Burial versus cremation

[Eddie Dane]

Thinking about committing my wishes to paper.

I always thought I wanted to be cremated, but now I'm having second thoughts.

In the past I used to have a very rational approach to the matter. These days I'm more inclined to think about the people surviving me.

Maybe it would be nice for relatives to have a grave to go to. Apparently some people find it helpful in their grieving process.

Also: it occurred to me that burning a body is a big waste of fossil fuel. When they stick you in the ground, you decompose all by yourself.

What say you?

[applecorped]

Harvest anything useful. Burn me up. Spread the ashes in the garden.:)

[Ryokan]

I don't care one bit what they do with my body after I'm dead. Carve me up for dog food for all I care. My family can do what they wish.

[bokonon]

I suppose it would be better to ask your loved ones. Myself, I'd feel better carrying a photo than visiting a gravesite when I wanted to feel a connection with the deceased. And I don't think there's any need to allocate a spot of real estate that can never be used for anything else as a final resting place.

But I've always had unconventional views about the treatment of dead bodies. As far as I'm concerned, it's just plumbing. The person I loved isn't there any more. I cherish the memories, not the corpse.

[Patsy]

I'll be creamated and scattered in the desert. I carry loved ones in my memories, and in some family mementos. I've been to most of my most loved family members graves only once, when they were buried.

[NYCEMT86]

Since you are Dutch, you should probably know that your body and organs will be harvested for drop and those hard candy balls with the salty center (shut up perverts haha)

Personally I will be cremated and have my ashes dumped in the ocean.

[Sir Robin Goodfellow]

Here, your ashes must be buried anyway, so there is a grave as well. Maybe the best is when your body lies out in the woods, where it will be eaten by scavengers. Very efficient.

[jmcvann]

The tiny bit of fuel used in cremating you seems less a waste than all the land that is used for cemeteries.


Country clubs and cemeteries are the biggest wasters of prime real estate! Dead people? They don't need buried nowadays. Ecology, right? Ask Wang. He'll tell you. -- Al Czervik in Caddyshack

[geni]

Cremation kicks out a lot of polutants (mercury from fillings amoung others). Composting is probably the best option.

[jmcvann]

Perhaps repurposing us as Soylent Green is the best option.

[quixotecoyote]

I figure if I can afford it, I'll have 'em freeze me. I doubt I'll ever be back, but it's a nice sci-fi way to go.

[Rat]

I really don't care much one way or the other. Obviously, make sure I'm dead first and everything. I am just grateful (in a way, of course) that my parents predeceased me, since I once admitted that I was disappointed that whatever I had said to my parents to the contrary, my dad would have given me a religious service, which I didn't like the idea of. So my girlfriend assured me that she would not let that happen. On the one hand, I really don't want a C of E service but, on the other hand, I wouldn't have wanted a big to-do over it either.

This is an odd thing in the 'I don't care what happens to me after I'm dead' thing though. I agree that what people cherish are indeed the memories, though, and I wouldn't want people's last memory of me to be father Curtis, looking like Ned Flanders, reciting ill-remembered anecdotes along with organ-renditions of almost-appropriate music.

[GreNME]

Also: it occurred to me that burning a body is a big waste of fossil fuel. When they stick you in the ground, you decompose all by yourself.

That's a misconception, at least if you plan on being buried in the US. Your body gets pumped full of preservative fluid, you're encased in a box made from materials that don't decompose slowly, which is also placed in another box separating the coffin from the ground around it and essentially forming an airtight seal.

That's not to say that there isn't decomposing, since the preservatives aren't that efficient long-term. Still, the impression one would get about being buried and what actually happens are not the same thing.

[geni]

I figure if I can afford it, I'll have 'em freeze me. I doubt I'll ever be back, but it's a nice sci-fi way to go.

Cheaper option is freezeing, shattering with ultrasound and then compost. Works quite well.

