The Forever Fernwood cemetery in Mill Valley, Calif., goes even further, according to an October Los Angeles Times story, banning grave markers, but, said the owner, “We issue the family a Google map with the GPS coordinates” so they can find their loved one.

Why not require grave markers that will last not that much longer than the person's friends and family, like say... I don't know... wood?

I want to be planted in a fairly nice place with an oak tree planted in my navel so whatever nutients are left in my remains they will feed the tree. No embalming.

It would also be good if it could be a place where they are not thinking of putting the new highway through.

It is interesting to note that there are more people alive today, right this moment than all the people who have live and died in the history of the planet.

I wonder how many tombstones there would be if there was one for every dead squirrel.

I believe in global warming and all, but this is REDICULOUS.

Letting a political idiology get in the way of people burying their loved one as they wish is disgraceful.

It is the same principle used by that crazy Westboro Baptist Church group.

I'm all for it.

And please plant a tree on top of mine. Preferably an oak or something that will live a long time.

Randy @ 8:

I believe in global warming and all, but this is REDICULOUS.

Letting a political idiology get in the way of people burying their loved one as they wish is disgraceful.

It is the same principle used by that crazy Westboro Baptist Church group.

I think it is an option not a new federal law or nuthin'.

At least Conan O' Brien loves his writers.

Toyota hates its employees.

Putin hates treaties.

this is fucking stupid

first off, every jewish cemetary is green....or wood be were it not for local ordanances that require the casket to be surrounded by cement in order to not pollute ground water

that's right folks...the jewish people dont get embalmed and are buried in simple pine caskets

xoites defends Constitution @ 21:

mo_dems @ 17:

xoites defends Constitution @ 6:

It is interesting to note that there are more people alive today, right this moment than all the people who have live and died in the history of the planet.

I wonder how many tombstones there would be if there was one for every dead squirrel.

Not true. Common myth that's been around since the 70s.

Are you sure it is not true?

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa004&articleID=09E07C6F-E7F2-99...

mo_dems @ 17:

xoites defends Constitution @ 6:

It is interesting to note that there are more people alive today, right this moment than all the people who have live and died in the history of the planet.

I wonder how many tombstones there would be if there was one for every dead squirrel.

Not true. Common myth that's been around since the 70s.

Looking at this i am inclined to agree with you.

xoites defends Constitution @ 6:

It is interesting to note that there are more people alive today, right this moment than all the people who have live and died in the history of the planet.

I wonder how many tombstones there would be if there was one for every dead squirrel.

xoites defends Constitution @ 6:

It is interesting to note that there are more people alive today, right this moment than all the people who have live and died in the history of the planet.

I wonder how many tombstones there would be if there was one for every dead squirrel.

In the alternate universe, where they buried all the squirrels, the dogs solved the tombstone problem by collecting them and using them as chips in their Hold 'Em games.

The Again...

Tequila @ 18:

Putin hates treaties.

Bush hates treaties too. Maybe this is what Bush meant when "he saw Putin's soul" in his eyes... or whatever the fuck that was.

OUTING A CIA AGENT IN TIME OF WAR IS TREASON AGAINST THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Call Nancy Pelosi @1-202-225-0100 and DEMAND IMPEACHMENT.

The Zoroastrians have the most green way to go. Expose the body to be eaten by or weathered to dust.

November 30th, 2007 at 9:27 PM - PST

The Zoroastrians have an interesting religion. There are still small pockets of them in India (forced from persia by the Muslims).

For poor families, who can't afford a GPS to locate their loved ones, they could just sprinkle their loved one's corpse with plutonium, and pick up a used Geiger counter, which are available, real cheap, at almost any pawn shop near the testing sites in New Mexico.

For those who would like to go the cryogenic route, but can't afford it, have yourself cremated, and arrange for a small pinch of your ashes to be placed way back in the corner of a McDonald's freezer. They'll still be there in a hundred years.

