Annoyed by their anatomy professor's telling of off-color stories during class, a group of co-eds agreed that, as soon as started to tell the next one, they would rise and leave the room together in protest. The professor got wind of their scheme and started his lecture with: "They say there's a terrible shortage of prostitutes in France."
The girls glanced at one another, stood, and headed for the exits.
"Sit down, ladies," said the professor with a big grin.
A Florida funeral home has introduced an eerie alternative to burial or cremation - body liquefaction.
The stainless steel machine can dissolve a corpse in just under three hours, and the 'brownish, syrupy' liquid is then pumped into the municipal water system.
The bones remaining can be ground down and returned to the family, rather like ashes from a cremation.
Resomation (from the Greek 'resoma' meaning 'rebirth of the human body') is an environmentally friendly alternative to burial or cremation, according to a BBC report.
The Anderson-McQueen funeral home in St Petersburg had the body liquefier put in just days after Florida became the seventh state to legalise the machines.
They plan to try it out on some dead bodies over the coming weeks.
The 'alkaline hydrolysis' unit, installed by a Glasgow-based company called Resomation Ltd, works by submerging the body in a solution of water and potassium hydroxide, which is then pressurised and heated to 180C for two-and-a-half to three hours.
The end result is a small quantity of green-brown tinted liquid containing amino acids, peptides, sugars and salts and soft, porous white bone remains which are easily crushed.
The white ash can then be returned to the next of kin of the deceased.
The liquid can be recycled back to the ecosystem by being applied to a memorial garden or forest or simply put into the sewerage system.
Resomation Ltd founder Sandy Sullivan said: 'Let's face it - there's no nice way to go. You have to go from what looks like a human person to ash and bone, whether you get there by flame or decomposition.
'If you stood in front of a cremation, with the flames and heat, it seems violent. You go next door and the resomation is quiet.
'It's stainless steel and clinical and sterile. It seems nicer and returns (a body) quickly to ash.
'We're using the exact same chemistry that's carried out by bacteria but instead of happening over months and years, it happens in three hours.'
A funeral director in Columbus, Ohio, reportedly had his body liquefying operation shut down a few months ago - after 19 uses - because it was not approved by the state.
Resomation Ltd claim that the system can reduce a funeral home's greenhouse gas emissions by 35 per cent, and that mercury emissions - typically released from dental fillings during cremations - are eliminated.
A scientist told the BBC that disposing of remains in a municipal water system is perfectly safe.
The UK is considering bringing in the technology here.
The driver of a Ferrari involved in a fatal high-speed crash on Pacific Coast Highway had two convictions for driving under the influence and another DUI case pending.
Police believe that Vladimir Skvortsov, 24, of Upland was driving the Ferrari southbound on PCH at a high rate of speed -- possibly as high as 90 to 100 miles per hour -- early Sunday morning when the car veered off the road just north of Sunset Boulevard and hit a power pole, according to LAPD West Traffic Det. Robert DeArman.
The car split in half and fell over a 30-foot cliff to the beach. Skvortsov and his passenger, Basil Max Price III, 23, of Pomona, were ejected.
Price died at the scene and Skvortsov remained in critical but stable condition Monday.
San Bernardino County court records show Skvortsov had DUI convictions in 2007 and 2009 and another case that was pending when the crash occurred.
Skvortsov was not the registered owner of the Ferrari. DeArman said police were still trying to determine why he was driving it, but said that no one had reported the car stolen. They were also investigating whether Skvortsov had been drinking before the crash, police said.
Graeme the trainspotting cat has attained rock star status among commuters at his station in Melbourne, Australia. Every morning the laid-back feline leaves home and saunters down to the platform on the Hurstbridge line to mix with travellers heading off to work. The pampered cat cannot get enough of attention, with scores of regulars calling him by name as they stop for a chat and give him a pat on the head.
Safety conscious, the sociable moggie is meticulous about using the subway to cross to the city-bound platform, rather than take a dangerous short cut across the tracks. When the evening peak comes around, Graeme puts on an encore performance, arriving at the opposite platform in time to greet owner Nicole Weinrich as she returns home from work.
"He always seems to know which train carriage I am on and will be sitting there behind the yellow line when the doors open, because he is all about safety," Ms Weinrich said. "He is an amazing cat." But sometimes Graeme can take his desire to be close to his fans a bit too far - he has been known to jump on the train and get off a station or two later. "He doesn't do it often, but we do worry about that," Ms Weinrich said.
She said Graeme, believed to be about 12, had roughed it on the street before being saved from the RSPCA's "death row" six years ago, so his love of people is tempered by his survival instincts. "He is very friendly and loves to go to the station to watch people go, but he's weirdly stand-offish," Ms Weinrich said. "He's very cool about it. I've heard people get off the train and say, 'Look, it's Graeme'. Some just call him 'rock star'."
In southwest Miami, a small subdivision is being called "ground zero" of an invasion by a destructive, non-native species. "It's us against the snails," Richard Gaskalla, head of plant industry for Florida's Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. That's the Giant African Land Snail, to be precise. They can grow to be 10 inches long. They leave a slimy trail of excrement wherever they go. They harbor the microscopic rat-lung worm, which can transmit meningitis to humans.
And they will literally eat your house. "They'll attach to the side of the house and eat the stucco off the side of the house," Gaskalla says. The snails are also attracted to garbage and pet food that's been left out. Giant African Land Snails are restricted in the US. Gaskalla says people often smuggle them into the country in their pockets, because they make popular novelty pets.
"Back in 1965 we had an introduction that was traced back to an elementary-aged child that had put two of them in his pocket in Hawaii and brought them back to Miami," Gaskalla says. "Seventeen-thousand snails, a million dollars, and ten years, we eradicated them." A more recent introduction several years ago was traced to small religious sects in Miami, where the snails are believed to harbor healing properties.
"A young woman had come in with some stomach ailments, and her mother said she had been fed the juices of a live snail as a healing rite," Gaskalla says. "That's not in my medicine chest," he adds. Authorities are asking residents not to handle the creatures. Anyone who finds a suspicious snail is advised to call the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. Workers or volunteers will ID and collect the snails before taking them to be killed in a freezer. "That's sort of a kinder, gentler way to get rid of them," Gaskalla explains.
