The body politic.

• Author: Clinton, Kate
• Position: Unplugged

During our long domestic and international nightmare, it is perhaps no mistake that millions of people have paid money to determine their personal "sleep number." By inputting height, weight, mattress preference, and sleep pattern data, trained professionals have helped the sleeplessly addled to determine the key to a perfect night's sleep. It's not clear if George has availed himself of the technology, but he has said, "I'm sleeping better than people would assume." Some would call it passing out.

Perhaps more noteworthy than the upsurge of sleep numerology in these last years of the Bush Administration is the intriguing phenomenon of the traveling exhibit known as Body Worlds. In the last two years, millions of people in the U.S. have attended sold-out exhibitions of human bodies and body parts preserved and frozen in various poses through a process called plastination. Gunther Von Hagens, a German anatomist, invented the technique, put the show on the road, and put me off Rocky Road Haagen-Dazs for a while.

The stated purpose of Body Worlds is the "education of the layman about the human body leading to better health awareness." Thus the compare-and-contrast exhibit of the smoker's and nonsmoker's lung, the free-standing circulatory system. The Swimmer, the Archer, the Equestrian, and the Pregnant Woman and her eight-month fetus are some of the more popular displays.

But we are kept from seeing unplastinated bodies of our dear soldiers returning from war zones. We are all left behind.

Full disclosure: I have not attended. Whenever I saw the ads for the show, I mistakenly dismissed them as movie promos for Matrix IV with a crouching Keanu Reeves, filleted and bug-eyed. A surprising residual reverence for the body as Temple of the Holy Ghost keeps me away.

Word has it that when he's not deciding to surge, or...