Join DSN and the Beagle Project in Brazil

The fabulous Karen James and I will blogging and tweeting the “party in Paraty” starting this Thursday! There is an exciting line up of events which will include:

• A celebration of Darwin and to put his work in context with the work of international collaborations like Census of Marine Life and Consortium for the Barcoding of Life
• Exploring the scientific possibilities of doing various kinds of science on tall ships
• Corresponding with the International Space Station to verify phenomena observed from space imagery as it passes overhead AT THE SAME TIME (how awesome is that??)
• Speaking with 60+ children from local schools in Paraty about evolutionary science, Darwin, marine science and maritime history aboard the brazilian tallship Tocorimé.
• Facilitating an audio connection between the Brazilian school students and astronauts aboard the ISS.
• Engaging local teachers and the public to discuss ways they can stimulate Darwin activities in the schools and local areas.

It is very exciting to be a part of this project. I feel like a missionary for science in rural Brazil. Brazil is a scientific powerhouse in Latin America with a long and great tradition of excellent research. Darwin recognized the significance of Brazil and South America in the very first lines of the Origin:

When on board H.M.S. ‘Beagle’, as naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the inhabitants of South America, and in the geological relations of the present to the past inhabitants of that continent. These facts seemed to me to throw some light on the origin of species – that mystery of mysteries, as it has been called by one of our greatest philosophers.

As a science missionary, I hope to be able to inspire children, and adults, from any country to appreciate and inquire about the natural world in the Darwinian tradition and from within an evolutionary context. I wish that everyone can enjoy “throwing some light” on their own “mystery of mysteries” great and small.

So please follow along here at Deep Sea News and The Beagle Project blogs. Also, follow along Karen and mine twitter feeds. We’ll be using the hashtag #beagleinbrazil and I have installed a widget in the sidebar that aggregates all tweets with that hashtag.

[mappress]