Cambridge Science Festival

I only managed to do some things this weekend, rather than through the week as I'd hoped. Best stuff:

-Heard a little music and got to gawk at some musical sculptures by Viktor Lois. I didn't hear but got to see one that included much of a bike and the guts of at least three typewriters, among other things.

-Saw the TechnoArt Bike, which was very pretty. I can totally imagine dressing it up with interesting lighting and riding it at night.

-Saw the plans and the kitchen tabletop of MIT's solar decathlon entry. The table top is solid, able to have onions cut on it or a ringed hand hit it, and is also a computer monitor that is usable by touch (when sitting on the sensor pad) by up to four people at once. I saw how it could display all the house's energy use, or the floor plans (using cool zooms activated by different kinds of touch), and a fun bubble-popping game I wanted to play.

edit, 5/04 1300
-How could I have forgotten the model trains?! There's a huge set-up, with lots of identifiable Boston buildings. Trains! Miniatures! Very fun.
/edit

-Walked the human genome trail set up from Kendall to Harvard. I read about chromosomes 1-22 plus X and Y. This was ok, but would have been better with more information at each stop (there was far too much area used for boilerplate). Good to be out and about, though.

-Walked the climate trail set up on Sunday by the Swiss consulate. It started at the consulate, so I finally got to see the inside, which is all glass and metal and light wood (very much FJ!!), and read some of the many posters about Euler. The rest of the tour meandered over to Harvard, then down to the river. A couple of stops had researchers with posters set up (about global warming in general, greenhouse gases, glacial melt in South America, and so on), and some were showing solutions used around the university, ranging from the solar light post to semi-underground Pusey library to Harvard's energy plant on ( Blackstone Street. )

I didn't do the evolutionary timeline walk along Cambridge St. (no time, plus I didn't find the "map" until today); I might use the map next time I plan to walk the length of the street.

The Madcap Rumpus Society, or, How I Went to the Circus and Saw My Friendslist

Sunday was the premiere performance of the Madcap Rumpus Society with Emperor Norton's Stationary Marching Band. Or is the Society the performers and the musicians together? Either way, it was a spectacular show, with clowns and stilt dancers, a hula hoop (-er? -ist?) and a belly dancer, a twirler of fabric that would have been fire had it been outdoors, people performing on the trapeze, a suspended not-a-hula-hoop, aerial silks (including two people on the same silks at once!), long straps ending in loops (wow, gravity doesn't usually work like that!), the whole accompanied by the 14-person band with music that felt like energetic klezmer with a dash of Romani.

I knew a lot of the people in the audience, as well as some playing or performing; it was like old home week, sort of. I'm amazed by the things people I know can do. They're not professionals, to have that kind of time to devote, and yet the performances were impressive, even when there were rough edges. It felt like a cross between Cirque (all the acrobatics, especially silks) and the kid circus I saw once in Addis (where the audience was very caring, clapping more to cheer up a kid when the performance didn't go as planned), a balance between spectacle and caring. Plus a whole lot of fun.


A much more detailed review, by Siderea.

Boston Organics

( just what you've been waiting for, a list )