Natural History Museum

The Natural History Museum, visited on July 20th, was entirely thrilling. A mixture of live and replica specimens, it was definitely a treat for a biological science-major such as myself. One building, several floors of exploring a world we have come to know only through textbooks, the Discovery Channel, and internet posts of things in nature only a select have the time to experience.

Unfair. I have to find out secondhandedly that ladybugs are "poisonous, fungus-Infested, carnivorous death tanks."

http://www.cracked.com/article_20539_6-horrifying-dark-sides-creatures-you-think-are-adorable.html

The battle between the tyrannosaurus and the triceratops represents the museum's entirety quite well - you may see something artificially created/posed, but you can bet it actually did/does happen

And you're missing out on it.

Get to making that time machine, kiddies. Counting on you because I know I can't help myself out.

I thoroughly appreciated being able to say both "I TOTALLY KNEW THAT ABOUT THAT ANIMAL" and "WHATTT THAT'S AWESOME, DEFINITELY GONNA TELL EVERYONE THAT." Interesting to think that we enjoy having this transmission and acceptance of information/true and verified facts as if we derive pleasure from better understanding the world and helping others to feel the same - maybe it's a basic/residual survival technique.

Along the lines of this information-gathering, there was an entryway that quoted Marcel Proust saying, "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes." This was much like the tale of Flatland and imparting the human realization that the world, or even all of reality, needs a transcendence of normal human imagination for full comprehension.

The exhibits of continental resident animals were in this format of detailed and scaled dioramas. It really made one wonder if their individual environments have actually remained untouched by our societies, considering that the point of the museum is to show animals that we rarely see.

However, the experience wasn't immersive enough for one to ride the back of a wolverine or climb a tree with a loris.

This art of displaying life in an isolated box for appreciative purposes reminded me of a favorited episode of How I Met Your Mother where one character's past self is a display so she can introspectively evaluate whether their personalities and ambitions are still compatible.

It's embarassing enough to read letters to yourself from the past or reviewing childhood photos, but imagine a live interaction with your past self...
http://www.buddytv.com/articles/how-i-met-your-mother/how-i-met-your-mother-review-38596.aspx

In some of the newer areas that aren't darkened for the sake of directing your attention to only things you can see, there are exhibits meant to connect you to everything in the natural world.

This flowchart enables you to align your interests with projects around LA to become a part of the world that the museum preserves.  

Flowcharts have surpassed being representations of experimental hypotheses and have been developed to be simple, flexible informing tools that can be harnessed and received by many.
http://www.geekosystem.com/hobbit-dwarf-flowchart/

This history of the environment around LA is not the format you experience in a textbook,
and it is probably not a good representation of what your teacher would put on a blackboard -
thus, drawing your interest in learning the information.

Many other presentations stood out to me as relatable to our learnings from class. Here are a few examples.

The diverse collection of butterflies from the Los Angeles area made me remember the Bioengineering lecture regarding an artist's manipulation of butterfly DNA to create artificial wing designs and several students' concern with the necessity of modifying naturally beautiful products of nature.

Some of these were caught by LA residents from their own backyard or neighborhood - I don't imagine too many of them thinking "Aw, what's with these wings? I can definitely make this thing look better."

Somebody did, however, decide to apply the metamorphic process and its beauty-generating results to represent the intact humanity of vampires zombies.
http://www.craiglotter.co.za/2008/06/06/legendary-butterflies/

Another thermal camera to show passersby that our technology can represent natural abilities and how some animals can actually see you like this.
And that they may or may not appreciate that one's yellow lower region makes it seem like you pee'd yourself.

This rock seems like it was a solidified chunk of vessels from some large being's microscopic internal anatomy.

The similarity doesn't end with just the pinkness.
http://www.deltapix.dk/biomedical-gallery.html

Here, the vitruvian man attempts to represent the bird he will never become; even with proportionate wings, man's anatomy and biology cannot physically allow for flight and is thus trapped in fantasizing being like birds but never attaining their abilities.
Or maybe he can through biotechnology.

Not entirely an optical illusions, but these mirrored images manipulate human vision so that they can collectively be perceived as motion.

Effective enough to educate even the most primitive of minds.
http://youtu.be/zc3MnoSS5Hw?t=58s

Putting scientists on display reflects the culture of scientists no longer being undesirably nerdy professionals, but respectable artists of the natural world that should be appreciated.

Cool, like this guy.

http://www.theproducersperspective.com/my_weblog/2013/02/why-writers-are-like-indiana-jones.html/indy

This exhibit is about space management; one can't dedicate thousands of dollars worth of public and privately-funded floorspace to full animal bodies, so show off the part that everyone cares about the most as much as you horrifyingly can.

Artistic depictions of monsters are sometimes not too far off from actual organisms that have inhabited the earth or continue to do so. 

Obviously, I don't need to provide a description of a scene of many, many cartoon/cultural depictions of birds like Donald Duck and Woody the Woodpecker seeming invading our world as a symbol for our inherent, appreciation for natural phenomenon constantly reformed to be our creations.

I appreciated that the museum has shows with animatronic dinosaurs that are representative of new findings regarding the bird-ancestors being feathery instead of having reptilian scales, being an effective art form of educating audiences that might be incredulous to the information presented elsewhere.

Hopefully, this is the version of dinosaurs that these kids will grow up with so that they don't suffer like previous, greatly disappointed generations.

The picture below is of a statue of humans holding up the world, which is an interesting statement considering that throughout the span of the earth's million years of existence, we are a relatively new development; and yet, we have had a significantly impact on its natural infrastructure and will continue to do so as long as we are here.

 

NACHO TIME

http://nachosonastick.4inchninja.com/?p=74

After waiting for a fire alarm incurred by an actual fire, the nachos my girlfriend and I had were extremely reminiscent of the ones at the Griffith Observatory, except that it had chili and shredded cheese and was missing guacamole and sour cream and had avocados instead and we had the jalapeños withheld. 

So they were nothing like alike.

And that made them better.

My facial expression is specifically in reaction to the sour cream.