Tag Archives: travel
museum tourist: denver museum of nature and science
I took the occasion of a visit to Colorado last week to drop in on the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. The building opened in 1908, which is positively ancient for Colorado. And like any self-respecting natural history museum, … Continue reading
museum tourist: amnh (butterfly edition)
The American Museum of Natural History in New York: Way too much museum to fit in one blog post. Here’s my first post about the visit. Next topic: Butterflies. This is a trend at natural history museums these days, apparently, … Continue reading
research vessel tourist
On Thursday, I met up with Brandi Murphy, one of the technicians on my icebreaker trip in the Bering Sea last year. Brandi works for the University of California – San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. She’s at their Nimitz … Continue reading
museum tourist: getty center
I stuck around in Los Angeles for an extra night to see the Getty Center. It’s an art museum. It’s on a hill. It didn’t rock my world, maybe because of the sporadic rain, or maybe because nothing could measure … Continue reading
museum tourist: la brea tar pits
I’ve been hearing about the La Brea tar pits forever, so I was pretty darn excited when a friend suggested we go see them while I was in Los Angeles. The tar pits were – are – naturally-occurring tar seeps … Continue reading
tortoise/hare
I like how the tortoise (in Boston’s Copley Square last weekend) is dressed up for the holidays. Do you think the decoration would help him win the race? Or create drag and slow him down? Or motivate the bunny to … Continue reading
DotW: Australian Pocket Oxford Dictionary
The Dictionary of the Week is a new acquisition. Yesterday I was killing time (and seeking heat) in Harvard Square, so I ducked into a used bookstore. Then I realized that they specialize in scholarly used books, so I was … Continue reading
particularly creepy gravestones
This kind of image is on a very large percentage of the headstones in Boston’s historic burial yards: Seventeenth-century Puritans were opposed to using religious imagery (like crosses) on gravestones, so they went for reminders of the limits of mortal … Continue reading
radio all over
Handy website: a list of public radio stations across the country that stream live, including (where available) what’s on right now. So if, say, you’re in a hotel in Boston where the clock radio is broken but the wifi works, … Continue reading
museum tourist: harvard natural history
There is nothing I love like a good old-school museum. And Harvard’s Museum of Natural History? It is OLD school. Ok, it has many excellent modern displays teaching scientific concepts. And it also has: Boxes of rocks! (Excuse me: cabinets … Continue reading