{"id":38794081,"date":"2009-02-13T01:31:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-13T01:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.casey.com\/2009\/02\/happy-darwin-day.html"},"modified":"2013-04-05T04:42:16","modified_gmt":"2013-04-05T04:42:16","slug":"200902happy-darwin-day-html","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/2009\/02\/13\/200902happy-darwin-day-html\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Darwin Day!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"darwin_fish.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/chriscasey.typepad.com\/.a\/6a00e54ee0b2d08834010537229716970b-pi\" width=\"250\" height=\"121\" align=\"right\" border=\"0\" \/>Today is the 200th Anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, and hence the occasion to celebrate <a href=\"http:\/\/www.darwinday.org\/\">Darwin Day<\/a>! Seeking some appropriate reading material for the occasion, I&#8217;ve begun a book that&#8217;s been sitting unread on my shelf for a long time, The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. In the first paragraph of his book, Dawkins writes;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"posterous_short_quote\"><p>Living organisms had existed on earth, without ever knowing why, for over three thousand million years before the truth finally dawned on one of them. His name was Charles Darwin.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I am among the &#8216;layman&#8217; readers that Dawkins says he had in mind when he wrote the book 33 years ago, and I predict I won&#8217;t always quickly grasp that my body as well as those of every other living thing on the planet are in fact &#8216;survival machines&#8217;, designed solely to protect the genes that we carry within us. Science wasn&#8217;t a strong subject for me. But I&#8217;m gonna try. I was glad to see the Washington Post put <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2009\/02\/11\/AR2009021104244.html\">an article on Darwin and advances in the study of evolution<\/a> on the front page of the paper today, well placed.<\/p>\n<p><em>for further reading&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gallup.com\/poll\/114544\/Darwin-Birthday-Believe-Evolution.aspx\">On Darwin\u2019s Birthday, Only 4 in 10 Believe in Evolution<\/a><br \/>\nGallup Poll<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/news.nationalgeographic.com\/news\/2009\/02\/photogalleries\/darwin-birthday-evolution\/\">7 Major &#8220;Missing Links&#8221; Since Darwin<\/a><br \/>\nNational Geographic Magazine<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/science\/discoveries\/news\/2009\/02\/dayintech_0212\">Feb. 12, 1809: Darwin \u2014 Adapted There, Evolved That<\/a><br \/>\nWired Magazine<\/p>\n<p>And not to overlook today&#8217;s other notable 200th, Happy Birthday also to <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Abraham_Lincoln\">Abe<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today is the 200th Anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, and hence the occasion to celebrate Darwin Day! Seeking some appropriate reading material for the occasion, I&#8217;ve begun a book that&#8217;s been sitting unread on my shelf for a long time, Th&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38794081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3mOvc-2CM6Z","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38794081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38794081"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38794081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":173354041,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38794081\/revisions\/173354041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38794081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38794081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38794081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}