@@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ @ @ @@@@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @
@ @@@@@ @@@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @
@ @ @ @@@@@ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 06/18/99 -- Vol. 17, No. 51
Chair/Librarian: Mark Leeper, 732-817-5619, mleeper@lucent.com
Factotum: Evelyn Leeper, 732-332-6218, eleeper@lucent.com
Distinguished Heinlein Apologist: Rob Mitchell, robmitchell@lucent.com
HO Chair Emeritus: John Jetzt, jetzt@lucent.com
HO Librarian Emeritus: Nick Sauer, njs@lucent.com
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4824
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.
The Science Fiction Association of Bergen County meets on the
second Saturday of every month in Upper Saddle River; call
201-447-3652 for details. The Denver Area Science Fiction
Association meets 7:30 PM on the third Saturday of every month at
Southwest State Bank, 1380 S. Federal Blvd.
===================================================================
1. The sequel to BABYLON 5, has begun. CRUSADER runs on TNT
Wednesday nights at 10pm EDT and is repeated Monday nights at 11pm
EDT. It is too early to tell, but this one may be a
disappointment. It looks like a variation on STAR TREK: VOYAGER,
but done with J. Michael Straczynski's hard-edged dialog, but using
it before he has established the characters just makes it sound
melodramatic. "Just so we're clear--once we go this is my command.
I'll do whatever's necessary. If that means turning the entire
galaxy upside-down and shaking its pockets to see what falls out,
that's what I'll do. I'm not subtle, I'm not pretty, and I'll piss
off a lot of people along the way. But I'll get the job done."
Wow! [-mrl]
===================================================================
2. A formatting problem last week caused the following sentence in
Mark Leeper's article on museums to be truncated:
You would be surprised how many museums and national parks have
souvenir shops selling things labeled like .79 cents. It is not 79
cents or $.79, but .79 cents.
===================================================================
3. In Joe Karpierz's review of DARWINIA last week, the sentence,
"Turns out that our Guilford Law is the real Guilford Law" should
have read, "Turns out that our Guilford Law is *NOT* the real
Guilford Law." [-jk]
===================================================================
4. They are talking on the radio about a new law REQUIRING a
teenager to get permission from a parent to get an abortion. I
wanted just to say I think these blanket laws are absurd. I think
at least the males should be exempted. What's the point of forcing
them to get permission they will never use? [-mrl]
===================================================================
5. Last week I was discussing the old and not very good dinosaur
exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History and how they
knowingly spread misinformation about dinosaurs.
Well, finally the dinosaur halls opened again, but getting back to
the museum was not my top priority. I finally went back a few
weeks ago and several years later. Hey, man, the snit is OVER. If
you have not been to a museum since you were a kid, you should
realize that the computer has forever changed museums. And is it
ever for the better! You have corporations whose job it is to
design new exhibits and in the age of the computer, do they ever do
a good job! It is a whole new ballgame. You used to see specimens
placed there and a few paragraphs about them. Everyone who was
interested read the same paragraphs. And if you went to another
museum you saw basically the same exhibit, just with different
specimens.
Computers these days make what is conceivably thousands of times
the amount of information available to the visitor and the visitor
can choose what information interests him or her. So if you want
to just gawk at the specimens, you can still do that. But if you
want to learn something there is a wealth of information at your
fingertips. This exhibit has had a marvelously creative idea that
I would suspect other museums would want to copy. The whole fourth
floor is devoted to vertebrate evolution. The ordering is not by
years but by what are called clades. Let me see if I can explain
this. You have the whole tree of vertebrate life and every
vertebrate is on it someplace. There are branches of the tree.
The first major branching is animals with jaws versus ones that did
not have them. The next is having four appendages, and so forth.
Well they start by showing you specimens of creatures with and
without jaws. Then they follow the jaw-line (so to speak) and next
show you specimens with jaws but not four legs, versus ones that
did not. Evelyn was talking about how useful having four legs were
and I agreed, "Oh, yeah. Four legs good." And with each
bifurcation the museum explores what evolved on one or on both sub-
trees coming out of the bifurcation. Every few feet they have a
computer terminal that allows you to see pictures of the animals on
both sides of the evolution and, if you want, to give a little
lecture on the breakdown. And at the same terminals you can pick
"Tour" and have a little movie of a museum guide pointing to the
various specimens and telling you why they are interesting. Oh, at
one time you probably could rent a tape and get a one-size-fits-all
tour. But this had more information and it was about just the
subjects that interested you. And it was free to anyone in the
gallery.
Most terminals seemed to be working too, which is impressive. You
get the kids coming along and they do not care what the terminal is
saying about science. They just want to hit a button and see the
computer do something. Anything. So they come along and are
convinced that the computer has a scheduling algorithm that
increases the priority of an action based on how hard the button
was pushed. If you drive the button four inches into the base,
that will be considered to be a really high-priority button press.
A doting father comes along, sees his kid bashing the controls and
holding up Evelyn's and my education, and he says how these kids
are really smarter than we ever were. I look at the father. I
look at the kid. I look at the father. I look at the kid. I
suppress the urge to say "Speak for yourself." This kid should be
in a computer game arcade and not a science museum, but that is not
the museum's fault.
Anyway, since I wrote a previous editorial complaining about the
American Museum of Natural History, I felt I should update it and
say all is now forgiven. They do have a really good exhibit, if
that kid did not destroy it after I left. [-mrl]
Mark Leeper
HO 1K-644 732-817-5619
mleeper@lucent.com
To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked
at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight of the blood.
-- George Santayana
THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT ALMOST BLANK