Death Reference Desk

  • Home
  • About
  • Research Guides
  • Ask a Question!
  • Contact

DeathRef Tweets DeathRef Tweets

  • http://t.co/N8RHE9eou9 http://t.co/yOBK5WSl8o, May 18

Categories

  • Afterlife (12)
  • Burial (31)
  • Cemeteries (42)
  • Cremation (25)
  • Death + Art / Architecture (35)
  • Death + Biology (19)
  • Death + Crime (27)
  • Death + Disaster (9)
  • Death + Humor (35)
  • Death + Popular Culture (68)
  • Death + Technology (59)
  • Death + the Economy (34)
  • Death + the Law (101)
  • Death + the Web (41)
  • Death Ethics (73)
  • Death Ref Questions (2)
  • Defying Death (9)
  • Eco-Death (17)
  • Funeral Industry (37)
  • Grief + Mourning (30)
  • Monuments + Memorials (41)
  • Suicide (30)

We Like

  • Daily Undertaker
  • Death Care
  • Morbid Anatomy
  • Obit Magazine
  • Pushin Daisies
  • Taphophilia (dot) Com
  • Wikipedia Death Portal

Archives

  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009

Tags

animals anthropology Arlington Cemetery assisted dying attending your own funeral auctions audio Bali bio-cremation bioethics body fisherman books brain death capital punishment cardiac death celebrity death Cemeteries China civil rights coffins columbaria corpse abuse crafts cremains Cremation cryogenics cryonics cults death and art death and smell death masks death meditation death with dignity decomposition definition of death digital archiving digital assets Dignitas disease Edward and Joan Downes euthanasia Facebook films foreclosure forensics Foxconn free speech funeral directors funeral homes funerals games genealogy ghost bikes grave markers green burial guns Haiti Earthquake home burial homicide humor infographics informatics insurance investment Jack Kevorkian Japan jewelry last words lecture LGBT lifecasting living with the dead marketing mass graves medicine memorializing memorial tattoos Mexico mock funerals moment of death mortuary science mummies mysterious deaths obesity obituaries online memorials patents pet loss pets photos physician-assisted suicide planned giving plastination podcast postmortem photography premature burial promession protests public art QR codes religion research reusing graves roadside memorials same-sex partners seminars September 11 2011 soldiers soldier suicide spiritualism statistics stress Suicide suicide prevention superstition SxSW tattooing taxes TED talk thanatos tours twitter unclaimed bodies urns vertical burial video wayward bodies webcasting Westboro Baptist Church wills writing zombies

Melvyn Bragg: I would seek Assisted Death

5 May
2013

Lord Bragg: I would seek assisted death rather than suffer Alzheimer’s
By Shiv Malik, The Guardian (May 05, 2013)
Writer and broadcaster reiterates wish to end own life rather than face severe mental degeneration and calls for change in UK law

For those keeping up with the UK’s ongoing Assisted Dying debate, this news item will certainly generate further discussion. Melvyn Bragg is a UK institution and well-respected across the board.

I was particularly struck by the article’s lead:

The veteran 73-year-old arts critic, novelist and broadcaster was deeply affected by watching Alzheimer’s take its toll on his 95-year-old mother for five years until her death last year, and said assisted suicide was an issue for people his age. “It’s happening to my generation – they see what happens when people get close to death, and we’re saying, ‘We don’t want that.’”

Melvyn Bragg

Bragg is right about his generation and the end of life control many of them want.

Death Ref hasn’t run a long(ish) update on the UK Assisted Dying debate in a while, so I will start pulling items together.

Until then, keep listening to In our Time with Melvyn Bragg. It’s the best programme on the BBC Radio 4.

RedditDiggFacebookTwitterStumbleUponDeliciousShare
  • By: John
  • In: Death + the Law|Death Ethics

  • Tags: assisted dying, death with dignity, physician-assisted suicide
  • Read More
  • Comment

SxSW Platforms for Haunting: The Talking Dead Podcast

7 Apr
2013

Platforms for Haunting: The Talking Dead
SxSW Interactive 2013

In March 2013, the Death Reference Desk headed to the South by Southwest Interactive conference.

