One of our favorite place is the University of California Museum of Paleontology--the UCMP. On the Internet, the UCMP is a marvelous, virutal, interactive museum, a place where you can spend an afternoon browsing the exhibition--and all without hurting your feet.

One afternoon, my children and I crossed Strawberry Creek to visit the museum in person. We soon found ourselves in the central stairwell looking at a very impressive Tyrannosaurus under construction. On the next floor up, there was a similarly impressive Triceratops skull.

That was pretty much it. The UCMP had just moved, and did not have all the public exhibits unpacked yet. Even so, the public exhibits are very small. The UCMP is a research museum, not a display museum. It is not designed for five-year-olds, or for 35-year-olds who don't know as much about geology and chemistry as they should. I stood in the stairwell. I looked at the few, but very impressive, fossils. I thought to myself, "Let's get back to the office computer, so we can link to http://ucmp1.berkeley.edu and see the real University of California Museum of Paleontology. The real museum has audio narration by the discoverers of dinosaurs. The real museum has many more bones--a Diplodocus skeleton, for one thing. The real museum has detailed exhibits on dinosaur evolution and geology...