Vatican issues decree on Burials.

Vatican Issues Decree on Burial, Cremation, Just Before ‘Month of the Dead’

by Thomas D. Williams PHD Breibart News October 25, 2016

The Vatican has published new guidelines regarding Catholic burial and cremation just in time for Halloween and the beginning of November—the “month of the dead.”

While expressing a preference for Christian burial, the new Instruction makes allowances for those who wish to be cremated, but specifies that their mortal remains cannot be scattered in the air or at sea, preserved in mementos, kept in the home or divided up among family members.

The norms issued by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith are meant to uphold the importance of the body in Christian theology and to avoid “every appearance of pantheism, naturalism or nihilism” that can be associated with the scattering of ashes, the document states.

"Death with Dignity Legislation introduced in Albany"

“The option to end one’s suffering when facing the final stages of a terminal illness should be a basic human right, and not dependent upon one’s zip code,” State Senator Diane Savino said in a statement today. “With solid support for aid in dying across every demographic, I believe there will be strong bipartisan backing for this bill.”

Brittany Maynard

"Japanese Maple"

By Clive James

Your death, near now, is of an easy sort.
So slow a fading out brings no real pain.
Breath growing short
Is just uncomfortable. You feel the drain
Of energy, but thought and sight remain:

Enhanced, in fact. When did you ever see
So much sweet beauty as when fine rain falls
On that small tree
And saturates your brick back garden walls,
So many Amber Rooms and mirror halls?

Ever more lavish as the dusk descends
This glistening illuminates the air.
It never ends.
Whenever the rain comes it will be there,
Beyond my time, but now I take my share.

My daughter’s choice, the maple tree is new.
Come autumn and its leaves will turn to flame.
What I must do
Is live to see that. That will end the game
For me, though life continues all the same:

Filling the double doors to bathe my eyes,
A final flood of colors will live on
As my mind dies,
Burned by my vision of a world that shone
So brightly at the last, and then was gone.

Via Slate

They Always Go in Threes, right?

Sad news: One of television's original comic stars, Sid Caesar, has died. He was 91 and at home in Los Angeles, according to his friend and former collaborator, Carl Reiner, reports Reuters.

First, Shirley Temple; now, Sid. Who will be next?

Study: "Subconsciously Thinking About Death Might Make You Funnier"

A study published in the journal HUMOR states that researchers have discovered that subconsciously inducing thoughts of death makes people funnier than inducing thoughts of pain. Consciously focusing on death, however, doesn’t.

The study took 117 students and divided them into four groups. Two groups were exposed to either the word “death” or the word “pain” in 33 millisecond flashes on a computer screen while they worked on other tasks. Then they wrote captions for New Yorker cartoons.

And the death group killed it. An independent jury who knew nothing about the experiment voted for the subconsciously death-primed captions by clear margins. The effectiveness of subliminal messaging is still being explored, but this is further proof that we can demonstrate the impact of something without being aware of it.

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Christopher Long, psychology professor at Ouachita Baptist University and author of the study, said that there was still a lot to explore in the difference between the consciously and subconsciously death primed humor, and why one makes you funnier.

“Our guess is that there is something about the source of the anxiety a person is experiencing and the way a person was reminded of that source, which influences his or her ability to be funny in the moment,” Long said in an email. “It may be that thinking about one's own death confronts a person with a more overt sort of discomfort that is either not as conducive or motivating to be funny, relative to a more subtle exposure to death reminders.”

The study linked the boost in humor to terror management theory—which states that human beings are bound to being aware of our lives’ finitude and thus create culture as distraction and also to grant those short lives meaning. It also points to humor’s role as a stress-reliever in times of trouble and trauma, but noted that there’s much more research to be done.

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