Ecological burial: freeze-drying and composting

I first wrote about promession in this blog two years ago.  This week PhysOrg provides some updated information.

The first part of the ecological burial method involves removing the water that makes up 70% of the human body. To do this, the company freeze-dries the corpse in liquid nitrogen within a week and a half after death. The corpse is first frozen to -18°C (0°F) and then submerged in liquid nitrogen. Next, sound waves at a specific amplitude vibrate the brittle corpse, transforming it into an organic white powder. The powder is sent through a vacuum chamber that evaporates the water, greatly decreasing the corpse’s mass...

At this point, the organic powder is hygienic and odorless, and the remains can either be cremated or buried. Since the powder will not decompose if kept dry, there is no hurry for a burial. At the time of burial, the remains are laid in a coffin made of a biodegradable material such as corn starch and placed in a shallow grave. Depending on the wishes of the next of kin, a bush or tree can be planted above the coffin. Within 6-12 months, both the coffin and its contents will become loam, a high-nutrient soil that nourishes the plant growing above.

Personally, I'd like to have a Tibetan sky burial, but that seems impractical...

The newest trend: delayed funerals

An article in the StarTribune explains why more and more families are opting to delay funerals to a time that's more convenient for everyone.

When Sue Walker's dad died in January, she immediately began planning his services -- for July. To honor her father... Walker and far-flung family members will play some golf and cards, drink some scotch and "call it a day," she said. "If we can have everybody here and do something he loved, it will be more of a tribute," Walker said.

Although some funeral experts suggest immediate services to help in the grieving process, more families are waiting weeks or even months to hold memorials...

"Each circumstance is different," said Daniel McGraw of Gill Brothers Chapels. "My neighbor's mom just died and they just don't want to go out to the cemetery until the spring. ... Sometimes they don't want to pull the kids out of school or they have a long-planned vacation to Mexico and they don't want to lose the $1,000 they already paid for the trip."

In a few cases, people just have difficulty finding an open date in their hectic schedules.

"It's sad but true," McGraw said. "A lot of people's lives are busy, and they're postponing funerals for convenience's sake. It's a sign of the times."

...Although delayed funerals aren't the norm, funeral directors say they are becoming more frequent, coinciding with the increase in cremations. State statistics show 46.8 percent of those who died in Minnesota in 2009 were cremated, compared to 15.8 percent in 1990. Once Aunt Martha's body is cremated, it's a lot easier to hold her services weeks, if not months, later...

"Thirty or 40 years ago, everyone did it about the same," said Philip Sellew, University of Minnesota professor of classical and Near Eastern studies. That meant a two- to three-day visitation immediately after someone died followed by funeral services in the mortuary or a church, then a procession to the cemetery. A luncheon often followed the burial...

"It's an important family discussion," Ellis said. "What would Grandma want us to do? It could be that Grandma would really be pissed off if we were late to her funeral or postponed it. Or maybe Grandma would want us to go on vacation. ... It's all situational."

But don't wait too long, cautions Gill Brothers' McGraw. "They'll say they'll schedule in the spring, and then never do it. Out of sight, out of mind," he said. "I have a closet full of cremates."

More at the link. Photo credit Richard Sennott, Star Tribune.

Remembering the words of Ronald Reagan

The photo above shows Madison resident Philippa Bergman writing her words of protest on the pavement near the capitol.  For "paint" she is cleverly using mud, which will be washed away with the next rain. Here is her text:

"These are the values inspiring those brave workers in Poland ... They remind us that where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost." - Ronald Reagan

The words come from Reagan's 1980 Labor Day speech, during which he reminded listeners that he was president of his union (the Screen Actors Guild).

Photo credit Nataraj Hauser, in eyeDance - an excellent Madison blog for monitoring the activities of the legislature and the protests.  Lots of great pix.

Median age at first marriage

An interesting trend.

Posted by Dana Goldstein, via The Daily Dish.

Americans with(out) passports

This map was posted at Political Language, with these comments:

As with every social statistic applicable to the US there are geographic disparities. I couldn’t find exact figures for states, so I extrapolated zip code-based passport issuance data from the State Department to create a choropleth map of globetrotting & stay-at-home America.