[TragicMonkey]

There are risks either way. If you are cremated, it will be much harder for future generations to use their powerful science to reanimate your corpse and bring you back to life. Of course, whether this is good or bad depends on whether they're doing it to learn about the past and will treat you like a king, or whether they're doing it because they lost a war with aliens and need to provide undead slaves to work the ammonia mines on Planet Doom.

Of course, if future generations abandon science in favor of sorcery, they can probably revive you even if you're cremated, and put your soul into one of their hellish golems and force you to hunt demons or something.

Pretty much anything short of being shot into the sun or going into a black hole leaves you vulnerable to future terrors, and even those won't work if they're going to use time travel. They'll just collect your corpse before disposal or even, horrible thought, snatch you alive. The only way we'll be completely safe is if we stop reproducing entirely, so these horrible future people will never exist to menace our precious corpses.

[learner]

Buried. Standing position. Saves space.

[Thunder]

Buried. Missionary position.

:)

[R.Mackey]

In the past I used to have a very rational approach to the matter. These days I'm more inclined to think about the people surviving me.

Maybe it would be nice for relatives to have a grave to go to. Apparently some people find it helpful in their grieving process.

You can be cremated and leave a memorial behind. I have two relatives so far who've opted for this (one memorial official, the other somewhat more clandestine).

Personally, I think I'm going to ask to be cremated, and then my remains fired out of a cannon. Something to add a little levity, if nothing else.

[quarky]

You get to keep the ashes, you know. At least in the U.S.
So you can access your dead loved one more materialy than if it was underground in a strange place, and you mostly stared at an expensive rock.

You can even sprinkle the ashes on popcorn or pasta, and slowly consume some aspect of the missing body.

I favor a corpse disposal method that generates energy. To consume energy at the end of the ride is a final insult. Your corpse has intrinsic value. To deny the world of its goodies through cremation or burial in a fancy box is the last stingy gesture.

[Björn Toulouse]

Funerals are for the survivors. I'd rather not be buried and would let my wishes be known about that but also that I would let my survivors know that they can make the choice that suits them.

Cremation is the other option in this climate. If I lived in the arctic climes, I would rather be placed on a floating chunk of ice and sailed away for polar bear or fish food, you know - just go with the floe.

[Darth Rotor]

http://www.lifegem.com/

Another option: become bejewelled upon the ring of your dearly beloved once you are among the dearly departed.

[WildCat]

And I don't think there's any need to allocate a spot of real estate that can never be used for anything else as a final resting place.
Actually it's not uncommon for cemetaries to revert to other uses. In fact, Lincoln Park here in Chicago (home of the '68 Dem convention riots) was once a cemetary.

And then there's the Burr Oak fiasco (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-burr-oak-08aug08,0,6984744.story)...

eta: and just recently a cemetary adjacent to Ohare Airport was moved to make way for a new runway.

[WildCat]

http://www.lifegem.com/

Another option: become bejewelled upon the ring of your dearly beloved once you are among the dearly departed.
But then your soul is trapped in a diamond forever!

[tyr_13]

While I want my body used for medical purposes, I also want some heirlooms made out of me.

Yeah, I know it sounds crazy, but a polished piece of skull bone in a nice silver setting sounds cool. That, or my femur as a sword handle.

[FramerDave]

I'd really like a natural burial where I'd be stuck in a pine box and put straight into the ground. No vaults, no preservative, no hermetically sealed casket. I like the idea that all the carbon, water, calcium and everything else in me will eventually become part of a tree and grass and flowers.

Some of that grass will feed a little critter that will be killed by a hawk and fed to her chicks. It's some small measure of immortality.

A few billion years from now when our sun dies and vaporizes the planet, everything that's left of me will be swept out into space, eventually to become some part of some creature somewhere. That's some large measure of immortality.

The only problem with natural burial is that there are so few places in the US that allow it. If I can't find a suitable place I suppose I'll be cremated. I'm not sure where I'd want my ashes scattered, though. Maybe in the Cooper river, just a mile a or so from where I was born. Or maybe in this one incredible spot in San Fransisco where I first saw the Golden Gate Bridge. Or there's always Puget Sound. Hopefully I still have plenty of time to decide.

