I admit I do, and as a matter of fact have since I was twelve years old, although my reasons changed as the years piled up. Of course the first draw was the plentiful and profusely illustrated ads that made me first to grab that section on Sunday mornings: What twelve-year-old boy doesn’t enjoy photos of pretty young girls in their underwear? Then it was the twin pull of the Sunday crossword puzzle and the cooking page.. I never tasted a single one of those dishes except in imagination, but in that form every one was delicious. And, of course, for decades on end doing that huge Sunday crossword puzzle was a ritual for half the families in America.
But the Times still holds me. It’s one of my greatest extravagances, by which I don’t mean its dollars and cents cost but its exorbitant price in hours and minutes. By the time I get through the world news section and the national, and Books, Travel, The Week in Review and the Magazine, the day is pretty well shot, and I haven’t even opened Business, Sports or any of the eight or ten other sections that come tumbling out of their plastic sheath.
But I’m fond of the ones I do read. Unfailingly they provide me with little nuggets of knowledge I might not otherwise possess. In one issue of the Magazine, for instance, I learned that if I have a little naturally occurring lithium in my tap water the chance of my committing suicide is lessened — so reported the neuropsychiatrist Takeshi Terao, after a study of communities in Japan’s Oita Prefecture. And if you pull out those old sixth-grade snapshots of yourself and study them, are you smiling? Psychologist Matthew Hertenstein reported that when he compared the top ten percent of childhood smilers with the bottom, the nonsmiling kids grew up to have five times as many divorces.
In that same issue of the Magazine, I learned that we now have a third option for what to do with our corpses when we’re through with them in addition to the old standbys.of burial or cremation. It’s called resomation, and it’s ecologically sound, neither increasing the carbon burden nor taking priceless land out of productive use. It was pioneered by the Mayo Clinic as a means of disposing of donated cadavers when no longer needed, and is now beginning to become available to commercial undertakers in a few states. In resomation, the corpse is heated in a potassium hydroxide solution for three hours, after which all that’s left is a soft, white cremation-like ash, plus shiny dental fillings and surgical implants, if any existed, and a brownish liquid which, being 100-percent sterile, can be poured away with waste waters.
Ibid says:
My plan is to be cremated, have my ashes mixed in with some concrete, and use the concrete to make an elaborate statue/headstone of my own design. Not only will it add some character to these lame cemeteries full of small uniform headstones, but when they turn it into condos they don’t have to dig me up. Just chain me to a forklift and we’re good to go.
Thanks for recommending Murray Leinster to me. I’d read “The Wailing Asteroid” already, but found a lot more of his stuff at manybooks.net.
May 28, 2010, 7:22 amBob Munck says:
I’m to be cremated and stored until the first Space Elevator goes up. Then my ashes will be taken up past GEO to the very end, maybe 100,000 km out, and released slowly over a 24-hour period at the equinox. Momentum alone will get me as far as Jupiter, and I figure that the Solar Wind will push some of me completely out of the solar system. Of course, I’ll also be sprinkled lightly over all of the planets and moons in this system.
May 28, 2010, 4:30 pmEd Gazvoda says:
I, too, enjoy reading the Times. An article on Resomation(R), in 2008, in the Times, led to my current business. I am a competitor of Resomation(R)LTD. Almost two-years later, I have manufactured a much better and significantly less costly system than Resomation(R).
By using potassium hydroxide, the soft remains can be spread upon the earth, not necessarily drained into the sanitary sewer. The soft remains are pathogen free, with no trace of DNA. Bodies will soon be nourishing the earth with an NPK of 3.1.6. A better descriptor for this process is water and alkali disposition, as Resomation(R) refers to the process as performed by Resomation LTD. The leading manufacturer of such systems is CycledLife. http://www.CycledLife.com. Cremation and burial are harmful to the living. A water & alkali disposition is the best way to show one remembered family and friends when planning for the inevitable.
May 28, 2010, 5:41 pmStefan Jones says:
I love the Sunday NYTimes, but don’t get it often because I don’t feel I can give it the time it deserves. Especially the magazine. What has given me the patience and excuse to give it the attention it requires: A long plane flight.
Most of the nation’s Sunday papers include something called “Parade Magazine.” It’s beyond pathetic. It makes US Today look intellectual and comprehensive.
May 28, 2010, 8:29 pm