Brain full, must stop learning.

[thanate]

I just spent all day (ok, upwards of 5 hours, anyhow) in the Natural History museum with fishy1 and my parents; we wandered through bits of the new ocean hall, said hi to the dinosaurs and the Hope Diamond room (in which, in my opinion, the Hope Diamond is the least interesting thing going) and then went through soils and the fascinating Written in Bone exhibit. That last is a forensic archaeology exhibit looking at graves from early Jamestown and St Mary's City (Lord Baltimore's original capital of MD) for what the bones can tell us about people's lives and conditions. Quite fascinating. They had not only the usual array of work, injury, and illness related stresses (and I hadn't realized that late-stage TB did such awful things to people's bones) but also a case with jawbones from three Africans with filed teeth, a practice I'd heard of, but not seen before.

They had a 3-example case of skulls showing what racial features look like in bone, and I had not realized how much my personal conception of "what a skull looks like" had been skewed by european catacombs-style images. The Amerind example (a cast, of course, unlike the other two) struck me as looking surprisingly like the stylized Dia de los Muertos skulls, which have always looked unnatural to me. It seems that they are not so much oddly stylized as just not, well, european. Funny, that...

Other than that, I continue to be confused by "tailor's grooves" (left by repeatedly holding pins between one's teeth-- why would one *do* that? What did these people have lips for, anyway?) and in a moment of weakness, I stared at their photos of costumed people working and determined that their garments had all clearly been hemmed by machine. (You can't see the stitching, but the very straight solid line and the way the fabric has worn looks like ren faire costumes that have seen a season or three) But they had lovely pictures of field drawings, and grave sites laid out in little semi-translucent beads around the skeletons they had on display, and I totally want to be a forensic archaeologist when I grow up, except for that bit about actually not. Very cool. I may have to go back at some point, since everyone else was done far before I was, and I ended up rushing thought the last gallery.

Next up, Pompeii on Saturday, before it leaves us for Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, everyone is selling dolls and doll things (oh, the lovely mystic unicorn wings I am *not buying*) and fortunately I don't actually *want* any of the dolls just now, as I have put myself on buying probation indefinitely (except for house/wedding stuff, and paying laeticiav for box-of-crazy-stuff, of course.) Instead I am developing strange ideas about morality and restraint and financial responsibility, which I still intend to post on. With luck this will happen before they take over my brain and develop into a fierce code of "You (who do not think this) are Wrong." Because I'm pretty sure that would be everyone but me, and nobody likes a fanatic, right?

Comments

[laeticiav.livejournal.com]

I'm trying out restraint and financial responsibility too (morality is in a whole different part of my brain), but I still enjoy people who don't have too much of either.
Sent the crazystuff yesterday -- shipping = $8.80 including deliv. conf. (ppl = al.c.biades AT gmail DOT com)

[thanate.livejournal.com]

Ok, you are paid!

I think if I did not have my own bizarre strong moral code (most of which I try not to apply to other people) then I would see no need for the other bits. But I'm also very aware that my brain is put together noticeably differently than other people's, so it could just be that.

[stanci.livejournal.com]

What in particular does late stage TB do to people's bones?

Now I have to get back to DC and go to the Natural History Museum again.... :)

[thanate.livejournal.com]

It basically eats away at the spine until it's all crunkled and compressed and "straight" has you sitting up at about a right angle. Not pretty. (the second picture down, here) (http://anthropology.si.edu/writteninbone/lives_cut_short.html)

This exhibit will be around for about two years; the soils one (also interesting, but after doing archaeology for a while, I didn't learn a lot from it) is there for one.

re: hope diamond

[fishy1.livejournal.com]

jah, i still think the melted-together-buddhas sandstone was the best in that room.

Re: hope diamond

[thanate.livejournal.com]

I'm still pretty impressed with the giant copper sheet, too, and I want a circular iron meteorite as a centerpiece for my garden. :)