15 Jul 2006
Funeral pyre starts legal wrangle

According to this article, open-air funeral pyres have been illegal in the UK since 1930. Yet when foot and mouth disease ran rampart in Britain in 2001, the recommended procedure was to destroy the cattle and burn the carcasses. In open air pits.

My question is why it's illegal to burn a human body, which probably weighs less than 200 pounds, while it's sometimes mandatory to burn a cow carcass, which can weigh up to a ton.

The open air cremation of a Sikh man in the North East provokes a legal row among police and council chiefs.

(link) [BBC News | News Front Page | World Edition]

13:36 /Agriculture | 1 comment | permanent link

Top Grades and No Class Time for Auburn Players

Just remember, these kids got their room and board and tuition paid entirely by the taxpayers of Alabama. While at the same time the state (and the Feds) were cutting education funding and assistance for students with the academic qualifications but without the requisite muscle power.

Shows our real priorities very clearly, I think.

In 2004, many Auburn athletes received high grades from one professor for courses that required little work.

(link) [New York Times]

13:35 /Politics | 3 comments | permanent link

Slavery-tainted Penny Lane to stay in your ears

Maybe we should ban the posting of the "Ten Commandments", since they had their provenance in a war of genocide and were delivered by a mass murderer?

Somehow, I don't think that suggestion would fly very far, especially in a Red State.

Where will this end? Will be take George Washington off the dollar bill because he owned slaves? After smoking is outlawed will we take FDR's head off the dime?

How far down this road do we really want to go?

Liverpool officials said Saturday they would modify a proposal to rename streets linked to the slave trade when they realized the road made famous by the 1967 Beatles song was one of them.

(link) [CNN.com]

13:31 /Politics | 1 comment | permanent link

Checklist for Camp: Bug Spray. Sunscreen. Pills.

This indicates as strongly as anything I've read the ultimate bankruptcy of the modern way of life: we're rapidly becoming the Medicated Society, with a pill a day from the cradle to the grave. Or as one famous pundit phased it, "A gramme is better than a damn!".

Medication lines, unheard of a generation ago, have become fixtures at children's camps across the country.

(link) [New York Times]

13:08 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link