I already have my funeral pyre built in my back yard. It's disguised as a barbeque pit/smokehouse.

Okay, now this is just stupid. Number one, I'd like to know what is wrong with ROCK, which is a naturally occurring abiotic factor found in every environmental niche everywhere in the world, being used for grave markers. Number two, yes, metal coffins, pointless as they are (most of them buckle and crack under the weight of the earth) are not exactly bidogradeable, but there's nothing in metal, even processed metal, that isn't already naturally occurring. I can think of rust being a cause for concern for some people, but they need to take geology; any kind of red soil gets its coloration from oxidation, and red clay isn't exactly barren. Number three, if there's concern about polluting ground water, map out burial sites to make sure the water table is below a certain depth, possibly add special soil, and dump the bodies in the ground; the soil will filter the water naturally. Embalming fluid might be a BIT of a problem, but I repeat: there's nothing produced by decaying matter that's new to the environment. If death juice were an environmental hazard, the planet would have been devoid of greenery by the early Triassic.

Dear C&Lers:

Check this article out. It is somewhat frightening, but very familiar to the goals of the GOP and their lackey's. Truth telling is not of course a high priority of the GOP. They are taught to conceal their real aims which are rooted in Dominionism or also known as Fascism....it is funny listening to their rants over "IslamoFascism" when the likes of Rick Santorum and Tom DeLay would kill gays and lesbians, secular humanists, and anyone else who does not follow their way of the Bible to the utmost. Bush as you will see from this article is a liar and yes evil as much as Hitler was. Pat Robertson is also evil as this article will show you all.

I urge all of you to read this article (I included an excerpt below), and pass it on to others:

The Despoiling of America: How George W. Bush became the head of the new American Dominionist Church/State
By Katherine Yurica
With Editorial and Research Assistant Laurie Hall
February 11, 2004

The First Prince of the Theocratic States of America

It happened quietly, with barely a mention in the media. Only the Washington Post dutifully reported it.[1] And only Kevin Phillips saw its significance in his new book, American Dynasty.[2] On December 24, 2001, Pat Robertson resigned his position as President of the Christian Coalition.

Behind the scenes religious conservatives were abuzz with excitement. They believed Robertson had stepped down to allow the ascendance of the President of the United States of America to take his rightful place as the head of the true American Holy Christian Church.

Robertson’s act was symbolic, but it carried a secret and solemn revelation to the faithful. It was the signal that the Bush administration was a government under God that was led by an anointed President who would be the first regent in a dynasty of regents awaiting the return of Jesus to earth. The President would now be the minister through whom God would execute His will in the nation. George W. Bush accepted his scepter and his sword with humility, grace and a sense of exultation.

As Antonin Scalia, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court explained a few months later, the Bible teaches and Christians believe “… that government …derives its moral authority from God. Government is the ‘minister of God’ with powers to ‘revenge,’ to ‘execute wrath,’ including even wrath by the sword…”[3]

George W. Bush began to wield the sword of God’s revenge with relish from the beginning of his administration, but most of us missed the sword play. I have taken the liberty to paraphrase an illustration from Leo Strauss, the father of the neo-conservative movement, which gives us a clue of how the hiding is done:
“One ought not to say to those whom one wants to kill, ‘Give me your votes, because your votes will enable me to kill you and I want to kill you,’ but merely, ‘Give me your votes,’ for once you have the power of the votes in your hand, you can satisfy your desire.”[4]

Notwithstanding the advice, the President’s foreign policy revealed a flair for saber rattling. He warned the world that “nations are either with us or they’re against us!” His speeches, often containing allusions to biblical passages, were spoken with the certainty of a man who holds the authority of God’s wrath on earth, for he not only challenged the evil nations of the world, singling out Iraq, Syria, Iran, and North Korea as the “axis of evil,” but he wielded the sword of punishment and the sword of revenge against his own people: the American poor and the middle class who according to the religious right have earned God’s wrath by their licentiousness and undisciplined lives.

