Musicians hear better due to better internal CoDecs

Monday afternoon, All Things Considered featured an interesting story about how musicians hear better than non-musicians, not because of their ears (hardware) but because of the way the brain processes the audio (software CoDec (well, kind of -- it's my analogy, not NPR's)).

Musical training can improve your hearing, according to several studies presented in Chicago at Neuroscience 2009, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.

The studies found that serious musicians are better than other people at perceiving and remembering sounds. But it's not because they have better ears.

Sounds come in through the ears. But they travel through the nervous system and get interpreted by the brain.
That means your hearing can change even if your ears don't, says Nina Kraus, who directs the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern University.

"Your hearing system becomes tuned by the experiences that you have had with sound throughout your life," Kraus says.

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You can read the entire transcript here or listen to the report here.

I like to think of hearing as a processing issue in many cases.  Here's why.

I began noticing some years back, that sometimes I had trouble understanding what someone said.  I would ask them to repeat themselve, and while I was asking that, I suddenly understood what they said.

Or I'll hear something and not understand it a first.  If I think about the sound for a moment, I'll be able to understand it.

Have you noticed similar experiences?

What that tells me, is that my ears are delivering the appropriate data to my brain, but sometimes my brain simply requires more time to decode those sound waves into something that actually has meaning.  It just takes a few more CPU cycles.

To extend the metaphor a little further, it's like those grainy videos they show on CSI.  You'll see just pixealated blobs.  That's what my ears deliver to my brain. Then they press the "enhance" option on their keyboard, and suddenly the video is perfectly clear.That's what my brain does to the data my ears deliver.  Except that with hearing, this actually happens.

Musicians have better trained their brains than I have.  Their brains do a more efficient job of processing audio than mine because they live it.

And that's a fascinating process.

Pain is a bug

Last month's issue of Wired featured an article on two pioneers in Artificial Intelligence. They were both working to build thinking machines by first teaching the machines basic things about the world. And them both committed suicide in a similar manner just weeks apart.

The article itself was interesting, but what really caught my attention was this quote from Marvin Minsky:

In The Emotion Machine, Minsky suggests that chronic pain is a kind of "programming bug." He writes that "the cascades that we call Suffering' must have evolved from earlier schemes that helped us to limit our injuries — by providing the goal of escaping from pain. Evolution never had any sense of how a species might evolve next — so it did not anticipate how pain might disrupt our future high-level abilities. We came to evolve a design that protects our bodies but ruins our minds."

It makes sense that pain is a good thing for a creature who can't think through the potential for injury. Pain is an incentive not to do something. Humans still need pain, too, to stop us from being too stupid.

But at some point it is no longer a warning; rather it is a superfluous condition of life that prevents people form living their lives to the fullest. And it does this for no good reason. There seems to be no evolutionary benefit to chronic pain.

Modern science in many ways seems to turn evolution on its ear. Hundred or thousands of years ago, the weak or sick or injured might die out, resulting in a physically stronger gene pool. However we now have the ability to prevent them from dying out. We have become more interested in the survival of the all than in the survival of the fittest.

I don't really have a point here. I am just fascinated by the idea of chronic pain as a programming bug that needs to be fixed in version 2.0.

Delays and more

I'm sitting at Gate L2B at ORD (Chicago O'Hare airport). It's 7:12 PM and I'm waiting for my 3:35 PM flight to Seattle (AS 23) to start boarding. Right now, we are due to leave at 9:05 PM, after a 5.5 hour delay.

The delay started out as a two hour weather delay. Due to pending snow in ORD, Air Traffic Control wouldn't let our in bound plane take off from SEA (Seattle). When it finally arrived, they discovered something was wrong with the engine and put us on a mechanical delay. Personally, I'm not sure what the big deal is with an engine problem. After all, there's another one right on the other wing.

Of course they couldn't find the part here. They started calling around because it's not something that NAPA typically stocks. They finally found at part at MDW (Midway, the airport on the opposite side of Chicago). I'm guessing they got the part from SW (Southwest Airlines). Now they are driving this part from MDW to ORD. Through Chicago traffic. At rush hour. Good luck, guys.

