Weekly sampler 22

It was a week of celebration and remembrance. There was a major birthday. And celebrations of that day of the first fruits of bigger things, in unlikely places like Florida and Arizona. It's all very exciting.

1. So... you're tired of reading about why Darwin is [God/Satan/Abe Lincoln/Howard Stern] or whether Darwinism is [Nazism/Atheism/True religion/ID codeword]. You'd rather read about what evolutionary biologists are doing today, and what real scientists think of Darwin and his ideas, but you don't have access to most academic journals. Take heart! There are some very good free resources that have been posted in celebration of Jason Varitek's signing, and here are some that I think are worth a visit:

• An entire issue of Heredity devoted to the topic of speciation
• A section of Current Biology devoted to reflections of various scientists upon reading (or perhaps re-reading) the Origin
• A series of very nice posts on evolutionary biology at Not Exactly Rocket Science, one of the best science blogs out there
• A new issue of Evolution: Education and Outreach, with excellent articles by Ryan Gregory (on artificial selection and domestication) and Michael Majerus (on the peppered moth story), among others. (Professor Majerus died last month; you can read a lot more about him at a tribute page at the University of Cambridge.)
• A special issue of Science devoted to Darwin and speciation, with some features freely available
• A special section at Nature devoted to all things Darwin
• A superb article at National Geographic by David Quammen on Darwin's first fossil clues to common descent

2. Randy Isaac (executive director of the ASA) has been providing reports from the AAAS annual meeting in Chicago, focused on topics of interest to ASA folks. He attended a symposium on human origins and posted comments on the ASA email list.

3. The Vatican will be holding a conference on evolution next month, and reports indicate that ID will get a very critical eye. Via John Farrell.

4. At the end of the month I'll be in Dayton, Tennessee to participate in an interesting Darwin-themed event at Bryan College and to hang with my friend Todd Wood. (Ted Davis is another speaker.) I hope to have a Scopes trial-centered tour as well. And in June I'll be giving a talk in a symposium at the North American Paleontological Convention in Cincinnati. I'll post the abstract here once it's accepted.

5. Siris on why Jerry Coyne should either stick to genetics or take a high school-level philosophy course.

6. More amazing illusions, again at Scientific American and again via Very Short List, but this time we have sculpted illusions of "impossible figures."

7. Gordon Glover has posted some lectures by Dennis Venema at Beyond the Firmament. Dennis is a professor at Trinity Western University in British Columbia and a fellow evolutionary creationist and ID skeptic.