Bad news for cows and graveyards
March 27, 2006
The game, not the blog. At least, that was the first thought when I read this article in WaPo. Next was of the conversation between Oedipa Maas and Dr. Hilarious in The Crying of Lot 49. Btw, I love in the comments on the book in Amazon how one of the reviewers writes, “so porely constructed all reviewers who herald it should be lead directly to the meat grinders. A book worthy of burning.” Ignoring the spelling mistake (as I excuse them since I make so many on my own), I just think this has a wonderful tie in with my last post regarding the conservative t-shirt sales. I’m really alarmed that people say things like this. Some person I have never met has asseted that I should be murdered. Does this not faze anyone else?
- Thanks to Josh for this post in a comment, the Army is now acknowledging peak oil. The first line of the strategic report looks like it was taken almost directly from Matt Simmons. This article writes, “Overall this is surprisingly green sounding advice.” That in some ways misses the point. “Green” has nothing to do with it, this is about necessity. Although, the “green” movement has been trying to make that case for some time. Why let advocates give hard, sober economic analysis when you can just label them “tree-huggers” and move on.
- A case for behavioral economics. I am fascinated by this new turn in economic studies. On the one hand, I think expected rational behavior is still valuable as a model for comparison. On the other hand, I think that there are lots of human behaviors where the hand has already been forced for the individual before a choice is ever presented in things that “old school” economics would clearly look at a choice settings. I think this will be an interesting disicplinary dialogue to follow through the years.
- DC United ended last season with a spitting incident and start this year with a racism incident. Good form guys.
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As Phil can attest, this graveyard movement is OK by me so long as teh graveyards that are in the backyard of someone selling roadside barbecue are the first in line
There must be a better way to dispose of human remains. Graves just frighten young people, burden grown people, and impede land use. Only nuclear or hazardous waste condemns land more permanently than a grave.
It’s funny, but as much as I find myself bored by the corpse-rights movement, I still suspect that we’re stuck burying them. I’m personally hoping my bits will live on as donations, but this sense that there’s still a person “resting” at the location of a grave centuries after burial strikes me as absurd. The whole line about the the way we treat our dead being a window into our treatment of the living is just hooey. We ought to spend all that energy on someone who can actually appreciate it!
That said, repurposing those graves as parking lots feels like an impoverished version of my preferred resolute secularism. It’s the whole being-towards-death thing again, isn’t it. Sigh.