Grim Risks of Reaping Death’s Rewards
Leslie Scism and Larry Light, Wall Street Journal (February 6, 2010)Slemrod Sees US Tax/Death Experiment
Marc Abrahams, Improbable Research (January 13, 2010)
Here’s a death and dirty money twofer for this lovely Saturday. Enjoy!
The Wall Street Journal reports on “life settlements” — investors buy elderly people’s insurance policies with the stipulation that they’ll cover the premiums while the person is still alive and then cash in upon death. As a result, the sooner death occurs, the greater the return on investment. Unfortunately (??) some people don’t go so easily…
Carol Tonzi, a court reporter in Palmyra, N.Y., sank $51,700 into partial ownership of a $5 million policy in 2003 … She says her tax preparer touted the investment as “safe and secure” and said her money in five years would grow to $82,720, a 60% increase.
But Ms. Tonzi, 52, is still waiting for the policyholder, now 89, to pass away. Over the past three years, she says she has shelled out an additional $15,000 in premium payments. She is suing the tax preparer … alleging negligent advice. “It’s a mess,” she says. “If I wanted to gamble, I would have left the money in the stock market.”
Ouch. In a similarly gruesome vein, Improbable Research (via BoingBoing) posted last month about estate taxes and timed deaths:
Our prize-winning research showed that when estate taxes are known in advance to be changing, some people time their deaths (or have their deaths timed for them) so as to save their heirs money. The evidence: in the U.S. history of estate taxes, when tax rates went up, there were less (than otherwise) deaths after the law change, and when tax rates went down, there were more deaths after the law change. …
Now the U.S. Congress has granted us a social scientist’s fondest dream — or worst nightmare — the perfect “natural experiment.” As of January 1 of this year, the U.S. estate tax has been abolished for the year 2010, and is scheduled to be reinstated in 2011 with rates as high as 55%. If our findings (and those of our colleagues in Australia and Sweden) are right, there some would be “moved” from the end of 2009 to the beginning of 2010, as some rich folks hold on to bequeath their assets tax-free. Of course, the really morbid stuff will happen at the end of this year, when dying in December of 2010 will incur no estate tax, but dying beginning in January 1, 2011 can trigger a tax liability equal to more than half the taxable estate. It’s being called the “Throw Momma from the Train” tax provision.
Weird, sad and huh? As one of them groundling proles who will inherit naught but gewgaws, good looks and bad circulation, I’ve never been compelled to imagine such things. Sounds like being super rich is unexpectedly macabre.
- By: Meg Holle
- In: Death + the Economy| Death + the Law
- Tags: insurance, investment, research, taxes
Premature Burial Device Patents
2 Feb2010
Brace yourself for some library science / classification / database search nerdery… or skip below to see a list of U.S. patents related to premature burial!
This morning I ran across a list of suspected premature burials with some interesting contemporaneous newspaper clips (it also links to How to Survive If You Are Buried Alive from the Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook — nice!).
It got me thinking: I love all those turn-of-the-twentieth-century inventions designed to save you in the event of your premature burial — bells attached to strings, extraneous air shafts and electrical devices that would detect your stirring corpse. I figured there must be patents on these, and sure enough: the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) provides them online.
Unfortunately their interface is exceptionally ugly, with a series of dazzling numbers and codes that make me salivate as a librarian oh sweet luscious data! but claw my eyes out as a blogger wanting to share something cool with reg’lar folk. In addition, many are images only that required a plugin I couldn’t make work. Argh! It’s all right there, and yet… not.
So I looked to our information overlord, Google. Google Patents draws data from the USPTO in the slick and familiar Google preview and downloadable PDF format (including all the fascinating line drawings). But, search fiend that I am, I could not in wholesale fashion extract what I wanted, either via keywords or using the US Classification field in the Advanced Search.
This allegedly corresponds to the PTO Manual of Classification for US Patents. The proper code, however — class 27 (undertaking), subclass 31 (life signals) — returned only a few results, with such oddities as “Optical Illusion Wear” and “Martial Arts Uniform Top.” A patent for a gi classified as a life signal device? Only if it improves one’s ability to karate chop out of a casket.
Stung by this death info travesty, I used the patent numbers from the USPTO list (generated by classification code) and found them on Google Patents, for the delight and convenience of the interwebs. (I did exclude a couple that were irrelevant, and there are a few below that seem more concerned with the living’s ability to monitor and view the dead… eek.) The dates below reference the filing date for the patent, not the issue date. Enjoy!
