mssv

  • The British Museum: Ming and Germany

    ·

    1–2 minutes

    ·

    1 comment on The British Museum: Ming and Germany

    The British Museum has a couple of big exhibitions on at the moment, about China’s Ming dynasty and Germany. The bigger one is undeniably Ming: 50 years that changed China, being held in the museum’s shiny new gallery. It did a solid job at contextualising what the Ming dynasty was and why 1400-1450 was so…

  • A History of the Future in 100 Objects

    ·

    2–3 minutes

    ·

    1 comment on A History of the Future in 100 Objects

    Last year, I listened to a programme on Radio 4 called A History of the World in 100 Objects. It took 25 hours, or 1500 minutes. In the show, the BBC and the British Museum attempted to describe the entire span of human history through 100 objects – from a 2 million year-old Olduvai stone…

  • Can the Science Museum be up-to-date?

    ·

    2–3 minutes

    ·

    1 comment on Can the Science Museum be up-to-date?

    I visit the Science Museum in London at least twice a year, so I was interested to read an interview with their new Director, talking about how he’s going to change the place: A month into his job, Professor Rapley is sitting in his South Kensington office, telling me that broadly the museum’s collection celebrates…

  • Exploratorium

    ·

    2–3 minutes

    ·

    3 comments on Exploratorium

    Now with photos! I’ve been to a lot of science musuems. Off the top of my head, I’ve visited major museums in London, Glasgow, DC, Seattle, Philadelphia, San Diego, Amsterdam and Sydney – and a host of smaller places besides. As I’ve written before, I don’t go with the intention of actually learning anything; the…

  • Free, as in Beer

    ·

    2–3 minutes

    ·

    2 comments on Free, as in Beer

    As a big fan of museums, I’m always eager to hear news of how well they’ve been doing since the government scrapped admissions charges. Today it’s been announced that since the charges were scrapped in 2001, visitor numbers have increased by 75%, or 6 million. Considering that it used to be fairly pricey to go…

  • Strike Back

    ·

    1–2 minutes

    ·

    No comments on Strike Back

    A recent conversation: Him: I need to get a new mouse for my computer – the right button doesn’t work any more. Me: Hmm, that sucks. I guess it means that you can’t- Him: Yeah, I can’t crouch in Counterstrike any more, I can hardly play it now. [beat] Me: I was going to say,…

  • Take The Sword Of The King

    ·

    1–2 minutes

    ·

    No comments on Take The Sword Of The King

    Tomorrow I’m off to London with a motley crew of friends to see the Lord of the Rings exhibition at the Science Museum, one day before it leaves this country and heads to New York. I’m definitely looking forward to it; I wasn’t that keen on The Fellowship of the Ring, and while I enjoyed…

  • Melbourne

    ·

    3–5 minutes

    ·

    1 comment on Melbourne

    Continuing my epic journey around the globe to Contact all Culture listees that are the furthest away from me (despite having not met most of the guys in London) I spent a fun day going around Melbourne with Claire. First up was the ScienceWorks museum outside the city centre. I’ve made something of a hobby…

  • Names

    ·

    2–3 minutes

    ·

    No comments on Names

    Had a great day in Sydney today. Clear skies as usual, and in the morning I hopped on the Monorail for a quick ride around. It’s not wonderfully fast or smooth, but it’s worth a try if you’re here. Following that, I visited the top of Centrepoint Tower, which is about 250m tall and looks…

  • Merseyside in Space

    ·

    1–2 minutes

    ·

    No comments on Merseyside in Space

    International Space Centre for Merseyside – bit of a bizarre idea, putting it in Wallasey, and I’m not sure how many visitors it’ll get, but on the whole I think that more space centres are always a good thing.