Bodies

Photo by: Joshua Trujillo / seattlepi.com
No More 'Bodies' Exhibit in Seattle?
A while back, a small version of the Bodies exhibit came to Tallahassee and I went to see it. It was okay. After a while, it just felt like they were synthetic. I had to keep reminding myself that they were real body parts, but I suppose they're all injected with chemicals and stuff anyway. Might as well be fake.

The controversy is legitimate, I suppose. I mean, my one friend says "If I'm dead, I don't care what people do to my body." Religious beliefs are another thing, but if these people in Bodies are unknown (if their relatives don't know they're in it; if they're too poor to afford proper burials), then, technically, but perhaps immorally, the pros of science, education, and art received from the audiences should outweigh the cons of desecration... maybe.

This argument against (the Bodies exhibit), though, is the kind of argument that leads to a slippery slope (e.g., arguments over abortion, stem cell research)... Hypothetically, suppose a person died from a rare disease or some other scenario where desecrating the body (for scientific research) could prove beneficial for many living people, but this person's family objected. Or, this person didn't have a family but strongly believed in a religion that was against bodily desecration after death and everyone knew this person believed that...

[This post is a comment I left in Google Buzz.]

A Mythology of Death.

I found this webpage when I searched for a quote from Calvin and Hobbes:

A Mythology of Death

(By the way, the quote was "Dad, how do soldiers killing each other solve the world's
problems?" -Calvin)

Although the author of this essay does not really analyze modern attitudes toward death, she does compare a variety of views in ancient mythology. I've always been interested in this sort of thing.


I went fishing with some friends last summer and I caught an average sized fish. Now, I had been fishing dozens of times before with my father, but this was the first time I can remember grabbing the fish (to try to get it off the hook that it swallowed) and feeling its heartbeat pulsating in my hand. It shocked me. It made me reconsider fishing and hunting (especially after reading an article about trouts feeling pain in their lips) and realize that I was holding a living entity in my hands. Coupled with a book I read last year, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal, it almost had me going vegetarian. Luckily, my healthy appetite had me digesting chicken stir-fry again in no time.