As was stated before, the heat of the fire does not come from burning the corpse (the corpse is not the fuel). So Scott's idea of forging steel using a corpse as a fuel source would fail.
As was stated before, the heat of the fire does not come from burning the corpse (the corpse is not the fuel). So Scott's idea of forging steel using a corpse as a fuel source would fail.
I guess we have to wait to discover the mystery of spontaneous combustion.
As was stated before, the heat of the fire does not come from burning the corpse (the corpse is not the fuel). So Scott's idea of forging steel using a corpse as a fuel source would fail.
As was stated before, the heat of the fire does not come from burning the corpse (the corpse is not the fuel). So Scott's idea of forging steel using a corpse as a fuel source would fail.
Yet another time Steve and Joe agree :-p
Heh. I get the intent of the joke, but I challenge you to show where I said anywhere in this thread that Scott's idea about the corpse sword would fail.
Actually, Steve might be right about an instance in which someone tried to use the corpse itself as fuel, but I think that if you fired up a forge hot enough to forge a sword and THEN threw in the corpse, it might work. At least, it would work well enough to say that part of the corpse was in the sword.
Actually, I'm beginning to like the corpse sword more and more.
I like the sword idea and the science idea. What about a wiki page that was an obit/directory for the dead? You could have a rule that locked the pages two days after creation, so as to cut down on vandalism and such. Also, it wouldn't require a lot of time, money, or effort to keep up. You just need a server, some volunteers to maintain it (admins), and user input.
. . . and all of those would fail in less than ten years.
Not necessarily. There are websites that have lasted longer than 10 years, you know.
If it was a paid service, then it wouldn't be a problem. Why rely on volunteers?
Pay to post? That would work. They key is to make it free to view, or else nobody would visit it. I suppose pay to post would keep costs negligible. That's actually a good idea.
This thread brings new meaning to saying that your grandmother was a "battle axe."
I've used an industrial crematory for disposal of potential hazardous medical waste. In short, I threw road kill into a blast furnace. Trust me on this. No blacksmith is going to willingly work with the smell of burning human flesh. If you find one that's willing to do so: CALL THE COPS! That dude is insane!
I'd get cremated property first and have scoop of ash set aside to be taken to the smith. He should be able to add them when the metal is molten.
Fark, Slashdot, Penny Arcade, Something Awful (I think)...
. . . and you think that someone wishing to keep a memorial for a loved one has the resources of Fark, Slashdot, Penny Arcade, and Something Awful?
Did someone kick you in the junk today? Your really ornery today. You asked for 4 websites with volunteered content that are over 10 years old...and you were told. The concept of vast user driven content oriented sites are barely 10 years old as it is so most of the sites sprung up recently.
Fark, Slashdot, Penny Arcade, Something Awful (I think)...
. . . and you think that someone wishing to keep a memorial for a loved one has the resources of Fark, Slashdot, Penny Arcade, and Something Awful?
Did someone kick you in the junk today? Your really ornery today. You asked for 4 websites with volunteered content that are over 10 years old...and you were told.
. . . and we're talking about normal, everyday citizens making memorials for loved ones and possibly have those sites substitute for gravesites. That requires some degree of permanence. Now, normal, everyday people just don't have resources like Fark, Slashdot, Penny Arcade, and Something Awful to keep a memorial website up for ten years or more and it's unreasonable to expect that sort of thing from them.
I asked for sites that have been up for ten years and I was told that behemoths like Fark, Slashdot, Penny Arcade, and Something Awful have been up for ten years. So, sure, something as big as Fark might make it for ten years. Do you think a website Tommy Callahan makes for his dad has as much of a chance as Fark for lasting?
I'm not trying to be difficult. I'm just saying, again, that the internet is not the answer for every aspect of human life, nor should it be.
