Death and the Panopticon
Quick and crazy factoid for the night:
Upon his death, Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) (of Panopticon fame) asked to be permanently embalmed and kept at the University of London, where his corpse “now fitted with a head made of wax, is regularly wheeled into college meetings, where it is duly recorded in the minutes as ‘present, but not voting’” (Hijiya, 1983, p. 356)
Talk about persistence. A-mazing.
December 12th, 2009 at 5:05 am
…ensuring that he is always watching and being watched. brilliant!
December 12th, 2009 at 7:41 am
especially in the double sense of “brilliant” in current UK English, equivalent to unusually intelligent and way cool. The UK is weird and whacky. I love it.
January 8th, 2010 at 1:55 pm
That is funny!