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All in Review
Visiting natural history, palaeontology and science museums whenever I visit a new city is something of a tradition to me. This time, I had the pleasure of visiting the Natural Sciences Museum of Barcelona or Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona. The museum is located in a part of Barcelona that I can only describe as what looked like the ‘business’ quarter. Getting there from the centre of Barcelona was pretty easy and the Museum is a very short walk from the Meresme-Forum metro station.
On the 29th June we visited the National Museum of Natural History and Science in Lisbon. This is my second trip to Portugal but my first to Lisbon. The Museum is located near ‘Estacao do Rato’ and features a Botanical Garden right next to it. The entrance was around 5 euros but for an extra euro, you get access to the Botanical Garden as well.
TetZooCon this year was a two-day event that took place at UCL on the 6th and 7th October. Unfortunately, due to health reasons, I was unable to attend the last day - though I did follow it on Twitter using the hashtag #TetZooCon. If you’ve never heard of TetZooCon or Darren Naish’s famous Tetrapod Zoology blog (aka Tet Zoo), you are seriously missing out. TetZooCon is an annual meeting that features talks and workshops on topics explored in the Tet Zoo blog.
I went to Munich for the first time last week and decided to check out some of their natural history museums. I visited the famous Museum of Man and Nature on Sunday and as expected really enjoyed it. It's a great museum for children and adults alike and definitely worth visiting. However, I decided to write about the rather smaller but oh-so-very-exciting collection of the Palaeontological Museum.
This week, the Science Museum in London hosted an event featuring Andrea Wulf's latest book 'The Invention of Nature: The Adventures of Alexander Von Humboldt - the lost hero of science'. The event was organised by the British Society for the History of Science and was presented in a conversation format between Wulf herself and Gaia Vince, the author of 'Adventures in the Anthropocene'.
How often have you read an article that takes a piece of scientific research, misinterprets the evidence presented and blows the results way out of proportion? The titles of such articles tend to be the sensationalist types, using explosive statements that are guaranteed to get the general public's attention, aka 'clickbait'. This is pretty much what Ford's presentation sounded like - a bunch of decisive, explosive and sensationalist statements that in reality, meant absolutely nothing.
