I just noticed this today that Google Street View is now active in Cincinnati.  It's a new function in Google Maps where you can now see a 360 degree photo image of many locations in Cincinnati.  Here's a shot of Music Hall. This is a tremendously powerful tool.  I can see all sorts of uses for it, especially looking up property in real estate. But, is it an invasion of privacy?  It does make it easier for someone to look up and find your house, making it a stalker's new best friend.  I'm not so worried about that, but it is a little disconcerting to see details of your life on display.  In this picture of the back of my house, you can see my kick bag that I use when I work out.  There's a picture of my backyard because my house is in between two streets.

Sometimes I find the ads that Google serves up on my site to sometimes be amusing, sometimes frustrating.  I'm an Obama supporter, so it is a little annoying to be serving up McCain banner ads to the visitors of my site.

Anyways, this banner showed up on my site.  I'm not sure what the point of this banner ad is except to highlight how old John McCain really looks these days.  Can this young handsome fellow really be John McCain?  The John McCain of today can be described at best as "seasoned".

So, if you want young and vibrant, you're either going to have to get a time machine or vote for Obama.

From AP.com: ALL BUSINESS: Don't count on gas tax cut lowering prices

That's because the idea proposed by presidential candidates John McCain and Hillary Clinton to ease the federal gas tax would strip the U.S. government of about $10 billion for roadway and transportation projects.

And the plan doesn't even guarantee that lower taxes will lead to lower gas prices. Just the opposite might happen if the tax holiday spurs more demand for gas at a time when supply is already constricted.

The gas tax is fixed at 18.4 cents/gallon.  We can cut this 18.4 cents and the next week the price could rise 18.4 cents and we'd be back in the same place and then we'd be short 10 billion to fix roads.  I mean gas has risen over 30 cents in the last couple of weeks

We'd all like to see cheaper gas, but a gas tax holiday doesn't solve the fundamental problems we have and is just a political ploy.  The gas tax pays to repair our crumbling infrastructure and actually employees people in the road construction industry.

From the Wall Street Journal: He Said, She Said: Hillary and Sinbad

Clinton has, throughout the campaign, talked about a harrowing trip to war-torn Bosnia as an example of the foreign policy experience that has prepared her to face future national security crises, should she become commander-in-chief.

"I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we jut ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base," Clinton said.

But last week, the comedian Sinbad, who accompanied Clinton on the trip along with singer Sheryl Crow and then-first daughter Chelsea, said he remembers the landing differently. "I think the only 'red-phone' moment was: 'Do we eat here or at the next place?'" he said in an interview with the Washington Post.

Clinton has said in her stump speech, "We used to say in the White House that if a place is too dangerous, too small, or too poor, send the First Lady."

Sinbad scoffed at this statement as well: "What kind of president would say 'Hey man, I can't go 'cause I might get shot so I'm going to send my wife. Oh, and take a guitar player and a comedian with you."

It's stories like this that make me wonder if Hillary ever tells the truth without embellishment.  She's really reaching to make being First Lady a qualification for foreign policy experience.

What is Bodies the Exhibition?

Coming to a museum near you! Katrina Victims Bodies on Display! Twenty African African-American, unclaimed and unknown victims of this hurricane tragedy are artistically dissected and posed in lifelike educational exhibits.  See a body's muscles as they ripple from the exertion of running away from a breaking levee.  See a cross-section of a drowning victim's lung to see how much water it can hold before death. Examine the impact of alcohol on a liver of a drunk homeless person. It's a moving and educational experience!

This exhibit does not exist, thankfully, not because there aren't unclaimed victims of Katrina.  There are still about 100 unclaimed Katrina victims that are still refrigerated, awaiting burial.  It does not exist because of the staggering outcry an exhibition like this would bring.  The public would collectively say that showing the dead in this manner is undignified and against the customs of all cultures.

Since the dawn of time, humankind has always treated the dead with respect.  This respect is so important that the breaking of this is taboo, a shocking and horrific deed.  The imagery of an American soldier being dragged through the streets or a body of a young black man hung from a tree is unbearable and has mobilized people into action to change the course of history.

Add race or religion to this mix and you'd have a total inferno.  Just the thought of displaying twenty dead African African-Americans without their consent is unfathomable.  How about twenty dissected and unclaimed Jews? How would you feel?  How about twenty Chinese?

Wait. Twenty Chinese?  Twenty Chinese on display without their consent.

Where's the outrage?

Bodies: the Exhibition, opening February 1, 2008 at Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal, is just such an exhibition.

