Beet L. Jooz

Gavin Hayes was the first baby born in 2019 in Rapides Parish, at 1:30 a.m. on Jan. 1. His mother, Alana Bazile, said he wasn't due until Jan. 10, but she went into labor early on New Year's Eve.

Don’t want your human remains leaching toxic chemicals into the ground when you die?

Don’t want to be cremated because of the impact on global warming?

Don’t want to take up space in cemeteries?

Just want to save money on the expense of coffins and burials?

Or, maybe the prospect of “becoming a tree” or having a “different alternative” farewell to the world has you motivated for a new option to the old routine of dust to dust, ashes to ashes.

Washington state residents may be given the opportunity to be “human recomposting” pioneers as early as the 2019 legislative year when the bill is introduced this month.

“People from all over the state who wrote to me are very excited about the prospect of becoming a tree or having a different alternative for themselves,” explains state Sen. Jamie Pedersen, a Democrat, who is sponsoring the bill in Washington’s Legislature to expand the options for disposing of human remains.
How does it work?

The process is not as green as it may sound. It uses alkaline hydrolysis, a process of dissolving of bodies in a pressurized vessel with water and lye until just liquid and bone remains. Then the “human recomposition” products is ready to rejoin the earth as life-nourishing soil.

The process involves placing unembalmed human remains wrapped in a shroud in a 5-foot-by-10-foot cylindrical vessel with a bed of organic material such as wood chips, alfalfa and straw. Air is then periodically pulled into the vessel, providing oxygen to accelerate microbial activity. Within approximately one month, the remains are reduced to a cubic yard of compost that can be used to grow new plants.

Pedersen sees recomposition as an environmental and a social justice issue. He said allowing it would particularly benefit people who can’t afford a funeral or aren’t comfortable with cremation.

Yet it hardly comes at a bargain price at $5,500. A traditional burial costs about $7,000, according to the National Funeral Directors Association. (Cremation can cost less than $1,000, though that doesn’t include a service or an urn.)

Whose big idea was this?

Meet Katrina Spade, 41, a Seattle-based designer who started focusing on the idea in 2013 while working on her master’s in architecture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

“We really only have two easily accessible options in the U.S. — cremation and burial,” she said. “And the question is: Why do we only have two options, and what would it look like if we had a dozen?”

Spade’s initial goal was to design a system that would restore people’s connection to death and its aftermath, which she said had been severed in part by the funeral industry. A friend introduced her to the farming practice of composting livestock after they die. Called mortality composting, the practice has been shown to safely keep pathogens from contaminating the land, while creating a richer soil.

“It was like a lightbulb went off and I started to envision a system that uses the same principles as mortality composting … that would be meaningful and appropriate for human beings,” she said.

Recompose, a public-benefit corporation Spade founded in 2017 to expand research and development of her concept, recently co-sponsored a $75,000 pilot program through Washington State University.

Led by researcher Lynne Carpenter-Boggs, associate professor of sustainable and organic agriculture at Washington State, the five-month program recomposed six donor bodies in a carefully controlled environment, aiming to allay concerns about spreading pathogens.

The research concluded in August, and the recomposition of human remains was found to be safe, according to Carpenter-Boggs, who plans to submit her results for publication in 2019. (Recomposition isn’t for everyone — some pathogens, like the bacteria that cause anthrax, are known to survive composting in animals, so recomposition’s safety will depend on excluding people with certain illnesses.)

In addition, an earlier version of the bill received opposition from the Roman Catholic Church.

Thomas Parker, a former lobbyist for the Washington State Catholic Conference, said the church was concerned about dissolved human remains draining into sewers.

Pedersen has signed up several co-sponsors of the bill in the state Senate, which is now under Democratic control, and he’s optimistic about its chances. Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, has not taken a public position on the bill and did not respond to a request for comment. If the bill passes, it would take effect May 1, 2020.

The post Composting humans? Could be legal in 2019 appeared first on WND.

Netflix has removed an episode of comedian Hasan Minhaj's Patriot Act in Saudi Arabia after its government complained about the variety show's criticism of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, according to reports.

A man who was shot the day after Christmas died on New Year's Eve as a result of his injuries.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday invited congressional leaders to a bipartisan briefing on border security at the White House as a partial U.S. government shutdown over Trump's $5 billion demand for a wall along the border with Mexico is in its second week.

LSU's Terrence Alexander ejected from Fiesta Bowl  ESPN

LSU entered the PlayStation Fiesta Bowl without cornerbacks Greedy Williams and Kristian Fulton before Terrence Alexander's ejection for throwing a punch.

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Washington bans anyone under 21 from buying assault rifles  NBCNews.com

Washington on Tuesday joined a handful of other states that ban anyone under 21 from buying a semi-automatic assault rifle after voters passed a sweeping ...

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New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) announced pardons on Monday for 22 immigrants who were at risk of deportation because of criminal records, taking a swipe at President Trump in the process."While President Trump shut...

A 2-year-old girl fell into the rhinoceros exhibit at a zoo in Melbourne, Fla., on Tuesday and was airlifted to a hospital in Orlando.

Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr. told the Washington Post that it’s “immoral for” evangelical leaders “not to support” Donald Trump in a lengthy interview regarding his right-wing religious views and support of the president.