US Patents for detecting “life signals” / preventing premature burial
1984 — Apparatus and method for detecting body vibrations
1980 — Coffin alarm system
1954 — Safety release for refrigerators
1924 — Coffin
“This invention relates to an improved coffin and seeks, among other objects, to provide a coffin wherein a body may be preserved more or less indefinitely” with a sight tube extending from coffin to above ground “so that the body may be readily viewed in the coffin as desired.”
1921 — Attachment for coffin
“This invention has for its prime object the provision of a simple, inexpensive and durable device which can readily be applied to burial caskets for the purpose of enabling relatives and friends of deceased persons to view their features after interment.”
1912 — Life-detecting apparatus
1909 — Alarm for indicating life in buried persons
1909 — Apparatus for preventing human beings from being buried alive
1908 — Grave attachment
“This invention relates to new and useful improvements in grave attachments… whereby a body may be observed or watched after being interred.”
1907 — Safety-coffin
“This invention is distinguished from the already known arrangements by the fact that an opportunity is afforded the apparently dead person, when he awakens, of opening the coffin automatically, with very slight exertion on his part, so that he can immediately obtain a supply of fresh air and may afterwards leave the coffin.” In other words, it’s SPRING LOADED.
1903 — Apparatus for signaling from graves (Crosby and Henry)
1901 — Apparatus for signaling from graves (Griffith)
1900 — Apparatus for preventing premature burial
1899 — Electric device for indicating the awakening of persons buried alive
1899 — Coffin
“An improved coffin which permits the body to be kept during a certain time until decomposition sets in and, moreover, enables the person inclosed in the coffin to give warning if there has been a mistake.”
1897 — Apparatus for saving persons buried alive
1886 — Coffin
“My invention has relation to a coffin wherein the lid is provided with transparent doors or panels held down normally upon the lid against the tension of springs and adapted to be released and thrown upward from the lid upon the operation of a device located within the coffin.”
1886 — Apparatus for saving people buried alive
1886 — Coffin
“If the person buried in a state of trance opens his eyes on returning to consciousness, he sees light through the glass disks of the lid and will, on coming to his senses, unconsciously make a movement by which the mechanism which stands under the pressure of the springs is immediately released and the springing up of the lid is effected.”
1885 — Coffin
“We also supply the coffin with an electric battery, the wires therefrom leading though the air inlet pipe to an alarm on the outside of the ground, the circuit of said alarm being closed by a slight movement of the revivified person.”
1894 — Grave-signal
1893 — Grave-alarm
1892 — Coffin-signal
1891 — Annuciator for the supposed dead
1887 — Device for indicating life in buried persons
1885 — Burial-casket
1884 — Safety apparatus for the preservation of the dead until their burial
1882 — Device for indicating life in buried persons
1882 — Grave-signal
1878 — Improvement in coffin-torpedoes
1871 — Improvement in life-detectors for coffins
1868 — Improved burial-case
- By: Meg Holle
- In: Burial| Death + Technology| Death + the Law
- Tags: coffins, patents, premature burial, research
TiVo Grief with Funeral Webcasting
29 Jan2010
Funeral Webcasting – Can’t Attend a Memorial Service?
FuneralResources.comvia The Consumerist, “Now You Can Attend Funerals Live Over the Internet”
Laura Northrup at the Consumerist recently blogged about funeral webcasting with this video from Chris Hill at FuneralResources.com. Weirdly, the vid seems aimed at those in need of services for loved ones while the accompanying webpage is targeted at funeral directors (i.e., getting a funeral home set up with “Pre-Screened and Qualified™ Preferred Providers” — yes, that is actually their trademark).
Anyway, reasons for being unable to attend a funeral include being poor, old, sick or riffraff:
Specific details are scarce — I imagine it depends on the local Pre-Screened and Qualified™ Preferred Providers. Nonetheless, it seems to target those who don’t really understand how the internet works (you can watch it anywhere! even the library!). I also frown that he emphasizes that services are archived up to 90 days as though that’s a bonus and not a ripoff — you can be sure for an extra fee you can extend your access to final farewells if not purchase a DVD.
Cynicism aside, this is not a bad idea, at least for those physically unable to make it to a funeral. When it’s used as a tool of convenience, however — or as an excuse to not need to put aside differences and invite the family baddies and black sheep — the idea turns crass and cold. Funerals are about gathering and remembering together — not about watching other people gather and remember on the internet, whenever you happen to find the time to tune in and grieve.
