Burial or cremation?

Every so often a daughter, spouse, or relative would ask, "When
you die, do you want to be cremated or buried?"

At first I'd say "I don't care." Or "I'll be dead, it won't
matter to me." Or else I'd start a rant about death-phobic
Americans, and funerals being for the living and not the dead,
and the Mexicans know how it's done; going down to the sepulchre
on Dias de los Muertos. Party with the deceased while being
forced to contemplate your own mortality!

But that didn't stop the question.

Hmmmmmm. Burial or cremation. Only two choices, eh?

Heh.

At first I made a habit of requesting an "Open Casket Cremation."
But then I stumbled across a Japanese article where such things
are already done! (The furnace chamber has a wall of high-temp
glass, so the family can retire to the viewing room to satisfy
their curiousity.)

Then I started coming up with more "creative" suggestions. How
about freezing me in liquid nitrogen, sharpening my head to a point,
then dropping me out of a plane over farmlands? A fertilizer
spike!

Let's see, what else...



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William J. Beaty SCIENCE HOBBYIST website
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EE/programmer/sci-exhibits amateur science, hobby projects, sci fair
Seattle, WA 206-789-0775 unusual phenomena, tesla coils, weird sci

 

[Ken S. Tucker]

b...@eskimo.com wrote:

Every so often a daughter, spouse, or relative would ask, "When
you die, do you want to be cremated or buried?"

At first I'd say "I don't care." Or "I'll be dead, it won't
matter to me." Or else I'd start a rant about death-phobic
Americans, and funerals being for the living and not the dead,
and the Mexicans know how it's done; going down to the sepulchre
on Dias de los Muertos. Party with the deceased while being
forced to contemplate your own mortality!

But that didn't stop the question.

Hmmmmmm. Burial or cremation. Only two choices, eh?

Heh.

At first I made a habit of requesting an "Open Casket Cremation."
But then I stumbled across a Japanese article where such things
are already done! (The furnace chamber has a wall of high-temp
glass, so the family can retire to the viewing room to satisfy
their curiousity.)

Then I started coming up with more "creative" suggestions. How
about freezing me in liquid nitrogen, sharpening my head to a point,
then dropping me out of a plane over farmlands? A fertilizer
spike!

Let's see, what else...

I've willed my body to female CANNIBALS,
preferably AMAZONS, (one last time in a
chick .
My 18 year old wife will get to keep
the best parts, to keep her from being
lonely well into her old age.
My meat will be well aged ~ 100 years,
aka well hung.

 

[Abacus]

b...@eskimo.com wrote:

Every so often a daughter, spouse, or relative would ask, "When
you die, do you want to be cremated or buried?"

You could always be plastinized, and gain a little bit or immortality
by appearing on late-night channel 4 dissection programs.

 

[Sbharris[atsign]ix.netcom]

Then I started coming up with more "creative" suggestions. How
about freezing me in liquid nitrogen, sharpening my head to a point,

then dropping me out of a plane over farmlands? A fertilizer
spike! <<

You could omit the sharpening and dropping part.

Look, if you had a hard drive crash full of irreplacable data, and the
recovery company said there was no way they knew how to recover any of
it in 2005, though some or even most of it might still be there in some
form, what would you do? Cremate it? Bury it?

Well, your brain is much the same kind of thing. Put it on the shelf
and see what the future brings.

SBH

 

[OsherD]

From Osher Doctorow

Don't die. Get a big family or your clan to pickle your brain in
alcohol (Harris probably had this idea too) at approximately the moment
of death and have them keep running with it like Raiders of the Lost
Ark. It's true that from all that we can tell with instruments,
there's an awful lot of destruction of brain cells and no sign of
consciousness, but heck, there's even information coming out of black
holes and according to some big theorists some of it encoded into
spacetime geometry near black holes. Someday another Civilization
smarter than ours (probably another species too, unless you have a
hangup on apes) may decide to revive whatever's left or clone our
brains from what's left. Of course, with all that alcohol, we might
start resembling some of the Elitists on sci.physics.

Osher Doctorow

 

[OsherD]

From Osher Doctorow

RST Engineering (jw) said:

You idiots that respond to this with >bottom posting do understand
that
nobody reads your posts, don't you?

Could you run that by me again? I was born 66 years ago approximately,
before they handed out computers. I guess that just makes me a visitor
on the internet. :&gt

Osher

 

[AJW]

To paraphrase Bob Hope, who when asked where he wanted to be buried,
said "surprise me."

More seriously, I'd seen too many gravesites looking lonely and uncared
for: my answer is an unmarked site, or none at all. Cremation is the
ultimate sharing: assuming a well mixed atmosphere, everyone will
breathe part of you with every breath.

 

[Sbharris[atsign]ix.netcom]

Well, your brain is much the same kind of thing. Put it on the shelf
and see what the future brings.

It'll beat the purpose. Dying is part of it all.

Who says? And how do they know? If you think death is such a great
deal, you're welcome to demonstrate by shuffling off sooner.

A bunch of folks originally from your country now let themselves get
eaten by buzzards in Bombay. I'm unable to discover if they're still
allowed to do it in Iran, where some Zoroastrians still live. Is
providing energy for the wings of a vulture part of it all, too?.
Edward Abbey once thought so. But when it came to his own remains, he
wimped out.

SBH

 

[Sbharris[atsign]ix.netcom]

More seriously, I'd seen too many gravesites looking lonely and
uncared

for: my answer is an unmarked site, or none at all. Cremation is the
ultimate sharing: assuming a well mixed atmosphere, everyone will
breathe part of you with every breath. <<

Like everyone doesn't breathe "part of you" in every breath already.

The human body has a huge turnover in atoms. At 4% a day, the average
person at age 40 has already put 30 metric tons or so of atoms that
have been part of this body into the environment. Given these figures,
the nonsense that attends discussions of cremation vs burial (in terms
of talking about 50 kg MORE matter or so, at the end) is just silly.

But it's a great example of how our common sense tends to go South when
talking about death.

SBH