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Opening the inside to years of Fear !(left)http://nontroppo.org/blog/images/bodyworlds.gif! I never quite understood the controversy that surrounded the BODY WORLDS exhibition, where real human cadavers are expertly dissected and aranged for public viewing. I suppose being a biologist, and having a strong interest in death and mortality, I resent this reaction that is driven by both a pointless fear of death and an utter ignorance of biology. Going to BODY WORLDS was interesting for me because I was intrigued to see the reactions of other members of the public. Graphic designers discussing the nerves of the body, and an old man looking at examples of disease processes that may be occuring in his (and progressively my) body. I found it very positive and rewarding to see open minds and an awareness of the reality of our biological nature. What for me would be a natural extension, "a public autopsy,":http://www.bodyworlds.co.uk/en/Specials_London_Autopsy.htm has however stirred huge controversy. I was very moved when I went to "spectacular bodies at the Hayward gallery":http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&q=spectacular+bodies+hayward+gallery&spell=1 (in many ways more 'radical' than BODY WORLDS), because anatomy was considered so differently in the past than it is now. We were much closer to death in the past (e.g. most deaths would occur in the home rather than clincal hospitals or nursing homes), and thus they were much more aware of the biological processes that happen within. We have become experts at disguising our food (meat that looks identical to what is inside us) in a way that allows us to divorce its materiality from our own. Death only happens in stupid Hollywood fantasies and far-away countries (whos lives are less valuable than our own[1]...). We have become so fearful (and / or cognitively detached) from what is so fundamental to what we are. Of course people may be offended by a public autopsy -- that is because they are so pre-conditioned by ignorance and fear in the first place. The whole response is very disappointing, people have complained about a televised version of the autopsy -- just don't watch it if you are incapable of understanding anything about yourself! Amazingly, 33 people had complaind to the television-station broadcasting the autospsy before it even started! This whole process may have been spectacularised, but without people pushing against the boundaries of our societies ignorance, we will get nowhere... LINKS: "An account of the autopsy":http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2497889.stm "Info on the media storm":http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,7493,844547,00.html
[1] Evidenced by the appaling disinterest of the media to the number of civilian casualties in Afghanistan... See individual entry…

Opera 7 is GREAT! I've been to a conference in Orlando, and have been super-busy with scientific papers and stuff, thus I haven't updated this page for a long time. Of course, while I've been away - "Opera 7":http://www.opera.com/ beta was released. I've finally had a chance to play with it. My conclusions? * CSS2 implementation is really great! Quite a few bugs naturally (many on this page!), but for the first beta release it is quite incredible. * DOM appears well supported, although it is more difficult for me to critically evaluate it. Nevertheless, pages that didn't work because of DHTML are working now * CSS user modes - "VERY COOL!!!" apply and configure a whole range of user-specified CSS styles, such as text-browser emulation, accessibility mode etc. * Navigation bar: as first used in Mozilla - very nice * User interface - MDI and SDI have been merged. I was at first highly dubious about this, and still have some reservations. But as I've used it, I realise the logic in simplifying this duplicity. Tabbed browsing is still leagues ahead of Mozilla. Don't like the icons too much (far too big) but looking at the skinning interface it is far more flexible (and thus complex) than OperaV6, so some very nice skins will be on their way -- I want a version of the Mozilla skin, "Breeze.":http://www.ba.wakwak.com/~king/web/xul/breeze_en.html * F A S T - my god! loading a complex pure CSS page locally off the harddrive and comparing Mozilla V1.2b, Opera V6.05 and IE6 against Opera V7b1 -- Opera 7 trounces the others. DHTML seems faster at least compared to Mozilla. IE6 is always slower with :hover and other CSS rendering to me... * Email -- tiny DLL with a lot of function. People complain about Opera having built-in e-mail, feature bloat they say - but when the email function is 170kb DLL and the total EXE file is still a staggeringly small 1.2mb, these arguments are rather pointless (email module can be removed if wanted too). Email seems nice -- SPAM filters need some extensive tuning though. I liked the automatic folder generation for mailing lists. The email module (called M2) uses something called "access-points":http://www.opera.com/support/helpfiles/m2tutorial.html (pointers into the email database rather than folders) - which has a wonderful potential for very flexible and robust email mangement. Actually thinking about this, I think it is going to be truly revolutionary change in email mangement and I can't wait until M2 is polished off. Still going to stick with The BAT! for day-to-day use at the moment, but quick checking may get off-loaded onto M2. I really hope Opera can pull off M2 into a polished product. If the true potential of access points are fulfilled -- I think people may buy Opera7 just for the built-in email. Very very promising... * Memory use: It seems to use about 1mb more than Opera V6.05 when freshly loaded with a local page, but handles its memory very tightly. Overall? My bias is towards CSS and DOM support, as 'standards' is the whole point of Opera, and I'm now very happy with the current state of play. It has certainly stopped me from switching over to Mozilla as my primary browser (which I promised to myself if CSS/DOM didn't improve substantially in 7). Opera has so many unique and positive user-interface features, now that the rendering engine is top-notch (minus bugs in the beta of course), I think i'm definately sticking with Opera... See individual entry…