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Video
Music

An Ode to Charles Darwin

VIDEO: Singing scholar finds musical theatre in history of science. No, really.

Allison Martell 16 Feb 2009TheTyee.ca

Allison Martell regularly writes about online video for The Tyee.
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Music for monkeying around.

The 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth Thursday ignited a little burst of online Darwinian love -- Google populated its logo with fish and birds, and the New York Times posted this video, along with an accompanying article.

The singer is Richard Milner, a science historian and childhood friend of late evolutionary theorist Steven Jay Gould. Milner writes and performs songs from the perspective of his intellectual hero, Charles Darwin. Between writing books about evolution, Milner tours his one-man show, Charles Darwin: Live & in Concert. His songs, about everything from whales to protozoa, draw on Darwinian mythology -- the first song in the video, "Why Didn't I Think of That?" is an obvious reference to Thomas Henry Huxley's famous reaction* to Darwin's theory of natural selection: "How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!"

The Internet can be a frustrating place for folks passionate about Darwin's work, consumed as it is by the exhausting trench warfare between creationists and evolutionists. I think that's why this video is so refreshing -- it just doesn't touch that debate, at least until you scroll down to the comments.

There is something else, though. Popular music has become so professionalized, such big businesses, that I'm always pleased to find an enthusiastic amateur singing his or her heart out among the iTunes cross-promotions. In that spirit, the Times offered a prize for the "reader who comes up with the best lyrics to be sung by Charles Darwin or any other scientist, alive or dead." One entrant has already submitted this fantastic ode to Rosalind Franklin.

So while all the Internauts out there obsess over that boy on nitrous oxide, and this girl narrating a picture book of kittens, I'll keep returning to guys like Richard Milner and songs about Darwin.

In my geeky heart, that beats out kittens any day.

*Story corrected at 3:34 p.m., Feb. 18, 2009.

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