Last night Curator Mark and I went back to the Grant Museum’s historic roots as a proper teaching collection and got out about 100 specimens to run a workshop called How to Get a Head: A Hands-On History of the Skull.

Everyday, university students use our collection as part of their courses, but we’ve never run an actual class with objects for members of the public teaching proper old school zoology. We’ll certainly be doing it again (Get a Grip: A Hands-On History of Hands is now open for bookings for February).

Here’s an impartial write up from one of the people who came along, and some of the things she picked up… http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/events/2011/11/30/how-to-get-a-head-or-what-your-skull-is-saying-about-you/

Today I would like to celebrate the spod. There are a couple of definitions for this term relating to over-users of online chat-rooms, but the spods I’m referring to here are those that Urban Dictionary defines as:

“A derogatory term used to indicate someone with one of the following:
1) A penchant for academic study, above and beyond the call of duty
2) Higher than average intellectual capabilities
See also swot, nerd, geek.
“You’ve already done your history homework? Dude, you’re a spod!”
“I hate that kid, he’s a bit of a spod!”

My aim is to dispel these derogatory connotations and praise them for their gumption, rejection of the norm and dedication to something that is important. I use here terms like geek and nerd to which I attach no negatives – and have to a great extent be “reclaimed” by people like myself, who do belong in these categories. Geek-chic is cool these days, as we all know, but I’m not actually talking about the fashion for being a geek-wannabe. Just dressing like what you think a geek dresses like doesn’t make you a geek. (more…)

Last week was the Grant Museum’s 15th Annual Robert Edmond Grant Lecture, in which the superb Professor Roger Wotton explored the world of mythical creatures. He applied Grant’s own science of comparative anatomy to see whether things like angels, fairies and demons could actually fly, biologically speaking.

The science was solid, and – SPOILER ALERT – the answer was no. UCL Events blog reviewed the event in full, so you can read all about it there.

Roger’s original article on the topic can be found here in the Telegraph

The ‘Journey to find and save the world’s rarest primates’ event provided an opportunity for people from all backgrounds to come together and celebrate the International Day for Biological Diversity, as well as the International Year of Forests. Organised by gibbonologist Helen Chatterjee, UCL Genetics, Evolution and the Environment, the evening sought to raise the profile of the Hainan gibbon, the world’s rarest primate. The Save the Gibbons website provides details on the problem and ways which we can all help. (more…)

Darwin as a modern scientist?

Last night the Grant Museum hosted an event discussing the merits of ‘old school’ science based on observation and studying real things against ‘modern science’ in the lab using computer models and the like. This is a gross simplification but essentially strikes at the heart of last night’s event. Annoyingly, the idea for the event and one of our speakers was poached for the Today Programme on Radio 4 broadcast yesterday morning, which normally we wouldn’t mind, we even helped put them in touch with some of our panelists but the museum didn’t even get a credit. We have a very small team here and I hope our learning and access manager, Jack Ashby doesn’t cringe when I say he works very hard to schedule some really great events. This is unfortunate because for better or worse, media coverage does go a long way to justifying our existence as a cultural institution but sadly not getting credited does happen with some frequency. Anyway, on to the event itself. (more…)