Slashdot Mirror
TV Show Seeks Terminally Ill Volunteer for Mummification
Terminal illness got you down? Does your future seems bleak? Channel 4 and production company Fulcrum TV would like to brighten your day by making you the star of an upcoming documentary. They would like to offer you the chance to be mummified on TV and maybe even displayed in a museum afterward. An advertisement for the project reads: "We are currently keen to talk to some one who, faced with the knowledge of their own terminal illness and all that it entails, would nonetheless consider undergoing the process of an ancient Egyptian embalming."
That is like saying that solar power isn't a renewable resource because eventually the Sun will die in 5+ billion years. It may be technically true but not meaningfully so.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Because obviously they'd like to get some filming done before May Sweeps... this is show business, you know. Can't be waiting for you to croak 20 or 30 years down the line...
Because they're looking to cash in on the morbid fascination of seeing a sexy, healthy-looking person who died of some non-obvious disease (such as certain cancers) get stripped down and cut to pieces.
It's much less can't-look-away horrifying if they're cutting up an 80-year-old. Who'll want to buy ads in THAT half-hour?
We all "know we are going to die"
Well yeah, obviously, but that's completely different to being told "two months".
It's for science!
No, it's for "science."
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
So it's not just me that sees shows like Mythbusters as an intellectual version of Jackass.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
And slashdot, of course.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
We all "know we are going to die".
Not really, no. I'm serious. One thing that humans are fascinatingly good at is ignoring this "knowledge". There's some brain research that shows evidence of our brains actually being wired up so that we avoid facing this, on very low-levels. In other words: It's not a conscious decision, not even an unconscious one. Runs a lot deeper than that.
So, it's only true for broad definitions of "know". Yes, the fact is recallable from memory. But your brain goes to great lengths to ignore it, and almost always when you actually do recall it, it has about the same emotional impact as last year's sports numbers. Actually, for sports fans, less than that. But it shouldn't. Ever wondered why that is? Now you know. For some definitions of "know". :-)
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Staring the most famous politicians of the world!
Then do a follow up season with dictator leaders, soap opera celebrities, ..
What the hell do you care? It's not like you're going to be lying there thinking, "Aw man, this really sucks!"
My family has approached me a few times about what I want to be done with my body when I die. My answer is always the same. I want what organs might be useful donated. After that, I really don't care. Bury me, cremate me, donate me to science, do whatever gives you what comfort and solace you need, because that's not me.
When my mom passed away, which is by far the single most gut-wrenching experience I've ever been through in my life, that thought was the only thing that got me through the funeral without totally falling apart. My mom was a lot more than just the collection of organic molecules that lay before me, and she's gone. I appreciate the body that lay before me; it was her "house" for 60 years and allowed me to see her, talk to her, interact with her, and love her. But the house was now empty. Sad, for sure, but it wasn't the loss of the house I was mourning.
So yeah, once I'm gone, you can pull my brains out through my nose and make gut soup for all I care. It was just my house, and I don't live there any more.