[JJM 777]

Traditional burial is more handy when the police start suspecting murder after the person has been buried / cremated. Last year a nurse in Finland was caught poisoning elderly people to death with insuline. Some digging in the graveyard revealed that she had been doing it for some time already. Graveyard also serves a recreational or hmm memorial purpose, so nice graveyards are a part of comfortable life for the elderly, who tend to be more interested in graveyards than young people.

Besides, what would be Thriller video without all those tombstones and resurrected ghosts?

[Delscottio]

The price of coffins has led me to start thinking of making my own, that or dumping my corpse in a bin bag. I really don't want the undertakers making a fortune out of my death when the wife and kids could have it.

Also because I favour being torched I am not 100% whether the undertakers would allow the casket to be burnt when the temptation must be there to remove the cadaver. Even after death I want value for money.

[scratchy]

I want to be cremated and then put in a burial mound with a marked round stone on top.

I also have this idea how burial mounds could be a usefull thing. When cities grow there are often new roads built to bypass them. Eventually the city grows out around these roads, and there is a need for land securing a distance and sound barriers. The dead are not disturbed by the sound of traffic, and parks with mounds could be beatifully arranged on each side of the road. The cost would be covered by a fee from the herritage of the deseased.

[Aitch]

The main cemetary in south Manchester (Southern Cemetary, Barlow Moor Road) is just about full, so I think most people in south Manchester get cremated. When my mother died a couple of months ago, her ashes were scattered round the base of a rose tree in the Garden of Remembrance and a name plate added to the tree. It's the same tree my father and sister's ashes were scattered round.

I quite fancy being buried in forest land, in a cardboard coffin with an acorn or two. Bit like Barbara Cartland did, apparently.

[Southwind17]

I used to take the "cold", pragmatic view too, and would have opted for cremation, as my parents did. But now, my views have changed. Whilst I quite like the idea espoused in Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything", that your atoms survive in perpetuity after (and indeed before) death, some probably as part of a more complex compound, substance or even another living creature, as I age I feel more compelled to endure in my current form for as long as possible, albeit dead. Consequently, I'm tending towards burial now. That said, the idea of being almost instantaneously reduced to simple compounds of ashes and smoke without going through the eternally transitional decomposition process that burial dictates, including all of the Hammer House images that it also conjures, is also quite appealing. The idea that "I" could embark on free holidays to the four corners of the World (and possibly beyond), all at the same time surely has advantages, even if "I" can't be there to appreciate them!

[Georg]

I think this (http://www.bodyworlds.com/en.html) is a good idea.
As a bonus, it angers the catholics.

[Eddie Dane]

http://www.lifegem.com/

Another option: become bejewelled upon the ring of your dearly beloved once you are among the dearly departed.

Perhaps I should have pointed out that I'm heterosexual:)

[Eddie Dane]

I think this (http://www.bodyworlds.com/en.html) is a good idea.
As a bonus, it angers the catholics.

That's great!

Do you think I can be displayed in the "air guitar"-position?

[Eddie Dane]

I'd really like a natural burial where I'd be stuck in a pine box and put straight into the ground. No vaults, no preservative, no hermetically sealed casket. I like the idea that all the carbon, water, calcium and everything else in me will eventually become part of a tree and grass and flowers.

Some of that grass will feed a little critter that will be killed by a hawk and fed to her chicks. It's some small measure of immortality.

A few billion years from now when our sun dies and vaporizes the planet, everything that's left of me will be swept out into space, eventually to become some part of some creature somewhere. That's some large measure of immortality.

The only problem with natural burial is that there are so few places in the US that allow it. If I can't find a suitable place I suppose I'll be cremated. I'm not sure where I'd want my ashes scattered, though. Maybe in the Cooper river, just a mile a or so from where I was born. Or maybe in this one incredible spot in San Fransisco where I first saw the Golden Gate Bridge. Or there's always Puget Sound. Hopefully I still have plenty of time to decide.

