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Three girls, a dead raccoon, and a crockpot

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Re: Three girls, a dead raccoon, and a crockpot

#11

Post by chrissnell »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #3
hh3k0 wrote: post #2

The kid in me thinks that this is amazing and I wish I'd have been able to do something similar -- but current me thinks about how I could never use that crockpot for food again.

> I could never use that crockpot for food again. They actually mentioned that the crockpot in question was brought home from a lab, and it was used specifically for cleaning biogoo from bones. But otherwise, I totally agree on the ick factor. I'm a little surprised that a crockpot with detergent, and then hydrogen peroxide, is all it takes to sufficiently disinfect dead critter stuff. (Then again, I toss raw meat in…

Disinfecting things isn't as hard as some might think. Sewage processing, for example, is pretty low-tech. By the time your toilet water makes it to the plant, most of the poop has dissolved. They run the liquid through a metal strainer to get most of the non-organics out (condoms, tampons, etc). Then the sewage is pumped into settling ponds where most of the solids settle to the bottom and they aerate it so that the bacteria can do their thing and digest it further. They move the liquid through a succession of ponds and tanks until it's basically clear and everything has settled out. To disinfect it, they either run it through a mesh of UV light tubes or add bleach (less ideal). After that's done, you could basically drink the water but they typically dump it into a stream.

Re: Three girls, a dead raccoon, and a crockpot

#13

Post by amha »

This is amazing! This is the sort of thing that makes me want to have kids––the opportunity to turn whatever life throws at you into an awesome DIY science projects. (Though, I guess I could do it without kids, too––but imagine how cool it would be to be a kid growing up in this kind of household!)

Re: Three girls, a dead raccoon, and a crockpot

#14

Post by amha »

johnchristopher wrote: post #7

This is really cool on many different levels ! Those kids seem to have fun :). Plus, it's somehow satisfying that the story is being told on a old-fashion (what am I writing) blog. I strongly believe it wouldn't have been as structured, as accessible if it had been told through instagram or facebook (too much noise, not enough authenticity (this is the media guy in me talking). The gallery works, the text works... th…

I agree 100% with your "old-fashioned blog" comment! The ability to incorporate photos and text together, in a sensible layout, with a URL that is permanent/human-readable (at least relative to social media URLs), and on a site that doesn't require log-in and doesn't throw 10,000 other distractions at you simultaneously––it's really frustrating that that's going away.

Re: Three girls, a dead raccoon, and a crockpot

#15

Post by torbjorn »

amha wrote: post #14
johnchristopher wrote: post #7

This is really cool on many different levels ! Those kids seem to have fun :). Plus, it's somehow satisfying that the story is being told on a old-fashion (what am I writing) blog. I strongly believe it wouldn't have been as structured, as accessible if it had been told through instagram or facebook (too much noise, not enough authenticity (this is the media guy in me talking). The gallery works, the text works... th…

I agree 100% with your "old-fashioned blog" comment! The ability to incorporate photos and text together, in a sensible layout, with a URL that is permanent/human-readable (at least relative to social media URLs), and on a site that doesn't require log-in and doesn't throw 10,000 other distractions at you simultaneously––it's really frustrating that that's going away.

I am hoping it is not that blogs are going away, just that the growth of social media is dramatically outpacing it.

I don't have any data but I wonder if the amount of independent blogs is quietly and slowly growing. Maybe it is just my wishful thinking-they really are a great internet medium.

Re: Three girls, a dead raccoon, and a crockpot

#16

Post by GlenTheMachine »

My wife did this as a PhD student in Animal Science, along with a fellow grad student. Only her skeleton was that of a draft horse — she mainly wanted the skull. It took place on the hill in back of the lab building and used a fire, an enormous cauldron, and a canoe paddle.

I can only imagine what undergrads wandering by thought. But we still have the horse skull in a tupperware in the basement.

She teaches comparative animal anatomy now. For a few years she kept a colony of flesh-eating beetles in her lab for cleaning skeletons. They were delivered by FedEx — yes, you can order flesh-eating beetles online. Unfortunately the box had a puncture, and beetles were coming out. The FedEx guy who delivered it sprinted into her office, threw the box on the desk and sprinted out again without stopping to ask for a signature. I wonder why...

Re: Three girls, a dead raccoon, and a crockpot

#17

Post by tyingq »

amha wrote: post #13

This is amazing! This is the sort of thing that makes me want to have kids––the opportunity to turn whatever life throws at you into an awesome DIY science projects. (Though, I guess I could do it without kids, too––but imagine how cool it would be to be a kid growing up in this kind of household!)

I had a fair amount of exposure to this kind of thing solely because I grew up in the 70's. Families didn't spread as much geographically. So, I got lots of great experiences with aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors, sharing things they knew, etc. Also, there was more freedom for me to interact with strangers. No cell phones, etc, so my parents couldn't really manage me real closely. Big potential downsides, of course.

Re: Three girls, a dead raccoon, and a crockpot

#18

Post by jschwartzi »

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #16

My wife did this as a PhD student in Animal Science, along with a fellow grad student. Only her skeleton was that of a draft horse — she mainly wanted the skull. It took place on the hill in back of the lab building and used a fire, an enormous cauldron, and a canoe paddle. I can only imagine what undergrads wandering by thought. But we still have the horse skull in a tupperware in the basement. She teaches comparati…

It would have been too tempting to sing this:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43189/song-of-the-wit...

Re: Three girls, a dead raccoon, and a crockpot

#19

Post by killgrove »

johnchristopher wrote: post #7

This is really cool on many different levels ! Those kids seem to have fun :). Plus, it's somehow satisfying that the story is being told on a old-fashion (what am I writing) blog. I strongly believe it wouldn't have been as structured, as accessible if it had been told through instagram or facebook (too much noise, not enough authenticity (this is the media guy in me talking). The gallery works, the text works... th…

Ha, thanks! (I'm the author of the post.) It's funny, I don't post to my personal blog much anymore - started it in 2007 on Blogger, and so it's definitely old-school. (Plus, I have a column at Forbes, so I tend to post most of my writing there.)

Re: Three girls, a dead raccoon, and a crockpot

#20

Post by killgrove »

hh3k0 wrote: post #2

The kid in me thinks that this is amazing and I wish I'd have been able to do something similar -- but current me thinks about how I could never use that crockpot for food again.

I forgot to put in the following story:

As I was leaving my lab, carrying the crockpot, my department chair saw me: "Ooh, what delicious thing are you making?"

Me: "Uhhhh, Cecilia and I are going to deflesh a raccoon this weekend."

Him: "Ew. Now I'm not hungry anymore."

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