These are very rough calculations, better for comparison than exact figures. There aren’t many surprises. Alaska & Hawaii... weighed in at 44% and 33% respectively, New Jersey was the only state approaching 50%, and West Virginia and Mississippi tied for last place at 13%.

Additional explanation at the link.  Since this was described as a "chloropleth" map, I had to look that up:

A choropleth map (Greek χώρος + πλήθω ("area/region" + "multiply") is a thematic map in which areas are shaded or patterned in proportion to the measurement of the statistical variable being displayed on the map... Choropleth maps are based on statistical data aggregated over previously defined regions (such as counties), in contrast to area-class and isarithmic maps, in which region boundaries are defined by data patterns. Thus, where defined regions are important to a discussion (as in an election map divided by electoral regions), choropleths are preferred...

Technical aspects of the color schemes at Wikipedia.

"Wet houses" (hospices for alcoholics)

I thought I was pretty well informed, but I've never heard of this before.  Excerpts from a story at TwinCities.com:

Hagerman has been drinking for 39 years. He drinks despite decades of lectures, prayers and punishment. He drinks despite two years of homelessness, six DWI convictions, six treatments for alcoholism and 13 months in jail. What's ahead for Hagerman? The 54-year-old can see only one thing in his future — more drinking.

That's why he feels lucky to live in a hospice for alcoholics — St. Anthony Residence in St. Paul. There, 60 men can — and often do — drink until they die. There are no counselors, no scolding, no 12-step programs, no group hugs. Just the love of Hagerman's life, waiting for him every day — alcohol. On his weeklong binges, he chugs vodka, beer or mouthwash. They are interchangeable to him, he said, gazing around his 12-by-12-foot concrete apartment.

"I drink," he said quietly, "until I kill the damn day off."

For three years, St. Anthony has been operated by Ramsey County, St. Paul, the state of Minnesota and Catholic Charities, at a cost of $18,000 per person per year. It's one of four so-called "wet houses" in the state. Like a growing number of wet houses across the country, it allows alcoholics to drink, even when it's killing them...

Once alcoholics become residents, the police know their names. If one is found passed out in a park, the police simply return him to St. Anthony — no ambulances, hospitals or trips to detox. If needed, residents get medical care from an in-house nurse. If they get sick, they go to a hospital.

And when they get extremely sick? There's an in-house hospice service. Three to five residents die every year....

Please read the entire article at the link before leaving any comments here.

Look at the shift in the voting electorate

In the 2008 presidential election year, young voters outnumbered older ones.  This year the ratio changed dramatically, with twice as many over-65s as under-30s.  Found at Yglesias.

Life expectancy after age 65

For all the gazillions of dollars spent on health care in the U.S., overall life expectancy is considerably lower than in other Western countries.  This discrepancy is often blamed on firearm and automobile deaths among younger people distorting the average life expectancy.

The graph above shows the gradually improving life expectancy of men aged 65 around the world.  Note that the U.S. (in red) is at the bottom of the group, and actually has been losing ground in the past couple decades.  Found at Yglesias, where there is also an almost identical graph for women at age 65.

Sitting Bull talks truth to power

In 1883, Sitting Bull was a guest of honor at the opening ceremonies for the Northern Pacific Railroad. When it was his turn to speak, he said in the Lakota language, ‘I hate all white people. You are thieves and liars. You have taken away our land and made us outcasts.’ A quick-thinking interpreter told the crowd the chief was happy to be there and that he looked forward to peace and prosperity with the white people. Sitting Bull received a standing ovation.

Via Miss Folly.

The "Geographic Divide" of U.S. military forces

An excerpt from an article at The Atlantic:

The social divisions of class and inequality have always run through the military. Fighting forces have long been drawn disproportionately from lower-income, lower-skilled, and more economically disadvantaged populations. But what is new, according to my colleague Patrick Adler at the Martin Prosperity Institute (MPI), is the degree to which those class divisions are underpinned by geography...

The data for the map are based on where the service member is based...

The variance across states is quite substantial: 13 states are home to fewer than ten military personnel per 10,000 people, while six states have more than ten times as much and three have more than 200 military personnel per 10,000 people... Aside from relatively high concentrations in Alaska, Hawaii, Washington state, and North Dakota, the military is overwhelmingly concentrated in two distinctive areas of the Sunbelt... The upper mid-west and the northeast, especially New England, which tend to be more liberal and left-leaning than the rest of the nation, have very low concentrations of military personnel.

