Scary Stuff

No - this is not about the 'shutdown', though that is of course pretty scary. I thought i'd take a break from writing about that to cover a few things that got stuck in my queue after the semi-hiatus brought on by the stomach flu. As I looked over my collection, I realized I had a theme of scary stuff I had collected, and with Halloween just around the corner, why not go with it... so without further adieu, here's some

SCARY STUFF

(see - it's scary because it's in Trebuchet font and RED)

First up is this:

(http://www.willamette.edu/~gorr/classes/cs449/brain.html)

Normally, somebody digging up an old brain is really not news. I mean, a guy's got to eat, am I right? But this report of scientist finding a really old brain in Turkey caught my eye. It turns out that the 4000 year old brain was preserved when the owner was burnt, and buried by an earthquake, and died. Talk about having a really bad day. What's cool is what the scientist can learn from such old brain matter.

In other old head related news there is this:

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillotine

It turns out the the preserved head of Henry IV may not be real, according the DNA test. I had no idea that old heads were even a marketable items. I mean, if you are a collector, how do you show off your dead king head? I can also understand the problem of verifying the providence of such an item. With family lines being a mess and cross breeding and couplings, they couldn't even verify legitimacy when they were alive. In any case it's a preserved head, and that makes it scary.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St_georges_church_graveyard_Carrington_Greater_Manchester.jpg
no - this is not in Norway...

It seems that Norway has a problem with it's dead. They are apparently not decomposing fast enough to provide space for the newly dead. Isn't that always the way with old people? The problem it seems is that the dead were wrapped in plastic, so the decomposition process was halted. This means that in a country that is short of burial plots, when they went to bury aunt Sara in great grandpa's grave, he wasn't done with it yet. Their solution was to use tubes to 'inject' lime into the remains to help the tarrying bodies complete the natural process. I am thinking no one wants to claim the credit for that invention.

Moving on to the scary things in the land of the living (dead):

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/yourbusiness/9119812/British-business-is-a-land-of-the-living-dead.html

In another brilliant piece of jurist prudence, this guy just has to live with being declared dead. The truth is somewhat less entertaining. They guy left his wife and children, and after 8 years, she had him declared dead. This seems to me to be somewhat gaming the system. The wife got death benefits after the legal declaration of his death. Now the guy pops up and says he's alive and he wants is social security number back so he can get his retirement. I am guessing the best way for him to get it now is to say he is an illegal alien and get a green card. Hell is a demonstratively bad place and worthy of a grant asylum. He just have to prove that he came from there, which should be easy given the circumstances of how he left his wife, children, and and child support payments.

Turning to human organ related news:

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-immigration-activists-march-in-hollywood-20131005,0,1018467.story

It appears that citizenship and free government cheese is not all that the illegal aliens are after. Apparently, they want to jump in line for red, white, and blue organs too. It does kinda make sense. After all they didn't have to go through the normal process if immigration, so why should they be denied organs? Scary!!!

Finally this feel good story from mother Russia:

A grown up 'wild boy' is discovered in the vast forest of Siberia where he had been living for 16 years after being abandoned by his parents. The officials who found him took the necessary steps to integrate him back into society. Of course in Russia, all that means is that they issued him an ID. "Papers! You must have papers!!! How else will you get health care?"