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Sunday, May 27, 2007

Pinnacle of Evolution


Earl J. Woods at Dinosaur Provincial Park, Drumheller; May 31, 1987. Photo by Jeff Crozier.
While looking through photo albums for another project, I found this gem. I'm not sure what I was doing...complaining about the heat, perhaps? This was taken on a school field trip to the Tyrell Museum in Drumheller. Timely, since Friday's Edmonton Journal noted that some creationists are building an alternative, anti-evolution museum in Big Valley. Come to think of it, this image would serve nicely as my reaction shot when I heard the news...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Content (or the lack there of) aside the web site and the design of this "museum" really offends me. I work for a design firm that specializes in Interpretive Exhibit Design and this place raises my hackles. This isn't a museum it is a 3D book that attempted to pack as much text as possible into a maze like setting of a box.

Bad web design, poor "museum" planning and grey vinyl siding.

Boring.

www.bvcsm.com

Anonymous said...

Whoops!

Please be careful using Steven's link. If you just cut and paste the link onto the IE path, it takes you to:

https://www.bvcsm.com/

Which is different from

http://www.bvcsm.com/

The second one is the museum link.


I was reading about some related news about a much larger Creationist museum that's opened near Cincinnati. It features animatronic dinosaurs designed by the same fellow that came up with the "Jaws" thrill ride at Universal Studios. Here's the link:

http://www.creationmuseum.org/

Obviously, the big difference between these two museums is in the funding. The one in the States cost something like $27 US million to build. I imagine that both sites have a more or less similar agenda. The one in Cincinnati ought to have a bigger impact, though. Why?

+ True-to-life animated dinosaurs, just like Tyrell (if not better) -- kids love dino's, even Creationist children

+ Access to American Bible Belt population

+ Complete private funding

Hmmm, that last one is interesting. According to the very flashy website, the larger Creationist museum was completely self-funded through donations. Just ponder on that for a moment. $27 mil is an awful lot of scratch to ask for out of pocket. They must have some fearsome fundraising juggernaut at their disposal.

That kind of money will buy you a quality museum, as opposed to the grey box in Drumheller, which looks like it was funded on a dream and a prayer, and hopes to skid by on God's grace and a low property tax. By way of comparison, Vancouver's secular "Storyeum" cost $22 million CAD to put together. Anyone go to see it? (Cricket chirping noises in the silence). Storyeum closed down after a little over 2 years of unprofitable operation. I kind of don't think the American Creation museum will, ahem, go the way of the dinosaur quite so quickly. Maybe the $5 million more will be enough to keep it afloat, but more likely, its "fan base" will be more keen to exploit its resources than were Vancouverites with Storyeum.

Still, there's a big downside to the American Creation museum. I quote from their website:

"Please note that the Creation Museum is a smoke-free facility. Firearms... are not permitted in the museum."

Bummer. They won't let us smoke our coffin nails and shoot at the T-Rex.