This seesaw is a part of our (mobile) insect playground, suitable for people who want to take their pet insects with them on holidays. The two baby cockroaches Bella and Grumpy (featured above) – are using the seesaw, while your pet ant can optionally use the weights for some weightlifting.
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BLACK WATER
by elize/helen
A drink of water today………
gives the aliens a space to play.
Intergalactic Planetary War Prevention Device
By Muhabat, Vera en Maren
This device is designed to prevent intergalactic wars. If you have a dispute about something it decides for you. Unfortunately it recently fell on Earth and is lost since. When it fell down, an innocent bystander made this picture. If you see this object somewhere, please get in touch with the IPWPC (International Planetary War Prevention Committee) T: 00389- 98445 00356 7777.
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isis/jeanne
THOUGHTSTHIEF
The ring that can steal peoples thoughts, leads them into the pen and write them down.
Recently I went shopping in the old city centre of Amsterdam. I locked my bicycle in front of the ‘Bijenkorf’ on the Dam square. I heard the bells of the Beurs van Berlage. Strange, I had never heard them before. They sounded irregular and slow. I walked to one of the revolving doors of the department store and tried to open it. It did not cooperate. I took the other door, but again I didn’t manage. A security guard saw me and rushed to help me. When he pushed his shoulder against the glass, the door started turning. Sorry, I said. A man behind me started to laugh. The security guard said rapidly: “it is not because of her, everyone has trouble with this door. The doors have already been repaired, but they still don’t work properly. Have a nice day”. I walked along the cosmetics department in the direction of the escalator. A blend of freshly sprayed fragrances approached me. Heavily made up girls sprayed passing customers. I stopped in front of the subtle eye shade colours of Yves Saint Laurent, the deep red lipstick of Dior and the porcelain like foundation of Guerlain. I forced myself not to buy it. I took the escalator to the second floor, women’s clothing. At that time I heard an enormous blast and the noise of falling glass. People were screaming. The escalator stopped. A long glass wall had fallen down and shattered. I rushed down the escalator towards the exit. There was glass everywhere. At the revolving doors a lot of people were pushing. I had to run away, I thought of a terrorist attack. I ran to the other exit and saw EHBO’ers kneeling among bleeding people. I managed to get out. The bells kept on chiming strangely. Quickly I took my bicycle and cycled in the direction of the Rokin towards the Munt. The usually tranquil water near the Turfmarkt was now moving violently, waves hitting the quay. Canal cruise boats smashing into each other. Cyclists and pedestrians were looking and helped the tourists to get on the quay. In spite of my state of near-shock, I wanted to photograph this spectacle. I placed my bicycle at the munttoren. While I was locking my bike, a brick fell beside me. I looked up and saw another one falling down. I ran in the direction of the Vijzelstraat. At that moment shouting men with helmets came from the subway station that was under construction. They shouted in German, weg da, geht da weg. Er stürzt ein, der Tunnel. Sirens approached. A couple of meters away, police cars, fire trucks and ambulances stopped. There were flashing lights all over the place. I ran to a tram stop. Panting and with beating heart, I stepped onto Tram 5 homewards. In the tram I started thinking: I should have known, this would happen. It just hit me. Once I saw a large black mass in a breach under my house. It smelled like sulphur. I touched it and it felt like a cold watery substance. It rapidly crumbled apart. It was the soil, the same as the soil under the old city. Despite his weaknesses He had used his strength for ages to support the majestic historical buildings. But every little piece that had been drilled in his body, made him even weaker. Now I understood the slow and irregular chiming of bells, the revolving doors, the falling glass, the whirling water and the falling bricks. The digging of the subway tunnel underneath the old city was too much.
Slowly he collapsed.
A myth by Cyrilla Verkooijen
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pickles love traily by elize:
I discovered such a nice new idea in a gardensupermarket, its a traily to put in your garden against a sunny wall, even a wall in your room thats sunny will do. Well, what can you do with this growingtool.
You get the possibility to let pickles grow with only your love and care. Its important that you give enough attention to the pickles, because if they grow too fast they will get too big and heavy, so they will fall down out of your traily. Too much love will kill them in a way.
So a perfect dose will let them grow to a perfect size. Its an unusual way to let them climb higher and higher by giving them only your personal love and passion, but on the other hand its an easy way to develop your love and carefeelings and notice how much or little you have to give.
So try to find this picklewonder and you will fall in love.