Note the color scale at the bottom of the map reflects a 50-fold increase in density.  Another map and further discussion at the link.

The "Greatest Generation" vs. "The Boomers"

In an essay in this month's The Atlantic, Michael Kinsley compares the "Boomers" to their parents:

The indictment against the Baby Boom generation is familiar, way oversimplified, and only partly fair. In brief: the Boomers’ parents were the “Greatest Generation,” a coinage by Tom Brokaw that looks as if it will stick. Toughened by growing up through the Great Depression, the GGs heeded the call and saved the world in 1941–45. Then they returned home to build a prosperous society. They forthrightly addressed the nation’s biggest flaw (race relations), and defeated Communism on their way out the door. The GGs’ children, the Boomers, were “bred in at least modest comfort,” as the Port Huron Statement of 1962, the founding document of Students for a Democratic Society, startlingly concedes. They ducked the challenge of Vietnam—so much smaller than the military challenge their parents so triumphantly met. They made alienation fashionable and turned self-indulgence (sex, drugs, rock and roll, cappuccino makers, real estate, and so on) into a religion. Their initial suspicion of the Pentagon and two presidents, Johnson and Nixon, spread like kudzu into a general cynicism about all established institutions (Congress, churches, the media, you name it). This reflexive and crippling cynicism is now shared across the political spectrum. The Boomers ran up huge public and private debts, whose consequences are just beginning to play out. In the world that Boomers will pass along to their children, America is widely held in contempt, prosperity looks to more and more people like a mirage, and things are generally going to hell.

Then he offers the counterpoint:

This same story could be told with a different spin, of course. The so-called Greatest Generation came back from World War II to create a bland, soul-destroying prosperity, unequally shared, and then mired us in Vietnam, a war that should never have been fought. It was the Boomers, not the Greats, who forced the nation to address civil rights. And it was the Greats, not the Boomers, who got us addicted to debt. The GGs’ willfully blind sense of entitlement turned the government—and many private companies, too—into machines for taking money from working people and giving it to “seniors” (in amounts far in excess of what they had contributed). The collapse of the Soviet Union happened on their watch, but this victory was devalued by McCarthyism, the blacklist, CIA misbehavior, and, ultimately, Vietnam and Watergate. The Greats were the ones who got us into Vietnam and the Boomers were the ones who got us out. They did this by convincing a majority of the country that it was a mistake, which it was. (Their disinclination to kill and die for a mistake was, if not noble, certainly not cowardly.) Even as they “sold out” and eased into middle-class life, they changed it for the better. They made environmentalism, feminism, gay rights so deeply a part of middle-class culture that the terms themselves seem antiquated. They created an American popular culture—particularly music—that swept the world, and still dominates. They created the technological revolution that revived capitalism. And they did their share of sacrificing: they paid for their own schooling with student loans—becoming the first generation to enter adulthood already burdened by large debts. They also paid, publicly and privately, for their parents’ generation to retire in greater comfort than they themselves can reasonably expect. And now—talk about selfishness—many Boomers are supporting their children, too, into their 20s and beyond.

It's a very interesting article, which you can read in full at The Atlantic.

Marriage rates continue to decline in the U.S.

For the first time since the U.S. began tallying marriages, more Americans of prime marrying age have stayed single rather than tied the knot, the culmination of a tectonic shift in the role of marriage and relationships that began in the 1960s.

High divorce rates, rising co-habitation and a tendency to delay marriage are main factors.

Marriage rates among young adults have been dropping for decades. But data released Tuesday by the Census Bureau show that for the first time the proportion of people between the ages of 25 and 34 who have never been married exceeded those who were married in 2009—46.3% versus 44.9%...

The long-term slide in marriage rates has pushed the proportion of married adults of all ages to 52% in 2009, according to the Census, the lowest share in history. In 1960, 72.2% of adults over 18 were married...

A slowdown in marriage rates doesn't mean the end of cohabiting relationships. As marriage rates have fallen, the number of adults living together has skyrocketed, according to Mr. Mather's analysis. Men and women are living together as an alternative or a first step towards matrimony. While marriage has fallen among younger people, the probability of getting married at some point in life still remains at about 90%...

The rest of the story is at The Wall Street Journal.