{"id":312,"date":"2009-10-30T17:22:15","date_gmt":"2009-10-30T17:22:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2009\/10\/30\/on_dead_stuff\/"},"modified":"2009-10-30T17:22:15","modified_gmt":"2009-10-30T17:22:15","slug":"on_dead_stuff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2009\/10\/30\/on_dead_stuff\/","title":{"rendered":"On dead stuff"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Tummy\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\nI’ve allegedly been on holiday this week. It was enforced: not only is it half term and the Pawns require a bit of childcare, I also found myself with rather a lot of annual leave that I have to use up, or lose, before the end of the year. Just before we go beta, too. Of course, I haven’t actually been able to treat it as a holiday, what with certain things too boring to go into here, so I think I’ll have to have another holiday real soon now. I have one day in the office next week and then I’m off to Charleston to speak at a conference, and back as soon as I get off the podium so I don’t miss too much of the Younger Pawn’s birthday celebrations.<\/p>\n

\n\"peer<\/a>
\nKaren gets peer-reviewed<\/em><\/p>\n

\nDespite various things that I really could have done without, alluded to above, I was able to take the Pawns into the Natural History Museum<\/a> on Tuesday, there to meet with the incomparable Dr James<\/a> of Beagle Project<\/a> fame. Karen took us backstage, to gasps of awe and astonishment.<\/p>\n

\n\"Schlurp\"<\/a>
\nIn a pickle<\/em><\/p>\n

\nSophie enjoyed the Tank Room, and loved the Cocoon, so we went back again today. As it’s half term, and it was totally packed out on Tuesday, we planned to get there just after opening time today. This tactic paid off, and we were able to walk straight into the Cocoon without tickets. (They have this really neat system where you get a card with a bar code and when you get home, you can enter a unique code and access more information about the things you were interested in while you were there, thanks to the awesome power of the internets.)<\/p>\n

\n\"Cocoon<\/a>
\nOne big egg<\/em><\/p>\n

\nOne of the things that is not immediately apparent about the NHM, and something that sets it aside from a lot of other collections of things in London and around the world, is that it is a research museum<\/em>. Karen told us that there are ~350 scientists working at the NHM, in five departments. With over 70 million specimens, they should be kept busy.<\/p>\n

\n\"Red\"<\/a>
\nThere’s another 69,999,999 to see<\/em><\/p>\n

\nStrangely, for the first time since leaving the lab, I got a slight pang about bench science. It must have been the videos of scientists talking about phylogenetics and the pictures of Gilsons. I stood back and watched other people, and was amazed by the number of mothers, in particular (don’t ask me where the dads were) telling their charges about the science being done there. It gave me quite a thrill to hear ordinary people, in a public place, use words like ‘DNA’ in cold blood.<\/p>\n

\nAnd yet… in the main part of the Museum, the displays are incredibly old-fashioned. Plastic models in the Human Biology section, strangely Victorian exhibits in the Arthropod room. I guess there’s only so much you can do with stuff that doesn’t move, but the Darwin Centre at least is a step along the evolutionary ladder.<\/p>\n

\n\"Reason\"<\/a>
\nWhat it’s all about<\/em><\/p>\n

\n(More photos on Flickr<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve allegedly been on holiday this week. It was enforced: not only is it half term and the Pawns require a bit of childcare, I also found myself with rather a lot of annual leave that I have to use … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}