To the middle class he said, “I’m going to give you clear skies clean air and clean water,” then he gutted the environmental controls that were designed to provide clean air and water. The estimated number of premature deaths that will result: 100,000.[5] He said to the poor and to the middle class: “I’m going to give you a prescription drug program, one that you truly deserve.” Then he gave the drug industry an estimated $139 billion dollars in increased profits from the Medicare funds and arranged for the poorest of seniors to be eliminated from coverage, while most elderly will pay more for drugs than they paid before his drug benefit bill passed.[6] After that he arranged for the dismantling of the Medicare program entirely, based on the method outlined by his religious mentors.[7] He said to the people of America, “I’m going to build a future for you and your children,” then he gutted their future with tax breaks to the rich and a pre-emptive war against Iraq, and the largest spending deficit in history.[8]

This article is the documented story of how a political religious movement called Dominionism gained control of the Republican Party, then took over Congress, then took over the White House, and now is sealing the conversion of America to a theocracy by taking over the American Judiciary. It’s the story of why and how “the wrath of God Almighty” will be unleashed against the middle class, against the poor, and against the elderly and sick of this nation by George W. Bush and his army of Republican Dominionist “rulers.”

Read the entire---very long article @:
http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/TheDespoilingOfAmerica.htm

They could save on the maps and the GPS systems, not to mention the land, by burying them vertically, and letting the head stick out.

Mr. XXXX @ 44:

Dear C&Lers:

Check this article out. It is somewhat frightening, but very familiar to the goals of the GOP and their lackey's. Truth telling is not of course a high priority of the GOP. They are taught to conceal their real aims which are rooted in Dominionism or also known as Fascism....it is funny listening to their rants over "IslamoFascism" when the likes of Rick Santorum and Tom DeLay would kill gays and lesbians, secular humanists, and anyone else who does not follow their way of the Bible to the utmost. Bush as you will see from this article is a liar and yes evil as much as Hitler was. Pat Robertson is also evil as this article will show you all.

I urge all of you to read this article (I included an excerpt below), and pass it on to others: The Despoiling of America: How George W. Bush became the head of the new American Dominionist Church/State by Katherine Yurica

Read the entire---very long article @:

FIFY

Preacher Boob @ 47:

Ahlyssah @ 45:

Why do we have such a hard time staying on topic? This isn't even going off on tangents, a perfectly normal phenomenon associated with people who think and apply information to experiences or related thoughts. Please, if you want to plug your opinion, at least do it on an open thread.

This is an open thread

I beg everyone's pardon.

Read Katherine Albrecht's fine book "Spychips" which talks about RFID tags and other like topics as this one.

As she says, before long, we will all be chipped and monitored. For the time being these ghouls are in their experimentation stages...its still not too late to leave AmeriKKKa.

Mr. XXXX @ 53:

Ahlyssah @ 51:

Mr. XXXX @ 49:

Religious leaders in America are EVIL!!!!

All of them!!!!

I have no trust with people who claim to have a "faith in God." I do not care who I am offending either. The religious people of America have helped destroy the nation. The religious people in America want the poor and middle class to die as the article above shows. Religious people are all Dominionists when it comes down to it anyway. Religion SUCKS!!!!

Religious people like Pat Robertson are evil personified and anyone associated with him and his kind are evil, evil, evil, and bloodthirsty to see people die, starve, and rot away as they collect their filthy money from the wars they create all in the name of "God" but really these people are from the serpents....Religious people in America today are nothing but money-hungry and war-whoring thugs, who are treated by their religious leaders as the mindless heathens they are.....

I don't think that's fair, at all.

That whole statement is like saying that all black people are violent criminals based on news stories about two or three murders. Just because someone is a high-profile personality, it does not mean that they are representative of their population. Christ, you're just as bad as Robertson for making these statements as he was when he said that feminism causes women to become lesbians and kill their children.

