I am wrong about something and also a massive nerd about something

I take it all back. I love the London Science Museum. We'd been there a few weeks ago and I'd sneered all over it, but I later discovered that the Science Museum contains something very special. The working model of Charles Babbage's Difference Engine. Oooh. So we went back so that I could have a good nerdy perv at it.

Despite the fact that I am as hopeless with maths and science as it is possible to be without actually being in a coma, I am a massive fan of the concept of maths and science in general, and a massive fan Charles Babbage in particular. He's amazing. He spent almost all of his life (1791-1871) trying to construct a machine capable of performing accurate, complicated arithmetic, and though he came close several times, he never managed to make it work. In 1991 a working model was finally made from his plans, but it was a huge job even with the more advanced technology the engineers had available then. He's often called the father of computers, but this isn't quite accurate as what he was doing didn't really prefigure modern computers in any significant way. I mean, it did a bit, but it's a bit of a stretch to call him the 'father of modern computers'. 

But this isn't the reason that I love the guy. On a superficial level I love him because he called his machines the Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine, which is brilliantly steampunk, but more than that I love him because he was such an interesting guy. He was acquainted with Darwin and Dickens, and was sought after for all sorts of fancy parties, in spite of his various eccentricities. He could be a bloody minded crank - he almost wasn't awarded his degree because he refused to apologise for making remarks that were thought to be blasphemous during a debate. He could also he a crotchety old bastard - he hated street musicians, and in his later life he launched a one man campaign to have them banned. He once wrote to Alfred Lord Tennyson to correct his poetry;

In your otherwise beautiful poem, one verse reads,

Every moment dies a man,

Every moment one is born.

 ... If this were true, the population of the world would be at a standstill. In truth, the rate of birth is slightly in excess of that of death. I would suggest [that the next version of your poem should read]:

Every moment dies a man,

Every moment 1 1/16 is born.

Strictly speaking, the actual figure is so long I cannot get it into a line, but I believe the figure 1 1/16 will be sufficiently accurate for poetry.

He was a proper mad genius. I mean, how many other Victorian-era scientists can boast of being the inspiration for a way cool web comic?

So I was very excited about seeing the Difference Engine. And it was pretty good.

But guess what else they had at the museum? His notebooks!

And his brain!

I was thrilled. I lingered for quite a long time over the case with the notebooks in it, along with a middle aged chap with a notebook. Neither of us said anything, but we exchanged looks that said it all; 'Babbage, eh?' But in a reverent sort of way. When we finally moved away from the case,a museum employee swooped in behind us, gave the case a little squirt with Windex and a wipe with some paper towels, then looked at us reprovingly. I didn't think I'd even touched the case, but apparently we had managed to displease him by breathing on the glass too messily. 

But officious glass polishers couldn't get us down. We weren't finished with the Science Museum yet, not by a long shot. 

We wanted to see the History of Medicine exhibit. Or, as we came to call it, the History of Human Suffering exhibit. It was pretty gruesome. But also fascinating. Doctors and surgeons in the past often did more harm than good (leeches and bleeding, for e.g.), but it was surprising to see how much they were actually capable of. For example, I wasn't aware that they had such things as prosthetic limbs and glass eyes. I also didn't realise that they were actually able to do things like bone setting and removal of bullets, and all sorts of surgery that, while it must have been pretty grim, must also have saved the odd life here and there.

The museum also had these on display;

Neat!

Lest you think that I'm some kind of weirdo obsessed with bits of famous dead people and trepanning, let me leave you now with some pictures of old-timey calculators. If these names don't make you smile, you're probably much better at parties than I am. 

The Adometer and Cordingly's Computometer

Totalisateur

The Arithmometer

More half hearted posting

Sigh. I've been moping around my grandparent's house, pining for Spain and doing nothing of any interest at all. Actually, that's not completely true. We did go up to London over New Year's, which was lovely. My cousin and her fiancé gave us the run of their pied a terre in South London while they were away, so we had four days of pretending to be trendy Londoners who know their way around the tube system and who quite often go to bars and do cultural things. 

We hit the Science Museum, which was heartbreakingly disappointing. It was all flashing lights and desperate ‘look, kids! Science can be fun!’ interactive displays. The best bit of the museum was the ground floor which is filled with all sorts of detritus that charts the development of cars, trains and airplanes. The rest of it was a sort of theatrical ‘welcome, to the world of tomorrow!’ theme park. I hate the idea that people need to be jollied into finding science interesting. I am a massive amateur science nerd, but I left in a mood of sneery disappointment. Bah.  

