People do weird things with their relatives’ remains after they’re cremated. There are businesses that specialize in that final ritualistic tribute. Some put the ashes in rifle ammo and have them fired into the air. Even more extreme are those who feel the need to devour the remains. For serious music fans and vinyl enthusiasts, And Vinyly (as in “And Finally”) is the business of choice.

The UK-based company presses the ashes of your loved one’s remains into an actual playable vinyl record. Basic packages run around $4,600 for 30 LPs. After cremation, the remains go to a standard pressing plant and are mixed in with the vinyl pellets. The difficulty lies in choosing your final song, words or sounds. It could be very easy to momentarily think that that one-hit-wonder from your high school prom is a good exit theme. And now some kitschy choices we came up with: Black Sabbath’s “Crazy Train;” Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper;” The Beatles’ “The End;” Bob Dylan’s “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go;” and basically anything by AC/DC.

The post Send Your Dearly Departed Kin for a Musical Final Spin first appeared on Gajitz.

Depending on your culture and your individual beliefs, the very last moments of life can be shrouded in fear or celebrated as the beginning of a new journey. But almost universal is the desire to be with loved ones when it is time to go. Artist, designer and engineer Dan Chen wanted to explore that desire and its limitations, so he built a machine that has already caused quite a stir among people of all belief systems: the Last Moment Robot.

The robot is designed to stroke the arm of a dying person and provide pre-recorded comforting phrases. As the stroking mechanism simulates the type of touch a human caretaker might perform, the robot tells the patient ” I am the Last Moment Robot. I am here to help you and guide you through your last moment on Earth. I am sorry that your family and friends can’t be with you right now, but don’t be afraid. I am here to comfort you. You are not alone, you are with me. Your family and friends love you very much, they will remember you after you are gone.”

Chen does not anticipate the Last Moment Robot actually taking the place of absent family members and friends. Rather, he built the very strange project as a sort of examination of the link between humanity and intimacy. Is it possible to achieve a tender moment between a non-living object and a human? Are we so obsessed with technology that we might one day outsource our tender moments to machines? So far, the robot has managed to give a lot of people the chills, but not in a warm and fuzzy kind of way.

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The existence of an afterlife has been proposed, contemplated, questioned and debated since time immemorial. But no matter what each of us thinks or believes individually, the reality of life after death has never been proven or disproved. British designers James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau have come up with a semi-morbid, semi-ingenious project to guarantee that one can go on living (in a way) after death: Afterlife.

Afterlife is a system that involves turning a deceased human body back into its core chemical energy. The decedent is placed into the special Afterlife coffin which features small drains in the bottom. The drains lead to microbial fuel cells beneath the coffin: the accumulation point for the human body’s chemical energy.

Once the body is turned into energy, the energy is packaged into batteries engraved with the dearly departed’s name. Family members are then free to use the batteries for whatever they deem appropriate – or whatever the deceased asked for in his or her will. Think of it as a last hurrah for those who have died, or a way to release the stored energy of the dead back into the universe.

Part of Auger and Loizeau’s project involved asking a handful of people what should be done with their own Afterlife batteries or those of their loved ones. Some of the answers were truly beautiful, such as using them to power a model airplane – and some were a bit predictable, like using the batteries in adult toys. The entire project is conceptual, of course, but it encourages us to think about the big question behind the idea: if we could provide some type of energy to the world after our deaths, what would we choose to spend that energy on?

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Inventors often put themselves in the line of danger to create new and useful things. But none have paid a greater price than these inventors who all died as a direct result of the very existence of the things they created. Above, William Bullock was the American inventor of the rotary printing press. His revolutionary design would forever change print media, but he wouldn’t live to see its full effects. On an April day in 1867, Bullock kicked one of his machines in frustration. His foot was caught in the machinery and severely mangled. The injury developed gangrene and Bullock died while his foot was being amputated.

In the late 19th century, personal flying inventions were all the rage. Unfortunately, none of them were as effective as their inventors would have hoped. This poor track record is wonderfully demonstrated in the tale of Franz Reichelt, a tailor who claimed to have invented an overcoat that would function as a parachute. Prior to his first test of the coat, Reichelt informed authorities that he would use a dummy to demonstrate its function by throwing it off of the Eiffel Tower. Unfortunately, Reichelt was a little overly enthusiastic and decided to test the coat himself. He, of course, fell to a gruesome and instant death when the coat failed to work as expected.

Thomas Midgley, Jr. is sometimes said to have had more impact on the Earth’s atmosphere than any other living organism due to his inventions: namely, lead gasoline additives and chlorofluorocarbons. However, Midgley wasn’t killed by these inventions which we now know to be exceptionally harmful. He met his maker thanks to a bed that he created after contracting polio and becoming bedridden at the age of 51. The bed featured a complex system of ropes and pulleys to help Midgley’s attendants get him out of bed…ropes which eventually strangled him.

The post Fatal Fail: 3 Inventors Killed By Their Own Inventions first appeared on Gajitz.