June 2012
23 posts
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Should one attend the funeral of a 'virtual... →
As I mourn the death of a friend I made on a cricket forum, I am left pondering when a cyber friendship becomes a ‘real’ one…
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Top 10 Famous Stolen Body Parts →
In a ceremony on May 9, a French museum in the town of Rouen returned to officials from New Zealand the embalmed head of a Maori warrior, which had languished in the museum as an exotic collectible for over a century. TIME takes a look at history’s other notable pilfered remains…
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Brains in jars: artists' fascination with anatomy →
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10 Weirdest Ways That Ancient Rulers Died →
One of the most shocking things aboutGame of Thrones is the brutal and often bizarre ways that the nobles and princes kick the bucket — but George R.R. Martin’s horrifying story is pretty close to historical realism. Many historical leaders snuffed it in bizarre, insane ways, from being smothered by coats to, yes, drinking molten gold.
Here are 10 completely strange and terrible deaths...
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The Meaning of Death: How do we know someone is no... →
At what point does a person actually die? That depends on who you ask. To one person, it’s the moment the heart stops beating. To another, it’s when the brain enters a “vegetative” state. But a heart can be forced to keep beating; and how dead is a person, really, if she can continue to grow, develop, and even give birth after experiencing “brain death”?
In...
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So you want to hang your skeleton in public?... →
We had a human skeleton in our biology class in high school. I remember thinking it was shorter than I expected, but I didn’t know how, exactly, it ended up in our classroom. I suppose I assumed grave robbers, which lent a adventurous air to our teacher. But in fact, there are much more legitimate ways for a classroom or other teaching institution to obtain a human skeleton.
What if you...
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London 2012: 50 of the best unusual museums in... →
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'Death has not required us to keep a day free' →
For the Love of God, Damien Hirst’s diamond-encrusted skull, has already become one of the most talked about works of art in recent years, but what was the inspiration behind it? With a major retrospective of his work currently on show at Tate Modern, Hirst reveals its Mexican roots…
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Watch
City holds Zombie Apocalypse Day to prepare officials for invasion of undead (well, it is Stephen King’s hometown)
With a recent spate of bizarre ‘flesh-eating’ criminals being arrested across the U.S., there have been rumours of a pending ‘zombie apocalypse’.
And one New England town is taking no chances - it has just held a Zombie Apocalypse Day to train...
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Co-op funeral firm piled naked bodies up in grim... →
Britain’s biggest funeral firm has been accused of treating the dead with shocking disrespect and stacking bodies ‘like television sets’ at industrial-scale storage units.
Instead of being kept in a chapel of rest before burial or cremation, the dead are kept among ‘rack upon rack of bodies’ in a warehouse-style ‘hub’.
An undercover investigation revealed overworked staff were ‘treating bodies...
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hobbithalfguard asked: I just want to say that I really, really, really love this blog.
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WatchInside Skulls Unlimited…a very unusual family business! (WARNING: this video is probably not for those of a sensitive disposition!)
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So…it would appear that I have posted diddly-squat here since March. What can I say? Life got in the way, it happens. However, I report back to you with BIG NEWS. I have won one of those lesser-spotted, fully-funded PhD studentships in archaeology and as of September, I will be living and breathing death, dying and the dead. HURRAH!
At some point, all of this will sink in but for the...