And I'm a witch, so I have no bias here aside from common sense and experience with religious people.

You are wrong just like those who were silent as the Nazis came to power and refused to see their evil because they would have been accused by others as yourself saying: Christ, you're just as bad as Robertson for making these statements as he was when he said that feminism causes women to become lesbians and kill their children.

Wake up to reality and understand what and who these people are and why America is in the position its in. Obviously, and I am sure not your own fault do not understand the evils of Pat Robertson and the dictators he has been in bed with over the years and that he has run missions with various militaries in the past as they killed innocent people, as in Central America back in the 1980s....

No, I am not as bad as Robertson. I do not wish people killed or blame AIDS as a "gay disease" and promote death and destruction. I think perhaps, you need to check some reality and wake up and fast!

Yes, you are.

Hitler didn't come out and tell people to kill Jews (you made the reference first), he made them the antagonists, then the threat, then the evil force. What's different here? Saying someone is evil is saying someone doesn't deserve to be around. How long until you start preaching execution of Christians and Jews? Of Muslims? Of Hindus?

Plastic isn't the bag for many Africans.

Mr. XXXX @ 57:

54--Ahlyssah Says:

Me thinks you are either a right-wing Internet Rover or better yet, part of the "Witches for Pat Robertson" brigade. Either way, I think you are a fake and a right wing plant here on C&L....Nobody in their right mind would say Pat Robertson deserves others to be justify his kind until he stops his evil ways....

Where does it say that others must tolerate and rationalize the likes of the Christian right and Dominionists? Are you aware that your type of "moral relativism/cultural relativism" is rejected by the likes of Pat Robertson, the Christian right and the Dominionists? Do you know that the Dominionists, of they held ultimate power would seek the death penalty of witches?

Check yourself dear....understand what is around you and the rest of the population who do not share the Nazi views of the Christian right, Pat Robertson, and the Dominionists!

We're not talking morality here, we're talking about whether or not you can see past the media and observe actual, living people. And please, don't call me right wing; if anything I'm just not the exact opposite of a crazy anti-everything Christian like you. Black and white is for murderers and sociopaths, not sensible people. I see what is around me: people who hold jobs, talk to their coworkers, buy food at the supermarket, help their kids with homework. Some of them are atheist, some Christian, a few agnos and a couple of Jews. Nothing about putting an end to homosexuality, nor about killing doctors who perform abortions, not about throwing wrenches into lumber machinery and potentially killing nearby workers with flying debris. Fun fact: sensible people don't get a lot of attention, because they aren't bad news. I thought you super liberal types were supposed to be all anti-big media, but it looks like you can't divert your focus from your TV.

And frankly, let Robertson try to sentence non-Christians to death. The vast majority of Christians are opposed to killing, even if they aren't happy with someone's beliefs. There's no way more than a fraction of a fraction of a percent would even quietly agree with him.

Talk to people. You've been a hermit long enough.

so what happens to a soldiers body that comes back after he's been breathing in all that depleted uranium dust ?

Mr. XXXX @ 49 "The religious people of America have helped destroy the nation."

Some fake fundamentalists make enough billions in their blood diamond factories in Africa that they are part of the very real evil that is destroying America (or trying to).

That's not 'religious people of America.'

Historically, consider the case of Martin Luther King Jr. or Woodrow Wilson.

Alive now, consider President Carter, Jesse Jackson Junior, Barack Obama or Rev. Sharpton. The REAL religious heroes are still working to repair the damage done by this handful of fake preacher slaveowners like Robertson.

CD @ 1:

“We issue the family a Google map with the GPS coordinates” so they can find their loved one."

Creepy.

But to each his own I guess.

I like the idea. (Kind of... better not get the data mixed up on a geocaching site... that could get ugly... markers serve a purpose.) I have NO idea how that really relates to global warming though. Just a good idea.

