Capt. Mondo's World o' Mondo-ness

Second Day in Montreal: "A Very Analog Experience"
I had told my business companion that I was interested in taking in a show at the Montreal Planetarium. I had checked the times for the shows before coming to town, and found an English-language presentation on star evolution starting at 7:15pm. Since my associate is similarly interested in science topics (yes, I can claim him as a fellow card-carrying member of the geek fraternity), and hadn't taken in a planetarium show since at least before the McLaughlin Planetarium closed more than 10 years ago in Toronto, he agreed to accompany me there after dinner.

We had a brief and overpriced meal at the hotel restaurant (charging $3.25 for a glass of Pepsi just strikes me as wrong), then zipped off to the planetarium by cab to ensure that we would make it on time.

We bought our tickets (a very reasonable $8), and with maybe two dozen other people total we soon set ourselves down in the comfortably steeply-angled seats of the planetarium, gazing upon the mid-1960s's era Zeiss projector, an electro-mechanical device from another time.

This was appropriate since the show was pretty much everything I remembered from taking in previous shows at the old McLaughlin planetarium back home a dozen or more years ago. Dozens of slide projectors madly clicked and whirred away, projecting hand-made landscapes of alien worlds and a clearly painterly and almost romantically diffuse milky way galaxy, while action was provided by occasional video streams showing previously-rendered computer animations in a TV-aspect ratio format projected to the opposite side of the dome from where we were sitting. After the automated show ended, the presenter followed up with a quick survey of the current night sky. He pointed out the red three-point line currently formed by the ruddy Betelgeuse, Mars and Antares, as well as Saturn that is also currently visible. By throwing (turning?) a switch he was able to expand the image of Saturn, pale rings suddenly emerging around the pale yellow-ish disc on the dome. At the end of the show my business companion commented that it was "a very analog experience".

I took a picture of the grand Zeiss projector, and managed to strike a conversation with the presenter, who was very knowledgeable (and who had in fact authored the previous show on the evolution of stars.) I asked him about the planetarium projector, which it turned out was made by the Carl Zeiss company of West Germany (as opposed to Zeiss Jena lab of the former East Germany which my researches had shown had constructed the planetarium projector that had been located in the McLaughlin planetarium). When I asked what the basic difference was, he replied that the Zeiss Jena ones were cheaper to buy than their West German equivalents. When I asked about how much of the existing projector is original, he responded that much of it was, and that they have a small machine shop for making replacement parts which are no longer easy to obtain. The slide projectors are no longer manufactured and as time goes it is getting harder to replace what wears out. When I asked him about the vintage depiction of the Milky Way that had appeared in the previous show, he remarked that it was an addition to the original projector that dated to the 1970s, and that the swirling image dated to the same era. He had some other interesting things to say, such as that the existing Planetarium was scheduled to be dismantled entirely (building and all) and replaced by a newer facility elsewhere in the city in three-year's time, and that he had recently received a notice about York University offering the original McLaughlin projector it had bought (and mothballed) for sale, presumably for parts. The kicker for me came when he mentioned that the planetarium and its projector both debuted on April 1, 1966 – the date and year I was born. When leaving, I looked at the electromechanical Zeiss projector, pausing for thought that it and I shared the same "birthday".

My business companion and I trudged the relatively short distance back to the hotel, and I said my goodbyes to him, since he was heading home early the following morning.

Before turning in I watched the conclusion of The Richard Dawkins documentary on religion and atheism, buoyed slightly by some of the conclusions (preliminary as they may be) on the subject as illuminated by science.

Second Day in Montreal: "Increasing Knowledge Leads to Triumphant Loss in Clarity"
I awoke and when I looked out the window, and found that a gentle but steady snow consisting of thick snowflakes had made the place a winter wonderland. Dressed, showered and pressed my clothes and headed out for a trudge in the immediate neighbourhood, mainly for the pressing need to find a bank machine, but also to just get an initial look around and get a lay of the immediate area in which I was staying. I discovered a Starbucks one block west of where I was staying, which made the excursion worthwhile.

The day at the firm we were visiting was a good one, though it took longer than I had anticipated, lasting until just after 3pm. Instead of heading straight back to the hotel I asked our cabbie to take me to the Redpath Museum instead. It is not open on a Saturday so this would be my only chance to go and see it. The cabbie was obviously not familiar with the place and a map had to be pulled out so that he understood where I wanted to go. My business companion was tired, so I handed over sufficient fare to ensure that he could get back to the hotel, which was a relatively short walk away from the McGill campus where the museum is located.

Love this museum. It is relatively small but it has been around a long time, so some of its exhibits date back to a time before interpretative displays became commonplace. This makes it sound like more of a throwback than it actually is, as most of the items on exhibit accompanied by sometimes extensive information, but are all housed in lavish wooden housings harkening to earlier curatorial times. I took many pictures, the afternoon light streaming in from the uppermost windows of the main atrium providing an excellent opportunity to take flash-less pictures. I took a panoramic set of shots of the main display hall, which was empty of other visitors when I went in. The result is below:

With a digital camera there's little reason not to take shots of things since memory is cheap, so I deliberately took pictures of much of the explanatory text for several of the fossil exhibits, in part so that I could read up on and properly identify the items I was taking pictures of, and also as possible source material for future Wikipedia entries I might be able to usefully contribute to. So in addition to pictures of "Zeller" the Albertosaur erected in the middle of the hall, I also took pics of a Chinese tooth-extractor's advertising banner filled with the teeth he had pulled (conjuring visions of dentistry I am glad I have never experienced), to examples of Chimu pottery, and roman mosaic work. Other pictures I just took for the beauty of the subject, such as the self-entangled arms of the basket star, to the many specimens of fine shells neatly displayed in rows of display cases arranged by size and colour, almost glowing in the light of the late afternoon.

I also took note of some of the more humourous signs that appointed the doors of some of the professors and their post-doc students who have their office here, my favourite being a quote from a paper by Romer called "Synopsid Dentition and Evolution" dating to 1961 that says "Here, as everywhere in paleontology, increasing knowledge leads to triumphant loss in clarity". This is complimented by a paper sign below it identifying the lab as the Larsson-Carroll Lab [of/for?] Deep Time Specialists', which sports a suitably quizzical-looking ostrich, whose expression seemed to suggest that it was similarly suffering from a "loss of clarity".

While the collection of pre-Cambrian Burgess shale fossils is dwarfed by the number and variety on display at the R.O.M., I was impressed by the examples of even earlier Ediacara and Stromalite fossils on view. I also appreciated the token display devoted to the Hadean period, studied with meteorites which date to the time when the earth was still forming out of the planetary nebula that gave it birth.

Couldn't help but remember the last time I was here, which was when I was with both Bryce and Toby. Somewhere I have a goofy shot of Toby's arm seemingly being consumed by the hole in the spine of a whale, and Bryce mugging beside another sign saying "Beware Thou the Mutant", and the brief but illuminating talk we had with the evolutionary professor whose sign that was, which led us all to attend a guest lecture at a nearby building on the "frozen earth" hypothesis, which was my introduction to that subject. Toby is now dead, and Bryce is no longer resident in Montreal. That was a fun trip, which contained at least one night's session making enjoyably bad Miscellaneous 'S' music, but one which will unfortunately never be repeated, at least not with the original line-up.

When I got back to my hotel room, I passed out on the bed and had my first decent sleep since the beginning of the trip.