inelegant design – The Friends of Charles Darwin

Book review: ‘The Incredible Unlikeliness of Being’ by Alice Roberts

The Incredible Unlikeliness of Being

Evolution and the making of us.

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Warning: this site is riddled with junk DNA

The newly relocated Friends of Charles Darwin website is riddled with junk DNA.

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Thanks for the anomalies

Vestigial features in letterboxes and organisms.

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Woodpeckers' toes and woodpeckers' kludges

I've been reading up about woodpeckers.

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A cat among the pigeons
Could Charles Darwin really have been a moggy murderer?
Maureen Brian, FCD (12 June 1942 – 31 July 2018)
I was sad to learn via Facebook that Maureen Brian died earlier today.
The problem writing a book about Charles Darwin
…there are so damn many of the things already, how do you make your book different?
Re. Joyce
How the Friends of Charles Darwin motto was pre-empted by James Joyce.
24 not out… So, what next?
Today (2nd March 2018) marks the Friends of Charles Darwin's 24th birthday… Time, perhaps for something of a relaunch!

14-May-1856: Darwin starts writing his ‘big species book’
On 14 May 1856, Charles Darwin recorded in his journal that, on the advice of his friend Charles Lyell, after almost 20 years exploring the subject, he had finally begun writing a ‘sketch’ of his ideas on species.
If humans evolved from monkeys, how come there are still monkeys?
This is a question frequently posed by creationists—and quite often by perfectly rational people…
13-Jan-1833: The day HMS Beagle nearly sank
Charles Darwin's closest brush with death during the Beagle voyage came on Sunday 13th January 1833, near that most infamous of nautical perils, Cape Horn.
The great Darwin fossil hunt
In which a friend beyond measure arranges a behind-the-scenes visit to the Natural History Museum to see fossils collected by Charles Darwin during the Beagle voyage.
Spandrel sight-seeing
In which I visit the spandrels of San Marco in Venice.