But the practice of pumping dead bodies that used to be people full of formaldehyde and other nasty stuff? Why? How selfish of the living. Divorcing the remains of that person from the natural environment that created them. A very childish pretense of life, we paint their faces and pose them just so... then throw them in a metal box so they rot into goo rather than decay normally... to me that's creepy. Dead is dead, decay is going to happen. Return their bodies to the thirsty plants, and let them go. Can't we leave "zombification" and corpse worship in our past? I suppose a sky burial to give back to the eagles and crows is out of the question, but that wouldn't be so bad... (yes, I know the formaldehyde and methanol eventually go away)

Probably asking too much of modern society. I fully expect to see some giant gawdy red grave marker of plastic that proclaims "Here lies 'urmama3847', level 90 Orc Shaman. A noble death for the Horde!" over a body shrink-wrapped in cellophane, preserved with that orange stuff from Cheetos, and buried with an iPhone and a Nintendo.

I agree with the others, that a tree is a better monument. I guess it adds a new gravity to that old question, "If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?"

I suppose everyone wanting to be a Giant Sequoia would get out of control... hmm, maybe a Black Walnut, or just a plain old Ponderosa Pine...

Ok - OK - OK ---

Something more UPlifting, I have posted the O'Reilly Comic Book - the one seen on Keith Olbermann last night from 'The Village Voice' - at my site.

FUNNNNEEEEEE!

I'm all for the enviroment but the grave marker thing is just fucking stupid. You know why they don't want grave markers? It's so that they can reuse the land by dumping multiple coffins in the ground or dig up any area and put more coffins in the spot. This is bullshit.

Here's a thought experiment.

First, sit back, get really, really comfortable, do a mantra or whatever, become at total peace with the world.

Now, imagine that you are omnipotent, omniscient, THE all-powerful ONE, 'GOD'.

You have created the universe, the cosmos, all for the purpose of providing a place for EARTH, in order to provide a home for MAN, whom you created in YOUR IMAGE.

But you have other interests, too (I'll leave those to your imaginations), so you need some representatives, some PR types, to keep an eye on things on earth for you while you're 'otherwise engaged' (hint: it may have something to do with gaggles of virgins, but maybe not, what do I know). Anyway, you need some reps.

Who you gonna choose?

Robertson!!?? Nawww. HaGee?????????? Christ, no. Dobson?? HAWWWWWWWWW! (heavenly peal of laughter) Haggard? Who's Haggard, oh, that Colorado freak!! Falwell!? He's already in the Pit. Sharpton?!?! HAW, HAW,HAW! He's funny! The Pope???????Never met him, but he's too old, too rich, and he thinks HE's ME.

Well, Jaysus Christopher, ain't this the pits! I gotta do everything myself!!

Leave it to these nuts, they would rent out the back of grave markers as billboard space if the price is right.

DaveM @ 59:

im sorry, but how does engraved stone contribute to carbon foot print?

It takes an awful lot of energy to mine, shape and transport all that stone. Obviously the rock itself does not give off co2. Quarrying also creates huge gaping holes in the ground which are, at least for tyheir lifetime, an environmental disaster.

I recently asked a funeral director about my personal wish...to be buried at sea, in a plain canvas bag like thge old-time sailors were. He told me that it was possible, but only with a SPECIAL PERMIT FROM THE NAVY, which could take months to get. What bullshit!
Stone grave markers are not pollutants. It is amazing how far overboard some people go in their quest for whatever self-righteious silliness they profess.

Terrible @ 5:

"news of the weird"?

Sounds like news of the sensible to me.

Thanks - I was going to say that

CIA learned lessons of the Shah overthrow, and applying them in Venezuela. GOP used same tactics against Kerry.

How much data does NSA provide to CIA-GOP to monitor effectiveness of these approaches used stateside?

Wondering @ 81:

What will it take to remove all the roadblocks to an impeachment investigation?

The dems letting their testicles drop, maybe?