We spent today at the Taipei Science Museum. Exhausting, but a lot of fun! Click for larger versions.
They had a nice genetics exhibit.
This is a Galton board or quincunx. It also makes music! The nail lengths vary across the board, so as the balls fall they generate harmonies. The board rotates but is attached to a parabolic (black) backing that amplifies the sound. Max really liked it!
The kids are often as interested in the museum store as in the museum :-)
7 comments:
You mean uh, Taiwan hasn't been destroyed by apocalyptic earthquakes? ;)
I was also wondering if most of the inhabitants of Taiwan are Type A or Type B?
Some of each. The descendants of KMT immigrants (1949ers) are probably more Type A than the easygoing longtime tropical islanders.
That question of mine was both a serious one and a play on the name of the capitol city Taipei. Sorry if I was being a little obtuse. But I do wonder about the Taiwanese aborigines vs. the Han “immigrants”.
Are there still a lot of “aborigines” there or is the island mostly dominated by Han descendants? I met a math professor recently who is originally from Taiwan and she told me that the original inhabitants had no written language. I never knew -or even thought about that--knowing little about the place.
I suppose I could dig all this info up by reading but was wondering the impressions from the so called “man on the street”.
According to the wikipedia Taiwan today is 98% Han and 2% Aborigine. Now, imagine if America was 98% white. I think some people in the blogosphere would die from the ecstasy. ;)
On the other hand, I can imagine some poor schmuck out on some Indian reservation thinking to himself, "If only this were the good ole days when America was 100% Amerindian..."
Aborigine? Oh, those uncivilized head hunters! Han Chinese bought those barbarians out of the Dark Age during the Qing Dynasty. Every Taiwanese elementary school kid knows that. Some of them have blonde hair, a rare display of the recessive gene acquired from mating with the Dutch hundred years back.
The right question to ask is the Province of Origin. Now we are talking about the Chinese version of Israel vs Palestine. That's where the "joke" come from. I'd rather talked about the real Israel vs Palestine issue. Once they did a survey of the Chinese people of Silicon Valley. The one who identified themselves as Taiwanese American were more pro independent than those identified as Chinese American.
Well--I probably should have read something about the subject before I posted. I remember reading awhile back on the subject of Taiwan’s original inhabitants but only recalled that after reading the Wikipedia link.
Most areas of earth have/had aborigines but- as you said Al Li- they had to have come from somewhere and didn’t appear out of thin air as some might want to believe. But historically there is much truth in the adage “might makes right”. I am not attempting to cast asparagus (apologies to Kinky Friedman) on the Han for driving the “originals” into obscurity. I don’t view the world through a PC lens but mostly try and make sense of the way things are. And wonder how that came to be.
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