I don’t know how to tell you guys this, but I’m abandoning my blogging duties today to hit up museums. I’m off to the TELUS Spark this morning, and then to the Royal Tyrrell Museum. You’ll all have to entertain yourselves for a bit.
Oh, yeah, then I have to give a lecture tonight. Busy busy.
But Grand Tentacled Poopyhead! What about the rebellious thread! Will thee not smite those traitors and their unholy thread with thy 12 bore of thread destruction?
Ah jealous! Have not been to the new Science Centre (tonight!) and have not visited Tyrell for ages. Please say hello to David Eberth for me. I am looking forward to hearing him speak at Imagine No Religion 2.
Look forward to seeing you tonight PZ! Any news on the pubfest afterwards? There is nothing close to the Science Centre.
Try to make some time for the Glenbow.
It’s downtown and just a few blocks from The Unicorn Pub.
Damn i want to visit tyrell again :(
I wanna go to the Royal Tyrell too :(
PZ, you get all the fun. Totally not fair.
Outside the Tyrrell is a walking region covered in kaolinite clay. Resist the urge to toughen up your soft, city soles by removing your shoes and socks and walking around on the rough, hard clay barefoot. Trust me.
“Urge”???
Yeah, that urge that each and every one of us gets from time to ti—why is everyone looking at me like that?
Have fun! But not all of us are guys.
I actually did the barefoot in Drumheller thing but it was a few
yearsdecades before the Museum opened.Yes, but what kinds of idiotic beliefs will aliens think up?
What will an alien Jonathan Wells be like? One can only cringe.
Glen Davidson
The Drumheller area has lots of nice Opuntia polyacantha to skip barefoot through.
No side trip to the creation museum at Big Valley?
chigau (√-1), we know you’re cool. No need to play “I liked ’em before they were popular” with us.
Speaking (well, writing (actually, typing)) as a loyal commenteer, your priorities are screwed up, dude.
Brownian
I was a Brownie at the time. Cool really doesn’t begin to describe
Oh, I know.
I dated a Brownie when I was in Grade 1. She was in Grade 2. (“Dating” consisted of sitting next to each other in the gym at lunch.) I’m not sure why exactly (the uniforms? the badges?), but I’d nonchalantly drop it into conversations with my classmates during art class. “So, yeah, things are pretty good. I’m dating Namewithheld*. She’s a Brownie. You gonna eat all that glue? I didn’t finish my lunch. Too busy, if you know what I mean, eh? Eh? No seriously, lemme have some of your glue.”**
I’m still basking in the residual coolness of my early adventures in social climbing.
*Yeah, I know: weird name.
**This story is absolutely true, except for the eating glue part. I only did that in high school, and then only to annoy a fairly uptight and authoritarian calculus teacher, and then only when I figured he’d had enough of my guimbarde.
I found the Telus Spark disappointing. It’s very expensive(1) now, in a boring glass cube and the exhibits are much like the ones at the old Science Centre – broken. Plus it takes 30minutes to get out of the (expensive) car park if you leave when it shuts (early)(2)
(1)$20 admission plus $5 to park. (2) they shut at 4:00 PM most days – so when I went there with my family at 2:30 on Sunday, it was expensive and cut short. Spending almost as much time in the line up to get out of the parking lot was the turd on the crap sandwich.
Now the Tyrrell museum is something else. It’s a real museum and well worth the drive
*sigh*
I remember that glue.
It was delicious!
My girlfriend recommends Tubbydog. Never been there myself.
I was wondering if you ever took a break.
I normally dislike living in Alberta, but a few (very few) things make it almost worth it, and being relatively close the Tyrell is one of them. I live in Edmonton, though while it could still be a day trip I’d rather stay the night in Drumheller, but it’s still one of the best places I can get to with this much ease.
A break? Have you seen this place? [Peels off a chip of lead paint, pops it into his mouth and chews thoughtfully.] Why, if it weren’t for us regulars stealing nails from other FtBs while PZ gallivants about with the Trophy Wife™ this place would be falling down around our ears.
Is that the randy traveling atheist biologist version of “hiking the Appalachian Trail”? C’mon, you can tell us. The TW will never know!
PZ, this is an excellent blogging priority as it might spark any number of blog posts.
I love the Royal Tyrrell Museum. Do a walk if you get a chance. The Museum is at the edge of the Badlands because that’s where the fossils are. Undisturbed landscapes have stone mushrooms of all sizes where anything from a boulder to a pebble protects the soil underneath from erosion.
I haven’t seen the Spark. It looks good but Science Centres are more Technology Centres geared to gee-whizz reactions rather than knowledge. Special exhibits, however, can be fabulous.
Okay Brownian you started my internet day with a laugh. Got to admit I have never had the urge to walk barefoot there — even when I was much younger. First went to Drumheller about 1970. Sent my daughter and niece to day camp at Royal Tyrell about 2000. Took my niece and nephew a couple of years ago. It just keeps getting better.
Mary P
If you want a Bed & Breakfast in Drumheller, try the Heartwood.
I was a Brownie when the uniforms were still brown. Kids these days!
What? The mushrooms that get you stoned are found in BC, not the badlands.
Once, during one of those two-day Professional Development things that teachers have to go to and the kids get off, my mom decided to take the day off of work and take me somewhere fun. I picked the Edmonton Space & Science Centre (now Telus World of Science). It was a great time; I fooled around with all of the exhibits and did all of the quizzes.