We then went to the Natural History Museum, somewhere I had very fond memories of visiting as a child. And I was thrilled to find that it lived up to every single one of my childhood memories. It is the best sort of museum, one that is packed full of stuff that is basically the legacy of an empire. Look, over there we have a stuffed dodo! And an complete ichthyosaur! And all sorts of differently coloured rocks! Oooh.  

The brontosaurus in the entrance hall is just as breathtaking as I remember;

Gosh, weren't they big, though?

The taxidermied animals were as morbidly fascinating as they’d always been, especially this warthog, which looks ecstatic to have ended up stuffed and on display for the enjoyment of the museum-going public;

 

Though this little antelope thing (in the bottom of the picture) looks understandably slightly miffed about its fate;

And there were some new friends to make. Behold! A bowl-clenchingly realistic depiction of a nightmare I have frequently had on nights when I have over-indulged in cheese too close to bedtime;

Also this room. I have no idea what it was, all I know is that it is now my goal in life to become whatever it is that allows me to introduce myself as having that job at parties.

I didn’t think anything could top the excitement of the Natural History Museum, but then we went to Pollock’s Toy Museum. Oh, joy of joys. If you ever get the chance, go there. It’s what museums should be. It’s like being in the home of a kooky elderly relative, one who has helpfully posted typewritten, laminated signs all over the walls explaining what it is that you’re looking at. It’s in an old house, and you traipse up and down the stairs. Each room is dedicated to a different theme of toy, and each successive room served merely to reinforce to me how sterile children’s toys are today. Why, in the olden days they were saucy...

terrifying...

and German. 

It was absolutely brilliant, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. So all in all a good day. Next up, what we did for New Year’s.

I freely admit that I was being childish

It was a quiet Sunday afternoon with not much happening. Our flatmates were occupying the lounge room, watching some sort of game show that we couldn’t quite follow in spite of the fact that it was being watched at the maximum possible volume, so we felt the need to be out of the house. The museum here has free entry on Sundays, and it seemed as good a time as any to check it out. The ground floor had an exhibition of amateur photography, some of which was stunning, and some of which was horribly earnest, but the real attractions are the art works and archaeological exhibitions on the higher floors. 

There are some beautiful Roman mosaics and some stonework from the medieval period, which were wonderful. I would have been happy to pay the admission fee just to see the stone carvings;

And there were some nice Roman artefacts; I’m always enthralled by these little everyday objects, far more than I am by massive statues or buildings. 

I always find the idea that someone handled these things every day touching, and somewhat sobering. I wonder if they were treasured items that had been scrimped and saved for as presents to mark a special celebration, or if they were just trinkets that were lost in the mountains of stuff that person possessed.We wandered around these floors for quite a long time, at first trying to read the little Spanish descriptions of the objects, but after a while just enjoying looking at them.

Then we went onto the higher floors where the religious art is shown. I know I’m going to sound like a philistine, but I just found it tedious. I can appreciate that the paintings are old, but basically, they’re pretty rubbish. There. I’ve said it. If an HSC student presented one of these paintings as their final work, they’d get a verdict of ‘must try harder’. I find it hard to enjoy looking that these paintings on any level other than that the colours are quite nice, and that I’m impressed that they’ve survived for so long basically intact.

What I’m trying to make sound less low brow is that I eventually lost interest in pretending that I cared about the art, and I started judging them on my own neanderthal criteria. 

Such as, which statues would work best as models for monsters on Dr. Who?

                                        or

Or, which painting is less homoerotic?

                                        or

I realise that I was being juvenile, and that anyone with any kind of religious sensibility probably doesn't think this is at all funny. 

It was it this point that one of the guards told me off. I didn’t see any signs that prohibited photography, I wasn’t using a flash, and I was being relatively discreet; I wasn’t actually pointing at things and laughing. So I can only assume that he picked up on the fact that I was behaving like a stroppy teenager and making fun of the exhibits from the less than reverent air I had about me. In which case, he gets a gold star for his observational skills. 

I was told in no uncertain terms to put my camera away, or I’d be asked to leave. For a brief moment I considered trying to impress the guard by telling him that I did in fact hold Bachelor of Arts, and had some experience studying art history, and that I was perfectly qualified to point and laugh all I wanted. However,  it occured to me that no one is impressed by a BA, and shame overcame my urge to bluster. I was sufficiently chastened that I spent quite a long time looking appreciatively at some disastrous modern art they had on the top floor in order to look less like a total pleb.