Thought for the Day

This was supposed to be broadcast on BBC Radio Suffolk on 12 February 2008, after being recorded. I didn’t hear it, so I’m not sure if anyone else did.

Today is Darwin Day, the 199th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, the man who first described biological evolution via natural selection. On Darwin Day we celebrate the enormous benefits that scientific knowledge, acquired through human curiosity and ingenuity, has contributed to the advancement of humanity, and in particular we celebrate the achievements of a great man.

If he were alive today, I‘m sure Darwin would be fascinated by the current BBC TV series, Life in Cold Blood, with Sir David Attenborough, some of which was filmed on the Galapagos Isles, where he made the discoveries that sowed the seeds of doubt about the conventional biblical explanation for the origin of life.

Thought for the Day, BBC Radio Suffolk, Saturday 2 February 2008

Thirty-odd years ago, I met a suffragette. She’d known the Pankhursts – Emmeline and her daughter Christabel, who led the Women’s Social & Political Union, popularly known as suffragettes. Although Mrs Birnberg was an old woman when I met her, she still felt as strongly about women’s rights as she’d ever done and was scornful about the young women who didn’t use the vote that she and other women had fought for. I thought about her when, during election campaigns here in Suffolk, women would say they couldn’t be bothered to go and vote.

I make a mental note of new words I hear or read if I think they may come in useful. Last week someone used the word “anthropocentric”, and I had to look it up because it had been used in connection with Humanism.

We’ve had a mention in Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia written by volunteers around the world. If you follow the link below and click on the little [1] reference, you’ll be brought back here to my Evolution Day Thought for the Day on 24 November 2006.

Evolution Day - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Listeners who are, or have been, parents or teachers might have experienced the problem of fair shares, when a child has a sweet or a treat, and the others get wind of it and demand one too. It’s no good trying to sneak a treat to one child, without setting off wails of “O-oh! That’s not fair!”

In mid-August, a few hundred people took to the streets in Burma's capital, Rangoon. Since then, the world has watched an unfolding drama on its TV screens. At least, those that have TV are watching. Others are listening to their radios, or reading newspapers, leaflets, emails and blogs (or web logs).

Over fifty years ago, when they wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, they didn’t anticipate the World Wide Web and its effect on international communications. Article 19 says, “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” It’s become harder to conceal human rights abuses since then, as there are an increasing number of ways to spread information.