The next day, my father, who normally worked at home, decided he wanted to take me somewhere fun (Mom and Dad had obviously had a bad fight). Having had such a good time the day before, I picked the Edmonton Space & Science Centre. All of the teachers from my elementary school were there (Day 2 of their PD meeting was being held there, I guess), and being a rather precocious child, they all recognised me. Moreover, bored, they followed me around. And like the day before, I fooled around with all of the exhibits and did all of the quizzes, but this time with an audience. And of course, remembering the answers to all the quizzes from the day before, I answered them like Data playing Strategema.
I got a helluva gee-whiz reaction.
The rest of that school year was pretty easy, as I recall.
Brownian
Your life would be an instant hit as a TV show.
(just the fun bits)
@Brownian #29:
You cheating bastard!
Pardon me: you brilliant cheating bastard!
Yeah…I like that idea. We could call it The Life and Times of Our Dear Supreme Emperor Overlord: Applaud When Prompted or be Fed to The Grakrron.
The title might now make a whole lot of sense right now, but trust me: it will soon enough.
I didn’t intend to cheat. I was just doing what I liked doing: quizzes. Of course, I was smart enough not to tip my hand when I noticed everyone watching me with their jaws agape. I’m sure I hammed it up a little—“Pfft. Who doesn’t know the average density of Phobos and Deimos?”—but for the most part I played it close to my chest.
For those of you who are bicyclicly minded there’s a fabulous road descent just north of Drumheller. You turn west off the main highwat and all of a sudden the road just disappears. IIRC the drop is a 1.5 km of 12%, fun. I managed to get up to 78 km/hr on my clunky old touring bike. Assuming nothing’s changed there’s also a funky old car ferry at the bottom to take you across the river.
What’s the snow like, FossilFishy? Even with the little snow we got this year all but the most exposed trails are still pretty slushy.
museums can be fun. Unless it’s the creation museum, where the fun is mostly from pointing and laughing at the so-called exhibits. But best laugh quietly, from what I’m told. The goon squad will throw you out.
FossilFishy,
The Munson Ferry (now known as Bleriot Ferry) still operates, as far as I know.
Tabby,
If you are headed to Drum from Edmonton, I really recommend taking highway 21 instead of 2. It is much more scenic (though right now everything is post-winter brown). You can take 590 east and see the Big Valley creation museum before going south on 56, or you can go east off 21 on 575. Or even loop a bit south to Three Hills, where Fred Phelps attended the Prairie Bible Institute.
Oh, yeah, great suggestion. It’s a much more pleasant drive.
I third the Highway 21 suggestion.
You can see more birds and other critters.
Too early in the year for PZ to go on the walks (found that out last year when we went, and that was in April (missed the trail opening by one day grrr)) I did do the trails when I was 9, and managed somehow to boil the skin off my shoulders under my t-shirt. It didn’t hurt and I loved the place so much, I would go back any time, even tho there’s other stuff I haven’t seen yet.
I wouldn’t know Brownian, I’m an ex-Edmontonian now living in rural Australia. I found the place on a cycle camping trip to see the Royal Tyrrell. I wish I’d known about the creation museum in Big Valley, a stop there would have made my trip perfect.
Now speaking of winter, last year’s was a brutal one here, just brutal. I had to cover my ears twice, two separate days no less, on my morning ride to work. Oh the humanity! Mind you, it’s raining again today and the rivers are rising enough to warrant a flood watch warning. Come to sunny Australia they said….it never rains there they said…grumble, grumble…
Museuming?
Be careful about making up words. You’re liable to wake up the resident language experts and then all hell will break loose!
Racing your way the minute I get out of these pesky parent-teacher interviews… Hope the presence of a physics teacher doesn’t upset all the biologists’ equilibrium…
Alas, an early morning Friday precludes stalking you after. :D
P.Z. has been white hatted. Don’t worry; it means he is beloved, not “good”.
PZ got white hatted??? Wow! I can be proud of my home city again. I’m just wondering if he rode any dinosaurs at the Tyrell. I would hate to think that a cretinist museum has one up on a legitimate science museum.
White hatted? Is this some strange native custom?
I could spend at least six hours doing the Tyrrell… there’s so much there, dinos to Dunkelosaurus to Precambrian fossils to human evolution. But especially dinos.
Royal Tyrrell Museum’s photostream
Brownian, you hit on a great strategy for getting good marks. If a teacher thinks you’re brilliant, he or she will take you seriously, answer your questions in more detail, and generally help you along, which just puts the polish on your natural brilliance.
When Prince Charles received his umptymumpf Calgary White Hat he said, “oh no, not again”
We went to the Tyrell Museum a couple of years ago. I still get “goosies” thinking about it.
Couple of memorable moments:
-rounding a corner and proceeding up a ramp to another section of the museum, and suddenly there was a large banner with Darwin’s “tree of life” sketch on it, with his “I think…” note at the top. Emotional, astounding, it left me breathless for a moment.
-checking out the skulls of our distant ancestors…sigh, thinking of the deep time that has passed since they lived, the struggles they went through…the priveledge of having them, the painstaking work and dedication to find them!
-and, just slightly innocuous…not flashy, not huge…all of a sudden, there was Tiktaalik! ~270 Myrs ago! I was awestruck! Our oldest walking ancestor. Think of what has happened since then…
Sigh…the history of life on this planet is so spectacularly amazing, I just don’t get how the faith heads can so easily cast it off to choose fairy tales instead.
@bcskeptic
You’ve inspired me to take the 40 minute drive to this treasure we locals sometimes neglect.
Funny how we take things for granted.