RelentlesslyOptimistic

Metal from people's cremated remains recycled to make road signs

Metal body parts from the dead are being recycled into road signs, lamp posts, car parts and aircraft engines. Steel hips, plates and screws from legs and skulls are collected after cremation and sent off for recycling. Even metal plates from false teeth and tiny fragments from fillings can be recovered and re-used, together with metal fittings on coffins. High value metals which survive the 1000-degree cremation are then sold for use in the automobile and aeronautical industries.

Money made is donated to charity and almost £1million has been raised for good causes since the project began in Britain in 2004.

via arbroath.blogspot.com

Asbestos-contaminated tarantula could be on the loose!

"A web of intrigue surrounds a gruesome discovery in a 19th century attic – where a large tarantula skin, potentially contaminated with asbestos, has been found. The shock find was made during a routine survey by Cardiff asbestos specialists Kusten Vorland.

...Although it had been assumed Katie had stumbled on a dead tarantula, when we showed the evidence to Cardiff Reptile Centre, they said the bagged exhibit was just a shed skin - meaning the spider, thought to be a Chilean Rose Tarantula, could still be at large."

via arbroath.blogspot.com

There Are Whales Alive Today Who Were Born Before Moby Dick Was Written

"In Alaska’s North Slope, the population of bowhead whales seems to be recovering. But that’s really not the coolest part of this Alaska Dispatch story. Instead, it’s this, noticed by Geoffry Gagnon"

"Bowheads seem to be recovering from the harvest of Yankee commercial whaling from 1848 to 1915, which wiped out all but 1,000 or so animals. Because the creatures can live longer than 200 years — a fact [Craig] George discovered when he found an old stone harpoon point in a whale — some of the bowheads alive today may have themselves dodged the barbed steel points of the Yankee whalers."

Read the rest at blogs.smithsonianmag.com

Earth's temperature from 1880 to the present — in 26 seconds (video)

[via NASA and Kay (Leah)]

via www.bookofjoe.com

Misguided fund-raisers, Episode 9

via www.criggo.com, image from picasaweb.google.com

Cut Leaf Illustrations

via www.thisiscolossal.com

When the EPA is gone we'll have REAL freedom

via afternoonsnoozebutton.com

KC is #26 on the list of the most dangerous cities for walking in the U.S.

From nytimes.com via www.bookofjoe.com

I miss being a tree

via wins.failblog.org

Your consumer lifestyle

via fuckhappiness.com

Radiation Dose Chart from XKCD

Note the caveat that this is "for general education only. If you're basing radiation safety procedures on an internet PNG image and things go wrong, you have no one but yourself to blame."

Thanks, Genesis!

via xkcd.com

Taking the tree-hugger bit too far

via pictureisunrelated.memebase.com

60 Wild Coyotes Patrol Chicago

 

"Chicago's Cook County now has over 60 coyotes fitted with radio collars (plus a good many uncollared ones) roaming parks, alleys, yards and thoroughfares in one of the biggest cities in America. The animals earn their keep eating small rodents, especially rats and voles. The Cook County, Illinois, Coyote Project calls itself "the largest urban study of coyotes in the world.""

From www.npr.org via Woosk

I like it, even though it no longer works as a chant

via meagainstthem.com

Cool Graph/maps: World population by latitude and longitude

Bill Rankin

created these maps.

[via Nuclear Toast and paul.kedroskey.com]

via www.bookofjoe.com