Science Cafe at the American Museum of Natural History

If you are a parent of small child in New York City, especially if that child is a boy, you have been to the American Museum of Natural History. In fact, I've been there so many times I know where many of the exhibits are. They also have special exhibits to lure you back in when you are tired of the regular ones. There was a film set in it - Night at the Museum, which was fun because it played into the fantasy of what might happen there at night... One summer DH even did summer camp there for 2 weeks and loved it.


Which all goes to show how I think about this museum - as a child's mecca, where I float along on his interests. Then, after the summer camp I think, I got on their mailing list and they sent me emails about their science cafe, something for adults only. I sent it to some friends of mine I thought would be interested and for months the first Wednesday of every month rolled around, and for months none of us could do it, and finally we committed and said, next month, no matter what, we are going.

So of course the one we could absolutely go to, was in time for Valentine's Day and was about Why Humans have Sex. It was our first time and apparently the largest crowd they have ever had! David M Buss, a renown author and someone I had never heard of, gave a very entertaining talk about mating rituals amongst seals and insects and how they correlated to mating rituals amongst humans. It was fun, though I did say to my friend who came with me that next time I want to go to something I hadn't read so much about, because he didn't really tell me anything I didn't know. It's such a juicy topic that most interesting psych studies and results are reported in the papers. He mentioned again the t-shirt experiment, where women could actually get information about immune system compatibility through the smell of a sweaty t-shirt - though of course they didn't know they were doing that, they only had to rate how attractive or repellent they found the smell of the t-shirt and the scientists worked out the rest. But that's an amazing piece of information, and shows that attraction processes are far more sophisticated and subtle than we ever knew.

I'm very glad we went and we will definitely go again.


But what really changed my perception of the museum from a child's playground to an adult dream, is that in the line for the wine tickets, one man told us that on one Friday night a month, the museum hosts a party in the Rose Centre - (where all the planetary displays are) getting famous DJ's, the dancing starts at 9, and stops at 1 am sharp, they get around 1,000 - 1,200 people, and it's amazing, he loves it. And I thought, what a perfect use of the space! Visiting lectures is one thing, but this was great out of the box thinking. The next on is on March 12th, and I will definitely be there!