I like the idea of natural burial. There's probably a public health reason that it isn't allowed in many places (groundwater contamination?)

But when my niece died (in Spain) they put her coffin in a concrete box and cemented it shut. I couldn't help think about her decomposing and found this a much worse image then her just being stuck in the ground.

I thought Jews and Muslims were supposed to be buried in nothing but a cloth. That is a good idea, maybe I can "convert".

But I suspect they have just had to adapt to what is allowed locally.

[ddt]

I like the idea of natural burial. There's probably a public health reason that it isn't allowed in many places (groundwater contamination?)

But when my niece died (in Spain) they put her coffin in a concrete box and cemented it shut. I couldn't help think about her decomposing and found this a much worse image then her just being stuck in the ground.

I thought Jews and Muslims were supposed to be buried in nothing but a cloth. That is a good idea, maybe I can "convert".

But I suspect they have just had to adapt to what is allowed locally.

I never heard of use of concrete in Holland. In fact, this statute (http://www.overledenenzorgpro.nl/Lijkomhulselbesluit.html) on the allowed materials for caskets and such basically says: all materials have to be decomposable. This wiki article (http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_op_de_lijkbezorging) on the Dutch code on funeral practices says burial in just a cloth, no casket, is also allowed. I think practice in Holland has always been geared to being able to reclaim cemetery space for reuse - we're a small country, after all.

Another possibility is to donate your body to a medical faculty. I get the impression it's no option for you, but I thought I'd just mention it.

[Dr Adequate]

I want to be mummified. That way if anyone breaks into my pyramid I can shamble after them going "urrgh!"

[quarky]

There is presently aprox. 1/2 trillion pounds of human flesh that must be disposed of within 100 years or less. That's a shitheap.

[Tiktaalik]

In Dead Earnest
If I should die before I wake
All my bone and sinew take
Put them in the compost pile
To decompose a little while
Sun, rain and worms will have their way
Reducing me to common clay
All that I am will feed the trees
And little fishes in the seas
When corn and radishes you munch
You may be having me for lunch
The excrete me with a grin
Chortling, There goes Lee again
'Twill be my happiest destiny
To die and live eternally

Lee Hays, 1981


When Lee Hays died, he was actually cremated, but his ashes were buried in his compost heap.

Actually, I would like to be left out for the coyotes & crows, but I think in order for that to happen I'd have to die in some inconvenient mountainous area & cause expense & labor for the people who would be searching for me.

Interestingly, we scattered my mother's ashes, but I still have my dog's in a little urn...

[WildCat]

There is presently aprox. 1/2 trillion pounds of human flesh that must be disposed of within 100 years or less. That's a shitheap.
But the mass of the Earth remains the same.

[quarky]

But the mass of the Earth remains the same.

Doesn't it pick up some mass from meteors and other ejecta?

[WildCat]

Doesn't it pick up some mass from meteors and other ejecta?
It's very minimal, and somewhat offset by the bit of atmosphere we lose to space every year.

[Southwind17]

Actually, I would like to be left out for the coyotes & crows, but I think in order for that to happen I'd have to die in some inconvenient mountainous area & cause expense & labor for the people who would be searching for me.
Didn't seem to bother Steve Fossett! :boggled:

[HistoryGal]

I'd really like a natural burial where I'd be stuck in a pine box and put straight into the ground.

You're describing a Jewish burial.

[Eddie Dane]

I never heard of use of concrete in Holland. In fact, this statute (http://www.overledenenzorgpro.nl/Lijkomhulselbesluit.html) on the allowed materials for caskets and such basically says: all materials have to be decomposable. This wiki article (http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_op_de_lijkbezorging) on the Dutch code on funeral practices says burial in just a cloth, no casket, is also allowed. I think practice in Holland has always been geared to being able to reclaim cemetery space for reuse - we're a small country, after all.

