h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The modern style museum tends to be organised around "here's what we know - press the buttons to learn more". The old-style museum was more "here's everything we've collected including lots of stuff we don't understand - draw your own conclusions".

I remember in the British Museum handling an Ancient Babylonian pottery cone covered in cuneiform writing. I asked whether they were worried about me dropping it and breaking it. They said they had 350,000 more of them down in the stores.

That reminds me of an episode of the antiques roadshow I saw once where a guy proudly produced a genuine Roman glass bottle/amphora.

The expert authenticated then declared that it was virtually worthless as there were absolutely millions of them around and about. The guest was most disappointed.

It's about the only time I've seen them tell the person their antique is worthless. (I'm reliably informed that they do this with glee the versions in other countries)

There was a good show on radio 4 the other day (Material World? Possibly.) which talked about how important our GRANDparents are to our genetics.

Consider: I'm the product of an egg cell and a sperm cell. The sperm cell in question was created a matter of days before my conception. The egg cell, on the other hand, was created YEARS before. In fact, the egg cell from which I came was created in my GRANDmother's womb. So MY health is at least partly contingent on the conditions prevalent in the womb of my grandmother.

This is a mind boggling insight, and I would suggest anyone interested spend a bit of time looking into it.

If anyone's still interested in this, a good place to start would be the current life expectancy of those descendants of Glaswegian slum dwellwers. They still have a life expectancy up to 20 years less than equivalent people who have ancestors from elsewhere.