But, after all, it's ORD. It's an extremely reliable airport. Your flight is guaranteed to be late. It's just a question how late. if you are flying though ORD, you should just accept it.

This lateness is not just about the flights though. The decorators are also delayed, which would explain why the Christmas decorations are still up in the K terminal.


While the delay is annoying, it's not the worst thing to happen to me today. Things got off to a rough start.

Now, before I go on, I'm going to recommend that those of you who have a weak stomach or are squeamish about blood click away. You will not be interested in the rest of this post. I'm fine. I'm uninjured, but if you don't like to read about those sorts of things, don't. I won't mind. Seriously. You won't hurt my feelings.
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Are you sure you want to keep reading? It gets kind of nasty.
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Okay. You are an intrepid interneter.

There are a lot of ways to wake up at 5:30 AM in a hotel. You can use your hotel alarm clock. You can get a wakeup call. You can use an alarm clock you brought from home. You can use your watch. You can use the timer on the hotel TV. You can even use your cell phone alarm.

But none of them are quite as effective or as unrecommended as waking up with a mouthful of your own blood.

You know how hot water heaters start spilling water out through a safety valve if there is too much in the system? I think that's what happened to my circulatory system. It seems to have overflowed.

Some where high up in my nose or sinuses, a blood vessel apparently broke. I don't know why. i felt fine the night before, and because of my flight schedule, I though I might actually get a full 8 hours of sleep. Then I got my 5:30 wakeup call. I woke up, coughed and felt something wet on my arm. I knew that wasn't good, and turned on the light. Then I saw the blood on the pillow from my nose and what had come down the back of my throat and out my mouth. I was mildly annoyed and still half asleep when I grabbed some tissues from the nightstand. They started to soak up some of the bright red liquid (from a tiny artery, I guess) and quickly became useless. I stumbled to the bathroom to assess the damage and contemplate my next step.

I stood in front of the sink and tried using tissue to slow the bleeding. At this point it was coming out in large fast drops that were splashing all over the sink and the little hotel shampoos. I've never had this happen before, and quickly abandoned the paper products, and turned to the cotton ones. I'm sorry Hilton. I grabbed a hand towel not so much to stop the flow as at to contain the damage.

By now, I was also spitting out blood that was coming from my sinuses. It spattered all over the sink, shelf above the sink, floor, bathmat, and toilet. It coagulated in the sink forming this weird gelatinous goo that wasn't washing down easily. I found a clean spot on the towel and leaned over the tub where I figured I would do less damage due to the larger target.

After about 20 minutes, the flow hadn't really stopped, but I had an effective blotting/capture system in place. My higher brain functions had come on line and I was out of bare survival mode. I began contemplating my next steps and whether I needed medical attention. I decided to give it a couple hours and if the problem didn't go away, I'd ask the front desk to call their house doctor or paramedics.

Since it was forming that goo in the tub now, I knew I did not have a clotting problem. Since it was bright red, I assumed it was arterial and full of oxygen. I figured my body would probably heal itself given enough time.

Now at this point, I pulled the towel away, since my nostril felt clogged. With it came a thick plug of this goo, which was a nasty mix of mucous and clotting blood. I dumped that in the tub and the flow started again. I put the towel back to my nose and tried my other tried and true nose bleed technique.

I leaned my head back so gravity would not encourage the bleed. When I was a kid, this always helped. This time, it did not. Instead the blood flowed straight down the back of my throat. That was not the result I was looking for.

I tried stuffing tissues under my upper lip, another tried and true technique. That did not stop the bleeding. Instead it just made a ramp so when blood flowed out of my nose it could jump further an spatter in new places in the bathroom.

So I continued to close off my nostrils with the towel.

Since I was out of ideas, there were only two paths to choose. Call an ambulance, or wait it out. I wasn't in any pain; this was really just annoying. Sticky, wet, and annoying. I chose to wait it out since I had not yet become woozy from lack of blood. So I got dressed, and undid the dead bolt from the door. I figured this way, if I passed out, housekeeping could still get in and find me.

