Sunday 28 September 2014

Zombies and chickens, John!

 The march of the dead.

And watch out - the one on the left is a Polar Bear. Sad to say, but they have fucked-up the Pitt-Rivers museum in Oxford.

At last, it has fallen into the hands of modern curators, who don't believe that children can be enthralled with dusty exhibits, haphazardly thrown together in a dimly-lit environment that hasn't seen a lick of paint in 100 years. Well, they are wrong.

There is a whole industry based around museum curation now, and if you don't subscribe to the magazine (as I used to) which offers all sorts of climate-control systems and sensors, interactive display cabinets, modern signage and even university degrees in Museum Curation which tell you the most expensive way to make your collection as boring as possible, then you just won't get a job at all.


The one modern improvement is the great quality of their model-making, though. When you look at creatures like this one, you really understand the notion that chickens are - second to lizards - the dinosaur's closest living relatives. This one doesn't even have teeth.

There is one problem with all these brilliant models, however. The people who make them can only go on what the scientists have told them they should look like, and these instructions are based on conjecture when the science lets them down. Archeologists and film-makers have the same problem, as mentioned in a recent post.

There is a wonderful head of a Tyrannosaurus Rex next to a full-sized skeleton of one in the Pitt-Rivers, and because of a recent discovery by Chinese palaeontologists, they are going to have to remake it, or be laughed at as old-fashioned idiots. I suppose they could just adjust the existing model and stick feathers over the toad-like warty skin. No, they wouldn't do that - it's too cheap a solution.


When it comes to real, stuffed animals, you can't go wrong. I love this little feller - he (I am presuming it is only the male who dresses up like this) looks like an old transvestite going to a ball. That red triangle on the mount denotes that it is on the extreme endangered list. I wonder how it got itself into that position....

We were sitting in the cafe section of the museum, eating the worst sandwiches we have ever had in our lives, when I noticed a small glass case with a dried-out looking bat in it. Attached to the mount was a hand-written label which said that the bat had been caught in the porch of the museum, and presented to it in 1918.

I suppose life was cheap in the aftermath of WW1.

47 comments:

  1. The Castle Museum in Norwich has been similarly ruined I now feel I am not wanted there, that it is only meant for children. Even the keep has been modernised and feels like part of a theme park instead of a Norman castle. It has lost its aura of history and old things and self-discovery, and is now just buttons to press, plastic displays telling you all you want to know, and noise.

    The sandwiches must be the same ones the Tate Mod serves.

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    1. The Pitt-Rivers was packed with five year olds when we went there, and they had all been issued tambourines to bang and paper and pencils to draw with - why tambourines in a bloody museum?!

      The town of my birth - Haslemere - had a wonderful little museum with a stuffed Grisly Bear and Japanese Giant Crab, both of which scared the hell out of me when I was about 3. I went back there about 20 years ago, and it was exactly the same. I really hope they haven't ruined it too, but I bet they have.

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  2. When I see that word INTERACTIVE, I tend to cringe.

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    1. Me too - they don't seem to understand that there are other ways of interacting than by pressing buttons these days. I used to interact with a Mummy in the British Museum when I was about 13, and that was just by staring at it through a glass box.

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  3. I noticed that the Polar Bear has claws which curl upward, and not downward like most animals.

    So the next time a Polar Bear says to you, "You'll feel the back of my hand in a minute'", take it seriously.

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  4. I wonder if the current generation of hyperactive screamers might have been more thoughtful and introspective and, let's just add it, respectful had the world not gone "interactive." Begging the question, how did it happen. What generation designed and provided all this shallow interaction. What came first, the chicken or the egg.

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    1. Managers saw an opportunity, and they made damn sure nobody else would ever be able to exploit it other than them, ever again.

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  5. Oh please ……. why does everyone have to live in the past ….. if we didn't change and move forward, we'd still be living in the dark ages !! I can remember going to museums when I was young { and that WAS in the dark ages } and if any exhibit had a button to press { and, they did have buttons to press all of those years ago !! } then, I was there and I was interested , especially if you pressed the button and everything started to move.
    ……. and, they probably need climate control systems to preserve the exhibits, otherwise they will deteriorate.
    Try and embrace the 21st century …. we can't stand still can we ? !!
    …. and, if you like stuffed animals, you should visit the Natural History Museum in Tring { if you haven't already} Lional Walter Rothschild collected thousands of mounted animals and opened his museum to the public in 1892.
    Google images of it it …. I think you'd like it. XXXX

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    1. That's LIONEL Walter Rothschild …. slip of the finger !!!! XXXX

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    2. You seem to forget that we true English people like our culture to be slowly rotting, like us.

      We certainly hate change as well, unless we can jingle it in our pockets so that Big Issue sellers get envious.

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  6. Hey Tom: What kind of bird is that endangered fellow?

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    1. It's the Transvestite bird. I once asked someone in Florida what a Cardinal bird was called as one flew past, and they said, "It's a red bird." This is my revenge to all you bastards.

