Charles Darwin: currently nearing maximum subterranean angular velocity

I was watching BBC Four earlier and caught the second half of What Darwin Didn't Know, a programme presumably broadcast as part of the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin's On The Origin Of Species. All very interesting, and presented by the splendidly-named Armand Marie Leroi.

Search on Google for "what Darwin didn't know", though, without providing any other context, and you find links to some absolutely tremendous hogwash, for instance this and this and, for goodness sake, this. You're also only a couple of clicks away from this reading list, which you probably want to strap yourself into your tinfoil hat before diving into.

Couple of further points, firstly, as one of the central characters in Stephen King's excellent short novel The Langoliers keeps forcefully pointing out: time is very fucking short. With all the very real challenges facing the human race in the 21st century, do we really have the time or the available wood pulp material for stuff like Greater Than You Think: A Theologian Answers the Atheists About God? I mean, do we? Really? How about for Nyah Nyah Nyah Nyah Nyah; There Is Too A Santa Claus: A Small Incontinent Child Answers The Meanies Who State The Bleeding Obvious About Father Christmas (And Then Shits Itself)? Is that a useful and constructive use of our remaining time on this planet?

Secondly, even latter-day saints like David Attenborough get hate mail, and, unsurprisingly, it's about evolution, as it always is.

Thirdly, anyone interested in how life evolves and develops could do a lot worse than to read, along with the more orthodox Dawkins stuff like The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker, Ian Stewart's (no, not that one) Life's Other Secret, a fascinating account of how much of the seeming complexity of life follows from some fairly simple mathematical laws, without even the hand of genetics being required to guide the process. Which just illustrates even more forcefully the single basic central point that the anti-evolutionists fail to grasp: seemingly simple rules can and do generate mind-bogglingly and certainly at first glance counter-intuitively complex results. You really should read it, it's very good.