The Museum of Failure

There is a temporary exhibit in Los Angeles called The Museum of Failure.

Notice the Nintendo Power Glove in the picture...

(I never bought the Power Glove, but I did buy a U-Force. I liked the idea, but the technology wasn't yet ready for practical use. Just image me playing Galaga by waving my hands back and forth. That was just about the only game with simple enough controls that the controller was even usable, and even then it was much harder than using something conventional.)

Is anybody able to tell what the portable game system under the yellow cans is?

The first thing that came to mind when I saw the post was New Coke, of course.

I should go to this exhibit!

An Ancient Roman Dice Tower

It would be awesome to whip out one of these — ideally, along with an ancient d20 — during a Dungeons & Dragons game.

Ancient roman dice tower used in the playing of dice games from IV AD pic.twitter.com/5TckuhqKqf

— Museum Archive (@MuseumArchive) October 13, 2017

(Tip of the cap to Sydney Padua.)

Historical Naval Charts and Maps

The National Maritime Museum (one of the Royal Museums of Greenwich) has a really cool collection of historical sea charts and maps. It would be really cool to do some research involving them!

I found this out via the follow tweet.

This portulan chart is decorated with compass roses, towns, rulers, tents, mountains, animals and ships. #MapMondayhttps://t.co/l4BDRiuQU3 pic.twitter.com/l6lAMceEhA

— Nat. Maritime Museum (@NMMGreenwich) June 26, 2017

(Tip of the cap to Sydney Padua.)

Museum Notice of the Day

Wow! This is spectacular!

I want this to be my obituary. pic.twitter.com/od4pJLn5cO

— Dr Jez Phillips (@drjezphillips) May 12, 2017

(Tip of the cap to Meghan Duffy.)

"Artistic Expressions of Math Over Seven Centuries"

My favorite picture in this article (in Hyperallergic) by Allison Meier is "Garden of Mathematical Sciences". So sweet!

This article, which has lots of great pictures of mathematical art, is a review of the exhibit Picturing Math at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

(Tip of the cap to James Tanton.)

National Videogame Museum to Open in April

I want to take a field trip to the new U.S. National Videogame Museum, which will open in Frisco, Texas in April.

Even more than that, I want to go to the classic arcade and American Classic Arcade Museum at Funspot in New Hampshire.

(Tip of the cap to Paul Carter for news about the new museum.)

Data Visualization from the Annals of History

A new exhibit at the British Library is paying tribute to scientific diagrams from the annals of history. That sounds way cool. I hope I get a chance to go.

The exhibition called Beautiful Science: Picturing Data, Inspiring Insight, opens tomorrow and closes on 26 May 2014.

This article also reminds me of Katy Börner's Atlas of Science, which I reviewed for the journal Science a few years ago.

(Tip of the cap to Iain MacMillan.)

The Puzzle Museum

There is apparently a Puzzle Museum in Devon, England. I want to go!

The Museum of Mathematics

The Museum of Mathematics will open in New York City in 2012. Here is a New York Times article about the new museum. (Tip of the cap to SIAM for posting this on Facebook.)

Art and Science

As you can see in this picture, sometimes art imitates science (and vice versa).

On the left: Community structure in protein-protein interaction networks

On the right: a work of art in the Tate Modern museum in London

(Big tip of the cap to Mariano Beguerisse Díaz for taking the picture on the right.)

Baseball-Cricket Origins Exhibition in London Museum

This CNN article was written in relation to the premier of an exhibition about the dual origins and baseball and cricket in London's Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) Museum. I am so there (at some point... I have until December)!

You might recall that I blogged about the news that baseball is a "British sport" a couple of years ago.

Steampunk

Oxford's History of Science Museum has a temporary steampunk exhibit that just started on Monday and is running until sometime in February.

Bletchley Park

Yesterday morning through afternoon, I took a break from grant proposals to go to the museum at Bletchley Park with some math and CS folks. Here is the beginning of its wikipedia entry:

Bletchley Park, also known as Station X, is an estate located in the town of Bletchley, in Buckinghamshire now part of Milton Keynes, England. During World War II, Bletchley Park was the location of the United Kingdom's main codebreaking establishment. Codes and ciphers of several Axis countries were deciphered there, most famously the German Enigma. The high-level intelligence produced by Bletchley Park, codenamed Ultra, is frequently credited with aiding the Allied war effort and shortening the war, although Ultra's effect on the actual outcome of WWII is debated.

I got to see a remade Colossus in action and when the normal people in the guided tour were gone, we stayed and asked some more technical questions of one of the guys who built and runs the remake. The actual guided tour spend too much time on the war and not enough time on the technical stuff. :) I didn't get a chance to explore most parts of the museum at all because between lunch, the guided tour, and the extra conversation, there wasn't time for anything else.

I'm going to go back because there is a lot more for me to see. I know Lemming wants to go and my ticket is good for a year's admission, so hopefully he'll come visit within the next year.