Pharyngula

Posted by: blf | October 27, 2007 12:31 PM

I assume PZ is the Kraken that will eat it. He wants the blueprints to find the weak points and ensure the attack is successful.

Posted by: Jon H | October 27, 2007 4:44 PM

Um, in terms of science, I'm afraid I don't see the point. Surely it'd be a more productive use of money to buy a modern vessel, equip it with modern science gear, and use *that*. Or pay for a few more postdocs or grad student to join an already-planned voyage.

The Beagle didn't have much in the way of ROV's, for example.

Posted by: Ian H Spedding FCD | October 27, 2007 5:04 PM

I bet PZ is imagining himself as Cap'n Jack Sparrow ordering his scurvy crew aloft to the yardarms.

I'm looking at the Union Flag buttons. We need to make sure everyone remembers Beagle was British before Hollywood remakes it as an American expedition with Charles Darwin portrayed as an Indiana Jones type of adventurer complete with fedora and bullwhip...

Posted by: Peter McGrath | October 27, 2007 6:04 PM

Jon H. If all you are interested in is doing research, then away you go: endow some post docs on existing research vessels. Don't tell anyone, Jon (just you and I here) but we have a bigger vision. First off, a square rigger replica of one of the most significant ships in history being built in 2008 will generate media and public interest in the run up to the Darwin bicentenary in 2009. In 2009, her launch (attended by descendents of the original crew) and departure on the Voyage of the Beagle: restaged will be one of the media events of the year (in a way, I respectfully suggest, funding a few postdocs on a steel motorboat night not). Not a few post docs but dozens, maybe hundreds of young internationally mixed scientists over the course of the circumnavigation. Some doing the ocean legs (some science to be done there), others retracing Darwin's shore expeditions, applying the techniques of modern science to Darwin's work, the raw exploration, the observations and results being streamed to classrooms and labs the world over. Science classes throughout the UK (and elsewhere, if they wish) taking part in part in the experiments (proper ones, not canned, results-known stuff) in parallel. Are we getting value for money yet?

We have meeting with broadcasters of worldwide reach next week: the point of this is not just the primary science (but there;ll be plenty of that), but to build a science education and outreach project.

We have declining recruitment to science courses in Britain, and a lack of scientific literacy. Darwin was English, but you might not know that living here (and we're not being nationalistic about this - we are really looking forward to getting our enthusiastic overseas supporters aboard - as Steven Jay Gould said, science at its best is international and collaborative). The Beagle Project aims to play a part in reversing both: do we do that with learned lectures and exhibitions of rocks in boxes alone, or do we bring a replica HMS Beagle harbours, get school kids aboard, take them to sea and let some good science teachers and communicators loose one them. Those who cannot sail can follow the science though an interactive website: have you sen what happens when young people see, far less get aboard a square rigger? I have. $7 million (capital) for a charismat science outreach, research and education project with a 20 year lifespan and the capacity to make you minds look, say 'cor! and wonder. Plenty of scientific bang for you buck, methinks.

Posted by: donna | October 27, 2007 6:23 PM

I"ll have to get a shirt for my dog -- Darwin.

Posted by: Scrofulum | October 28, 2007 11:55 AM

I like the mugs. Apparently, the handles are a slightly different shape depending on which factory they come from.