Bone To Pick

Image from http://chachabowman.wordpress.comImage from this how-to on creating sugar skulls

As my brain slowly gathers momentum I’ll get back to posting things with a little more meat to them, but, for the moment, I have a number of random items to address, such as:

Jessica was asking me about the last Mulligan story – shouldn’t the skeleton have been burnt up in the crematorium as well?

It’s a common misconception.

Contrary to popular belief, the cremated remains are not ashes in the usual sense. After the incineration is completed, the dry bone fragments are swept out of the retort and pulverized by a machine called a cremulator to process them into “ashes” or “cremated remains”, although pulverization may also be performed by hand. This leaves the bone with a fine sand like texture and color, able to be scattered without need for mixing with any foreign matter, though the size of the grain varies depending on the cremulator used. Their weight is approximately 4 pounds (1.8 kg) for adult human females and 6 pounds (2.7 kg) for adult human males.

Wikipedia