Posts Tagged ‘decomposition’
Haiti’s Anonymous Dead
19, Jan 2010As Haitians Flee, the Dead Go Uncounted Damien Cave, New York Times (January 18, 2010) Last home of country’s most famous families turns from place of respect and mourning into installation of horror Ed Pilkington, The Guardian (January 18, 2010) Following up on yesterday’s Haiti earthquake post, these New York Times and Guardian articles expand [...]
- By: John
- In: Burial|Cemeteries|Death + Disaster
- Tags: death and smell, decomposition, Haiti Earthquake, mass graves
The Impossibility of Identifying the Dead in Haiti
18, Jan 2010How can a country in the grip of an apocalyptic tragedy deal in a dignified way with its victims? Paul Harris, The Guardian (January 17, 2010) The current stories emanating from Haiti are incomprehensibly awful. This Guardian article uses the word apocalyptic and that seems utterly appropriate. A crisis situation of this enormity is compounded [...]
- By: John
- In: Burial|Cemeteries|Death + Disaster
- Tags: death and smell, decomposition, Haiti Earthquake, mass graves, video
Indigent Burials Are on the Rise Katie Zezima, The New York Times (October 11, 2009) Regular readers of the Death Reference Desk will recognize that the nationwide increase in indigent burials is a significant trend. Since this summer, when Death Ref launched, we have routinely posted articles on the uptick in unclaimed dead bodies under [...]
- By: John
- In: Death + the Economy|Funeral Industry
- Tags: decomposition, forensics, unclaimed bodies, video
How Dead Bodies Become Beetle Juice
10, Oct 2009To Casket Or Not To Casket? One Of America’s Great Field Biologists Thinks About Burial Robert Krulwich, NPR (October 9, 2009) NPR science reporter Robert Krulwich (also of RadioLab fame) did this short piece (it’s a little over five minutes long) on the decomposition of dead animal bodies and their consumption by beetles. He interviews [...]
- By: John
- In: Burial|Death + Biology|Eco-Death
- Tags: coffins, decomposition, green burial
The Nose Knows
13, Sep 2009The smell of death is all around us. Sometimes it hits the nostrils like a hammer to the skull; other times it goes undetected and unnoticed — at least to us humans. A few recent articles got me thinking about the phenomena of scent in the presence of death, or even in one case as [...]
- By: Kim
- In: Death + Biology
- Tags: death and smell, decomposition, research