Another possibility is to donate your body to a medical faculty. I get the impression it's no option for you, but I thought I'd just mention it.

No, not an option for me.
First of all, I think my loved ones will need some kind of ritual in which they dispose of my body. From my own experience that is necessary.
Of course the body doesn't have to be complete, I'll happily donate all my useful parts to those who need it. I'd advise them to forgo my liver though.

The issue came up because my wife lost her mother when she was fourteen. She gets a lot of comfort from visiting her grave from time to time.
So I started to think about the issue from a new perspective. We have two young children.

[Retrograde]

I think this (http://www.bodyworlds.com/en.html) is a good idea.
As a bonus, it angers the catholics.

It angers a lot more than just them. The original exhibition, with donated cadavers (i.e., donated by the original owners before their deaths with the understanding that they would be plasticized and displayed) is one thing, no different IMHO opinion than donating one's body for medical use - a position the Roman Catholic church has no problems with. Subsequent "shows" which are alleged to use cadavers of executed persons without their consent are a different matter altogether: that's more exploitation than education, and many people have problems with that.

I go for cremation, much as I like to visit cemeteries. Paris has some pretty cool ones in addition to Pere Lachaise.

[FramerDave]

I like the idea of natural burial. There's probably a public health reason that it isn't allowed in many places (groundwater contamination?)

But when my niece died (in Spain) they put her coffin in a concrete box and cemented it shut. I couldn't help think about her decomposing and found this a much worse image then her just being stuck in the ground.

I thought Jews and Muslims were supposed to be buried in nothing but a cloth. That is a good idea, maybe I can "convert".

But I suspect they have just had to adapt to what is allowed locally.

Personally I think that all the embalming fluid leaching out of a body would be more of a risk to the water table than a rotting body would. In fact, lobbying groups working on behalf of the funeral industry were instrumental in getting laws passed requiring that bodies to be buried were embalmed. Public health issues were the justification. Then of course they had to lobby to require sealed caskets and vaults to keep all the chemicals from leaching into the groundwater. *

I suppose this is a primary reason natural, or direct, burial grounds are located in the middle of nowhere.



You're describing a Jewish burial.

That's correct. Although in my case it has nothing to do with religion. If I remember correctly, caskets used in Jewish burials were made only of wood, with no metal hardware. I like that idea; I want my body and casket to become part of the carbon cycle and food chain as quickly as possible. Heck, drill some holes in it to speed the process along.

Maybe when the time gets closer I'll find a funeral home that specializes in Orthodox Jewish funerals.

I suppose funerals are for the living more than the dead. Since, if my wishes are carried out, I'll be buried somewhere remote, probably in Washington state, I'll be buried far from where most of my family is. I guess there will be a memorial service somewhere closer to them, and I'll have a memorial marker while I'll be buried somewhere else.


* The American Way of Death by Jessica Mitford. I'm working from memory, so details may vary. A very good read.

[Skeptic]

You SHOULD care what happens to your body after you die, since it matter to the survivors. That said, it depends so much on who they are and their relationship with you while alive that it is impossible to give any sort of guidance except for "talk it over".

[Skeptic]

Jewish burials as a rule do not have any caskets at all, but sometimes the law in the place requires one. I don't think it's FORBIDDEN to use a casket by Jewish law, strictly speaking, it's just not part of the tradition.

[The Mutha]

Mom was cremated and is in an Urn in the living room. When Dad goes, he'll be cremated as well and a portion of their combined ashes will be shot up into LOE. I'll truly be able to look up and say that my parents are above me... :D

I have all the papers ready for me to be cremated. Where I go after that will be up to my daughter, although I wouldn't have a problem being put into the headstone of my grandparents...

[Region Rat]

I plan on being cremated. Takes that zombie thing out of the equation, you know.

