Skeleton Keys

I was reading about the man who got a teapot made out of his father's ashes. Now every time he has a cup of tea, his father will be there. Until he drops the teapot, of course.

This kind of thing is getting increasingly popular - you can have your loved one's ashes turned into diamonds, or whatever.

What I don't understand is this: If you want to use their remains to make something, why bother to turn them into ashes first?

Putting the remains of a cremated person into the grinder.
Along with some cigarette ash too, by the looks of things...

Wouldn't it be less destructive and more personal if his father hadn't been cremated? He could have had a teapot made out of his skull, and perhaps a set of cutlery out of his bones.

This is all much more environmentally friendly than burning people, and uses up less space than burying. No, in the future recycling will be the thing to do. This is very much in keeping with religious traditions as well - after all, the bones of saints are often revered.

It's also sort of in keeping with much older traditions, where people carved things out of bone.

I've given it some thought, and I'm considering suggesting that my bones get used to make the keys on a grand piano. There are two reasons for this: Firstly, it's probably the only way I'm going to get a decent tune out of a piano, and secondly, it'd be nice after a fairly selfish and uneventful life to be able to play a part in making people happy.


What about you?

Pie in the Sky?

Thursday's Ta Nea paper had a report about an 80 storey rotating skyscraper. This is being designed by an Italian called David Fisher. More about him later.

There are wind turbines between each floor, and solar panels, and allegedly the building will generate ten times as much power as it needs. The floors will rotate once every 1-3 hours. If you go for one of the villas, then you have a whole floor to yourself and can rotate it at will. And you'll have your own private lift, which I think takes your car to your floor. Oh yes and a swimming pool, a sauna, a garden...

There' s a suggestion that as this building is wind-powered, they might build one in Chicago. If so, those of you who live in that part of the world will be excited to know that the price for a 1,300 sq ft luxury flat in the Dubai buildling is only $4m, with a 13,000 sq ft villa available for a mere $38 million. That's pretty good - the way fuel prices are going, it won't be long before it costs you $4m to fill up your Merc. And we're talking Dubai. Presumably the Chicago one will be even cheaper.

I wonder if this will ever really get built. It all sounds a bit ambitious. In particular there's something that's bothering me. Supposing you have a dump. The sewage pipes are in the middle bit of the building that doesn't rotate. The toilets are moving constantly. How does the brown matter get into the sewer? I won't believe it until someone shows me a 3-d turd's eye view. And even if it works in theory, what happens when it all goes horribly wrong, and 80 floors worth of shit literally hits the fan, or rather the turbines?

Anyway, here's the video:



Does this guy look like a phoney, or is it just me? Apparently, he hasn't been active in the field of architecture that much lately, and hasn't designed a skyscraper before. He also claimed to have an honorary doctorate from a US university, but that claim was retracted when someone checked with the university.

I hope that everyone who says that this is just a scam, or a computer-designed dream are wrong, as I think that it would be great if all buildings were rotatable.

Time will tell...

Ramblings

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Enjoy!

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THIS IS ME

Remembe the person out into the ope you could jump in the could jump in the car and take thbrush? I love hour road trip, packing only a be a mommy, I AM STILL SOMEBODY" for and scream to let your have chosen thought that I have now, Is the purpose for my blog

Wordy Wednesday

Quote of the Week
I write to have quick you. He’d drown! Now, I don’t kno, he hatessed I again? VE, I mean pee/poop system? AAAAAAAAGGG... with the disting motion. Ith the dungeon. I put hot I mean gorgency evaculties before I was ting subject fore I was diag, stuffed against a generat freakince I havery step? Married I'm martners in lunacy logsitting at Ording too much would M-eye. Oh wait, I their business do not like to ask to WHY you wer since I waiting for the a little sing to music in my comfy car. [From Bee's Musings]

I was playing with "dissassociated press", which is a silly computer thing that takes text and mangles it randomly. The above is part of the result when fed a couple of day's worth of Bee.

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Stuff

I've been spending the last few evenings doing geeky stuff with my laptop. I was up until around 3ish on Saturday night, and I still haven't finished tinkering. I was thinking about going to the pub tonight, but then Jean Knee complained about there not being any Wordy Wednesday, so I decided I'd better stay in and do one. Not that I mind, of course, Jean Knee. Don't feel guilty about depriving me of a social life or anything...

Actually, before I feel guilty about making Jean Knee feel guilty, I probably wouldn't actually have gone. Well, maybe not.

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Spot the Difference


I'm sure you've seen this already. Some lumps in the bottom left hand corner of the trench vanished. I think this might be mischievous Martians, but the boffins reckon that it was ice that melted, and that this might indicate that there is or was life on the Red Planet. Now, if the ice had been in a glass of Gin and Tonic, that would definitely be a sign of civilisation...

[Copyright]

Firemen, Cheese Sarnies and Ig Nobel Prizes

Bee's post about her narrow escape from a fiery fate and her close encounter with some allegedly "hot" firemen was very entertaining. Perhaps she should follow the example of the British woman had to be rescued by firefighters from a laundrette when she got her hand stuck in a dryer. It doesn't say whether it was Dryer 13 or not, nor does it say anything about the hotness or otherwise of her rescuers. One word of warning, Bee. They're not always firemen:


Not far away from that laundrette, at the University of Bristol, scientists have come up with an equation for making the perfect cheese sandwich:

W=[1 + ((bd)/6.5)) - s + ((m-2c)/2) + ((v+p)/7t)] (100 + l/100).