A podcast of Death Ref John’s talk has now been released and you can listen to it below.

He was part of presentation called Platforms for Haunting: The Talking Dead.

Here is a description of the presentation.

The relationship between death and technology is as old as human civilisation; from cenotaph to facebook memorial, industries have been built on our desire to remember and be remembered. Technology now enables us to create spine-chilling immersive experiences; allowing us to embody the worlds of our ancestors, enter our ghost stories and even plan a little post-mortem haunting ourselves. We want to move the conversation beyond discussions of data legacy to ask whether we can engender a new form of history, one that allows us to interact with the dead.

I want to be remembered for something

I want to be remembered for something

Bringing together experts in human remains, memorialisation and new technology this Panel will explore our relationship with mortality in a digital age. The discussion will draw on recent projects which have used new technology to augment cemeteries, populate historic sites with ghosts of their past and instigate twitter conversations with a 1,610 year old woman.

RedditDiggFacebookTwitterStumbleUponDeliciousShare
  • By: John
  • In: Death + Popular Culture|Death + Technology|Death + the Web

  • Tags: lecture, memorializing, online memorials, SxSW
  • Read More
  • Comment

Happy Easter from the Death Reference Desk

31 Mar
2013

Happy Easter to all from the Easter Bunny of Death.

Death Bunny of Easter by Obsidian Signum

Death Bunny of Easter by Obsidian Signum

No holiday can escape the bony grasp of ye olde Death Reference Desk!

RedditDiggFacebookTwitterStumbleUponDeliciousShare
  • By: John
  • In: Death + Humor|Death + Popular Culture

  • Read More
  • Comment

(Repost From 2009) Governor of RI to Gays and Lesbians: You Cannot Claim Your Partner’s Corpse

24 Mar
2013

R.I. governor vetoes ‘domestic partners’ burial bill
Katherine Gregg, The Providence Journal, (November 10, 2009)

Note: This post first ran in November 2009. We’re reposting it today in anticipation of this week’s US Supreme Court cases regarding same-sex marriage. Most people do no realize the legal obstacles same-sex partners often face when attempting to claim their partner’s corpse given the lack of either a marriage license or any statutory recognition of the relationship. This 2009 story from Rhode Island demonstrates all the issues. See our section on same-sex partners for more information. Two final notes. Donald Carcieri is no longer Rhode Island’s Governor and in January 2010 the RI Legislature overrode the Governor’s veto.

When a person dies, his or her body needs to be claimed by the next of kin. If no kin can be found, then that dead body is handled by local authorities. The legal question of who (or whom) qualifies as next of kin is a real dilemma when it involves domestic partners who have been together for numerous years but lack any say over the final disposition of the body. Asserting a legal claim over the control of the corpse is a key issue for same-sex marriage proponents as well as domestic partnership advocates (which would cover heterosexual couples too).

Last week, in Rhode Island, the Governor vetoed a new Domestic Partners bill that would have granted same-sex and opposite-sex partners next of kin status for claiming dead bodies. This Providence Journal article discusses the veto and why Governor Carcieri did what he did.

I promise that in the future, people will look back and read these histories with disbelief.

You need only read this section of the Providence Journal article to understand why:

At a hearing this year on one of the stalled bills to allow same-sex marriage, Mark S. Goldberg told a Senate committee about his months-long battle last fall to persuade state authorities to release to him the body of his partner of 17 years, Ron Hanby, so he could grant Hanby’s wish for cremation — only to have that request rejected because “we were not legally married or blood relatives.”

Goldberg said he tried to show the police and the state medical examiner’s office “our wills, living wills, power of attorney and marriage certificate” from Connecticut, but “no one was willing to see these documents.”

