soapbox

Another activity on the recent Oregon-Washington trip was a visit to the Bodies exhibition at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry.

If you’ve never heard of this exhibition, a German scientist figured out how to preserve bodies in a new and novel way to basically plasticize the flesh. There weren’t many details, but a freeze/thaw process is used to replace liquids in the body with acetone. The acetone is then drawn off under vacuum and various plastic resins replace it resulting in preserved tissue. A lot of of the bodies are then partially dissected to give clear views of various organ systems, muscle groups, etc. They also had preserved lungs from smokers, various cancers, and other things in that vein. (There were lots of circulatory systems showing veins.)

It was really mind-blowing, except for two issues. First, a lot of the tissues are treated with silicon rubber which leaves them slightly flexible. In the breeze from the air conditioning, this resulted in things waving around more than I’d really like from dead bodies. Second, some of the displays were less dignified than I would really want for my body. It’s interesting to see what muscles get used skateboarding, but I’m not convinced that I’d want my body locked in that position for eternity.

Two more things:
1. When skin and fat have been removed, it’s basically impossible to guess how old someone was.
2. Everybody always looks at the genitals.

I played the part of the cool uncle and took Kirsten’s brother’s kids to see Ratatouille when I was out in Washington last week.

I have to admit that I’m not the world’s biggest fan of some of the early Pixar films, particularly the Toy Stories. The lastest ones have been pretty good though and Ratatoille continues the tradition.

You can get plot outlines from a million places online, but let me get to the hting that’s important: if you buy a ticket to this movie, you’ll consider it money well spent.