Japanese Elderly should „hurry up and die“
Ansage vom japanischen Finanzminister: Die Rentner sollen sich mit dem Sterben doch mal bitte ein bisschen beeilen. Ich wiederhole mich: Als Politiker braucht man echt ein besonderes Talent für Arschlochism.
Japan’s new government is barely a month old, and already one of its most senior members has insulted tens of millions of voters by suggesting that the elderly are an unnecessary drain on the country’s finances.
Taro Aso, the finance minister, said on Monday that the elderly should be allowed to “hurry up and die” to relieve pressure on the state to pay for their medical care.
Let elderly people ‘hurry up and die’, says Japanese minister
Surround Sound Coffin
Ein Schwede hat einen Sarg mit Surround Sound entwickelt, dessen Playlist online bespielt werden kann. Soviel zu „Rest in Peace“, wenn die bucklige Verwandtschaft mit einen noch im Grab mit schlechter Mucke nervt oder noch schlimmer: 4Chan hackt die Playlists of the Dead und trollt die Toten mit hundert Stunden Rick Astley.
Music and video equipment store owner Fredrik Hjelmquist said his hi-fi coffin would entertain the dead and provide solace for grieving friends and relatives by making it possible for them to alter the deceased’s playlist online.
Sex-Ghosts and Mummies with big Dicks
Tolles Interview mit Paul Koudounaris über sizilianische Sex-Geister und Mumien mit großen Penissen. Yep. Über Koudounaris und dessen Buch „Empire of Death“ hatte ich hier schon ein paar mal gebloggt: The Empire of Death: A Cultural History of Charnel Houses und The Midnight Archive Ep.6: The Empire of Death.
One of the more outlandish stories is about a guy who got to be called “pene grande,” which means “big dick.” He was a mummy famed in life for having a big penis. People would go down to the Palermo Catacombs and treat him as the patron saint of big cocks. Finally a newlywed woman came to see him because she was married to a guy who was not well-endowed. She took a cloth and rubbed it on the mummy’s dick, and then rubbed it on her husband’s dick. The next time she had sex with her husband, his penis seemed larger and fuller and she was about to orgasm except that at that moment she looked up and saw it was actually the ghost on top of her. Everyone thought she was crazy, but then it happened again the next time she had sex. They had to set up an exorcism for this ghost.
How does one expel a penis ghost?
They had a blacksmith make a tight-fitting sheath made of metal, and once the husband got erect the ghost came out and got caught in the codpiece. They threw holy water at him.Then what?
That expelled the ghost from the guy’s body. So forever he had a small penis, but he was free of the ghost. As for the ghost, he gained a great following among older ladies, and eventually so many were coming to see him that they had to lock the mummy in a back room, which is where he remains to this day.
Sexy Xmas-Commercial for Funeraria López
Youtube Direktlópez, via Gawker
Ein Weihnachtscommercial für Bestatter López mit sexy Bikini-Nikoläusinnen des Todes. Yep.
The Walking Deads Dumb Ways To Die
Youtube Direktdead, via Laughing Squid
Nette Parodie auf Dumb Ways To Die mit Szenen aus The Walking Dead (inklusive Spoiler).
Talking to Kids about Death
Der vernünftigste Beitrag zum Amoklauf in Newtown kommt wahrscheinlich von Caitlin Doughty von Order of the Good Death und Ask A Mortician, die ein paar Tipps hat für Gespräche mit Kindern über den Tod: „Don’t let them suffer in Confusion and Silence because you are afraid.“
Nekromantik IRL in Sweden
Eine Dame in Schweden ist mit einem Skelett in der Wohnung erwischt worden. Die Frau hatte die Knochen offensichtlich als Sextoys benutzt, tatsächlich ziemlich genau wie in Buttgereits Nekromantik. Die Bilder in der Galerie bei The Local sind, wenn man den Film nicht kennt oder auch sonst eher empfindlich ist, genau richtig für einen kuscheligen Wohlfühlstart in die Woche.
A 37-year-old woman, who was arrested in September, was formally charged on Tuesday at the Gothenburg District Court for the crime of “violating the peace of the dead” (brott mot griftesfriden).
The prosecutor could not explain how the woman had managed to collect almost an entire skeleton, but explained that the human remains had been used in an “unethical” way.
“In the confidential section of the investigation we have material which indicates she used them in sexual situations,” the prosecutor told the TT news agency.
Portraits of the Dead for the Living
Tolles Fotoprojekt von Frieke Janssens, die Portraits von Leuten für ihre Grabsteine macht. Ich kann mir sehr gut ‘nen Online-Service für sowas vorstellen: Upload your Pic for your Gravestone here, never be forgotten, always be pretty.