Actually, it's an equation to work out how thickly you should cut the cheese once you've decided things like the type of cheese, bread, how much salad, margarine and mayo to use, etc.

I hope that the British Cheese Council, who funded this, are happy with the result. They could have just asked me, of course. My equation would involve strong mature cheddar, pickled onions, Helmann's Mayonaise and a bit of pepper. But what do I know. The scientist who worked out that equation won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering the best way to dunk biscuits in tea.

If he'd asked me, I'd have suggested that he stick to dunking Ginger Nuts in Coffee, which is by far the best way.

Anyway, this got me looking into the Ig Nobel prize. In 1999, the year that Dunking Doctor Fisher picked up his award, the Ig Nobel Prize for Literature was won by the British Standards Institute for their 6 page BS 6008, which describes how to make a cup of tea.


Last year three Spaniards won the Prize for Linguists for discovering that sometimes rats can't tell the difference between someone speaking Japanese backwards and someone speaking Dutch backwards. Clearly research that will change our lives.

I'm hoping that I'll get nominated, just as soon as I publish my forthcoming paper "Analytic Methods for Calculating the Optimal Ingredients of Soy Sauce to Make the Perfect Green Bean Casserole". Unfortunately, I'm having some difficulty getting funding for this important research...

On the Buses

As Tracy suggested in her comment to yesterday's post, public transport plays an important role in British tradition. Unfortunately we're not talking about what passes today for transport, but what they had in those ever-elusive "good old days", and we're going back before my time, since all my life I've found public transport to be a total nightmare.

Not being an anorak, I can't really do the subject justice, but I'll have a go at talking about a very special type of British Bus. The Routemaster:


You will recognise this from a picture in yesterday's post, if you weren't too busy staring at the eye-candy.

This particular model of double decker was built in the 50s and 60s for London Transport. Buses in London were (are?) red, hence the colour, and their popularity makes them the archetypal London Bus, even though there have been plenty of others over the years.

When I was a student in South Manchester in the late 80s, the Didsbury - Town Centre route used Routemasters for some reason. They were still painted London Transport red, and they were the best.

The reason is that they had a conductor. The driver sat in his cabin completely shut off from the passengers, and a conductor took the fares. This meant that the bus only had to stop long enough for people to hop on and off. There was no waiting around for people to find the exact change. It made them safer at night, too.

They were nice and warm in the winter - their heaters were a lot more effective than in modern buses, for some reason. They were too warm in the summer, though...

Nowadays buses look more like this one, which is in Stagecoach colours. Stagecoach is the Microsoft of the bus world:

I'm sure these buses are much safer, wheelchair friendly, etc, but sometimes progress seems to have no soul.

I'll leave you with the following. Contrary to the commentary this kind of event isn't very common, and people amazingly are rarely hurt. We'll prove this when Tracy comes for her tour by putting her in the front seat at the top.

Wordy Wednesday

Struck Down

I've been off work the last few days with a cold. Usually I go in anyway, but I did that on Monday and couldn't concentrate, so I gave up and have spent the last couple of days feeling sorry for myself.

I read somewhere that doctors are increasingly googling their patient's symptoms to find out what's wrong with them. The National Health Service probably can't afford to buy them textbooks these days.

Anyway, I spent some time looking up "cold". I didn't get much useful information. I already know that the condition is incurable, though I was surprised to read that they don't think vitamin C is much use. It's true though, I drank orange juice, ate clementines and lemons, and OD'd on Lucozade without making a miraculous recovery.

I wondered if I might have a temperature. I've got one of those forehead thermometer things, and it told me that my temperature was 36, which is a little low for a fever, but not so low as to indicate death. Which was a relief.

Apart from a sore throat, sneezing, the kind of cough someone has who's been chain-smoking cigars, and a headache, I'm fine. I think I'll be well enough to go into work tomorrow.

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Mystery Picture

Can you guess what this is?


Ever since Jean Knee did her famous horse-food post, I've been slowly working up an appetite for some muesli. I got some this afternoon. Mine isn't the teeth breaking variety, but I've just had a bowlful. I'm sure it'll help banish my cold.

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Crafting

On the back of the muesli packet is the following environmentally friendly message:


I'm amazed. I didn't know that they made double decker buses out of recycled cereal boxes. Isn't technology wonderful?

Who ever invented the cardboard bus, I bet they were influenced by watching Blue Peter as a child. This is a British Children's TV programme, which has been going for around 50 years. I don't know what it's like today, though apparently the lady below is or was one of the presenters:

I've studied this picture very carefully,
but I can't see her Blue Peter badge anywhere.

Maybe I should start watching it again... It used to look more like this:


They had a craft bit where they showed you how to make amazing things out of ordinary household objects, especially washing-up-liquid bottles, glue, cereal boxes, etc. I bet they're not allowed to do that nowadays - we need to keep our cereal boxes so they can make them into buses...