Archive for November, 2009
Ambulance Chasing: Not Just for Lawyers!
30, Nov 2009 Guatemalan Funeral Homes Compete for Corpses
Associated Press (November 29, 2009)
With its excess of murders and dearth of death practitioner regulation, Guatemala is home to “mobile morticians,” chasing ambulances and staking out city morgues to be the first to pounce on mostly low-income, grieving relatives. They’ve even earned a deathly moniker: “calaqueros,” or skullmongers, as [...]
- By: Meg Holle
- In: Death + the Law| Death Ethics| Funeral Industry
- Tags: funeral directors, funeral homes
Sweden woman’s ‘murder’ committed by elk not husband
BBC News (November 28, 2009)
So yeah. There are a number of more important articles that I SHOULD be posting to Death Ref right now, but I couldn’t resist this one. Especially since Swedish officials are saying that Elk can become aggressive after eating fermented apples.
I like to [...]
- By: John
- In: Death + the Law
- Tags: animals
Quodlibetica: The Death Issue
25, Nov 2009Friend of Death Reference Desk, Collier White, has just published the second issue of his collaborative writing/arts/criticism blog, Quodlibetica. The theme? Death. Olly, you know how to get us.
The issue, or “Constellation”, as it’s called, describes the issue thusly:
Death is an ideal subject for art: marginalized, terrifying, and ultimate. In our second constellation, Quodlibetica [...]
- By: Kim
- In: Death + Art / Architecture| Death Ethics
- Tags: writing
Discards
24, Nov 2009The euthanasia of unwanted cats and dogs is a regular occurrence the world over. However, in Japan, it takes on epic proportions. The voracious appetite of the Japanese for all things cute, fluffy and designer has spawned one of the worst adoption/destruction ratios anywhere. Whereas, in the United States about half of the animals in [...]
- By: Kim
- In: Death + Popular Culture| Death + Technology
- Tags: euthanasia, Japan, pets
While specific rites and rituals vary across cultures and time, anyone who has been to a few memorial services or even seen them on TV understands funerals. We may not know how to feel about death or the deceased, but we do know how we’re supposed to act.
A funeral, after all, is a performance — [...]
- By: Meg Holle
- In: Death + Popular Culture
- Tags: funerals, mock funerals, protests, video