Gizmodo: cremation

Swedish Town Using Cremation Heat to Warm Houses

Adam Frucci — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 13:15:00 EST

Is this Swedish town that's routing heat from its crematorium to local homes morbid or brilliant? Let's just call them brilliantly morbid.

The town of Halmstad came up with the idea when trying to curb the amount of smoke emitted from the crematorium.

It was when we were discussing all these environmental issues that we started thinking about the energy that is used in the cremations and realised that instead of all that heat just going up into the air, we could make use of it somehow. It was just rising into the skies for nothing," said Lennart Andersson, the director of the cemetery in the town of Halmstad.

It might sound kind of gross, but if you were suddenly having your house heated for free this winter I don't think you'd complain that much. [Treehugger]

Weather Rocket Causes a Wang to Explode During Cremation

Andi Wang — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 22:40:13 EST

A Chinese man, killed by a weather rocket, was thought to have died from getting struck by lightning until his body exploded at his own funeral.

Wang Diange was attending a wake in his home when an explosion took off half of his roof and left him dead in the wreckage. Because it had been a stormy day, family members and the police assumed that lightning was what killed Wang and left half of his home in ruins.

However, as Wang was being placed into the cremation chamber at his own funeral, his body exploded, causing the chamber's oven doors to fly off their hinges. Only then, spectators discovered a small piece of twisted metal, which led them to what really killed Mr. Wang:

A small weather rocket filled with silver iodide—shot into the sky in order to break up hail into rain—failed to explode in the atmosphere, and instead had fallen through Wang's roof and acted like a bullet, instantly killing Wang as it was lodged into his body.

Three years later, the Weather Bureau has given the Wang family 80,000 yuan (roughly $12,000USD) as a compensation for their loss. (And before you ask, no: I hold no relation to this particular Wang.) [Telegraph]

Achieve Immortality with Ink Afterlife Photo Printed Using Your Ashes

Charlie White — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 10:22:47 EDT

Here's the next step in mankind's never-ending quest for eternal life: Ink Afterlife, where cremated and ground-up ashes are mixed in with printer ink, and end up in a photograph. The ghouls at InkAafterlife.com supply you with a one-ounce barcoded vial, into which you lovingly place the powdery essence of the dearly departed. Send that off to the printers along with your fave pic, and it's all set. Next, they unceremoniously mix those ashes into special ink and print that sucker up on an 8x10 inch black-and-white photo for 50 bucks, or $79 for a color print. It's a far cry from building a Great Pyramid or Taj Mahal—or better yet, having your ashes shot into space—but hey, it's better than being buried in a pauper's grave. [Inkafterlife] Thanks, Tom!

Soul Ash Solace: Go Out In Style

Charlie White — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 14:29:45 EST

Here's a great way to go out in style, with Soul Ash Solace by Maximal Design, a combination cremation coffin and urn that will make you the envy of all of your morgue mates. The body is placed in this coffin made of eco-friendly corrugated board, papier-m ch and wood, and on top of the coffin is a stainless steel memory capsule which the product designers call an urn. (By the way, the picture above is slightly confusing—the top of the coffin looks like ashes, but it's not.)

Coffin and urn are placed in the crematorium, and after it's reduced to ashes, all that's left is this hourglass-shaped capsule that can be kept as a souvenir. It's shaped like an hourglass because time does heal all non-fatal wounds.

Soul Ash Solace (Belgium) [Maximal Design]