He said he was told the medical examiner’s office was required to conduct a two-week search for next of kin, but the medical examiner’s office waited a full week before placing the required ad in a newspaper. And then when no one responded, he said, they “waited another week” to notify another state agency of an unclaimed body.

Rhode Island State Flag

After four weeks, he said, a Department of Human Services employee “took pity on me and my plight … reviewed our documentation and was able to get all parties concerned to release Ron’s body to me,” but then the cremation society refused to cremate Ron’s body.

“On the same day, I contacted the Massachusetts Cremation Society and they were more than willing to work with me and cremate Ron’s body,” and so, “on November 6, 2008, I was able to finally pick up Ron’s remains and put this tragedy to rest.”

“I felt as if I was treated not as a second-class citizen, but as a noncitizen,” Goldberg told the Senate Judiciary Committee, an hour into the first hearing this year in the 13-year push by gay-rights advocates for the right to marry in Rhode Island, and the pushback from the Roman Catholic Church and other opponents.

Kathy Kushnir, executive directive of the advocacy group Marriage Equality of Rhode Island, called the governor’s veto “unconscionable” when “people are trying to piece their lives together, which is what Rhode Island is requiring them to do without legal recognition,” and then when “faced with a time that could not be more difficult or more painful, not even being able to take care of funeral arrangements for their loved ones.”

RedditDiggFacebookTwitterStumbleUponDeliciousShare
  • By: John
  • In: Death + the Law|Death Ethics

  • Tags: civil rights, LGBT, same-sex partners, unclaimed bodies
  • Read More
  • Comment

Death Ref heads to South by Southwest (SxSW) in Texas

3 Mar
2013

Platforms for Haunting: The Talking Dead
South by Southwest Interactive media conference
Saturday, March 9
5:00PM – 6:00PM
Radisson Town Lake
Town Lake Ballroom
111 E Cesar Chavez

The Death Reference Desk is headed to the 2013 South by Southwest (SxSW) Interactive media conference in Austin, Texas.

Doing our best to keep Austin weird!

Death Ref is part of a panel, Platforms for Haunting: The Talking Dead, on death, technology, the dead body and the future relationships of all these things. Same old same old, really. Death Ref John’s Future Cemetery project will also be involved.

Here is the panel’s description so that everyone can see what they’re missing (or seeing– if you’re at SxSW):

The relationship between death and technology is as old as human civilisation; from cenotaph to facebook memorial, industries have been built on our desire to remember and be remembered. Technology now enables us to create spine-chilling immersive experiences; allowing us to embody the worlds of our ancestors, enter our ghost stories and even plan a little post-mortem haunting ourselves. We want to move the conversation beyond discussions of data legacy to ask whether we can engender a new form of history, one that allows us to interact with the dead.

I want to be remembered for something

I want to be remembered for something

Bringing together experts in human remains, memorialisation and new technology this Panel will explore our relationship with mortality in a digital age. The discussion will draw on recent projects which have used new technology to augment cemeteries, populate historic sites with ghosts of their past and instigate twitter conversations with a 1,610 year old woman.

Updates about SxSW will appear here on the Death Ref blog, on Death Ref’s Facebook page and on the Twitter Feed of Death!

The Twitter feeds to watch are: @DeathRef, #SxSW, #haunting, @FutureCemetery, and @ReactHub

Anyone in Austin should come on up and say howdy!

And then after Death Ref is done with the SxSW panel, we’re all going to the Alamo’s basement to look for our stolen bicycle.

RedditDiggFacebookTwitterStumbleUponDeliciousShare
  • By: John
  • In: Death + Popular Culture|Death + Technology|Death + the Web

  • Tags: lecture, memorializing, online memorials, SxSW
  • Read More
  • Comment
Older Entries
top

Copyright ®2009 - 2013 Death Reference Desk | Disclaimer | Privacy

Powered by WordPress | Evidens White Theme by Design Disease