Archive for the ‘science’ Category

I try not to dwell on my own mortality, but we all know we’re going sometime. Why not go out high tech?

[This process] involves freezing the coffin and body to -18C before lowering them into liquid nitrogen at -196C, which leaves them extremely brittle.
A vibrating pad is used to reduce the remains to a powder and a magnetic field then removes all traces of mercury and other metal residues from fillings or hip replacements.

Later you can plant a tree (which will draw its nutrients from the gravesite) on top of the grave of your loved one. Simultaneously weird and sort of beautiful.

With regard to pain receptors the human body is not unlike a computer and can even be ‘rebooted’ to be pain free say neurologists interviewed by Jerome Groopman in the New Yorker. They’re actually given ketemine injections so large that they go into a coma, and in 50% of cases wake up (and stay) pain free.