The Washington Post‘s Joe Heim asked Falwell about faith leaders who have criticized his pro-Trump views, and Falwell pointed to minority unemployment rates as a reason that all Christians should back the president.

“It may be immoral for them not to support him, because he’s got African American employment to record highs, Hispanic employment to record highs,” Falwell replied. “They need to look at what the president did for the poor.”

He continued:

“A lot of the people who criticized me, because they had a hard time stomaching supporting someone who owned casinos and strip clubs or whatever, a lot them have come around and said, “Yeah, you were right.” Some of the most prominent evangelicals in the country have said, “Jerry, we thought you were crazy, but now we understand.”

Heim also asked Falwell if there is “there anything President Trump could do that would endanger that support from you or other evangelical leaders.” to-which the conservative activist quickly replied, “No.”

“That’s the shortest answer we’ve had so far,” Heim remarked.

“Only because I know that he only wants what’s best for this country, and I know anything he does, it may not be ideologically ‘conservative,’ but it’s going to be what’s best for this country, and I can’t imagine him doing anything that’s not good for the country,” Falwell added.

After being asked if it is moral for evangelical leaders to back Trump, despite all his known and admitted sins, Falwell argued that Christians shouldn’t focus on electing moral leaders, and should instead “choose a president based on what their policies are.”

“Let’s say you decide Mitt Romney. Nobody could be a more decent human being, better family man,” he said, before bizarrely speculating that there could be bad “things that [Romney has] done that we just don’t know about.”

In another eyebrow-raising quote, Falwell attacked low-income people and suggested they are worthless to society.

“A poor person never gave anyone a job. A poor person never gave anybody charity, not of any real volume,” Falwell said, amid a rant about American exceptionalism.

Read the full interview here.

[Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images]

'Get the paddywagon'

‘I do know her, by the way’

TerraPower LLC, a nuclear energy venture chaired by Microsoft Corp co-founder Bill Gates, is seeking a new partner for early-stage trials of its technology after new U.S. rules forced it to abandon an agreement with China, company officials told the Wall Street Journal.

President Trump on Tuesday issued an all-caps New Year's Day tweet predicting that 2019 "will be a fantastic year for those not suffering from Trump derangement syndrome."Trump, as he did ...

Bruce Campbell has signed on to host a new version of the docu-series "Ripley's Believe It or Not!" for the Travel Channel.

Hours before the New Year's ball dropped in Times Square, US Strategic Command published - then swiftly deleted - a seemingly insensitive tweet making light of the US's violently interventionist foreign policy just weeks after President Trump ordered one of the biggest troop drawdowns in recent memory.

In a play on the annual ball-dropping ritual, StratCom tweeted that "if ever needed, we are #ready to drop something much, much bigger" than the New Year's ball.

A video of B-2 bombers dropping two 30,000-pound conventional weapons during a test run accompanied the video, according to the Associated Press.

After deleting the tweet, StratCom tweeted an apology: "Our previous NYE tweet was in poor taste & does not reflect our values. We apologize. We are dedicated to the security of America & allies."

Our previous NYE tweet was in poor taste & does not reflect our values. We apologize. We are dedicated to the security of America & allies.

— US Strategic Command (@US_Stratcom) December 31, 2018

But that didn't prevent a flood of tweets blasting StratCom for its insensitive stab at humor, with some joking that it was a "very late entry" for worst tweet of 2018. Others accused StratCom of treating "raining death and destruction" as some kind of joke.

US Strategic Command (You know those People who can drop Nukes to kill all humanity) tweeted the Tweet below earlier this evening. 😳 The Tweet has now been deleted and an apology tweet substituted. However, this is very concerning.....#HappyNewYear pic.twitter.com/Pn1KbvcC2V

— Damian Kelly 🎄⚖️☃️ (@Kelly4Law) January 1, 2019

A very late entry for worst tweet of 2018 from @US_Stratcom (it has been deleted) pic.twitter.com/fP0D2c7EEW

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 31, 2018

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you @US_Stratcom, the stoic guardians of several thousand nuclear missiles who definitely don’t think raining death and destruction from above is some kind of joke. pic.twitter.com/4OWcGMtfCj

— Derek Johnson (@derekjGZ) December 31, 2018

.@US_Stratcom just deleted their tweet threatening to drop some bombs on New Year’s Eve so I guess the war is off and all of our terrible parties can now go on as previously scheduled. pic.twitter.com/GnDX6i34GG

— Jerry Dunleavy (@JerryDunleavy) December 31, 2018

Somewhere, a US StratCom social media intern is having the worst New Year's of his or her life.

NASA starts new year with flyby of planetary body beyond Pluto  USA TODAY

NASA kicked off 2019 by scheduling a flyby of a planetary body beyond Pluto, but can't confirm the spacecraft made it until Tuesday morning.

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Detained US citizen Paul Whelan was in Moscow for a wedding, his brother says  CNN

A US citizen detained in Russia is a retired Marine who was in Moscow for a wedding, and his detention has his family concerned about his welfare, his twin ...

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Italy's Uffizi Galleries called on Germany on Tuesday to return a still-life painting by the Dutch master Jan van Huysum, which was looted by retreating Nazi troops in World War Two.

PayPal has reportedly blacklisted "The Hacker News," a popular cybersecurity news website with millions of followers online.

Call it, as President Trump does, a “wall.” Lately, he’s been saying, “steel slats.”