On February 12, 1809, he was born.  Who, you say?  Charles Darwin (1809-1882), the great English naturalist, he of the famous Voyage of the Beagle 1831-1836, and his On the Origin of Species (1859). So, you ask, how is dear old Darwin at 203 - or, more accurately, how is his crucial discovery and formulation of the Theory of Evolution? 

Quite well, thank you.  That is true, despite the rather futile sniping from the Far Right of the GOP and US Protestant Fundamentalists. Futile, because in the rest of the World, in half of the United States, and throughout the Sciences, the greatness of Darwin's creative vision of Life is recognized.

I have just discovered (through Twitter) an excellent article on Darwin & Evolution from three years ago.  Written by film critic Roger Ebert, it was posted in his Journal on the Chicago Sun-Times, on 11 Feb 2009 on Darwin's bicenntenial. It is still well worth reading, so I have reposted it here:

Darwin survives as the fittest

A little background to this article may be helpful. Two months earlier, Ebert had published a post (3 Dec 2008), praising Darwin's Theory but castigating Ben Stein's doumentary Expelled and the theory known as Intelligent Design.  Ebert's 2008 post brought a tremendous response.  This is what he wrote in Feb 2009, "That entry has so far drawn some 280,000 visits and inspired nearly 1,300 comments comprising some 145,000 words, every one of which I have read. The thread is still active and growing every day." 

He goes on to write this: