While our attention is on sociological and artistic dichotomies posed by the scientific community, there is yet more thought-provoking stuff scheduled for this evening. And a good chance to see a little known museum in our city too. Don't say we never give you value for money...
The Grant Museum of Zoology is one of the University College of London (UCL) museums, originally founded for teaching purposes in 1827, and is packed with skeletons, stuffed animals and preserved specimens that the Victorians seemed to love so much. There's also an enormous insect collection for those who like creepy-crawlies and don't instantly re-enact a Charlie Brooker-style dirty protest at the sight of a spider.
You can visit tonight and take in a film too, as tonight there is a special screening of the 1954 animated feature film Animal Farm. This moving image adaptation of George Orwell's political satire was commissioned by the CIA and is being shown as part of the museum's series of lectures and events exploring how natural history can teach us about human history, lives and societies. This film about the uprising of farm animals against their human masters and then their slow assimilation into human behaviour will be introduced by Dr Joe Cain, UCL Historian of Science, and there's a very civilised interval with free wine during the screening. You could do worse on a Thursday night and you would be getting a bit of intellectual exercise for no financial outlay at all.
You can take your freshly worked out brain to the office the next day and lord it over your peers: after all, all animals are equal but some are more equal than others.
Animal Farm on the Big Screen, tonight, 6.30pm at the Grant Museum of Zoology, free. For more information, go to the museum website here.
Image courtesy of Chutney Bannister from the Londonist Flickr pool.