Your Last Shot’ is your very last portrait. A serene and fearless portrait that will be taken of you now and that one day will be used to remember you by on your grave.
Why would you have someone else choose a picture for you that you would have untagged yourself from? Your ‘last portrait’ will be finished in porcelain, so that it actually can be used when the time has come. Meanwhile: have a great life.
Your Last Shot (via Petapixel)
Flesh-eating Beetles munching on a dead Parrot, timelaps’d
Youtube Direktparrot, via 3 Quarks Daily
Schickes Timelapse-Video vom Museum für Naturkunde in London mit fleischfressenden Käfern, die einen toten Papagei (und ‘ne Eule und einen Fasan) verspeisen. Die Viecher konnten natürlich nicht wissen, dass der Papagei nicht tot ist. Jedenfalls: Das Museum hat hier noch ein weiteres Papageien-Video und eine Webcam, mit der man den fleischfressenden Käfern beim Futtern zuschauen kann, leider nur als Windows Media Crap, ich kann daher nicht sagen, ob die grade irgendwas auseinandernehmen. Fuck yeah Science und guten Appetit!
Scientists sometimes use strong chemicals to strip the flesh off skeletons they want to study. But these can eat into the bones and change their structure. So instead, we use a special beetle species, Dermestes haemarrhoidalis, that strips off the flesh but leaves the bones and collagen untouched.
The beetles don’t eat feathers, so usually specimens are skinned first, to speed up the process. Here, the feathers were left on, to show how the skull of the scarlet macaw, Ara macao, sits underneath its skin. The impressive size of the lower jaw reflects the massive strength of the parrot’s beak.
Hacked Pacemakers of Death
Auf einer Security Konferenz haben Wissenschaftler gezeigt, dass sich Herzschrittmacher hacken lassen und tödliche Schocks abgeben können. Außerdem kann man Malware auf den Dingern installieren, die sich wie Viren verbreiten. Da steckt Stoff für mindestens vierzehn SciFi-Storys drin.
“The worst case scenario that I can think of, which is 100 percent possible with these devices, would be to load a compromised firmware update onto a programmer and … the compromised programmer would then infect the next pacemaker or [defibrillator] and then each would subsequently infect all others in range,” he reportedly said.
Hackers Could Access Pacemakers From A Distance And Deliver Deadly Shocks (via Actually Gee)
World of Warcraft-Death Hack, Azeroth recreated in Minecraft
Youtube Direktwarcraft, via The Verge, Geekosystem
Gestern haben Hacker in World Of Warcraft auf einen Schlag ganze Städte vernichtet und tausende Charaktere getötet: „This afternoon, Paris time, something very strange happened on various realms. […] to cut a long story short, everyone in Stormwind and Orgrimmar was killed, NPCs included. It’s also been happening on Tarren Mill, Ragnaros, Draenor, Twisting Nether, and no doubt other servers.“
Und das hier hat zwar nix damit zu tun, aber Reddit-User RamsesA hat Azeroth komplett in Minecraft nachgebaut:
Q. How large is the world?
A. The current version of the map spans approximately 275 square kilometers and contains over 68 billion blocks. The highest part of the world, the peak of Mt. Hyjal, stands more than a kilometer above sea level. Since the map exceeds the Minecraft height limit, the world had to be divided into seven altitude layers, each connected via a server-side plugin that teleports players as they approach the height limit. To be played locally, the map requires 24 gigabytes of hard-drive space.
Cryonic Photography by Murray Ballard: The Prospect of Immortality
Superfaszinierende Fotoserie von Murray Ballard, der weltweit Institute für Kryokonservierung besucht und fotografiert hat, einschließlich der Geräte, Patienten, Experimente, Training und einer Firma, die im Moskau lediglich die Köpfe ihrer Kunden in flüssigem Stickstoff einlegt. Die Fotografien gibt’s als Fotoband, gedacht als Homage an das gleich betitelte Buch von Robert Ettinger „The Prospect of Immortality“, das der Ursprung der Idee der Kryonik ist. Ehrlich gesagt, hätte ich das Geld dafür… ich würd’s mir zumindest überlegen.
Hier die Fotos auf Ballards Website, Wired hat ein paar Bilder in größer, Snip:
The Prospect of Immortality is a six-year study by UK photographer Murray Ballard, who has traveled the world pulling back the curtain on the amateurs, optimists, businesses and apparatuses of cryonics. “It’s not a large industry,” says Ballard, who visited the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Phoenix, Arizona; the Cryonics Institute in Detroit, Michigan; KrioRus in Moscow, Russia; and Suspended Animation Inc in Boytan Beach, Florida; among others.
