Build Date: Thu Dec 26 21:00:10 2024 UTC
I imagine I can last until the absinthe runs out; then, I'm afraid, I'll have to work.
-- HST
Solar-powered Corpse Cooker
2001-08-04 09:35:47
"When my grandmother died we took her to the Towers Of Silence. Four men carried the body into one of the towers. I heard the harsh cry of the vultures and knew that in a matter of minutes they would strip the flesh from the bones. The skeleton would then lie under the fierce glare of the tropical sun until it calcified, after which the powdery remains would be cast into a central well and seep into the Earth. I wasn't revolted because we have been doing it for centuries. And my grandmother wanted it this way." -- Homi Dastur, deputy executive secretary of the Hindu Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan
But what is a Zoroastrian to do when there are too many corpses and not enough vultures to eat them?
(A) Start a vulture-breeding program.
(B) Come up with a vaccine to cure dying vultures.
(C) Use solar-power to heat up corpses to increase the speed of decomposition.
(D) All of the Above.
T O P S T O R I E S
The Once & Future King of Dust
Only The Onion could have acquired Infowarts. (More...)
Another Nobel Prize-Winning Author Describes Drunkenness
This book won a Pulitzer Prize. Here's its famous paragraph on getting drunk... (More...)
'Why I'm pretty sure JD Vance had sex with a couch'
True or false? The answers await us in that magical land where all truths are revealed -- the internet. (More...)
In 2010 Dr. Cheng-Huai Ruan discovered a way to cause a patient with an abnormal heartbeat to get back into a normal rhythm by sticking a finger up the patient's ass. (More...)
WKRP in Cincinnati aired from 1978 through 1982. Howard Hesseman played Dr. Johnny Fever, a DJ from Los Angeles who was fired from his previous job for saying the word "booger" on the air. In the show Hesseman would do some dialogue, introduce a song, and start the song. You'd hear a few notes, but never the whole song. (More...)
SF Hippies Can't Get Their Act Together
The annual 420 Hippie Hill event in Golden Gate Park, where large crowds of hippies, wannabe hippies, and hippie poseurs drape themselves in tie dye t-shirts and gather on a hill on 4/20 to smoke weed, was cancelled this year because the organizers couldn't get their act together. (More...)
C L A S S I C P I G D O G
Three Days and 25 Spocktails: A Cautionary Tale
Johnnie Royale picked me up from the dental surgery. I felt warm, safe, cradled in the anathesia's loving embrace. The pharmacy downstairs gave me a bottle of Vicodin and a few instructions: take it with food, don't mix with alcohol, don't operate heavy machinery. I put it in my pocket and we left. "Do you want to go home, or do you want to go to a bar?" asked Johnnie. (More...)
Pigdog brings you SETI astronomer Seth Shostak to bring you the truth about Ay-leens (More...)
Report from Spiritual Machines
Arkuat gives you the inside scoop on the "Spiritual Machines" panel and conclave. Wacky excitement ensues! (More...)
It's that time of year again -- Burning Man Season -- and that means fresh SCIENCE! Here is a new lab experiment for the fruity hillbilly in all of us. (More...)
Patient Joab's scientifick editorial discusses aspect of the space-time-beer continuum never before processed by sub-bush-robot minds!!! Too fabulantastic to contempulate! (More...)
Clowns Take on God in Mysterious Annual Ceremony
Last Sunday's (the 6th) Grimaldi Service at a small church in East London was a red-letter day for clowns worldwide. About a hundred old-school red-nosed clowns made the sombre trip to darkest Dalston to pay their respects to clowns who died in the last year and to thank God for the gift of laughter in a bizarre ceremony presided over by the eccentric Reverend Clown Roly, resplendent in a garish red lumberjack shirt with oversized gold lapels. (More...)
