There's been a bit of a rumpus echoing through the blogosphere following a series of pop sci articles about Darwin and his legacy (see for example this review of recent stories).  Generally, and presumably to attract readers, many make some kind of provocative claim in the title, such as "Was Darwin wrong?" or similar.

In contrast, the February 2009 edition of National Geographic features a rather excellent article by Matt Ridley: Darwin's Legacy. In a refreshing change from the tabloid-style hatchet jobs often seen in the press, this is a measured view of how modern biology has built on Darwin's foundations, and quite responsibly points out that Darwin, for all his breadth of knowledge never knew the physical basis for inheritance.

The latest in the ongoing saga of our fly shipment from the USA is that our packet of flies finally made it to the lab.  They've been in transit for exactly three weeks*, and of course kept in in known conditions.  I'm very grateful to various people at Animal Health, who were able to make an exception to the regulations.

Nonetheless, I think the application of tight control of over the international transport of live insects such as these is a bit over the top - the legislation that I've looked through seems principally aimed at commercially important farm stock and other animals important to the human food chain.   I understand there's a general unhappiness in the UK Drosophila research community, especially since the international postal union recently relaxed its regulations regarding the transport of live Drosophila through regular mail.  I'm not particularly optimistic that we can make a change to the enforcement of the new regulations, but it's most definitely worth a try.

Well, it looks as though 2009 will be the year I finally start to do this "social networking" thing for real.  I've been running this website for a few years now - originally set up to host my genealogy work for my family, it became something a bit more interesting when I embarked upon the Joomla! journey.  My first Joomla! site was the revision of my plain html North Bucks Road Club website using Joomla!1.0. I then reworked  this website using a release candidate of Joomla! 1.5.x, and subsequently set up a website for a conference in Oxford that I helped organise (this site has been removed as it's no longer needed).

This site has been upgraded to Joomla! 1.5.9. The initial upgrade from the release candidate to the final release version in summer 2008 was a disaster, and I had to rebuild it from a saved sql file. At that point, I switched to MyBlog to handle the front page.  I've also started using an extension that permits finer granularity in user groups, so that selected users can collaborate on documents, such as wikis.

The UK Government's plans to assemble a joined up database state appear to be drawing closer.  In the rather innocuous sounding Coroners and Justice Bill Part 8 - Data Protection Act 1998 (c. 29) lies an interesting clause, 152, in which the government empowers itself to authorise largely unlimited data sharing.

The bill's summary is as follows (my emphasis - at least it flags up the change that interests me):

There's been a profusion of articles in the popular press as he big Darwin anniversary swings into top gear.  Many of these make over-stated cases that Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection has been "shaken up", or "over-thrown" (see for example this blog post).

There's another at the Daily Telegraph today: Charles Darwin's tree of life is 'wrong and misleading', claim scientists. Setting aside the obvious point that Darwin couldn't have got all the details right given the scientific knowledge of the time, the article seems to restate the popular myth of the big icon of evolution - the diagram of evolutionary relationship as an oak tree:

Now that President Obama's in the White House, he's rolling out changes - closing Guantanamo Bay, permitting Federal funding for agencies that publicise abortion, and now enabling Federal funding for stem cell research.

Perhaps related to the thaw in stem cell research, the US Food and Drug Administration has approved a proposal aimed at investigating the use of embryonic stem cell therapy in spinal injury (BBC News).  The proposal, from Geron Corp., has been approved.

So, it seems the old farts at the Met don't want kids to have much fun these days.  Apparently, every live music event needs to be "risk assessed", which involves completing a form 696, while afterwards you need to complete a form 696A. It's claimed that

Sunny Hundal writes in the Guardian's "Comment is free" about his experiences.  Before he and other fun-lovers could get into the venue, a variety information were gathered, with no indication of why the data were collected, nor how long it would be held for.

The Wordpress blog I described the other day has been fully launched - Wonderful Life - and is hosted here rather than at Wordpress.com.  I wanted to be able to do some css tweaking, and that proved a bit easier I installed it in my own domain.  I'm rather pleased with the clean and uncluttered layout of the template I chose.

I've entitled the blog Wonderful Life because it's the sense of wonder and excitement I gain from observing and explaining the world around me that motivates me as a biologist.  It's a forum for me to sound off on atheism and related matters.  Of course, it remains to be seen whether I keep it (the blog, I mean, not my biology!) rolling after the initial excitement.  And of course this blog will still be needing attention, as does the Team Grumpy blog (though that's more of a joint effort). 

Another broadsheet blogger rails against the atheist bus adverts, this time it's one Gerald Warner, blogging at the Daily Telegraph.

I have been conducting research using the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster since I started my PhD in 1982.  In that time I have imported countless consignments of fly strains through the post and by courier (such as Federal Express).  On only  one occasion can I recall having difficulty getting them through customs - a box of female-sterile mutants from France got stuck, and was in a frightful state when they arrived (this was during my PhD).

The general practise is for the sender to affix one of those green customs tags, asserting that the contents are a gift, of no commercial value (typically $1 may be quoted), that they are live insects, but not an agruicultural pest or a vector of disease.  So for over 26 years as a practising Drosophila geneticist, I've had but one case where this has presented a problem.