Seriously, I dislike the whole 'pumped full of chemicals, sealed in an airtight vault' thing that burial has turned in to. I'd just rather my body go away and be done with it. My wife and kids and I have already agreed upon where the ashes will be dispersed by the survivors, however illegal it may be in some area's. Already have done it with some grandparents according to their wishes.

[quarky]

When one of my Catholic uncles died, he had the normal show, in a big church, with a fancy box. Only 3 people showed up, including me and my hard-core atheist dad.
We looked at the woodwork for a few seconds, and then it was put in the ground.

I remember feeling sorry for the carpenter. Such an awesome piece of work!
More expensive by far than any furniture these middle class folks ever had while living.

It seemed like such a waste. Such a shame. And $15,000 to boot. My cousin, the 3rd witness, was broke from quitting her job to take care of her father (my uncle) and could have used that money.

We never expressed our mutual queeziness about this. How could we? Between the cathedral and its somber sacrificial lamb, and the hired ghouls in dark suits from the funeral home, it would have been in very bad taste to protest.

I'm less polite now. Our way of dealing with dead bodies is bizarre and perverse. It couldn't be more sick if we were trying to breed exotic microbes underground, while appealing to twisted religious sentiments about eternity. We want to preserve the state of death, obstensibly so that we won't have to face facts.

This is the great woo of civilized nations. Though, as usual, the Scandinavian countries are making in-roads towards a sane, ecological, and safe way to move the flesh along.

[Macgyver1968]

Well..I agree with Rodney Dangerfield..."Golf courses and cemeteries are the biggest waste of prime real estate there is". I want to be cremated, no need to waste a piece of land for my rotting corpse. A nice portrait of me on the wall will suffice.

[HistoryGal]

That's correct. Although in my case it has nothing to do with religion. If I remember correctly, caskets used in Jewish burials were made only of wood, with no metal hardware. I like that idea; I want my body and casket to become part of the carbon cycle and food chain as quickly as possible. Heck, drill some holes in it to speed the process along.

Maybe when the time gets closer I'll find a funeral home that specializes in Orthodox Jewish funerals.

I don't think it has to be Orthodox - my family isn't Orthodox, but all the dead family members have been buried in a plain pine box with no metal parts. (We're not burying any of the live ones yet, although I can think of a few who have earned it.)

My mother, however, wants to be cremated, so I may have to look outside a Jewish mortuary.

Actually, the most "traditional" Jewish burials are with the unembalmed body in a shroud directly in the earth - no casket at all. I believe they have burials like that in Israel, but definitely not here in Southern California.

[Wildy]

But then your soul is trapped in a diamond forever!

But think about it. In the future they'll be able to put you into some kind of robot and you'll be alive again. Except that your brain is a diamond, and you're made of metal.

[Dr Adequate]

Well..I agree with Rodney Dangerfield..."Golf courses and cemeteries are the biggest waste of prime real estate there is". There's clearly a saving to be made here by combining the two.

[Eddie Dane]

I see a few members are pouring derision on undertakers.
Is this really fair?

If people want to buy a $ 15.000 box for their loved one, that's their business.
Same with the pallbearer: I helped carry carry a friend of mine to the grave, but I was glad those guys took over to lower the casket.
Knowing clumsy old me, I would probably have slipped and ended up under the coffin with the body hanging half out.

As I said, I was happy they handled everything professionally so that we could talk, give speeches and generally focus grieving.

Noble profession, if you ask me.

[Southwind17]

Well..I agree with Rodney Dangerfield..."Golf courses and cemeteries are the biggest waste of prime real estate there is".
There's clearly a saving to be made here by combining the two.
Sure is.
http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/195334aa4b82b27ff7.jpg (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=17497)

[richardm]

Maybe it would be nice for relatives to have a grave to go to. Apparently some people find it helpful in their grieving process.

This can cut both ways, though. My wife had a brother who died in infancy and was buried somewhere in Birmingham. The family subsequently moved to Essex, and fretted about "leaving him behind" for years.

[Damien Evans]

what will I care what they do with it?