- By: Meg Holle
- In: Death + Technology| Death + the Web| Funeral Industry
- Tags: funerals, video, webcasting
Mr. Freeze
28 Jan2010
Robert C.W. Ettinger
The January 25 issue of the New Yorker features an amusing article about cryopreservation of bodies, a.k.a. cryogenics or cryonics. The article doesn’t so much shed light on the science of this controversial procedure; but rather, it spotlights Robert C.W. Ettinger, one of the founders of the cryonics movement.
The ninety-one year old Ettinger gives journalist Jill Lepore a tour of his Cryonics Institute, about 20 miles northeast of Detroit. Ettinger is matter-of-fact as he dodders around the facility and explains the processes and pitfalls of cryopreservation. Ettinger’s two wives and his mother are frozen at the Institute as part of the current total of 883 members, not including the 64 pets also in cryostasis. Several pictures are here from the Immorality Institute’s forum page.
In his youth, Ettinger was a reader and writer of science fiction which informed his interest in and ultimately his career choice as a cryonicist. And indeed, he has an interesting take on what the future holds. Regarding the idea that if no one ever dies, won’t there be too many people on the planet? Ettinger posits:
The people could simply agree to share the available space in shifts and could “go into suspended animation from time to time to make room for others.” There will be no childbirth. Fetuses will be incubated in jars. Essentially, motherhood will be abolished. Then too, eugenics will help keep the birthrate down, and deformed babies could be frozen against the day that someone might actually want them.”
If you wish to learn more about Mr. Ettinger’s postulations, visit your local library or retailer and take a gander at some of his books:
Prospect of Immortality (2005)
Man into Superman (2005)
Youniverse: Toward a Self-Centered Philosophy of Immortalism and Cryonics (2009)
- By: Kim
- In: Afterlife| Death + Biology| Death + Technology| Death Ethics| Defying Death
- Tags: books, cryonics, immortality
The Last Post on Haiti’s Dead
27 Jan2010
In Haiti, A Proper Burial is in Short Supply
Frances Robles, Nadege Charles and Elinor J. Breche, Miami Herald (January 25, 2010)
This will be the last post, for a while, on the dead bodies in Haiti. I decided to run this Miami Herald article because it does a good job of summing up the problems the Haitian people are facing. None of what has happened will be resolved anytime soon and this article highlights that fact.
From the article:
For the moment, Louis Banatty lies in a stranger’s backyard, the Haitian earth shifting around him.
But as soon as she can, Chantal Banatty wants to bring him to Florida, where the once-controversial broadcaster, businessman and U.S. Marine veteran founded Miami’s Radio Creole in 1980.“No box, no sheet, no nothing,” said Chantal, of Punta Gorda. “They dug a hole and buried him in the ground like that. . . . He should not be rotting in dirt.”
Two weeks after the Jan. 12 earthquake, the solemn services that Haitians cherish remain as rare as an untroubled moment.
Among the few victims formally honored were Haitian Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot and Vicar Charles Benoit. About 2,000 mourners gathered Saturday for a two-hour ceremony at what’s left of Port-au-Prince’s regal cathedral to memorialize them — and cry for their ruined country.
But an estimated 150,000 of Haiti’s dead are moldering in the rubble and mass graves or falling prey to starving animals in the open, their fate an eternal mystery to loved ones.
And that, said Haiti scholar Ira Lowenthal, is profoundly disturbing in an ancestor-worshipping culture that melds Christian belief with ancient African traditions.
Haitians’ “job in life is to prolong [the] chain of succession,” Lowenthal said from his intact home in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Pétionville. Death rituals “give us dignity of our past. That’s what the Haitian family is about.
“When you break that chain and bury the dead without anybody knowing, it disrupts everything.”
Haitians save their entire lives to build tombs more elaborate than any structure they’ve occupied while living, Lowenthal said.
“It’s their final home.”
Luvie Netus, 76, attended a simple graveside service for her cousin’s husband, among the fortunate dead whose relatives have someplace to visit.
“Traditionally, as we are not animals, we have funerals,” she said. “Funerals are important to Haitians. We expect a coffin and a Mass.”
Funerals are important and what happened in Haiti will be discussed for a long time to come.
- By: John
- In: Burial| Death + Disaster
- Tags: death and smell, Haiti Earthquake