Then I started taking notes on my condition and writing out a timeline of these events. I wrote about what was happening and at what time. I wrote about the rest of my condition (height, weight, no known allergies, not on any medications, etc). I included my health insurance information and emergency contact numbers. I also finished packing my bags so if I did get taken away in an ambulance, the hotel could easily store my belongings.

I also decided to remain close to the floor. I didn't feel faint or dizzy but I figured if something takes a sudden turn, at least I won't have far to fall.

And I kept going back to the tub to cough up more of this excessively sweet and salty syrup. And to remove the occasional mucous/clot plug.

After an hour and a half, I though I might be feeling a little light headed, but the flow had definitely slowed down. By 7:15, I could retire the towel and rely on tissues. By 7:30, the incident was basically over.

I think there is still some leak in there someplace since I've been sneezing out some blood today and coughing up clotty phlegms every few hours. But over all I feel fine. I was a little light headed much of the day, but then had lunch at the airport and that helped.

I guess it's like the ham sandwiches and cookies they give out at blood drives. But I didn't get a cute sticker for my donation to the Chicago sewer system.

I'm glad my flight is delayed, though, it gives my body more time to make repairs before I have to contend with dry cabin air and changes in cabin pressure. Just in case, I have extra tissues and a stolen wash cloth in my carry on.

The final casualties included probably a pint of my blood, one pillow, three pillow cases, a bed sheet, a hand towel, possibly a bath mat and the good day the house keeper may have been having that day. I did tip them well for the mess they have to deal with.

The bathroom looks like something right out of CSI. I can just imagine the scene. Delco is looking down at the mess and says, "What do you think H?"

Horatio Cain hold on to his sunglasses. "I think someone nose what happened. And soon," he pause to put on his sunglasses, "so will we."

I do have pictures of the scene. I don't know why, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. I'm not sure why I want to remember this though. It was just odd, random, and messy. It's not how I wanted to start the morning.

So. How was your day?

How old are you?

According to the Real Age website (I found the link on digg.com) my real age is 29.2 (versus my actual age of 36) and my life expectancy is 80.8. The test considers a variety of factors like biology, heredity, and life style choices.

I think the 80.8 is a bit pessimistic for my tastes. Given advances in technology over the coming decades, I'm targeting 150 as a minimum. As for the 29.2 estimate for my real age -- I'm still holding on kicking and screaming to 27.

So, how old are you? Take the test here.

Roaches and Metropolis

On Thursday, KUOW aired an NPR story about robotic roaches. Scientists built a fake roaches and introduced them to actual roach communities, to see if they could alter the roaches natural behavior.

"I think it's a really fascinating idea to integrate robots within animal groups. In actual fact, I really feel that this is the future of doing this kind of research," said Iain Couzin, a researcher at Princeton University who studies how large-scale biological patterns can emerge from individuals' actions.

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They were able to influence the behavior of the entire roach community by altering the behaviour of the robots.

The story reminded me of the 1927 Fritz Lang movie, Metropolis.

In this film, commonly described as the first robot science fiction movie, society is divided between the working class and the upper class. The workers operate the machines below ground that drive the entire society. They pray with a priestess.

A mad scientist who has a vendetta against the person who owns the machines, extracts his revenge. He creates an android that looks exactly like the priestess. He kidnaps the priestess and replaces her with his own creation.

Instead of promoting peace and love, the android advocates the violent overthrow of the society, and calls on the working class to rise up, throw off their chains, and smash the equipment.

The workers, like the roaches in the study, do just that, even though it destroys their society. Their homes are flooded; their children are nearly killed.

The film is a fascinating story about coopting the influencers of public opinion for nefarious purposes.

Appendix may be useful, afterall.

Kind of like the Appendix at the end of a book, it turns out the one in the body may be useful as a biological reference tool for the digestive system.

From the Seattle Times:

The appendix "acts as a good safe house for bacteria," said Duke surgery professor Bill Parker, a co-author of the study. Its location — just below the normal one-way flow of food and germs in the large intestine in a sort of gut cul-de-sac — helps support the theory, he said.

