Why I Like the Atrium of Berkeley's Valley Life Sciences Building

Comments

[Anderson]

Because they have a T. Rex fossil submerged in an aquarium?

[jerry]

I feel so dumb. I walked through that same atrium for two years and always thought I was in the Hall of Free Traders.

[JRossi]

Everyone likes fossils, but if polar bears like that were alive today you'd be singing a different tune.

[Rishi M.]

Not to mention all the awesome triceratops that they have in the library.

[bacon]

I call hoax!

[David Lloyd-Jones]

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What I dislike most about the Berkeley dinosaur muse is that their entryway has one of the world's more egregious statements of the stoo-pid theory that human history consists of people magically "inventing" agriculture, then moving into towns and cities, and then going up the ladder, uh, away from the brainless dinos.

This is dumb palaeontology as far as the reptiles goes, but when it comes to modern economics it is romantic nonsense which would be funny if it were not so broadly and deeply pernicious. "Urban Renewal" rests on this sort of nonsense: when I first went to work for the Congress I found my boss had in his reception area a photograph of downtown South Bend -- a photo which he thought showed he was an energetic and effective Congressman. To me it showed that there was not that much difference between a 50 kiloton, say 2~3 times Hiroshima, A-bomb hit and a middle range Urban Renewal project.

Jane Jacobs, the main person in this generation teaching the opposites -- on a range from dinosaurs of the scaly-dead-bones type to those she found in New York urban governance and in academia -- died before she could collect the Nobel she was surely due for.

Bob Lucas at Chicago probably considers himself a conservative, while I am a socialist. Bob coined the phrase "Jacobs externalities" for the positive effects of urban information and population density; as is my wont I mostly politicked. Nevertheless we agreed in working for Jane's Nobel.

Can anybody go explore the Berkeley Museum with a spray-can of paint in hand?

The sprayer who corrects their titles and captions will not be the hoodlum: the intellectual hoodlums are the people currently running the joint.


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[Steve]

Shhh... This is my secret no-cost dinosaur museum where I take my kids. Don't want too many people to know. Btw, once a year Berkeley has their Cal day, and they let us peons into the actual Life Sciences Museum. If you have a fondness for stuffed rodents, you won't want to miss it.

[wood turtle]

That dinosaur has dainty toes. What is it?

[David Lloyd-Jones]

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I've mentioned elsewhere that I deal in politics.

I think I made two contributions to riding Newt Gingrich out of town on a rail, ridicule being an often effective weapon.

I coined the faux dictionary entry "gingrich: abb., giving/rich."

More powerfully, I pointed out to the world that he posed as a long-time lover of dinosaurs right up to the time when science suggested that they might have been warm-blooded.

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