Is technology ruining the moment?

Like many people, I was at home when the New Year was rung in, so I could only watch the fireworks on TV. They were, it must be said, pretty spectacular (although I actually thought there were too many at times) and I felt a twinge of jealousy towards all those watching it live above their heads.
Jealous, that is, until the camera panned across said crowd and revealed all the upturned faces, staring into the LCD screens of their cameras and smartphones.
Is the memory of the 21st Century human really so bad that we have to try and capture every event and every moment on a digital device, however inferior that would be to the experience itself? (Even the best camera equipment is not going to have a dynamic range or field of vision to challenge the Mark I human eyeball.) I could almost understand it if the event was not being televised and recorded for prosperity anyway. (It's on BBC iPlayer, which is where the screen grabs are from, if you missed it.)

I think I'm going to add another New Year's aspiration:

☑ Enjoy the moment. Learn to recognise when the view or the moment is just too special or breathtaking to be distracted by trying to get the perfect shot for the future.

Hmmm. That's two rants in a row. Must make the next one a positive post!

Putting Greenwich at the centre of the World

If, whilst watching the Equestrian events at Greenwich Park, you wonder how Greenwich got to be home to the Prime Meridian Line - and thereby determine both world time and world longitude - you could do much worse than Episode 91 of A History of the World in 100 Objects, which features the ship's chronometer from HMS Beagle.

It represents technological advancement that didn't get a mention in the opening ceremonies but was arguably much more important than putting men on the moon (as Steve Jones did argue) or robots on Mars. (As undeniably cool as those things are!)

I've been slowly working my way through the episodes of this great series over the past few months - there are a lot of them! - and was particularly pleased to listen to this one yesterday as Darwin and Deep Time both get a mention. (I'd just been updating the MapTime Organic Evolution TimeLine and Keywords.)

So, if you are in London and looking to kill some time between events, download the podcast (or read the transcript) and then visit the British Museum!

(Less than) 3 days to go!

And in other London news...

M&M's World... WTF?

Today, we had a day trip to London and experienced something very strange. All across the city, we spied people carrying yellow bags with M&M's on them as if they had been shopping in some form of M&M shop. Stranger still, it turned out that they had! They had all visited M&M's World, London. Described by World Chocolate Guide as "the largest candy store in the world", M&M's World London is 35,000 square feet of over-priced tat, spread over four stories.
The only thing that is a bigger mystery to me that the fact that someone thought a four-storey 35,000 square foot shop selling nothing but M&M's merchandise was exactly what London's Leicester Square was missing is the fact that loads of people were buying said merchandise. Even more bizarre, people were getting their photo taken at various points inside the shop as if they were visiting some kind of national monument.

It felt like a scene out of Invasion of the Body Snatchers or something, where some kind of mind-controlling alien force is slowly taking over people one by one and soon we would be the only people left without a yellow bag full of M&M's in novelty-shaped boxes and slightly creepy soft toys of sweets in uniform.

Most annoying/strange of all, they didn't even seem to have a particularly massive range of M&M's. Sure, they had the regular M&M's in 24 different colours - great if you're decorating a cake or something - but we've been on the lookout for Mini M&M's (for decorating cup cakes) for a while and they didn't even stock them. Makes any claim to being "the largest candy store in the world" a bit weak, in my book. What they mean is "the largest candy-themed Merchandise store in the world". (Who even knew so many M&M's products existed?)

Still, at the end of the day, you have to have some grudging admiration for the Mars folk. Somehow, they have convinced the good people (tourists?) of London to advertise their candy and spend over the odds to do so. Pure Marketing Genius. (If you ever see me with a yellow M&M's bag, though, alert the authorities - the alien invasion is imminent!)

The Grant Museum of Zoology

Today I was in London for a meeting at the Nuffield Foundation on Bedford Square. After the meeting, I had a bit of time to kill before the train home, so I paid a little visit to The Grant Museum of Zoology, which is part of University College London.

This place is great and well worth a visit if you are in the area and like Natural History. It's only open 1-5pm on weekdays but it's pretty small, so you don't need much time to look around. The essence of the museum is quite "old school" and it reminded me quite a lot of the Natural History Museum in Dublin a.k.a. "The Dead Zoo", with lots of skeletons and stuffed animals.

One of my favourite exhibits is the "jar of moles", which is quite literally a jar of moles! It was accompanied by jars of other animals, such as lizards. As the signs explained, these collections of the same animal were compiled for teaching purposes, not just because someone was addicted to collecting moles. The cabinet next to the jars of animals had a bunch of different brains in jars along with possibly my favourite sign in the museum. It was next to a brain coral and read quite simply: "Brain coral. This is not a brain."

As well as educating about the animals themselves, with lots of skeletons (such as this mole, to keep the theme going), the Grant is educational about museums themselves; there are lessons on taxadermy and critter display mixed in with the collections and some history about some of the collectors. (They have some of Thomas Huxley's specimens.) It's also an interesting mix of old and new - sitting in front of glass cabinets full of preserved specimens were a bunch of iPads as part of their "QRator" project, with interactive questions and challenges.

All in all, a good way to kill half an hour or so in the Euston area.

The Natural History Museum rocks!

On Saturday, I had a second birthday, like the Queen. My wife had bought us tickets for the BBC Comedy Prom (a future blog topic) in the Royal Albert Hall, London, so we had a bit of a day out in The Big Smoke. After a yummy brunch in Southampton (another future post), we jumped on the train and headed to South Kensington - some of the best museums in London are handily within a stone's throw of the Concert Hall. (Don't throw stones at it, though.)


The Natural History Museum must be one of my favourite places. Anywhere. Every time I go, I'm struck by how awesome the place is. Arriving early afternoon, we had to queue for a bit to get in (next time's going to pay to become a member and fast-track) but that just gave an opportunity to soak in a bit of the exterior.

It's such an impressive place in every way. Not only is it massive, and the displays excellent, but the building itself is a work of art. Everywhere you look, inside or out, there is amazing attention to detail, with animals carved into columns or pillars with nature-inspired geometric patterns. The ceiling of the main hall is covered with stunning botanical artwork.

Being a biologist, I normally visit the biological displays when I go to the NHM. (You can't beat fossils of crazy prehistoric beasties, like the giant sloth.) This time, for a change, we went to the Earth zone and had a look at the rocks.

"There's nothing to see here, they're just rocks," said one mother (sadly) to her daughter as she dragged her through the "red zone" towards the exit. I am hoping that these were purely words born out of frustration due to having reached "museum saturation" but I still feel sorry for the discouraged child, for these are not just rocks!



Take these crystals, for example. Stibnite on the left and pyrite ("Fool's Gold") on the right. Not the best photos but enough to give an impression of how crazy they are... and they're completely natural. If you ever wanted an example of how something amazing can just spontaneously arise from natural forces, look no further. "Just rocks", indeed!

Location:South Kensington, London, UK