Tuesday, August 01, 2006

V1.B.P3 A day on nature

Other than the hillarious photo on the left (click on it to read how the Rainbow Warrior fights our corner all day long), last Tuesday was full of amazement.
The natural history and science museums in London made me want to be a child again, which is a very rare occasion as I was almost always bored when I was a kid. All I could wish for in those childish little wishing games was to grow up. And I still think it makes sense. In the modern society being a kid is practically equivalent to being in a vegetative state and/or retarded. This bit is no different for the kids in London too probably, but if I had these two museums -instead of the ones dad took me to when I was 11-12, such as the maritime museum and stuff- I would be a happier child (and a more knowledgeable adult) ;)
so here are some pics to share my amazement with you..
The two entrances: The first one to the bio-centre the second to the geo-centre.



The Darwin Centre was unfortunately closed, hence I basically took a few pictures with/of him. On the other side of the room was sitting Thomas Henry Huxley, "Darwin's bulldog" as they used to call him. Nothing against good old THH, and thanks for the concepts such as agnosticism and abiogenesis, but it was sad and infuriating not to see any mention (leave aside a statue) of Alfred Russel Wallace! History is a cruel means to accredit people...

One of the surprises was to figure the extent to which David Attenborough influenced the perceptions of nature (i.e. not only mine, as he was one of my childhood heros sharing the platform with Jacques Cousteau) and how iconised he was. This pic is from a poster at the natural science museum. I think it had no slogans on it but might be asking for a donation.

I touched a real meteorite!
That fell from outer space!
All of a sudden the idea of life on Earth being brought from the skies started to make much more sense! lol! I mean the
PAH world hypothesis of course...
It felt very COLD and almost out of time and space...





I saw some real mammoth teeth and thought about vegetarian dinos... Which makes me think of sizes of these species. However smiley that dino looks it was said to be eating an equivalent of 300 kilos of tomatos and some tonnes of cabbages per day. Small is beautiful. I like the iguana in the David Attenborough picture better...









There was even a room which simulated the Kobe earthquake, in which I naturally did not take any photos. So, it was full of things you would like to do when you are a kid and not aprx. 30, but it was still a lot of fun.

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