History, naturally

About two weeks before Christmas, desperately hoping to wrap up (no pun intended) my Christmas shopping, I rode my bike in to the Mall to take a look in the Smithsonian stores.  I like being able to support the Institution, because even if a lot of what they have is mass-produced stuff, it's sciency mass-produced stuff.  I also hold the opinion that anyone should be excited to get a dinosaur for Christmas.

My first two stops were busts.  I hate Christmas shopping anyway, and it's worse when you have no income; I feel obligated to buy things for other people, because I can never convince them to not buy something for me, but I still have no good way to pay for that stuff.  To take my mind off it, and take advantage of the trip, I poked around in the natural history museum for a bit before finally locating something that might work as a gift for someone.

This sign wasn't here the last time I visited; this time, there was one on each side of the lab.

I like re-visiting the natural history museum mainly because I like looking at dinosaurs, but the random stranger I started talking to didn't seem to appreciate my insights, so I kept to myself for the rest of the visit, and paid attention to signs I hadn't fully absorbed in the past.  That's how I learned a fascinating new word.  I don't know how much I'll get to use it, but my very favorite word really only comes up in conversation when I mention what my very favorite word is (it's self-defining!).  I have a coffee mug sporting my second favorite word, but the context tells the reader nothing of its meaning.

After my tour of the cretaceous (and early mammals), I somehow found an entire hall that I don't think I've ever visited before: early man.  There was a really good display of hominids that showed life-size models of their heads displayed in cases around the room to simultaneously show how tall average members of the species were.  It was a simple and very effective way to give me an idea of scale that I'd never had before, and I learned about a species I'd never even heard of, despite a college anthropology course dedicated specifically to man's evolution.

Homo floresiensis lived on an Indonesian island, stood about three feet tall, and had a brain about a third the size of ours, but employed fire, tools, and hunting.  Being small was an advantage in an environment with limited resources, but they were easy prey for the much larger Komodo dragons.