Noteworthy entries.
Madison Avenue is so clever these days that most commercials are, to some extent, fun to watch. Adbusters.org is working hard to top Madison Avenue, though, with its own spoof commercials. Some of these are quite well done. You'll find more of Adbuster's spoof ads here. Here's what Adbusters…
Today is the first anniversary of my dad’s death. Yesterday I came home from the crematorium “with me dad took’d under me arm,” to badly paraphrase the children’s song about Ann Boleyn. Death doesn’t frighten me in an abstract way. I grew up with Tom Lehrer music, Charles Addams cartoons, Hitchcock short story books, and other foils to the timid mortal. This package of charred and calcined particles I carry in the crook of my arm is merely a transient monument to the man in whom they once dwelled.
Although my father died a year ago, his ashes just now returned from the medical school circuit. He was first and foremost an educator, and this seems a fitting final use for his corporeal remains. It was also was his expressed wish.
“Ashes to ashes” is a lame phrase to someone whose head was usually far beyond the clouds. I grew up perfectly aware that my body was made up of ashes from the remains of a supernova, as is the rest of our solar system. The even my cell nuclei are literally composed of decayed nuclear waste!
Not all of the mass of these coarse ashes was actually part of his body during his life. Cremation binds oxygen to any atom that will have it, increasing the total mass from the proteins being torn apart and vaporized by the process. Sort of like how 6 lbs (a gallon) of gasoline produces 30 lbs of greenhouse C02
It doesn’t …
No further comment necessary, right? Except that I'm publishing the above image with the express permission of Pixwit.com. Oh, and one other thing. Don't overlook your chance to earn $1,000,000 by participating in Pixwit's "Miracle Challenge." If you win, just send me my 10% finders' fee. Oh, and there's that…
February's Big Read in Missouri has selected a surprising novel--Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. I should not assume everyone today has read it, so briefly it is a novel about a future in which it is illegal to read books. The fire department, because all houses are built of fireproof…
Below is a link to a blog called 101 Reasons to Stop Writing. It is a blog about writing and actually does have a list of reasons to stop, which, when one considers the amount of verbiage being generated by the human race, might seem like an impossible challenge. Those…