From Me and the Devil Blues, Robert Johnson:
You may bury my body down by the highway side Baby, I don't care where you bury my body when I'm dead and gone
You may bury my body, ooh down by the highway side So my old evil spirit can catch a Greyhound bus and ride
Wow, you really took my idea in a different direction then I originally suggested. I suggested opening either a graveyard on the Internet (full of data on people who are now deceased) or a wikipedia type database of people's past family lineages where families can fill in their past and preserve it for the future. I never said we should get rid of real world monuments or cease the practice of burial in real life(other people suggested that). It might someday mean more to people to have a memorial on the internet then in real life but we are NOWHERE near that.
I never said we should get rid of real world monuments or cease the practice of burial in real life(other people suggested that).
This is what you said in your first post in this thread:
Shouldn't we move to memorialize people on the internet and stop using physical space to bury the dead?
That sounds to me like you were specifically suggesting that we "get rid of real world monuments" and "cease the practice of burial in real life".
Whoops, I probably was over reaching in my morning haze ;-p. I meant to talk more about virtual memorials and finding ways to store information about deceased people in a way that is more useful to both the morners and society.
AND then bring up the side issue that we could stop wasting real world space with at the very least the burial of the dead :-p
I don't understand the issue here. I think that each person should be remembered in whatever way that person wanted to be remembered. If the guy wants to be buried in the ground with a tombstone and all, then so be it. Why don't we all just make it perfectly clear in our will what we want done to us when we die?
Personally, I don't really care what they do. I think that if I was memorable enough to someone, they will remember me. It's that simple. I don't need a tombstone, or anything of the sort. I lost a few friends in high school, and I've never visited their graves, I just remember them in my day to day life. I don't understand the general population's fascination with having a physical means of remembrance.
(As a side note, I think that the whole 'Bury your dead in remembrance' thing is just stemming from tradition, which is also stupid.)
[W]e could stop wasting real world space with at the very least the burial of the dead :-p
Please remember that I'm not trying to be difficult, so don't read any sarcasm or anything into this that's not intended to be there, BUT: Are we really at the point where we're that concerned about space? I mean, I don't remember seeing any articles latley saying "OMG! We're running out of space for our shits!"
[W]e could stop wasting real world space with at the very least the burial of the dead :-p
Please remember that I'm not trying to be difficult, so don't read any sarcasm or anything into this that's not intended to be there, BUT: Are we really at the point where we're that concerned about space? I mean, I don't remember seeing any articles latley saying "OMG! We're running out of space for our shits!"
No, but I'm in favor of being proactive about this. It's easier to retool now rather than continue until we're actually out of space and then try to deal with it.
[W]e could stop wasting real world space with at the very least the burial of the dead :-p
Please remember that I'm not trying to be difficult, so don't read any sarcasm or anything into this that's not intended to be there, BUT: Are we really at the point where we're that concerned about space? I mean, I don't remember seeing any articles latley saying "OMG! We're running out of space for our shits!"
No, but I'm in favor of being proactive about this. It's easier to retool now rather than continue until we're actually out of space and then try to deal with it.
Don't take this the wrong way, but, who the fuck cares? We just won't bury people. They can get over it. Seriously.
I like how you are talking about people not having the resources to put up a web site for ten years. To host a single web page can be done for free at places like wordpress.com. If you are worried about them going down, you can pay like, $5 a month. A funeral with a casket and a headstone and a plot costs thousands upon thousands of dollars. At the price of $60 a year, it would take 60 years for the web site to equal the cost of a $3000 funeral. Many funerals cost more than that, and paying for upkeep at a cemetery is even more expensive.
You don't need the resources of Penny Arcade or Fark to keep a web site up. You just need to actually be attentive and move it around if something happens to your hosting company, like happened to Geocities. You also need to be prepared for a world without a web. Who knows what will come next, you might have to redo the site in some newfangled technology when things change. Make a 3D virtual reality memorial, or whatever the heck comes next. Even so, it's far cheaper than the expensive and outdated hole in the ground with a rock.