Preserved and dissected Chinese bodies are being put on display without their consent. Premier Exhibitions, Inc. chief medical advisor, Dr. Roy Glover, states in a letter to the Columbus Dispatch September 24, 2007:

"We have legal documentation and representation that confirms that only the bodies of people who are deceased from natural causes have been included in the exhibition and have been acquired by legal means with the highest of ethical standards."

It is standard practice not only throughout Asia but also here in the United States for unclaimed and unidentified bodies to be offered to medical schools for education, the core of our exhibition."

(bold text- my emphasis)

If you died today, would you volunteer to be stripped of your skin, pumped up with liquid plastic, cut up, and posed in a museum display?  Maybe, yes, maybe no. But at least that would be YOUR choice.  By using "unclaimed and unidentified bodies" Premier Exhibitions, Inc. clearly does not get consent from the dead.  These bodies are condemned to a lifetime of traveling to shopping malls in the name of "education" as part of this freakish sideshow. 

Premier Exhibitions, Inc. states that it's common for "unclaimed and unidentified bodies to be offered to medical schools for education".  But before Premier Exhibitions, Inc. brought this show to "educate" the masses in Cincinnati, this show had traveled to these noted centers of higher learning:

Las Vegas: Tropicana Resort & Casino
New York, South Street Seaport (Dining & Entertainment Center)
San Diego, University Towne Center (Mall)
Columbus, OH, Easton Market (Mall- Exhibit in was in a closed CompUSA)
Framingham, MA (Mall- Exhibit in was in a closed CompUSA)
Durham, NC, Streets at Southpoint (Mall)

Shopping malls and a casino.  If you donated your body to science, would you expect it to be seen at a casino? 

Let's be clear that this is a for profit show. Premier Exhibitions, Inc. is a publicly traded company with shareholders to answer to. The Cincinnati Museum Center believes this exhibit combined with the previous Pirates exhibit will create the "busiest 12 months in Museum Center history."  Traveling exhibitions like this are big business in the same tradition as carnivals and freakshows of the 19th century.  Bodies, the Exhibition is now one of a number of competing traveling exhibitions in the country.

Museums with higher ethical standards will not allow exhibits such as this. The City of San Francisco has already banned this type of exhibition and the State of Washington has a law in the works that would do the same.

Showcasing the deceased in this manner without their permission is wrong.  Charging money and profiting from unclaimed bodies is even worse.  Is it not our duty as humanity to care for those who are less fortunate?  I think one of the saddest things is to leave this world alone and to have no one to mourn or even to remember you.  Instead of giving dignity, respect, or even pity, we've turned these unfortunate souls into museum displays to roam our country for profit as property for their owners.

Consent is critical.  If consent doesn't matter then we'd be harvesting organs from all the dead to save the living.

It is educational, but the Nazi's experimented on Jews in the name of education.  That's not right .

Ethics are important not some thing to be skirted.

Let's end this now and take a stand here in Cincinnati and let the world know that it is not right and not ethical to show unclaimed bodies without their informed consent.  That it is wrong to show the dead for profit.  We are better than this, as Cincinnatians, as Americans, as humanity.

Boycott Bodies the Exhibition Cincinnati website

Resources and more information:

News and Opinion
SeattlePI.com: If only these bodies could talk
NYTimes: China Turns Out Mummified Bodies for Displays
The Epoch Times: 'BODIES . . . The Exhibit' is Gruesome Show of Unidentified Dead
NYTimes: Cadaver Exhibition Raises Questions Beyond Taste
SeattlePI.com: Education or freak show? 'Bodies ... The Exhibition' cashes in on our own curiosity
Pittsburgh Post Gazette: China 'Bodies' exhibit raises hackles here
RedOrbit: Museum Plans to Open Corpse Show in Fla.
SeattlePI.com: $10,000 reward posted to find who stole kidney from display
SeattlePI.com: First Person: Exploiting the poor beyond death

Cincinnati specific articles
From WCPO.com: Bodies ...The Exhibition Draws Criticism (VIDEO)
From WCPO.com: Bodies ...The Exhibition Draws Criticism (Story)
Cincinnati Enquirer: Archbishop says no to 'Bodies' exhibit
Cincinnati Enquirer: 'Bodies' exhibits troubling ethical issues
Cincinnati Enquirer: Exhibit to show real bodies
DocGrubb's opinion piece
Cincinnati Enquirer: Bizarre 'Bodies' left me queasy

Protest and Information Sites
Stop Body Worlds and other exhibits of plasticized bodies
The Anti-BODIES Virtual Protest Site
No Bodies 4 Profit
seattlechatclub.org: The Mystery of the Crying Cadavers