San Francisco Recap #2:  beetles, bacteria, and siege weapons

I spent most of my three-day conference at the super-cool Exploratorium.

The Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco
These are the remaining structures left from the Pan Pacific Fair. It is now the home of the Exploratorium, a learning environment for the young and old.
(postcard, Photo by Andrew McKinney)


There were lots of really cool exhibits there, including this one, which was a living chicken embryo under a magnifying lens. You could see the teeny little heartbeat. It was cool and weird all at once.




This is one of my favorites. It's a case where dermestid beetles decompose small dead critters. Gross but wickedly cool.


Here are closer shots of a mouse and a shrew. They're a little bit squicky. Go here and click on "Energy From Death" to see a time-lapse video of the beetles stripping a mouse skeleton and a sparrow skeleton, and go here for a video of the same kind of beetles cleaning a pig skeleton.



This one has different varieties of photosynthetic bacteria, which produce different pigments.





In between the conference session and dinner one night, we drove down Lombard Street, the so-called "crookedest street in America." I took a few photos, but the sun was at the top of the street and they didn't turn out very well, so here's a postcard instead:

Lombard Street, San Francisco
Lombard Street in June when the hydrangeas are in full bloom.
(postcard, Photo by Ken Glaser, Jr.)

Here's the view from the bottom of the crooked section, looking east:




On the last day of the conference, we went to Fort Mason.


That's Alcatraz Island in the upper left corner.

historic wharves with Angel Island in the background

This tiny patch is allegedly the last stretch of undeveloped, original / native / preserved coastline on the entire Bay. Beautiful and achingly sad.



They also had really kickass stuff in the Exploratorium gift shop:






I wanted one of each, but couldn't really afford any of them, so I got this instead:


I hope it works. I've been wanting to get a Venus flytrap or some other kind of carnivorous plant for a long, long time.



After the lion statue, this was the cutest inanimate object photographed on my trip:


I have no idea why it amused me so, but oh how it amused me.



Just for fun, here's a photo of Kitters with his current favorite toy, the kitty whip that J-Dog bought him a while ago:



Also, I may not have cute feet, but I do have some cute shoes:






Reading:  Coast Redwood:  A Natural and Cultural History