There's a wonderful feature story on the rising popularity of Jazz in the Park in today's Journal Sentinel.
This morning's Pulse section reports that Milwaukee will be adding more than 20 miles of new bike lanes to city streets this summer, bringing the total to 35 miles. Also, "the city has applied for funding to add another 60 to 75 miles."
With gas prices the way they are right now - and with no drop in sight - riding a bike to get around is a great idea. Those few of us who are lucky enough to live in an urban area where we can ride a bike to do errands and such should take advantage of the bike lanes. I would ride my bike to work if it wasn't for the fact that I get done late at night and it could be dangerous to ride home in the dark.
Yesterday in the grocery store parking lot, I saw a girl with a bag over her shoulder that read "Save the Earth - Ride a Bicycle" - but she'd just gotten out of a car. It's a nice idea to ride a bike instead of driving a car, but as Americans, we value every second of time we have, and driving is just faster. I think we need to change our whole outlook on time and on what's really important before we can change the way we get around. I'm going to practice what I preach and get out there on my bike today!
You can go here for more information on biking around Milwaukee.
The other story that captured my attention this morning was this feature on the "Body Worlds" exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. I heard about it awhile back from a girl at work but then forgot about it, but this story - and the accompanying pictures - made me really want to go see it.
Real preserved human corpses are on display - it looks absolutely fascinating. What an awesome way to educate the public about what is inside every one of us. In the main photograph that goes with the story, a human sits atop a horse and holds his brain in one hand and the horse's in the other. One area shows a smoker's lungs next to a non-smoker's lungs, and another shows an obese person's insides next to an average-sized person's insides. There are 27 dissected corpses in all, each showing a different area, function or trait of the human body.
The exhibit runs through September 5 - I really hope to get there to see it.
The Museum of Science and Industry is quite a "trip". As kids we used to go there from Milwaukee and in addition to the new display of "Body Works" they have always had a row of fetuses from about the first week to birth preserved in jars. They also have panels where bodies are sliced through like sausage slices and you can check out all the various organs. The only thing close to this that I have seen was in the Science Museum in Florence Italy where they had life size cut aways of all the various ways that a baby is positioned in the womb to show renaisance doctors how to extract the baby.
Posted by: David Ernst | August 16, 2005 at 09:28 AM