On Life and Death

A Very Short Post

First, for the Roomie:

I...Feel...Happy!

Not dead yet, Chilean man wakes up at his own wake

An 81-year old man in the small Chilean village of Angol shocked his grieving relatives by waking up in his coffin at his own wake, local media said on Sunday.

I'll leave the Monty Python references to her.

Source: Raw Story

Here's a Fairly Vintage Phoenix
The other day the roommate and I were having a discussion about the name of the local comic shop, The Vintage Phoenix; she contended that it was oxymoronic, I stated that there's no reason a phoenix can't be fairly old before it combusts.

Here's a tree that reproduces itself in a phoenix-like fashion once a century, that lends credence to my point, I think.

ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar (AP) -- A self-destructing palm tree that flowers once every 100 years and then dies has been discovered on the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar, botanists said Thursday.

The name of the giant palm and its remarkable life cycle will be detailed in a study by Kew Gardens scientists in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society published Thursday.

"It's spectacular. It does not flower for maybe 100 years and when it's like this it can be mistaken for other types of palm," said Mijoro Rakotoarinivo, who works for the London botanical gardens in Madagascar.

"But then a large shoot, a bit like an asparagus, grows out of the top of the tree and starts to spread. You get something that looks a bit like a Christmas tree growing out of the top of the palm," he said.

The branches of this shoot then become covered in hundreds of tiny white flowers that ooze with nectar, attracting insects and birds.

But the effort of flowering and fruiting depletes the tree so much that within a few months it collapses and dies, said botanist Dr. John Dransfield, author of the study.

Granted, there's no fire. She's big on fire, and that's likely to be a point of contention here.

Source: CNN.com