Boar Tits

"Useless as tits on a boar hog" was always a popular saying in my youth.
Today, we, the American public observe something that beats that by a mile for utter, complete uselessness, probably several times daily. ".9" Yes, point 9.
A week or so ago, a new gas station was being built near my abode. The price sign arrived and was installed with the advertised price of 00.9 - they already KNEW that that ridiculous .9 was going to follow whatever else they could gouge you for. I did think the 00.9 price was a bargain so I stopped in several times but couldn't get the pumps to work.
Are we the only idiot country in the world or is gas XXX.9 Kopeks in Russia or XXX.9 euros throughout Europe?
Let us all volunteer to pay that extra mill per gallon (adding 2 cents to a 20 gallon fill-up) and get rid of those pointless point 9 signs.
Pray for sanity,
RevS

Pfizer Phizzes

A follow up to my September post about wastefulness, I got a call from a Pfizer representative who told me they did make a "ninety" pack which only contained one inhaler. So far, so good. I ordered a three month supply from Medco (my drug plan), knowing I was doing my part in ridding the environment of excess inhalers - WRONG! My three month supply (90 pills) came in three "thirty packs", each with their own brand new inhaler. Sigh...
Update: Medco has e mailed me and said that henceforth my refills for 90 pills will come in the "ninety pack" with only one inhaler. One small step for reducing the landfills.

Resomation

The cremation rate has been on a brisk rise in the United States, in part because cremation is cheaper than burial and saves land. But powering a crematorium requires an enormous amount of gas and also sends carbon dioxide and other pollutants skyward. Enter resomation, an alternative to cremation for the eco-conscious cadaver. SANDY SULLIVAN
ILLUSTRATION BY CATH RILEY Resomation is a process that liquefies rather than burns body tissues. It uses about a sixth of the energy of cremation and has a much smaller carbon footprint, according to Sandy Sullivan, the managing director of Resomation, a company in Scotland that has designed a resomation machine. The Mayo Clinic in Minnesota has been using a similar system since 2006 to dispose of donated bodies, but this year the first commercial Resomator is being installed at a funeral home in Florida, one of three states where the process is legal.

Resomation (a neologism meant to suggest rebirth) was first proposed for use in Europe as a method of disposing of cows infected by bovine spongiform encephalopathy. The corpse is placed in a pressurized chamber. The vessel is then filled with water and potassium hydroxide, creating a highly alkaline solution, and heated to 330 degrees. After about three hours, all that's left are a soft, white calcium phosphate from bone and teeth and a light brown primordial soup of amino acids and peptides. Bodies buried underground decompose in the same way, albeit over many years and aided by microorganisms.

Unlike cremation, resomation doesn't vaporize the toxic mercury of dental fillings and doesn't char joint implants, leaving them clean, shiny and potentially recyclable. The bone and tooth material can be ground into a fine ash, as with traditional cremains. The brown liquid, because it's sterile, can go down the drain. "There's no genetic material in it at all; it's just basic organic materials," Sullivan assures. "You might get some people who say they want the fluid as well, but at the end of the day, it's best to send it to the water treatment plant so it ends up back on the land, as nature intended it to." RUTH DAVIS KONIGSBERG