"So long as no-one throws my teabags over the side"

Babe and Tiny occupy the site of Tuck's latest landscape restoration project, in this case revamping the egregiously overgrown circular parterre that once was the pride of the sideyard (see dug-up pinks in containers, top center) but now has lost its vigor and requires a thorough realignment of everything. A major goal will be raising and resetting the adjacent bricks of the walkway to prevent future basement flooding.

Two emails that made our blogday:

1. "Dear Donot," emails Imam Al Gore in a "Paid for by John Kerry for Senate" message plugging our ineffable -- or should we say F-able? -- Massachusetts junior senator's latest tome:

A few weeks ago I read John and Teresa's book, This Moment on Earth. I found the stories within, about men and women fighting the great fight for our environment, to be a profound challenge to all of us. These activists provide valuable lessons on the power of people working for change. If we embrace their resourcefulness, determination and essential patriotism we will prevail in the fight to save our planet.

We've never been one to embrace others' "resourcefulness, determination and essential patriotism," whatever that means. Environmental skeptic and libertarian Darwinian that we are by nature and by training, we've never bought the media-hyped hysteria of the Chicken Littles of this world who claim that humans/GeorgeBush are responsible for everything bad that ever happens to "the planet." Such attribution of God-like powers to humans comes straight from the playpen. Beyond the cynically trumped-up, agenda-driven hysteria of Al Gore & Company, the navel-gazing hubris is what gets us. Don't they know that Mother Nature always has the last word?

2. "'There is grandeur in this view of life': excellent choice, my favourite line in the book," emails the totally awesome Peter McGrath -- about whom more below -- responding to a comment we left at Ann Althouse's recent post. "Should conservatives embrace Darwin?" Here's our comment:

Like everything else under the sun, Darwin is grist for every proselytizer's mill. He's probably spinning in his grave at the trash being spewn on all sides in his name.

As our regulars know, passionate naturalist and fearless seeker of wisdom and truth Charles Darwin -- blogged here early and often -- is our urhero. And who is Peter McGrath, you may ask? What fun to learn that he is one of the principles of a project designed to build a replica -- with a secret heart of steel -- of the HMS Beagle, the ship that took Darwin to South America, the Galapagos and beyond, where his field work accumulated the evidence that eventually led to his earth-shaking theory of evolution. Here's a bit of background on McGrath's project from the BBC:

Plans are being drawn up to build a £3.3m working replica of the boat that took Charles Darwin around the world at Milford Haven in Pembrokeshire . . . The aim is to built a seaworthy vessel identical to the HMS Beagle on the outside, but with a modern interior.

Darwin, who showed how natural selection could explain evolution, sailed on the Beagle between 1831-36.

Mr McGrath said the ship would look identical to the original Beagle on the outside but would have a 21st century interior with diesel auxiliary engines and generators . . . He said he hoped the finished vessel would inspire the scientists of the future and be used by researchers and scientists from across the world.

Check out Peter's blog here and The Beagle Project website here, and if you're so inclined, send along some monetary support for this totally excellent project. We've had a nifty little email tête-à-tête with Peter in the last 24 hours. A snippet of his wit and wisdom for your delectation:

We hope to bring the replica to the USA, carrying a facsimile copy of the first edition of The Origin which Darwin sent from here (Yorkshire where he was in hiding from wrathful London) to Grey and Agassiz at Harvard.

We obviously hope to have a few US students and mentors aboard, too.  From a country that's produced so many Nobels, it would be rude not to . . .

If we could be a decorative addition to Chelsea by the sea, take local biology students out for day sails, get them interested in applying to sail with us, get some of Harvard's bulgy-headed ones interested in sailing with us as mentors, that might be beneficial for both. Just so long as no-one throws my teabags over the side. I'm very tetchy without my morning cuppa.

Wouldn't it be nice if the son of HMS Beagle were to find a berth across the street from us here in Chelsea-by-the-Sea during the 2009 Darwin bicentennial? We're workin' on it.

Comments

[goomp]

The ignorance among the rabid environmentalists of the history of the atmosphere and the varying temperatures that have existed on earth for as far back as can be traced is astounding. These people are not stupid. They are merely ignnorant and conceited. Theirs is a religion, a matter of faith, not an enquiring search for knowlesge such as was the goal of Darwin. Let us hope that new HMS Beagle will lead to a greater search for truth.

[Peter McGrath]

Goomp, I recently spent a day in the British Library with a first edition of FitzRoy's account of the voyage of the Beagle. His weather observations over the five years of the voyage run to 66 closely printed pages, and one of the projects I'd like to undertake is to use the data to reconstruct climate patterns of the time: it's been done from ships' logs at the battle of Trafalgar (1805), and a very eminent climate scientist has said it's worth looking into. And Sissy thanks for the blog: I blush. I must have committed a typo in my email - I meant so many Nobels rather than too many Nobels.

[hnav]

well said Goomp!

great post mighty SISU...

John Kerry is still sending emails?

you mean he is still in the Senate?

didn't he serve in Vietnam?

ps: could this new Beagle research the varying stories of Hillary Clinton on her vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq?

would Darwin call this evolution or revolution?

or just another lie?

pss: rumor has it, she is trying to de-authorize the Iraq war?

don't you need a time machine for something like this?

[Gayle Miller]

Not in the world according to Hillary Rodham Clinton, Brooklyn Boy. More than anyone else, she typifies the generation that believes the world revolves around their own sacred selves! Bunch of immature, mewling infants with no notion of consequences or true morality.

One would think that a 60-year old woman would have learned SOMETHING by now, but apparently not. HRC is a pathetic creature, comprised entirely of overwhelming ambition untempered by any ethical or moral base.