Showing posts with label Darwin Day. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Darwin Day. Show all posts

Friday, February 12, 2016

Darwin Day festivities!




Darwin Day signature drink: Primordial Booze!

I had my Darwin Day celebration last night since today I'm going to be at work until about midnight. Tonight is also the release of the very anticipated Dead Pool movie and Zoolander 2, so Darwin Day has been extremely over shadowed. Most of my friends went out to see Dead Pool for the midnight/early release, so my social media has been exploding with that.

Don't get me wrong, I'm also very excited about both of those movies and cannot wait to see them, but Darwin Day is my own little holiday and I take it mildly seriously.
Mildly because I haven't put real blood, sweat and tears into pulling off a grand event just yet, because I always have Jess and/or Shen to celebrate with.

Darwin Day isn't a big deal for the group of people I hang out with, because they accept evolution as a scientific fact, so they're not passionate about the importance of it. Which is awesome, because I have friends who are scientifically literate. I understand not wanting to throw a party about a dusty old man who obsessed over beetles and finches unless you are a huge dork with an unreasonable appetite for the science behind evolution.
I get it.
I guess it falls into the wildly cliche "If you're in love you want to tell the whole world" saying. I want to share this amazing connection we have to the rest of the animal kingdom and the planet with everyone, because I'm just still so madly in love with that fact. I want to celebrate, learn and drink green alcoholic beverages with some of my favorite fellow apes.

Though the box office media has stolen my tiny little bit of spotlight that I usually hog during this time in February, last night was still a lot of fun. We made dinosaur fossil cookies, which I know isn't Darwinian anything but whatever, some chocolate-cinnamon-cayenne pepper cupcakes, and Jess made some super yummy BBQ pinwheels. Oh, and of course, we mixed up some Primordial Booze.
WE ATE LIKE KINGS.
I also made a point of taking a couple pictures of our festivities since I realize how many pictures I'm not taking of these events.



We decided to go with Sir David Attenborough's Darwin and the Tree of Life series to start and finished the evening with an episode from the new Cosmos series with Neil DeGrasse Tyson. I wanted to stay out longer and watch the BBC drama I mentioned about in my last post, but I'm still trying to recover from a nasty cold.
I'm actually still feeling pretty awful so I'm taking it extremely easy today until I go to work around 15:00. I got plenty of sleep and am sitting in my recliner drinking water, wanting to take a nap. I'd actually kill for a cup of coffee or tea right now, but I'm sadly out and don't have the energy to go to the store.

I'm pretty sure he took a bite out of one of them....



I had brought along my trex, who has been officially named Skepasaurus because of his judging sideways glance, to help me make the dinosaur fossil cookies. Those cute little therapod tracks you see in those cookies are non other that him. He was kind of the mascot last night during most of our antics, but eventually found and made friends with Jess's tardigrade, or "waterbear".

Thus this adorable picture happened.

Trex and his tardi-bear

LOOK HOW HAPPY HE IS. I CAN'T DEAL.

While the entire night was a blast, that picture is definitely the highlight of the evening. We've set the bar yet again for my expectations for future Darwin Day events!

Next year, I think I am going to try and put together a big celebration. It really bums me out that there aren't big Darwin Day events happening in the DFW area, considering that Dallas has one of the best natural history museums. Despite this being Texas and part of a the "Bible Belt", DFW is not an overly Godly or anti-science area from what I can tell.
Which makes me feel like putting together an event like this wouldn't be too terrible hard. I thin if Austin can have some cool Darwin Day stuff, we should be able to make on happen too.
Next year goals...let's see if they happen like I'd like. A lot can happen in a year, so lets put a pin it it, shall we?

If you'd like some good links to videos to watch and/or book recommendations for Darwin Day, you can get both from my previous Darwin Day post which has all of those.

Happy Darwin Day, guys!

