Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

Too often modern “museology” is a smudge on the nose of a fine old museum collection. A few years ago, the big museology fad was that old-fashioned science museums were boring. Therefore every science museum, everywhere, cleared some big chunks of space for a show about ¨Sharks are scary!” or “Snakes are dangerous!”*

I understand that not everybody loves, as I do, the massed ranks of whitened skeletons that Paris displays (probably, just as Georges Cuvier organized them.)

But it is possible for museum displays to be fresh instead of stale without losing scientific value. The Barcelona science museum, under the direction of Jorge Wagensberg, is proof of this.

The display of 6 giant iguanodon skeletons amusingly shows the sequence of scientists´ideas about how to pose them. Did they walk on four legs or two? The huge thumb-claw was depicted as a nose-horn for many years, until intact skeletons made it clear where it went. Another sequence of signs talks about scientists´changing theories about the finding of 23 skeletons so close together, and talks about how evidence supports or contradicts each one.

In addition to big displays to ooh and ahhh over — let me re-mention the sunken Amazon rainforest — the interactive exhibits are clever, relevant, and in good repair. (Frank loved the Coriolis force machine and was delighted to find its twin in Madrid. Both museums are funded by CosmoCaixa Foundation, so they share inspirations back and forth.)

The CosomoCaixa Science Museums of Barcelona — it´s up near Tibidabo — and Madrid — go see them if you get a chance!

*You can see exactly the same effect when school curricula get re-written by people who hated school and thought all their subjects were boring or too hard. I was lucky enough to attend public school when some of the smartest and most ambitious career women in my home town were proud to teach kids the subjects they had learned and loved in those very same schools.

Heading for chilly Oxford this morning (must pack!)

Just quick miniblog on Barcelona–

• Wonderful science museum; we spent 6 hours exploring and could have spent more
• Wonderful Gaudi buildings and magnificent buildings created by his rivals
• Wonderful narrow cobbled streets near Cathedral get cleaned every single day
• Wonderful friendly people, even the extremely trendy looking young staff of the wonderful Hotel Neri
• Wonderful food, especially crema Catalana, an improved (if you can believe it) creme brulee with the custard less heavy and the sugar top thicker

The picture shows Gaudi’s hugely ambitious Sagrada Familia, still under construction, with a busker dressed as Barcelona’s Columbus statue, and two tourists enjoying it all.

Here’s a Google language tool I just discovered* — “Use the Google interface in your language“.

And they’re not just talking Afrikaans, Welsh, Xhosa, Yiddish, or Zulu. How about interfaces in “Bork Bork Bork”?

Pig Latin?”

Are you “Eelingfay Uckylay”?

Elmer Fudd

(Or should that be Ewmew Fudd?) What are your “Pwefewences”?

H4x0r:

Click link to learn “4|| 480u7 Google“…written in even more H4x0r!

And Google calls this “n0rM4L s34rCh”?

* Thanks to Chris Marcum for the ” fr34k1n6 cool” link!

Why does the name Forrest Mims look so familiar to geeks of a certain age?

Because wrote all those RadioShack books that got you started, starting with Getting Started in Electronics…
He’s now writing for a bi-weekly webzine called Citizen Scientist— the latest column on “The Scientific Names of Plants and Animals“…his own website reflects the breadth of his current interests…

Good to see he’s doing well, the Phillip Torrone of my own long-ago era…

The things you learn about your husband by reading pull quotes from newspaper interviews…these from La Vanguardia:

Tengo 53 años: menos memoria, pero mejor utilizada. Naci in Long Island y soy orgulloso fruto de la escuela pública de Nueva York. Casado, dos hijas…A veces me escuchan. No sé si Dios es; el de los humanos no lo he visto. No juzguen a EE.UU. por sus gubernantes: son mucho más mediocres que el pais.

Via Google language tools:I am 53 years old: less memory, but better used. I was born in Long Island and I am the proud fruit of the public schools of New York. Married, two daughters… Sometimes they listen to me. I do not know if God exists; the one of the humans I have not seen it. Do not judge the U.S.A. by its politicians: they are much more mediocre than the country.

I also discovered that the Spanish for “gluons” is “gluones.”

How did I almost miss this? Fortunately, JR duly Noded it…:

“Today is 05/05/05 which by some strange coincidence is the same in Nations that put the Date First as well as Nations that Don’t…”

One small step toward world harmony on this Cinco de Mayo?

Can you tell from this June 2003 bloggraphicthat I’m a big fan of Vespa? (And not of Segway?) Before the first Segway ever collided with Slashdot, its PR gaffes had lots of people annoyed. First, there was a huge, content-free hype prelaunch (“Ginger will change the world!”) Then, there was a sneaky push through state legislatures to pre-define Segway as an “EPAMD” legally entitled to compete with pedestrians for sidewalk space. My point, and I do have one, is to congratulate everyone’s favorite micropersuader Steve Rubel that his agency Cooper Katz just got the Vespa account. I look forward to seeing original, interesting, and amusing blogs about Vespa emerging soon from the collaboration.

Excellent feel-the-wind-in-your-hair spring motorcycle blogpost from MontaukRider…

Cocoa beans, that is, and that´s just one of the things you can learn at Barcelona´s Museum of Chocolate :

• The Aztec word xocoatl means “bitter water” — lily-livered Europeans were the first to flavor it with milk and sugar.
• The scientific name Theobroma means “food of the gods” — an editorial comment by Linnaeus with which I thoroughly agree.
• In my childhood, chocolate was one of the treats young Catholics were urged to give up for Lent. But Medieval monks were allowed plenty of chocolate during their many religious fasts — IMO, a classic early example of the way technology creates new temptations much faster than bureaucrats can create new sins.

Time to get off this smoky cafe computer, so hasta la vista*! Oh, one more discovery today–Barcelona hot chocolate is thick and black, like melted Hershey bars or hot chocolate pudding. I drank half a demitasse and I won´t need any lunch–not that I´m complaining!

* Also “fins aviat”–Josep Perarnau reminds me that Barcelona is in Catalonia as well as Spain, so the Catalan “see you later” is also on topic…