July 4th weekend was a lot of fun. We didn’t have a lot of time to spend in Chicago downtown but there are some highlights of downtown Chicago worth noting from the small amount of time we did spend there. The Museum of Science and Industry has an exhibit called Body Worlds at the moment where they plasticized 200 cadavers in various ways including posing them on horses, cutting out different layers (cardio-vascular system, bones, muscles and bones, nervous system, etc. They even had a cadaver which was a woman with an unborn child. That one was a little tough to avoid thinking about the horror of the circumstance prior to plastinization. But for the most part the cadavers were artistic and I felt like I learned a lot about the world of the body that would otherwise have been too intangible to learn. The museum also has a great train set model of Chicago and Seattle with a train going through the mountains to reach in between. The robot exhibit was terrible. It didn’t have any robots, just a lot of toys from the 1950s and a video promotion from the iRobot corporation.

On the drive to the museum Sarah’s uncle Paul and I were talking about potential treatments for Alzhiemers and Parkinsons. They are starting to test nanotechnology spheres that can cross the blood brain barrier. The localization of them is done through tricks with the immune system and antibodies to locate certain blocks of cells and they can then release the key missing enzymes (nerve growth factor) back to only the areas affected by the neurodegeneration. It sounds like a workable idea although I can already imagine that the next few science fiction novels will start to go for robotically controlled brains through nano-technology that locates a region in the brain and can then be controlled by radio signals. Such an application would allow someone to make a person feel orgasmic when doing a mundane and unattractive task like sweeping a floor. That could lead to an ultimate state like the one in Brave New World where people were bred for different castes.

After the museum we pressed onwards to a bar where we learned that Chicago hasn’t outlawed smoking in bars yet. Sarah asked for non-alcoholic versions of Mohitos or Pina Coladas but they couldn’t figure out how to do it. After the food we walked to the Hancock building to go to Top of the Cock, a very nice art deco bar that overlooks Chicago and lake Michigan. When we were there it also overlooked the sunset. It looked like a scene out of the Aviator with the big styled art deco ceilings, elevators, and bar areas. We only had drinks there but the dining area is visible below and you can see how prepared and dressed people get to go there. I could imagine the women going out with their boyfriends dressed fancily and wondering whether their boyfriends would pop the question. I think you would need reservations in advance to go but it beats the skyline restaurant in Boston Top of the Hub that is very cheap in comparison.

On Tuesday morning we went back into the City for a half-day to see some sights. We went to Navy Pier. The pier itself is a bit of a tourist dive with overpriced un-refilled drinks and a big mall. But boats leave from the pier for various cruises in the harbor and through the city canals. We took an architectural cruise for an hour and it was awesome. The boat went through the east river and the tour guide pointed to all of the skyscrapers to describe the style they were in, when they were made, why they were made, and who made them. The architecture reminded me of Ayn Rand’s the Fountainhead and it was very grandiose. The Mesian boxes were pretty but not very interesting while the post-modernists had warped the same boring rectangles into prisms and curves that hugged the river. Many of the skyscrapers are built above the original train system because there was no other way to negotiate the rights to the land. It led me to believe that Chicago is a ripe city for a scary terrorist attack by exploding a train underneath the skyscrapers. This was on Tuesday, two days before the attack on London’s transit system.