-M

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Happy almost Darwin Day: Prepping for fun


Happy Darwin Day! (almost)





Darwin Day has become a tradition of food, friends, drinks and science for about 3 years now. It started as a small gathering of a couple close friends eating a store bought cake with the Darwin Fish drawn out in icing on top.
Well, the size is still about the same with the same core group, only about 3-4 of us, but our activities and menu has changed quite a bit. Last year me and Jess made up a drink called Primordial Booze, a mixture of vodka, blue curacao, orange juice, and redbull. The drink comes out a wonderful green color and is extremely yummy. Since Jess is an amazing cook, she typically is in charge of the food and I tag along for simple stuff that’s easily tossed together.


For those of you who may not know what I’m talking about, Darwin Day is the celebration of Charles Darwin’s birthday, February 12th, and a celebration of the theory of Evolution. The reason this is so important is because evolution is still not completely accepted and very often is vastly misunderstood.
As a big fan of the theory of evolution and science in general, I love participating in this awesome day of science appreciation and literacy. To find out more about Darwin Day, you can check out the official website to get more information.


Last year really set the bar for festivities and had to have been my favorite Darwin Day so far. I spent the better part of a month putting together a long playlist on YouTube of any evolution education videos I could find. Turns out there are a LOT of them and a good chunk are very well done. Videos from SciShow, It’s Okay to be Smart, PBS studios, and a ton of others made up the list of about 20+ short videos, each about 2-10 minutes long.
I’ll put a link to my playlist at the bottom with all the other things I want to include in this rambling of science admiration.
The best part was that Jess had set up her nifty projector in the backyard, and we all huddled together in the slightly chilly February weather to watch every single one.
Awesome night of nerdy fun.


This year we’re doing something pretty similar since we had so much fun, but instead of YouTube videos we’re going to watch one of the videos that comes recommended from the Darwin Day website. I’m torn between a documentary starring Sir David Attenborough talking about Charles Darwin’s life, or the BBC drama about Darwin’s inner struggle with his findings verses his religious beliefs.
Edgy stuff, man.
I’m also going to be making “fossil cookies”, which is something I’ve seen online that’s staggeringly simply to make. It’s cookies with dinosaur footprints in them, and since you can buy dough already made and I have all kinds of different dinosaur toys...well...that’s about as easy and it can be. Boom. Done. Dinosaur fossil cookies.
I’ll post pictures, but yeah...it’s not rocket surgery.


Since I found out about DD in 2012, there have been a lot more celebrations and activities popping up all over during this time. It used to be a handful of celebrations across the US, but not there are tons all over the world, which is really inspiring. There’s a big event happening in Austin Texas this coming up weekend that I really wish I could go to. Austin is usually the only area in Texas having these kind of events, which isn’t shocking.
One of these days I’m going to put something bigger together, but I just don’t have the manpower to do something like that.
That’s a lie. I think I could actually make something amazing happen in the DFW area, but it’s more the time/funding that trips me up each year. Maybe that can be my 2017 goal for next year is to do something amazing and big for Darwin Day. For now though, it’s just another amazing gathering of friends I’m looking forward to.


Are you guys going to be doing anything to celebrate? You should totally let me know! I’d love to have some great ideas for next year. I'll do another post and actually take some damn pictures this time and do another post-Darwin Day blog about how it went.

Is this your first year celebrating? Your tenth? Share!! I wanna hear all about it.


Here are some pictures from past events, some book recommendations for those who want to read up on evolution, and/or a video playlist if you’d rather get your info that way.


Happy Darwin Day, everyone!!


-M


  • Pictures from years past!
I honestly don't know why I don't have more pictures.

First Darwin Day 2012

Last year 2015 with Primordial Booze!!



  • Darwin Day links and books

Links and Videos:





Book Recommendations:


  • Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
    • The entire book can be read for free online here!!
  • Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne 
  • Greatest Show On Earth: Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins
  • Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin
  • Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation by Bill Nye