At the price of $60 a year, it would take 60 years for the web site to equal the cost of a $3000 funeral.
Let's go with that. In one instance, you pay $3K and you're done forever. In the other, you pay out $60.00 a year for the rest of your life. As you say, after fifty years, the payouts are equal (that's 50 not 60 years, Mr. High Tech. 50 * 60 = 3000). After that, the website constantly gets more expensive. That's of course, assuming that your provider never raises its cost. That never happens, does it? Prices never go up, do they?
What if you want the website to continue after YOU are dead? Remember the total cost keeps piling up. Do you make your kids pay for it? What if you don't have kids? Do you have enough money to establish a foundation? I promise you, it's not exactly trivial.
If you are fine with a memorial that lasts only fifty years, then thats outstanding. For you. Most people want their memorials to last longer than that.
outdated hole in the ground with a rock.
You're really obsessed with this "out of date" thing, aren't you? Just because something is not web-based does not mean that it is out of date.
At the price of $60 a year, it would take 60 years for the web site to equal the cost of a $3000 funeral.
Let's go with that. In one instance, you pay $3K and you're done forever. In the other, you pay out $60.00 a year for the rest of your life. As you say, after fifty years, the payouts are equal (that's 50 not 60 years, Mr. High Tech. 50 * 60 = 3000). After that, the website constantly gets more expensive. That's of course, assuming that your provider never raises its cost. That never happens, does it? Prices never go up, do they?
What if you want the website to continue after YOU are dead? Remember the total cost keeps piling up. Do you make your kids pay for it? What if you don't have kids? Do you have enough money to establish a foundation? I promise you, it's not exactly trivial.
If you are fine with a memorial that lasts only fifty years, then that outstanding. For you. Most people want their memorials to last longer than that.
This obviously means that someone should create a memorial site that promises to keep every memorial that pays up for at least, let's say, 100 years, and it only costs a measly $3000 dollars to buy in.
At the price of $60 a year, it would take 60 years for the web site to equal the cost of a $3000 funeral.
Let's go with that. In one instance, you pay $3K and you're done forever. In the other, you pay out $60.00 a year for the rest of your life. As you say, after fifty years, the payouts are equal (that's 50 not 60 years, Mr. High Tech. 50 * 60 = 3000). After that, the website constantly gets more expensive. That's of course, assuming that your provider never raises its cost. That never happens, does it? Prices never go up, do they?
What if you want the website to continue after YOU are dead? Remember the total cost keeps piling up. Do you make your kids pay for it? What if you don't have kids? Do you have enough money to establish a foundation? I promise you, it's not exactly trivial.
If you are fine with a memorial that lasts only fifty years, then that outstanding. For you. Most people want their memorials to last longer than that.
This obviously means that someone should create a memorial site that promises to keep every memorial that pays up for at least, let's say, 100 years, and it only costs a measly $3000 dollars to buy in.
People would really like that. Yeah. Because the internet is really stable and has been around long enough to prove its stability and the company that makes the promise will obviously never go out of business like Geocities.
Something that is fragile enough to be adversely affected by net neutrality legislation, DRM, hacking, crashes, power failures, etc. is not the place that most people want to be remembered.
Joe, it seems you're really worried about people remembering you after you are gone. A rock in the ground may be fairly permanent, but what do you care if you are remembered? You'll be dead. If you want to be remembered, maybe you should do something great that people will remember you for rather than just buying a rock. Everyone buys a rock. That doesn't make you special. To be remembered you need to either do something really great or really terrible. You need to be the kind of person that is loved, reviled, or both, by many.
Personally, I don't give two shits about what happens after I'm dead, because I'll be dead. But as a courtesy to those close to me, I will not burden them with large expensive funerals or expensive web sites. If that is what they choose, then so be it. I'm dead, what I think doesn't matter.
Still, the two points stand.
1) Why do you care if you are remembered if you are dead? What does that say about you as a person now?
2) Even if you want to be remembered, neither a web site nor a stone in a field of many, are good ways to accomplish this goal.
