Two years ago, I had t-shirts made up for my evolution course that depicted Darwin's notebook sketch of a simple tree diagram capped by the words "I think". In total, we generated about $500 for conservation charities, and the students got a pretty cool shirt (I still see them around campus fairly frequently). Had I been teaching the course this semester, I probably would have produced the t-shirts again. This is Darwin Year, after all. But I'm not, so I won't.

Instead, I have teamed up with a good friend (and former fellow grad student) who is now a website designer and graphic artist to come up with a whole line of Darwin Year gear. We are planning to donate 50% of the proceeds directly to conservation charities, and the other 50% is to be invested in developing other evolution-related websites (hint: www.evolverzone.com and www.darwinaut.com). We've been having a lot of fun coming up with ideas, and we've also been working on a dedicated webpage with recommended books, links, and so on.

Our view is that Darwin Year is not just about Darwin, but is meant to be a celebration of the achievements of the entire scientific discipline that he helped to establish 150 years ago.

If you are looking for evolution-related shirts and other stuff, I invite you to check out the store at www.cafepress.com/darwinyear2009 or the main website www.darwinyear2009.com. Both of these are still under construction, and we'll be producing many more designs in the near future. But you can already access quite a few designs.

What will you find? Here are some examples:

















www.cafepress.com/darwinyear2009

www.darwinyear2009.com