Also, the worm-shaped organ outgrowth acts like a bacteria factory, cultivating good germs, Parker said.

That use is not needed in a modern industrialized society, Parker said. If a person's gut flora die, they usually can repopulate it easily with germs they pick up from other people, he said.

But before dense populations in modern times and during epidemics of cholera that affected a whole region, it wasn't as easy to grow back that bacteria and the appendix came in handy.

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Fascinating stuff.

Resistance is Futile 02: Out of Memory Error

In the current issue of Wired (15.10), columnist Clive Thompson talks about the recent decline human memory. He suggests that reason people remember less now is because they don't need to.

That reflexive gesture — reaching into your pocket for the answer — tells the story in a nutshell. Mobile phones can store 500 numbers in their memory, so why would you bother trying to cram the same info into your own memory? Younger Americans today are the first generation to grow up with go-everywhere gadgets and services that exist specifically to remember things so that we don't have to: BlackBerrys, phones, thumb drives, Gmail.

But is this a problem?

In The Matrix, when people needed to learn a new skill, they could just have it downloaded into their mind. I'd like to be able to do that. Imagine the possibiliities of having a memory card slot in your head that allowed you to download new information or skills.

I've talked before about adding senses, VR goggles, Modafinil, and other ways the improve on biology. Biology and technology continue to converge.

But in reality, are we alread there? Sure we can't download the information immediately into the brain, but we can get it all on the internet.

It may seem obvious, but the problem is nothing more than an interface one. The Keyboard-Mouse-Ears-Eyes interface between the Internet and the brain is simply too slow and clumsy.

And that's the realm where improvements will come in the next few decades. Either the interface will be improved, or it will be replaced.

To expand the idea even further, at what point does the body itself superflous?

Solving the world's problems with geek power

Why, as a country, did we spend so much time, money, and life trying to rescue seven trapped miners in Utah, while that same money could have saved dozens or hundreds of lives around the world? Clive Thompson attempts to answer that question in this month's Wired:

I've been reading the fascinating work of Paul Slovic, a psychologist who runs the social-science think tank Decision Research. He studies a troubling paradox in human empathy: We'll usually race to help a single stranger in dire straits, while ignoring huge numbers of people in precisely the same plight. We'll donate thousands of dollars to bring a single African war orphan to the US for lifesaving surgery, but we don't offer much money or political pressure to stop widespread genocides in Rwanda or Darfur.

You could argue that we're simply callous, or hypocrites. But Slovic doesn't think so. The problem isn't a moral failing: It's a cognitive one. We're very good at processing the plight of tiny groups of people but horrible at conceptualizing the suffering of large ones.

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He suggests that Bill Gates attempts to tackle epidemic level problems in Africa because of his geek sensibilities. Thompson suggest that those involved in the details of IT are simply wired differently to process the sheer volume of human despair by looking at the numbers in a way that makes most people go numb.

Which brings me back to Gates. The guy is practically a social cripple, and at times he has seemed to lack human empathy. But he's also a geek, and geeks are incredibly good at thinking concretely about giant numbers. Their imagination can scale up and down the powers of 10 — mega, giga, tera, peta — because their jobs demand it.

So maybe that's why he is able to truly understand mass disease in Africa. We look at the huge numbers and go numb. Gates looks at them and runs the moral algorithm: Preventable death = bad; preventable death x 1 million people = 1 million times as bad.

It's a brief, but intriguing look at just what it may take to solve the big problems of the world.

Sleep 04: What is it?

I've been posting more about sleep these past few months. I suppose that means I should be getting more.

Regardless, WNYC's NPR program, Radio Lab, recently did a show that focused on Sleep.

Radio Lab is a fascinating series. They take a big topic like Morality, Mortality, or Sleep, and spend an hour exploring what it means from a scientific and metaphysical perspective. It's framed with two hosts chatting with one another about what they just learned about the topic. They ask questions and joke, but they do it all in a respectful and profession manner. It comes across as two guys, who love learning about things, having a conversation over a beer.

