Friday, June 20, 2014

Visited Perot Museum on Father's Day

Went down to the Perot Natural History museum on Father's Day and came away very, very much impressed.

OK, the museum is fantastic, exhibits are beautiful, the interactive ones work, and it was a great experience.

The Cafe is mediocre and I think the hamburger I consumed on Sunday was made on Saturday.

And the website is the absolute worst example of a website ever created. It is a thing from HELL!

But the museum itself is wonderful.

In the mineral hall I kept expecting Kevin Spacey to come in and steal the Kryptonite...beautiful samples dramatically displayed. And still intelligently explained.

And with respect to the whole natural history concept as expressed in the museum let me say:

6000 years my ass! It had to have taken at least 7, maybe even 8 thousand years ... somebody did their sums wrong!


I jest, of course. The careful descriptions, explanations, and illustrations of everything from the Big Bang to the rise of the dinosaurs was near perfect.

How things came to be, how much time it took, how evolution slowly drove things forward all made a most compelling story. And standing next to a huge footprint of a Sauropod, its toenails outlined in the rock like those of some massive elephant, truly brings it home...these suckers were BIG!!!

In fact, I noticed that I often missed the reconstructed skeletons of the larger dinos until I took a turn and got it from a different perspective...they were so large that the mind cannot rasp them as other than isolated objects in space...you have to step away to see the animal within that forest of bone.

A great experience an well worth the price of admission.

But the website still sucks!