First, a great article from Science News on the man himself, giving a good idea of the breadth of Darwin's work. Next, we have a piece at the NYT that does an incredible job discussing, in broad strokes, the history of the reception of Darwin's work. The latest issue of BBC Focus Magazine, available in a really cool Flash format, has quite a few neat articles (MINI Coopers are referenced on p. 7; my heart sings).
On the cultural front, while Texas manages to score a minor victory, this piece at the Christian Science Monitor talks about the new form we can expect the ID debate to take in the future.
Finally, the singing Darwin scholar.
And, what piece on Darwin could close without the last few paragraphs of the Origin:
It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of different kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us.That word "evolved" -- the last word of the Origin -- is the only time Darwin uses any variety of the word "evolution." And as the work closes, we feel that the door has been opened -- opened to the entire future of biological science.
[...]
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
Watch this space on Nov. 24, which, in addition to being my birthday, will be the next Darwin holiday -- the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Origin!