February café: Evolution in School

For the month of February, we have a cafe meeting on Wednesday, February 4th, at 7pm.

In the year 2009, we intend to follow monthly themes suggested by the Coalition on Public Understanding of Science, which makes February "Evolution", as celebration of the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth (the 12th), and 150 years since On the Origin of Species was published.

Evolution is the unifying theory of biological sciences, and without it very little of biology makes sense. It remains one of the most respected theories in science, and yet in the general population in the United States, about the same percentage "believe in evolution" as "believe in ghosts". In a poll spanning 34 countries, only Turkey ranked lower than the US in acceptance of evolution.

Our presenter, Kathy Savage, is a high-school science teacher in Oveido and board member of Florida Citizens for Science. She will tell us of her struggles, both in teaching students who are already inculcated to distrust science and particularly evolution, and in helping to protect Florida's new science education standards from being poisoned with nonscientific ideas.

Directions

Our cafe is held at Stardust Video and Coffee, which is in the area north of Colonial (SR50) and east of Mills Ave (17/92), but south of Winter Park.

From Mills, drive east on Virginia Dr, past Leu Gardens, following the curves -- Virginia, Forest, Corrine. At a the traffic light for Winter Park Road, turn left/north.
From Colonial, drive north on Bennett Road, toward Baldwin Park. At the traffic light for Corrine Dr, turn left/west and at the traffic light for Winter Park Road, turn right/north.

From that intersection, Stardust is immediately on the left. 1842 E Winter Park Rd, Orlando, FL. (407) 623-3393 Beware that some GPS maps send you too far north, to W Winter Park Rd. Stardust is only 50 feet from Corrine Rd.

Parking Instructions

The parking lot will probably be crowded, so please park on Marble Ave, which is next to (north, away from Corrine) Stardust's modest parking lot.

About us

Café Scientifique is a worldwide grassroots effort to raise science literacy by bringing science out of the lab and into the pub. It started in England about ten years ago, modeled after the French /Café Philosophique/, and has since spread to several dozen cities. Meetings are free to attend, and we love questions. A typical meeting runs about an hour. A scientific expert presents some topic for about 20 to 30 minutes, we have a short break to cogitate and order refreshments, and then we ask questions, discuss, and generally have a good time.

Help us grow and thrive!

We need you to help us keep a healthy number of people attending and stoking our dialectic fires. Tell others about us. It may be easiest to point them to Cafe Sci Orlando's web site, at cafesciorl.com . Also, Chad loves folksonomies, and recommends using the tag "cafesciorl" to refer online to this Café Scientifique. It's already in use to pull photos from Flickr on the cafe web site. Use that tag on your own on the 'Net when referring to us.

Darwin Day is Feb 12

"Darwin Day is an international celebration of science and humanity held on or around February 12, the day that Charles Darwin was born on in 1809. Specifically, it celebrates the discoveries and life of Charles Darwin -- the man who first described biological evolution via natural selection with scientific rigor. More generally, Darwin Day expresses gratitude for the enormous benefits that scientific knowledge, acquired through human curiosity and ingenuity, has contributed to the advancement of humanity." (from Darwin Day Celebration web site)

While some celebrations at universities and churches are large and public, most are small private affairs. Maybe you could host your own party.