Talking to the Ghost of Food

Larry Gonick's "Cartoon History of the Universe" is always relevant.

 

  It's good to state at the outset that the reason something was developed might not be the reason it stays successful. In a episode of Radiolab called "The Cataclysm Sentence" contributors were invited to offer the single most useful sentence of human knowledge to pass onto a post-human intelligence, and of course I sarted thinking what I'd choose. I'm not a scientist but I'd want to pass on some fun short-cut to generating curiosity: maybe something about doubling the length of a string, then comparing its pitch when plucked to see, or rather hear, that leap of an octave – or something about the law of gravity: the idea that the very fact of our existence makes us attractive. Cute facts.

 

 One contributor was the excellent youtube mortician Caitlin Doherty, who's appeared on this blog before. She suggested, "You will die. Aand that's the most important thing... so you have to have Religion, you have to have Communities. You have to have Art. Those are created by our fear, and our strange, difficult, weird relationship with Death." Which is one theory for the invention of all the above, but listening along as a fellow atheist, I realised it wasn't mine. 

 What if we created Religion around about the same time we became evolved enough to start wanting to enjoy life, and to realise that wanting to enjoying life had a moral dimension – and that eating meat meant taking a life, for example, but that we still liked the taste? What if we created therefore a way to look upon the world not simply as an environment, but as a provider? What if we developed Religion not to help us deal with death, but to help us deal with killing? As I said however, the reason something was invented isn't necessarily the reason it hangs around.

Here's the episode.

This is somewhere on the riverbank outside Kew.

Frankenstein Placeholder, Valentine's Edition: Necronanigans!

 Apologies again for not posting my ground-breaking "Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman" blog, but I promise it will absolutely change the history of cinema and entiely salvage the reputation of Bela Lugosi, so hold tight. In the meanime, here's something appalling I learnt from my friend Michelle earlier this week. Above is a photo of the "vehicle" in which "Count" Carl Tanzler hoped to take Elena de Hoyos high into the stratosphere, restoring her corpse to life with cosmic rays. This is Tanzler building it.

 The flight never happened however, and what he did with Hoyos' body in the intervening nine NOPE years, including paying for a mausoleum NOPE to which only he had the key NOPE is as far as we can NOPE NOPE know recounted in appropriately rueful detail by mortician Caitlin Doughty below. "The public mood was generally sympathetic NOPE to Tanzler," wikipedia notes NOPES, "whom many viewed as an eccentric 'romantic'" NOPE NOPE NOPE although you'd hope a more modern NOPE public would NOPE at least NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!