Cryonics is the preservation of deceased humans in liquid nitrogen at temperatures just shy of its boiling point of −196°C/77 Kelvin. Cryopreservation of humans is not reversible with current science, but cryonicists hypothesize that people who are considered dead by current medical definitions may someday be recovered by using advanced future technologies. Stats are hard to come by, but it is estimated there are about 2,000 people signed up for cryonics and approximately 250 people currently cryopreserved. Over 100 pets have also been placed in vats of liquid nitrogen with the hopes of a future recovery.
Cryonics Photos Delve Into the Frozen World of the Immortality Faithful
Hey Death-Lovers: It get’s better!
Seit ungefähr einem Jahr hab’ ich den YT-Channel von Caitlin Doughty (hier auf Twitter) im Feedreader abonniert. Die Dame ist Leichenbestatterin aus Los Angeles und beantwortet Fragen, wie: Was passiert, wenn man Leichen in Säure auflöst, was bei Weltraum-Bestattungen abgeht und ob Tote explodieren können. Ist tatsächlich einer der interessantesten YT-Channels überhaupt und in ihrem neuesten Video erklärt sie alles morbiden Kids da draußen: It gets better.
Mausoleum-Photography: Kitsch for the Dead
Spannendes Fotoprojekt von John Faier, der für seine Serie Queen Of Heaven Mausoleen aus dem Amerika der 50er Jahre fotografiert hat. Als BWL-Idioten, Politiker und Finanzfuzzis das Land nämlich noch nicht kaputtgewirtschaftet hatten, konnten sich dort Durchschnittsverdiener eigene Totenhäuser leisten, das Ergebnis ist eine seltsame Mischung aus Andacht und Pietät und ‘nem ziemlich schlechten Geschmack für Interieur.
America in the ’50s was a time of consumer optimism. The post-war economy was booming and in addition to brand-new tract houses and shiny state-of-the-art appliances the popularity of a more opulent burial style was also on the rise. Instead of being buried in the ground, American consumers where choosing to have their remains eternally enshrined in polished beds of marble at public mausoleums. […]
Like the mausoleums built for kings, queens, and heads of state, the tombs of the 1950s were often extravagant. But they were also uniquely contemporary, Faier says, and borrowed from the kind of design that dominated the times.
“Bright colors, matching upholstery, matching lamp shades — the architecture reminds us more of a cocktail lounger or hotel, not of a mausoleum,” says Faier, who scoped out seven mausoleums in Chicago and others in suburban New York and Los Angeles. “The peculiar mix of modernism and death reflects the things most kitsch, troubling, and beautiful about our modern culture.”
Hotels for the Dead: Mausoleums Reveal Spectral Light and Kitsch Decor
The Science of Spontaneous Human Combustion
New Scientist hat einen superinteressanten Artikel von Brian J. Ford über spontane menschliche Entzündung, eine äußerst seltene und sehr umstrittene Todesart, während der Mensch von innen heraus verbrennen. Ford hat in Experimenten eine schlüssige Begründung für das Phänomen gefunden (unter bestimmten Umständen produziert der Körper zu viel des Brennstoffs Aceton, die Beine bleiben übrig, weil in ihnen zu wenig Fett für die Aceton-Produktion enthalten ist).
Der Text basiert auf einem ziemlich unterhaltsamen Vortrag (Video oben) mit Spinal Tap und Iron Maiden, den der Mann vor einem Monat in Chicago gehalten hat und da der Artikel nur gegen Registrierung online zu lesen ist und da auch nur für 10 Tage, poste ich den Text ausnahmsweise als Vollzitat nach dem Klick.
PEOPLE explode. One minute they may be relaxing in a chair, the next they erupt into a fireball. Jets of blue fire shoot from their bodies like flames from a blowtorch, and within half an hour they are reduced to a pile of ash. Typically, the legs remain unscathed, sticking out grotesquely from the smoking cinders. Nearby objects (a pile of newspapers on the armrest, for example) are untouched. Greasy fat lies on the floor. For centuries, this gruesome way of death has been debated, with many people discounting it as a myth. But spontaneous human combustion is real and we think we can show how it happens.
The first accounts date from 1641, when Danish doctor and mathematician Thomas Bartholin described the death of Polonus Vorstius – who drank wine at home in Milan, Italy, one evening in 1470 before bursting into flames. In 1663, Bartholin wrote of a Parisian woman who burned, leaving the mattress on which she lay unscathed. And in the Philosophical Transactions of 1745, Paul Rolli told how 62-year-old Countess Cornelia Bandi of Ceséna, Italy, said she felt “dull and heavy” after dining and went to bed. Next morning, her maid found a pile of ash with her legs protruding from the smouldering remains.
Der Rest des Artikels nach dem Klick.
