Updates and edits to yesterdays news…

If you read my posts yesterday, you know that I pretty much just teased you with short blurbs because I didn’t have my magazine in front of me. But today I do, and I want to clarify a few items:

• You can see that awesome robot carp here.
• That cool gadget to identify celestial bodies that fits in the palm of your hand is called the Celestron SkyScout.
• Those cool rocket racers are called X-racers (if you are into this stuff at all, you might recognize that these were developed in the same vein as the X-Prize – all dreamed up by the same guy).
• That cool eco-friendly way of disposing your body once it is time to go is called “promession”. If you happen to live in or near Crewe and Nantwich, the Swedish woman (not german guy!) that developed this process will be there giving a talk about it. It is really starting to pick up a lot of interest in the UK. And for those of you interested in the more techincal aspects of it, like me, here is the lowdown:
  • Promession begins with cooling the casket containing the deceased to a temperature of minus 18 degrees Celsius. The temperature is then reduced further to minus 196 degrees using liquid nitrogen. This makes the body very brittle. The coffin and contents are then subject to gentle vibration, which turns the body into an organic powder, which is then placed into a vacuum chamber to allow any liquid to evaporate away. The now dry powder passes through a metal separator where any surgical parts and dental amalgam are removed. The remaining organic powder is ready to be placed in a biodegradable coffin [made of potato starch] and buried in a shallow grave, where the living soil turns the coffin and its contents into compost within 6 12 months.

So yes. I want to be, would it be, “promissed”? Either way, that is the way I want to go. I already told Juan that this is really exciting, but we were playing pool last night when I told him, so he may not have understood how determined I was when I said it. I hope that when my time comes, my body can go back to the earth instead of polluting it and taking up space and resources.