I have a confession to make… I am a geek. Even worse than that, I love being a geek, I positively revel in it! Now, I know everyone thought I was pretty cool, and I’m not going to shatter those illusions (I carry it off well), but the question is, “How is someone working in the trendy world of fashion to get the requisite geek fix?” Day-by-day I am bombarded in cutting edge styles, fabrics, trends… but panic not, I have found the best place to geek it up, and even the non-geeks might enjoy it - The Wellcome Collection on Euston Road, London.

Upon walking into the atrium you are confronted with an upside down Anthony Gormley sculpture (you know, the cast of bodies recently dotted throughout London’s South Bank). The museum is set over several floors and houses both permanent and seasonal exhibitions. The upper floor had an exhibition on obesity, malaria, and medicine today. Highlights of this included a wall devoted volumes of books with the entire human genetic code in really small font – what was even more interesting was seeing the proportion of coding DNA (i.e. DNA that we actually use to make proteins – about 3%), and a display case of forceps through the ages (note to self: be “too posh to push”!).

The downstairs exhibition was about sleeping and dreaming and was absolutely fascinating. It offered lots of information about dreaming – percentage devoted to different types, the differences between men and women, sex in dreams and so on. There was a really interesting section about sleep deprivation and its consequences, including pretty harrowing footage of a sufferer of Fatal Familial Insomnia (a very rare condition where the sufferer cannot sleep and eventually dies from this 3-6 months after the onset, even coma inducing amounts of barbiturates can’t rouse the patient).

So, after a couple of hours of science presented in a really accessible way, it was with a heavy heart that I was kicked out of the exhibition (it was closing). I would definitely take visitors to London to see this and will be back to see new exhibitions, it was a thoroughly pleasant and educational way to spend an afternoon. For your viewing pleasure I have attached an image of my face averaged over the past 100 visitors to the museum – check out the eyebrows, were the previous visitors from a star trek convention?

Del.icio.us digg Facebook Stumble Upon

This entry was posted on Friday, January 11th, 2008 at 10:03 am and is filed under Urban Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.