Items of Interest Worth Remembering
While today a report of an animal – even a particularly charismatic one such as a Gorilla – arriving in a modern European nation might merit only a passing glance (at most) by many, back in 1876, the species was only recently discovered, and debates about it and its relationship to humans were front page news, as well as rich fodder for the more popular side of culture.
As most naturalists do, I like to stop for at least a few moments on anniversaries of particular scientific significance in order to acknowledge and contemplate what or who that anniversary commemorates and where we would be had that thing not happened or that person not been born. Such a day is 12 February, the date on which Charles Robert Darwin, FRS FRGS FLS FZS was born.
Given the popularity of such recent books as Britt Wray’s “Rise of the Necrofauna” and Beth Shapiro’s “How to Clone a Mammoth,” as well as the publication of the most recent addition to the still growing body of literature taking the topic as its subject, Ben Minteer’s “The Fall of the Wild,” it shouldn’t be surprising that Intelligence Squared U.S. gathered together four people with quite different views on the matter for one of their Oxford-style debates.
If you, like me, like moss, you’ll be pleased to learn that you can indulge your bryophilic inclinations to your heart’s content through the most recent episode – number 180 – of the In Defense of Plants podcast.