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I recently watch the documentary \with gilbert&george\ -it is still on, and worth watching, so check it u at SMART CINEMA (just in case you don’t know the place, Smart Project Space is a great place for movies, exhibitions and to have a drink/dinner). G&G talk about their life and work and also about their collections -vases from the arts&crafts movement , homoerotic literature (mostly from the sixties) and catechisms.
If you want to know more about these guys, you can also check these videos where they talk about their 2007 exhibition at TATE Modern, and also this (long) interview with them at the TATE
Lionel Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild, was born in 1868 into an international financial dynasty, but was destined to be famed as a zoologist and collector rather than a banker.
Walter was the eldest son of Nathan Mayer Rothschild, who was head of the distinguished firm of merchant bankers NM Rothschild & Sons and Member of Parliament for Aylesbury.
Building a museum
As a child, Walter knew exactly what he wanted to do when he grew up, announcing at the age of seven, ‘Mama, Papa, I am going to make a museum…’. By the time he was ten, Walter had enough natural history objects to start his first museum, in a garden shed.
Before long, Walter’s insect and bird collections were so large they had to be stored in rented rooms and sheds around Tring. Then in 1889, his father gave him some land on the outskirts of Tring Park as a 21st birthday present. Two small cottages were built, one to house his books and insect collection, the other for a caretaker. Behind these was a much larger building, which would contain Lord Rothschild’s collection of mounted specimens. This was the beginning of the ZoologicalMuseum, which opened to the public in 1892.
Passion for natural history
Educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge, Walter worked for the family firm in London from 1889 to 1908, though his passion was for his natural history collection. At this time his collection was one of the largest in the world.
Walter’s interest in natural history was not restricted to museum specimens. He kept an astonishing variety of animals in the grounds around the Museum and in Tring Park, including zebras, a tame wolf, rheas, kangaroos, kiwis, cassowaries and giant tortoises. He even drove a team of zebras into the forecourt of Buckingham Palace.
History of the collections
During his lifetime, Walter Rothschild collected many thousands of mounted mammals, birds, butterflies and moths, along with bird skins, giant tortoises and an impressive library.
Taxidermy
Many of the specimens on display are outstanding examples of 19th century taxidermy. Walter Rothschild selected only the finest specimens and made sure they were prepared by experts. We try to preserve this character in the displays you see today.
Scientific research
Walter accumulated new research material so rapidly that he and his professional zoologist curators, Ernst Hartert and Karl Jordan, began to issue the Museum’s own scientific journal. Novitates Zoologicaelaunched in 1894. Over the course of 45 years, they published more than 1,700 scientific books and papers, and described more than 5,000 new species of animals.
Libraries
The Museum has two libraries, the stunning Rothschild Library and the modern Ornithological Library. T he magnificent Rothschild Library was added to the Museum between 1908 and 1912. Augmented by The Natural History Museum’s ornithological collection, it now houses some 75,000 books and is considered to be one of the finest ornithological libraries in the world.
Collections left behind
During his lifetime Lord Rothschild accumulated:
2,000 mounted mammals
about 2000 mounted birds
2 million butterflies and moths
300,000 bird skins
144 giant tortoises
200,000 birds’ eggs
30,000 relevant books
Dispersing the collections
The majority of Walter’s bird skin collection was sold to the American Museum of Natural History in the early 1930s and is now in New York. All his research collections other than the remaining bird material were moved to the Natural History Museum at South Kensington over an extended period following World War II. The Natural History Museum’s own bird collections were then moved out to a new purpose-built building at Tring in the early 1970s, where they attract researchers from around the world.
The bird collections now include about 1,150,000 specimens of skins, skeletons, nests, sets of eggs and spirit-preserved material.They continue to grow very slowly as new items are added.
Spirit collection
The spirit collection is home to 17,000 specimens, kept in a solution of 80 per cent industrial methylated spirit, to preserve the birds complete with all internal organs in a manner permitting dissection. The oldest date back to Captain Cook’s voyages in the 1760s and 1770s.
Skeleton collection
The 15,000 items in the skeleton collection are mainly disarticulated (kept as separate bones) and stored in boxes in tight-sealing cupboards.
Skin collection
The skin collection of 700,000 specimens includes skins from Charles Darwin’s Galapagos journeys and Captain Cook’s explorations. Kept in the dark, in well-sealed cupboards and with carefully-regulated conditions of temperature and humidity, the skins retain their plumage colour and have a virtually indefinite life.
The collections also include around 400,000 sets of eggs and some 4,000 nests.