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    2. Well your first mistake was traveling to Florida.

      The Cardinal is our state bird. It is red. It looks like a red blue jay, kind of.

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    3. In defense of that Floridian, a lot of people here call cardinals "red birds". Not that I like defending Floridians.

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    4. On;y about 20% are true Floridians anyway, aren't they?

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    5. 'On;y!" is the cry of the Floridian Red Bird, BTW.

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    6. Oh, some of them must have stayed to raise a family.

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  7. The push button genie is out of the bottle. Between gaming, texting and such that is how many people relate to the world now particularly younger people.

    I don't bemoan the phenomenon for younger generations as that is their world and that of their children. There is a gap between my preferences and theirs which I accept. It's unavoidable.

    Having long ago been told by my younger siblings that I was "born old" I always enjoyed anything "old" that made me feel transported to a past age. They were moaning to leave historical places my parents took us while I felt torn away when we had to leave.
    I still feel wonder when I touch the stone of a gracious old building. Who walked these streets, who drank from this cup, who encountered this sight in decades or centuries past? That is how my imagination is stirred yet it likely seems too static to others.

    If some space is given over to more physically generated interaction to further awareness and appreciation of history and its objects that's fine. Better to engage than totally turn off even if it sounds like a cacophony to me.
    But please..leave some other quiet places of discovery for those of us who learn and appreciatively interact in that way.
    God, I sound like an old fogie!

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    1. I feel pretty much the same way, Leslie. Leave some mystery, and leave some scope for self-education, is what I think.

      If a kid is truly interested in something, they will make it their business to find out about it, and all we need do is both encourage them, and point them in the right direction.

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    2. Also - every child must reach a point when they no longer believe that their parents - or any other adult - knows everything. Part of a good education is instilling the realistic notion that everyone knows fuck-all about most things, and it's fun not finding out the truth.

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  8. The trouble is that museums now have an air of being clinical and pristine, whereas the museum of my youth -- the Fairbanks Museum in St. Johnsbury, Vermont -- had creaking floors and old display cases that were probably dusted regularly, but still had an air about them that was inviting. As a result many a child, including me, would regularly visit the place and imaginations would soar. The only buttons I remember, were in the basement and in display cabinets of lumps of various crystals -- enabling us to ooh and aah when the ultra-violet light went on and we were able to observe them in an entirely new light!

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    1. Yes, when Ultra-Violet light was a real rarity, long before Lasers were even thought of. I remember that, and - strangely - the only thing which was not working in the Pitts-Rivers was the little booth with the fluorescent crystals and the Ultra-Violet light! It was completely dark!

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  9. I believe the bird is the Lesser Prairie Chicken which is endangered because of habitat loss due to greedy developers, the dirtiest word in the english language, I believe. And, though I am glad my guineas don't have a helmet like that, there is a species of guinea still in existence with a huge helmet that is similar to the picture.

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    1. You could well be right, Donna, but I am not the one to verify it.

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    2. Hmm. Do Prairie Chickens roam across the Salisbury Plain?

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  10. I love old museums
    Duty and quiet...
    The new breed are usually just as interesting but are so often filled by screaming running kids that the fun of standing and looking has been taken away

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    1. 'Fuck duty' has always been my motto in life too.

      Yes, the P-R was amok-ran with screaming kids as well. There is a trend in London where they lock kids in museums all night with 3000 year-old cadavers.

      I'm all for that. I would have loved that when I was 7 or 8.

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  12. I have never commented here so please be kind. Chickens do have a tooth but only for a day or two. They need it to get out of the egg. Now which came first I can't help with unless I point you in the direction of Creationists. I won't do that as they are all sillier than I am.

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    1. Of course I will be kind to you, I am kindness personified. Yes, the egg-tooth, I remember that.

      That thing in the photo came first, and it was created by the Devil, in under seven days.

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    2. On behalf of us all, welcome Adrian. Be afraid, be very afraid. Hehe!!

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    3. Just to tell you a bit of history, Adrian, Iris is my current lover and neither of our partners know this, so please keep it to yourself for the time being.

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    4. Tom!!! You cannot keep a secret. And, Adrian, I am fan number one here, so don't try any funny stuff! ;)

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    5. I would like to hear Cro's opinion.

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    6. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    7. Cro? With an opinion? You must be thinking of someone else.

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  13. An egg tooth in chickens is just a tiny cap on the end of the beak

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    1. That sounded like wisdom from the French philosopher, Eric Cantona.

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  14. Is Eynsham pronounced the same as Keynsham without the K. That's Keynsham spelt K E Y N S H A M Bristol.

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    1. Yes it is, but it doesn't have the fabulous infra-draw method as part of its historic culture. Keynsham is where Bristol sends all its unmarried mothers these days.

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    2. I wonder if anyone ever won using his method. Clearly not a method suitable for use as a birth control.

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    3. If they did, they never told Radio Luxembourg.

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