Museum Visit

So about a week ago I was in Gainsville, FL home of the University of Florida. While there I took a couple of hours to visit the museum there, the Florida Museum of Natural History.

Let me start by saying that if you ever are in Gainsville it is worth a visit to the museum. It is fairly large, at least for a university museum, and contains a lot of different sections. The section that interests me, being a paleontologist, is the paleontology part. You start walking through a couple of small dioramas of early life but since there aren't much in the way of early fossils from Florida this is all kind of glanced over. You won't find much in the way of dinosaurs here, that is what happens when the state is underwater/doesn't exist for the entirety of the Mesozoic.

Then you walk into the main fossil hall which is quite impressive. Normally when you see fossil specimens in an exhibit hall they are entirely casts of the original bones so they can keep the actual specimens in the back where researchers have access to them. These exhibits here use actual fossils, if you look close at the specimens you will see that the individual elements have ID numbers on them that are given to the fossils when they are first prepared and put in collections. We were told that they sometimes have to go pull out fossils from the exhibits so people can do studying/analysis of them. The exhibit hall is full of specimens that you normally don't see in museums because most people are interested in dinosaurs.

While I was there they had what is called Can you Dig It going on. This is an event that geology department puts on every year apparently where they talk to the little kids about some fun stuff with geology. They had a volcano that they made explode every 30ish minutes and had a table on rocks and minerals. The vert paleo group had a table where they talked about Florida fossils as well as a few other topics. They also gave each kid that game an actual fossil, most likely ones that were either very common or had little significance. There was a little kid there holding her's and she looked ecstatic to just have one it was cute.


The final thing that I went to was the butterfly exhibit. This one of the few things that you have to pay to get into but it is well worth the price to get in. If you haven't ever been to an exhibit like this you are walking through a room that is filled with butterflies that fly all around you and you do have to watch your step. They also have some weaver birds and some other birds in their as well so it is always full of activity. There are plenty of flowers and the butterflies land on you if you stand still so it is enjoyable, and kids will love it.

I didn't have time to see the rest of the exhibits but you can find out more about them here, which shows just how large the museum is. It also appears that there are a lot of activities that the museum puts on, similar to the Can You Dig It activity I mentioned earlier. So if you live in or near the city of Gainsville, FL I recommend going if you get the chance and those of you that might be traveling through the area take a couple of hours to stop by and check out/support the science that goes on in Florida.

This finally brings me to something I blogged about earlier about supporting the push for a new museum for LSU (here). After seeing what used to be the museum that they have a University of Florida getting support allowed them to build a much larger and better museum that attracts all sorts of events. So continue to show your support for LSU to put in a new museum (here).

I plan on blogging about any museum visits that I do from now on, but I guess I should do the one here in Lubbock, the Museum of Texas Tech University, next.

Museum visits page

This may be a bit excessive

So a few months ago I read a story about 2 school administrators getting in trouble for saying prayer at a school event and today there was a follow-up released on CNN.com saying that these two men might actually get sentenced to jail for this. Story can be found here.

So it turns out that not only is it illegal to say a prayer in public schools because it violates that whole separation of church and state thing but there is also this:

Both parties approved the consent decree put in place January 9 under which district and school officials are 'permanently prohibited from promoting, advancing, endorsing, participating in or causing prayers during or in conjunction with school events,' the ACLU said.

Lay was a party in the initial lawsuit, and his attorney was among those approving the consent decree, according to the organization. In addition, the court required that all district employees receive a copy.

Whoops I guess they forgot about that consent decree when they did this:

But on January 28, 'Lay asked Freeman to offer a prayer of blessing during a school-day luncheon for the dedication of a new field house at Pace High School,' according to court documents.

'Freeman complied with the request and offered the prayer at the event. It appears this was a school-sponsored event attended by students, faculty and community members.'

Now you ask my friends and I can assure you they will tell you I have a bad memory but it really did seem like this consent decree was shoved down their throats.

Their attorney seems to think that just because the audience was adults it was OK to do this:

Attorneys from Liberty Counsel, a conservative legal group helping defend Lay and Freeman, have said that attendees included booster club members and other adults who helped the field house project -- all 'consenting adults.'

Well sure they were but that doesn't mean that they wanted to have your religion forced on them. What if some of the parents were atheists or even Hindus, or any of the many other possible religions?

Look I am OK if you want to pray to yourself before, during, or after a public event but it cannot be sponsored by people who work for the state at a state run institution during a state run event.

Now you might be wondering why I titled this what I did. Well as much as I am for separation of church and state as the next guy I feel that putting them in jail for it would be a little too strong. Now I know what they would be put in jail for is actually not saying the prayer but is actually for contempt. But this is probably their first time in trouble with the law, they have already lost their jobs, I am assuming, and will probably have a hard time finding another teaching job again after this the least that the state could do is end it there. It would, however, be interesting to see how the prison population would react to these two men being put in jail that when asked what for they say, "We said a prayer."