In Sleep, I found the animals stories fascinating. I learned that dolphins, for example, can put half their brain to sleep, while they other stays awake. This way they don't drown. Ducks can do the same thing. They tell the story of 4 ducks on a log. The two ducks in the middle go completely to sleep, with both eyes closed. The two on the ends, however, keep their outside eye open to watch for predators. When the do this, the half of their brain connected to the closed eye sleeps. After awhile, they get up, turn around, and let the other half sleep.

Somewhere in the evolutionary chain, land based mammals lost the ability to sleep just one hemisphere at a time. I don't know if that's a good thing.

You can download the audio from the entire show here. You can also just stream it. And, if you'd rather, you can download just individual segments.

If you like Radio Lab, you can also subscribe to the free, weekly netcast through iTunes.

It's fascinating stuff.

Feline Memory

Apparently, you can get grants to mess with cats' heads. Just think -- I've been doing it for free for decades.

A new study has measured just low long cats can remember certain kinds of information—10 minutes.

The research was designed primarily to compare cats' working memory of their recent movements with their visual memories, and found that cats remember better with their bodies than their eyes when they have encountered an object placed in their path by say, an annoying owner or experimenter.

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Sleep 02: Sleep is Obsolete

Well, almost.

Sleep-deprived groups ranging from truck drivers to the military have experimented with modafinil, marketed for nearly a decade by Cephalon under what Plotz calls the "creepy, pharma-Orwellian" name Provigil.

Military officials have found it so effective that some now refer to it as a "super drug." But its off-label uses have created a rich debate on how far to push the limits of the human body.

For Plotz, the results were immediate.

"I am the picture of vivacity," he wrote on Slate.com.

Even with only five hours sleep, he could write twice as fast and felt alert.

"I have a desperate urge to write, to make reporting calls and to finish my expense account – activities I religiously avoid," he wrote. "I find myself talking loudly and quickly. A colleague says I am grinning like a 'feral chipmunk.'"

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Until now, the military has used amphetamines or "go pills" for its pilots, but the side effects of amphetamines can cause problems. Investigators blamed those drugs for a 2002 incident in which American pilots inadvertently killed four Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan.

In studies funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and Cephalon, modafinil has proved to be a better drug.

Scientists treated 16 healthy subjects, depriving them of sleep for 28 hours and then expecting them to sleep from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. for four days and stay awake through the night. Those on modafinil did far better on cognitive tests than those on a sugar pill. Some could stay awake for more than 90 hours, according to Moreno.

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I've followed the developments on Mondafinil and Provogil for several years now. I think I first read about it when I was living in Boise in 1997.

It's an interesting concept for a drug. You don't get high. You don't get addicted. There don't appear to be long term consequences.

But you don't have to sleep. You can stay awake, alert and sharp for ridiculously long periods of time.

When I sleep on weekends or vacations, I can sleep for 10-14 hours straight with now problem. During the week, I can function well, on 5 hours a night. I can get by with the occasional alnighter and do okay on a couple of 3-4 hour nights.

And when I sleep for long periods of time, I do enjoy it.

But.

The idea of having extra hours of high productivity appeals to me. It seems there's never enough time in the day for everything I need/want to do. To get everything done and have time for myself, something has to go. And usually that something is sleep.

A product like Provigil has the potential to change things. When I forgo sleep today, I do suffer a performance penalty. I'd really like to avoid that penalty.

Is it right to take medication to alter the normal function of the body for my convenience? Is it ethical?

I used to think it wasn't. I used to think to most important thing was to rely on sheer Biology. But I've been coming around on that. Why not take advantage of the wonders of modern chemistry?

People legitimately hack their bodies all the time with. And they do it not to heal an injury but to alter they way the body functions to make their lives easier or simpler.

We see new advances in vitamins and nutrition that are anything but natural. Caffeine intake is another way many people try to push pass the limits of the body. Are the complex exercise regimens people take on natural?

And is using something like Provigil to alter human sleep patterns all that different from using birth control pill to alter the human endocrine/reproductive system?

But I haven't done anything yet. Like LASER eye surgery, I still look at Provigil with some concern about the long term effects and the possibility of addiction.

