Total eclipse of the moon tonight or, technically, I suppose, tomorrow morning. According to Time and Date, here in Boulder, totality will begin around 4 a.m. and end at 5. If you do not count the penumbra, we will see the entire eclipse, though it will be twilight before the end. Likewise, the entire eclipse will be seen in the Pacific Ocean, as well as much of western North America and eastern Russia, Japan, New Zealand, and eastern Australia. Dimming of the light during the penumbral phase is too faint to be seen visually.

We’re used to seeing all sorts of silliness at the Discovery Institute’s website “Science & Culture Today” (formerly called Evolution News). A staple of the site is an article describing how wonderfully well-adapted some feature of an organism is, with the implied conclusion that this could only have come from Design Intervention.

Recent posts there have continued their tradition of being even more astonishing than that. Here are three examples:

• An expert on German literature, Neil Thomas, wrote on “The Monster in the Sky”: Revisiting Atheism’s Creation Myth, in which he said:

My hope in this endeavor is to throw additional light on the subject of Victorians’ reception of Darwin’s Origin of Species, asking specifically what factors might explain our ancestors’ acquiescence in accepting a theory bereft of empirical documentation.”

Yes, he really means that. See my earlier discussion of his views here

• Emily Reeves, trained in nutritional biochemistry, discovered a remarkable feature of evolutionary change. In her post Merry Christmas! No. 8 Story for 2025: Optimization and “Evolution Before Our Eyes” she reported on studies on evolutionary tradeoffs in Darwin’s Finches, using the studies of Peter and Rosemary Grant and others. She finds the fatal flaw!

We see that, in the most classic example of “evolution happening before our eyes,” genetic variation was present before the adaptive radiation. Whether this is truly “evolution” is, then, a question worth discussing.

• And just to round off a trifecta, Granville Sewell shows up, for the n-th time, summarizing his surpassingly silly old argument that there is something-like-a-Second-Law preventing chaotic physical processes from leading to adaptations, human achievements, and technology. This latest effusion will be found here.

But occasionally there is a post that argues an important case for common sense. On January 7 of this year, their house bioethicist Wesley J. Smith made this agonized plea:

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According to the National Center for Science Education, International Darwin Day, which is technically Darwin’s birthday on February 12, actually begins today in Denver. You may find a worldwide schedule here. A plurality of celebrations occurs on February 12, but you may find other events into April.

Additionally, NCSE reminds us, Religion and Science Weekend is February 13-15 and approximately coincides with Darwin Day.

For further details, see NCSE’s article Darwin Day 2026 approaches.

Photograph by Ole Lundin.

Photography Contest, Honorable Mention.