museum of natural history
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New York planetarium to host 200-player space game tonight (video)
Got plans for this evening? Cancel them now, and do everything you can to sneak into New York's Museum of Natural History. Because tonight, the museum's planetarium will play host to a 200-person space game, courtesy of Brooklyn's Babycastles arcade. It's all part of the museum's "Cosmic Cocktails and Space Arcade" evening -- an event that seems tailor made for anyone interested in cosmology, humans, and/or hallucinogens. The showcase of the soiree is the Space Cruiser game, which promises to turn the ceiling of the Rose Center for Earth and Space into a "living, breathing, space ship where participants navigate around a beautiful fictitious universe." With the Magnetic Fields' Stephin Merritt assuming the tripartite role of ship captain-navigator-narrator, the game apparently begins with the birth of the universe, before transporting visitors across new galaxies and through time-bending wormholes. The ship launches at 6:30 PM tonight, but unfortunately, tickets are already sold out. Head past the break, though, for a rather "duuuude"-inducing video.
Cosmic Discoveries is a great free demo for your iPhone
Every so often I see a free app that is just dying to be used as an iPhone demonstration. The candidate for today is the American Museum of Natural History app called Cosmic Discoveries. When you open the app, you see an image of Saturn. It's a bit crinkly, so you dive in for a closer look, dragging your fingers apart to trigger a zoom. What you'll find is that the image is composed of many hundreds of pictures that can be expanded to near full screen proportions. The zoom goes almost literally to infinity. Some of the pictures are historical photos of observatories or scientists, while many others are striking images of the planets and deep space objects taken by some of our best observatories, or the Hubble or Spitzer Space Telescopes. You can explore the images and the attached information for hours. Alas, all things are not perfect. The app doesn't support the iPhone 4 Retina display. Another big foul up is that you're given the opportunity to share any image with someone via email, but when the image arrives, text is plastered across the middle of the image suggesting that the recipient download the app, too. It's hard to believe that the people who want you to enjoy the grandeur of the universe would deface their own images for some cheap promotion, which could have been handled in the text of the email and not in front of the image. I hope that rather glaring fault gets fixed, but even so, this is a really cool program that you can explore at no cost. You're bound to learn a few things, and the gigantic zoom is just the thing to show off your iPhone. There's no iPad-specific version, and the app requires iOS 2.2.1 or later. %Gallery-106103%
LEGO Batman launch event transforms Museum of Natural History into carnival
The American Museum of Natural History is known for being one of the most prestigious ... wait, is that a giant Batman made out of Legos? Yes, the fine folks behind the LEGO Batman video game have somehow managed to turn the sacred Museum grounds into a carnival, filled with good ol' fashioned carnival games. Popcorn, hotdog and suspect lemonade were all on hand as kids and games journalists of all ages partook in all sorts of classics like, er, whatever this game is.Quite possibly the most attractive display at the event was this mini-warehouse, littered with various LEGO Batman characters. Quite possibly the most deadly display were the cupcakes, with not-so-edible Batman and Joker characters on top. (We found out the hard way. Ouch.)%Gallery-32579%