Comments
As was stated before, the heat of the fire does not come from burning the corpse (the corpse is not the fuel). So Scott's idea of forging steel using a corpse as a fuel source would fail.
Actually, Steve might be right about an instance in which someone tried to use the corpse itself as fuel, but I think that if you fired up a forge hot enough to forge a sword and THEN threw in the corpse, it might work. At least, it would work well enough to say that part of the corpse was in the sword.
Actually, I'm beginning to like the corpse sword more and more.
EDIT: huh.
I've used an industrial crematory for disposal of potential hazardous medical waste. In short, I threw road kill into a blast furnace. Trust me on this. No blacksmith is going to willingly work with the smell of burning human flesh. If you find one that's willing to do so: CALL THE COPS! That dude is insane!
I'd get cremated property first and have scoop of ash set aside to be taken to the smith. He should be able to add them when the metal is molten.
I asked for sites that have been up for ten years and I was told that behemoths like Fark, Slashdot, Penny Arcade, and Something Awful have been up for ten years. So, sure, something as big as Fark might make it for ten years. Do you think a website Tommy Callahan makes for his dad has as much of a chance as Fark for lasting?
I'm not trying to be difficult. I'm just saying, again, that the internet is not the answer for every aspect of human life, nor should it be.
From Me and the Devil Blues, Robert Johnson:
You may bury my body
down by the highway side
Baby, I don't care where you bury my
body when I'm dead and gone
You may bury my body, ooh
down by the highway side
So my old evil spirit
can catch a Greyhound bus and ride
AND then bring up the side issue that we could stop wasting real world space with at the very least the burial of the dead :-p
Personally, I don't really care what they do. I think that if I was memorable enough to someone, they will remember me. It's that simple. I don't need a tombstone, or anything of the sort. I lost a few friends in high school, and I've never visited their graves, I just remember them in my day to day life. I don't understand the general population's fascination with having a physical means of remembrance.
(As a side note, I think that the whole 'Bury your dead in remembrance' thing is just stemming from tradition, which is also stupid.)
You don't need the resources of Penny Arcade or Fark to keep a web site up. You just need to actually be attentive and move it around if something happens to your hosting company, like happened to Geocities. You also need to be prepared for a world without a web. Who knows what will come next, you might have to redo the site in some newfangled technology when things change. Make a 3D virtual reality memorial, or whatever the heck comes next. Even so, it's far cheaper than the expensive and outdated hole in the ground with a rock.
What if you want the website to continue after YOU are dead? Remember the total cost keeps piling up. Do you make your kids pay for it? What if you don't have kids? Do you have enough money to establish a foundation? I promise you, it's not exactly trivial.
If you are fine with a memorial that lasts only fifty years, then thats outstanding. For you. Most people want their memorials to last longer than that. You're really obsessed with this "out of date" thing, aren't you? Just because something is not web-based does not mean that it is out of date.
Something that is fragile enough to be adversely affected by net neutrality legislation, DRM, hacking, crashes, power failures, etc. is not the place that most people want to be remembered.
Joe, it seems you're really worried about people remembering you after you are gone. A rock in the ground may be fairly permanent, but what do you care if you are remembered? You'll be dead. If you want to be remembered, maybe you should do something great that people will remember you for rather than just buying a rock. Everyone buys a rock. That doesn't make you special. To be remembered you need to either do something really great or really terrible. You need to be the kind of person that is loved, reviled, or both, by many.
Personally, I don't give two shits about what happens after I'm dead, because I'll be dead. But as a courtesy to those close to me, I will not burden them with large expensive funerals or expensive web sites. If that is what they choose, then so be it. I'm dead, what I think doesn't matter.
Still, the two points stand.
1) Why do you care if you are remembered if you are dead? What does that say about you as a person now?
2) Even if you want to be remembered, neither a web site nor a stone in a field of many, are good ways to accomplish this goal.