28 April 2007 Filed in:
The Voyage of the Beagle
I have just returned from the WildSouth International Film Festival in Wanaka – a festival that I had a hand in organizing. But that is not the point of this: what got me excited was not just the quality of individual films like the wonderful Mississippi: tales of a river rat but the unavoidable awe one experienced at seeing the different faces of Nature apparent in the films. From the opening of the festival, with its montage of superlative images of wildlife set to the haunting music of Trevor Coleman (in Equator: circle of life), to the many insects that dot the South American landscape in Buggin’ with Ruud, to the sequences of sharks, hunting dogs and elephants in the BBC’s Pole to Pole – you could not help but marvel at how varied Nature is, at how clever Natural Selection has been.
Read More...Tags:WildSouth, Voyage of the Beagle, Nature, biodiversity
24 December 2006 Filed in:
The Voyage of the BeagleThere is a certain irony in celebrating Christmas if one is an unabashed Darwinist. I wonder if Richard Dawkins gives Christmas gifts? Or receives them, even?
Charles Darwin acknowledged Christmas. While in New Zealand he attended a church service on Christmas Day 1835 in Pahia, where the service, somewhat ahead of its time, was in both English and Maori. Read More...Tags:Merry Christmas, Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle, HMS Beagle, Reverend Williams, Pahia, New Zealand, Cannibalism, Richard Dawkins
Darwin’s final staging post before pushing off the South American continent for the Galapagos Islands was Peru. Recently I have been researching and writing about that part of the Voyage of the Beagle. But I have also been using it as an opportunity to digress and explore the relationship between religion and the indigenous South Americans, from rampant Catholicism to the beliefs that preceded the Spanish invasion. Read More...Tags:Monastery, Lima, Catacombs, Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle, Monasterio de San Francisco