But the more I learn, the more I like what I see.

Bodies...The Exhibition

Bodies...The Exhibition is a touring show highlighting the anatomical structure of the human body.

A University in China accepts unclaimed bodies from the government and preserves them through a process called plastination. Using silicon, acetate, and other materials, they preserve the structures of the body in such a way that they can be displayed in full or in part in a museum.

Make no mistake -- the bodies in this show are real. People who were born, grew up, lived their lives, and subsequently died in China are now preserved and traveling the country for the general public to see and study.

This is the last week of the Seattle exhibit. Next weekend, they put the people and various people parts into boxes and take the show to San Diego.

So it was crowded when my GF and I went to the show today.

It was a fascinating show. The divided it into multiple rooms showing different organ groups. The first area focused on the bones and muscles. Another room was all about the nervous system and brain. The circulatory system, digestive system, respirtory system and reproductive system also had their own rooms.

Most rooms had one or more full bodies opened up so you could see each of the organs they were talking about.

These bodies stand right in the room. There is no Plexiglas case around them. You could reach right in and touch the insides of these people. Of course there are signs in front of each body that say "Please do not touch" and, since it's Seattle, nobody touched.

Most of the bodies are in action poses -- throwing a Frisbee, pitching a baseball, or swinging a tennis racket, for example. You can see which muscles are contracting and which are relaxing. You can see how they relate to one another.

In the first room, they have what looks like 2 bodies supporting one another. It's actually just one body, though. His skeleton has been separated from his muscles. And the full set of muscles is looking at the full skeleton.

In addition to the bodies, they have body parts throughout the exhibit, though these are in cases. For example, they have legs and arms with out the skin. They also have limbs sliced in half or opened up in other ways so you can see how things like the wrist or knee work.

The circulatory system was fascinating. They used a different process here. Basically they injected a substance into the blood vessels that hardened and preserved them. Then they used other substances to dissolve away the rest of the tissue. This leaves behind just the blood vessels preserved in their original shape -- like red ghosts of the people they used to inhabit. Considering how small and delicate most of the 60,000+ miles of blood vessels are, it's amazing we don't bleed to death each time we walk into a wall. Or wear a hat that's too tight.

They also had a section set aside for embryonic/fetal development. They posted a sign outside that room explaining that all the bodies in there were from children who died due to complications during pregnancy or unsuccessful fetal surgery. They also offered a second door through the exhibit so those who were uncomfortable with those bodies or birth defects could skip it and continue though the hall.

Here I have some difficulty wrapping my head around the extra sensitivity with which exhibitors have to treat the bodies in this room while being a part of a culture that allows legal abortion.

I learned quite a few things at the exhibit.

• Most organs in the human body are either much smaller or much larger than I expected.

• The brain is significantly smaller than I imagined.

• The lungs are much smaller and higher in the chest cavity than I thought.

• The three bones in the ear are really small. And yet highly sensitive.

• The uterus is really tiny when not in active use.

• The liver is much bigger than I thought. And it's the largest internal organ, often coming in at more that 2 pounds.

• The lungs are designed in a modular fashion. Each section works independently of the others, making it possible to remove just parts of a lung.

• There is a lot of complicated stuff packed into a very small space in the chest cavity.

• The navel of an adult is huge, especially when you separate much of the surrounding skin.

The creepiest thing I saw was the skin display. Without the structure of bone and muscle, it looked like some sort of Halloween costume, which I guess it is.

There were some strange things, too. The eyes in the displays were a little disconcerting. I don't know if they were the actual eyes the people had or if they were artificial. I'm guessing artificial because they were a little too perfect.

Several of the bodies still had eyebrows or eyelashes. And some of them still had toenails.

The other interesting part of the show was the crowd. There were plenty of adults and children there. The kids generally seemed fascinated, listening to the description on their museum audio tour sticks. A few seemed bored. None of them seemed disturbed by the show.

Most of the adults attending also seemed interested, though several of them looked a bit tense as well.

Many of the attendees were medical professionals explaining the details of the parts and bodies to their bored friends and relatives.

