althouse

Friday, October 2, 2009

What the cryogenics lab people did with Ted Williams's frozen, severed head.

"In 'Frozen,' Larry Johnson, a former exec at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Ariz., ... writes that in July 2002, shortly after the Red Sox slugger died at age 83, technicians with no medical certification gleefully photographed and used crude equipment to decapitate the majors' last .400 hitter.... Johnson writes that holes were drilled in Williams' severed head for the insertion of microphones, then frozen in liquid nitrogen while Alcor employees recorded the sounds of Williams' brain cracking 16 times as temperatures dropped to -321 degrees Fahrenheit. Johnson writes that the head was balanced on an empty can of Bumble Bee tuna to keep it from sticking to the bottom of its case. Johnson describes watching as another Alcor employee removed Williams' head from the freezer with a stick, and tried to dislodge the tuna can by swinging at it with a monkey wrench. The technician... missed the can with several swings of the wrench and smacked Williams' head directly, spraying 'tiny pieces of frozen head' around the room...."

May your dreams of immortality be non-corporeal.
Posted by magazine at 5:04 AM
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Labels: baseball, books, cold, death, technology

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