On Tuesday night I found myself under a dinosaur, sandwiched between one of Charles Darwin's great-great-grandsons and a giant, talking dodo.
It sounds like a bizarre dream but I was in the main hall of the Natural History Museum in London to celebrate the kick-off of Darwin's 200th anniversary celebrations, which begin in earnest next year (he was born in 1809).
Aside from an actor in a dodo suit, the entertainment at Darwin 200 included speeches from Margaret Hodge, the British government's Minister for Culture and Martin Rees, head of the Royal Society, artwork to commemorate Darwin and readings from four young poets.
But the highlight for me - and in my view the ultimate biological tribute to Darwin - was chatting to two of his direct descendants, a man who studies information theory in his spare time and a female opera singer.
They weren't my first taste of the modern-day Darwin family. That came in 2005, when I met another great-great-grandchild, Matthew Chapman, a film maker and journalist, at a trial about the teaching of intelligent design
held in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
At that time in the US, Darwin's legacy seemed uncertain
(although months later federal court judge John Jones ruled that teaching intelligence design was religion, not science
, and that teaching it violated the separation of church and state as laid out in the First Amendment).
In complete contrast, on Tuesday night in London, his legacy was being celebrated in the museum that houses not only dinosaur bones, but specimens collected by Darwin himself during his famous voyage around the world aboard The Beagle
But across the pond, the anti-evolution movement is threatening to undo Jones's good work, by infiltrating the biology classrooms in a new guise. According to the New York Times
, this summer, the Texas state education board will decide whether the "strengths and weaknesses" of evolution should be taught in public schools.
If you think "so what?" then read on:
The "benign-sounding phrase, some argue, is a reasonable effort at balance. But critics say it is a new strategy taking shape across the nation to undermine the teaching of evolution, a way for students to hear religious objections under the heading of scientific discourse.
Although "strengths and weaknesses" have been in the school standards since the 1980s, they have "had little effect because evolution skeptics have not had enough power on the education board to win the argument that textbooks do not adequately cover the weaknesses of evolution." Now, however, "seven of 15 members subscribe to the notion of intelligent design".
The worry is that as a result, the teaching of "weaknesses" could be mandated, allowing an unscientific amount of doubt to be heaped on evolution in the biology classroom. Similarly subtle language was introduced into the Kansas science standards in November 2005, after anti-evolutionists gained a majority on the state school board
The term "intelligent design" itself is an attempt to find an alternative to the word "creationism". This was most deliciously illustrated during the ID trial, where early edits of pro-ID book Of Pandas and People
were unsealed. The edits revealed that after 1987 (before the book had been published) references to creationism and creationists were systematically removed and replaced with the word "intelligent design", while the surrounding text remained largely unchanged.
These changes exactly coincided with a 1987 Supreme Court ruling that outlawed teaching creationism in US schools, helping Judge Jones to come to his final decision.
Now that teaching intelligent design has been similarly outlawed, it appears that "strengths and weaknesses" are all the movement has left. How long can the cat-and-mouse game go on? Given that the anti-evolutionists are forced to constantly water down their language to dodge the law, surely at some point, whatever phrase they finally come up with will be meaningless.