One of the displays was of a Teratoma, which is some sort of tumor. One women called out to here friend, "Oh, cool! Look -- an actual teratoma!" The friend excitedly rushed over and agreed that it indeed was quite cool and exciting.

It was a good show. I appreciated the opportunity to see how the body is put together and get a look at these normally hidden parts. I don't know if it's the type of show I can say I really "enjoyed" -- that would seem a bit disrespectful of the people whose insides we were looking at. But I'm glad I went and can definitely recommend it.

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I should mention that the show is controversial for a few reasons. There are occasional protesters in front of the building. The Seattle PI discussed some of these in its mostly positive review.

But critics say this show and others like it don't so much educate as they do desecrate the human body for profit.

"Premier is a for-profit company. What they're trying to do is make money for a corporation," said Philip Lipson, a Seattle resident who Tuesday stood outside the soon-to-be-opened exhibit distributing protest fliers.

Meanwhile, members of human-rights watchdog groups and some members of Seattle's Chinese community have expressed concern that, not only do the bodies come from a country with a long history of human-rights abuses, but the people whose bodies were used did not give permission for their bodies to be put on display.

"I'm troubled by the fact the bodies are from China," said Ron Chew, executive director of the Wing Luke Asian Museum. "There are a lot of issues there."

"From a cultural perspective, especially since a number of the cadavers are from China, it feels like a gross violation," said Bettie Luke, who works with various Seattle Chinese American groups. "The willful use of putting a body on indefinite display like that condemns the soul to wander the netherworld with no chance to rest."

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Markel and others are concerned that shows like this do not use bodies from consenting donors and do not make public the paper trail showing exactly where the cadavers came from.

"I'm all in favor of people looking at and understanding the human body," he said, but added that he thinks there are other ways, besides public spectacle, to educate people about their inner workings. "Frankly, I don't want to be somebody's Saturday entertainment."

Oddly enough, the most vocal critics of the Seattle show so far are Philip Lipson and his partner Charlette LeFevre, operators of the Seattle Museum of the Mysteries, a Capitol Hill museum that features exhibits on Bigfoot and UFOs and also hosts ghost tours.

"We feel that this group is not honoring the dead," Lipson said. "It's not treating them with dignity and is just making a peep show out of dead bodies."

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"This Seattle exhibit is deeply flawed," Aaron Ginsburg, a pharmacist from Massachusetts, wrote in an e-mail to the P-I. "The bodies were not donated, and may well have belonged to political prisoners. China is not a nation of laws, and any assurances that the bodies were legally obtained is meaningless."

Ginsburg has started a nationwide Web site protesting the various body exhibits with a portion of the site dedicated to the Seattle show: http://dignityinboston.googlepages.com/seattle.

Tan Truong, a Seattle practitioner of Falun Gong, a spiritual movement banned in China, also is worried about the origin of the cadavers.

Though Truong admits there's no proof the bodies are those of imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners or other enemies of the Communist government, he said, "You just don't know what kind of bodies you're getting from China because there's not a lot of regulation. There's a lot of organ harvesting."

But Glover insisted, "We are not using the bodies of executed prisoners. We are not using the bodies of anyone that belongs to (the Falun Gong). We are very sympathetic to the cause of the Chinese people that are undergoing the violations of their rights. But because we have a partner in China does not mean we are part of the problem."

Dalian Medical University receives the bodies from the government, Glover said. That's because when a person dies in China and there's no one to claim the remains, the government allows the body to be used for medical study.

Glover insists that all the people died from natural causes (including disease). He also said Premier has spent "considerable time" investigating the university. And Zaller said Premier has contracts with the university certifying that the bodies are not those of former prisoners or people from mental institutions. (Premier does not, however, show its contracts to the media.)

Glover points out that the Chinese government's gifting of unclaimed bodies to universities for study and education is not dissimilar to practices in much of the United States. Unclaimed bodies here often are used for medical study and education, though that does not appear to include use in any of these traveling shows.

One of the complaints is that the exhibit can't be educational because it's put on by a company using it to make money. Education and profit are not mutually exclusive however. But that is a rant for another day.