I'll be dead.

[Southwind17]

what will I care what they do with it?

I'll be dead.
Do you feel the same way about your assets, your family, the environment, etc?!

[Cainkane1]

Thinking about committing my wishes to paper.

I always thought I wanted to be cremated, but now I'm having second thoughts.

In the past I used to have a very rational approach to the matter. These days I'm more inclined to think about the people surviving me.

Maybe it would be nice for relatives to have a grave to go to. Apparently some people find it helpful in their grieving process.

Also: it occurred to me that burning a body is a big waste of fossil fuel. When they stick you in the ground, you decompose all by yourself.

What say you?
Creamation is cheaper. You can have a small memorial that conntains your ashes. I have my grave and coffin paid for but I'm going to be cremated and have the urn buried by my parents. I have a small marker and no oone willl know the difference. Hell 50 years from now no one will care anyway.

[Georg]

That's great!

Do you think I can be displayed in the "air guitar"-position?


I´d say yes. There´s a copulating couple shown in the actual exhibition, so I don´t think the "air guitar" position would be a problem. :)

It angers a lot more than just them. The original exhibition, with donated cadavers (i.e., donated by the original owners before their deaths with the understanding that they would be plasticized and displayed) is one thing, no different IMHO opinion than donating one's body for medical use - a position the Roman Catholic church has no problems with.


Well (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_Worlds)......:

Body Worlds exhibitions have controversy and debate focused on various issues. Religious groups, including representatives of the Catholic Church[29] and some Jewish ministers[30] have objected to the display of human remains, stating that it is inconsistent with reverence towards the human body.



Subsequent "shows" which are alleged to use cadavers of executed persons without their consent are a different matter altogether: that's more exploitation than education, and many people have problems with that.


As you said, an allegation. Innocent until proven guilty imho.

Bodies from deceased persons who did not give consent – such as deceased hospital patients from Kyrgyzstan[37] and executed prisoners from China – have never been used in a Body Worlds exhibition. In January 2004, the German news magazine Der Spiegel reported that von Hagens had acquired corpses of executed prisoners in China; he countered that he did not know the origin of the bodies, and returned seven disputed cadavers to China [38]. In 2004, von Hagens obtained an injunction against Der Spiegel for making the claims.[39]
(same source)


Even if it´s true, I´m pretty sure that the executed persons do not really care......and the relatives probably also don´t care. As far as I know, executed persons do not get a hero burial in China anyway.

I go for cremation, much as I like to visit cemeteries. Paris has some pretty cool ones in addition to Pere Lachaise.


Which ones? I´ve seen Père Lachaise about a decade ago and really liked it, so I´d be thankful for a hint regarding the other ones, I´m pretty sure to visit Paris again someday.

[El Greco]

In my will I'll state I wish to be burnied. That will hopefully confuse everyone.

[Eskarina]

Which ones? I´ve seen Père Lachaise about a decade ago and really liked it, so I´d be thankful for a hint regarding the other ones, I´m pretty sure to visit Paris again someday.

Never got around to see Père Lachaise, but in the early nineties I went to Montmartre - very beautiful - and les Catacombes de Paris, which is a bit unsettling.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Cemeteries_in_Paris

As far as I'm concerned: make sure I'm dead, take everything still useful and burn the rest. I'd prefer a compost heap, but meat attracts all kinds of nasty critters. :eek: (not that I would still care)

[Georg]

Never got around to see Père Lachaise, but in the early nineties I went to Montmartre - very beautiful - and les Catacombes de Paris, which is a bit unsettling.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Cemeteries_in_Paris

As far as I'm concerned: make sure I'm dead, take everything still useful and burn the rest. I'd prefer a compost heap, but meat attracts all kinds of nasty critters. :eek: (not that I would still care)


Danke Dir!



P.S.: Where do you have that absolutely lovely avatar pic from, that inevitably makes me smile everytime I see it, doesn´t matter how bad-tempered I had been before??