In Vietnam, grieving the dead once lasted 2 to 3 years and required following strict rituals. At Lac Hong Vien Cemetery, west of Hanoi, people can now pay online to have cemetery workers visit their loved ones graves.

In Vietnam, it is customary for grieving families to bring offerings like fake money, cognac and boiled chicken to the graves of their recently departed loved ones but Lac Hong Vien Cemetery puts a new twist on the old tradition: the ability to order these things online and have cemetery workers place the offerings for you. They then email photos showing the task was done.“The best thing would be for our children to visit our graves,” said a 53 year old woman named Bui Mai Phuong, in a recent AP article. “But if they're too busy, we have to accept that.”

Lac Hong Vien Cemetery is 30 miles west of the capitol, Hanoi, at the end of a road called Highway to Eternity. The cemetery is to have 120,000 graves, though now just 30 people are buried there. It is not cheap, burial land goes for about 8 million dong, or $400, per square meter, according to the AP article, nearly four times the going housing property rates in nearby towns. Then you must by the tombstone, which can cost as much as $48,000.

Other Great Reads: Out of space, Asia shoves their dead into futuristic tubes

It is a very new way to bury people in a country that has some interesting traditional funerary rites. In the bygone times of Confucius, the eminent 6th century Chinese scholar, mourning the dead was actually considered more important than the affairs of the living. Even today, the mourning period for a parent is meant to be two to three years, and often begins before the death has occurred. When someone is on their death bed the entire family will assemble around.  Everyone is quiet and the eldest son or daughter bends close to record the last words. They then suggest a name for the dying person, as it is considered unfortunate to use the same name in death as in life. Men often take the name Trung, which means faithfulness or True, which means loyalty. Women frequently go by Trinh, which means devotion or Thuan, which means harmony.

Other Great Reads: More on funeral customs from around the world

In a ceremonial cleansing, the corpse is bathed to wash off the dust of the terrestrial world, the hair is combed and the nails are clipped. Money, gold, and rice are put in the mouth of the dead to show they've departed this world without want or hunger. The body is then wrapped in white cloth and put in a coffin. Family members watch the body around the clock until a propitious burial time has been selected. Mourners wear loose-fitting garments made of crepe with a seam in the middle of the back. All must cover their heads. A public official is supposed to retire their position for the set mourning time and stay at home to build a tomb for their loved one and conduct memorial ceremonies. Mourners are not allowed to marry or comb or cut their hair.

Sometimes children don't initially accept a parent's death. In an effort to revive the body, they'll place a chopstick between the teeth of the deceased and put the body on a mat on the floor. The eldest child may take one of the deceased's shirts and waves it in the air, calling upon their soul to return to the body.

On one website, a Vietnamese man shared the story of his uncle, who died of liver cancer. Initially it sounded similar to what happens in the West. There is a funeral and a grieving period that lasts several days in which families bring flowers to the grave and burn incense and say prayers. Only with a Vietnamese funeral, the process continues: “Then, for the next 49 days, the family held a memorial service every seven days…The next gathering occurred 51 days later, on the 100th day after death…and finally a whole year later.”

But a man named Da, who I was directed to at the Vietnamese Consulate, in New York City, said such practices did not exist any longer. “Maybe in mountainous areas,” he said.

Da did, however, describe the funerary traditions his own family still followed:

“A relative would go to the grave and make sure the grave is still in good shape. If not, they fix it, then bring something to burn, bring some fruits, some incense, bring some dishes with food. You often bring the food that the dead loved when he was still alive. Then they bring them home, they will use those foods. A year after the relative has died the family will return to the grave.”

Have any stories about going to Vietnamese funerals? Leave a comment below..

Brendan Foster, dying of leukemia, chose as his last wish to feed the homeless. His story inspired sister movements across the country.

“On June 12th 2011, I'm turning 9 and I found out that millions of people don't live to see their 5th birthday,” Rachel Beckwith, of Bellevue, Washington recently wrote on a donation webpage she set up with the aid organization, charity:water. “And why? Because they didn't have access to clean, safe water. I'm asking from everyone I know to donate to my campaign instead of gifts for my birthday.” Rachel's goal was to raise $300 by her birthday, she hit $240. A month later she was killed in a horrible chain-reaction car crash on Highway 90, in Washington. Her mother was driving and her younger sister was in the car too. A semitrailer jackknifed into a logging truck and rear-ended Rachel's car. Her mother and sister were fine but she was put into a coma. Several days later she was taken off life support and died.

Other Great Reads: How to deal with the death of a child

Local newspapers and radio stations ran stories about Rachel's unfulfilled final wish and the actress Alyssa Milano and a Seattle Seahawks player tweeted about it. The national media picked up the story and by the Tuesday after the accident her contribution page had attracted more than $200,000 in pledges. In September, her church held a benefit concert that helped raise more than $300,000. The money goes towards bringing clean water to the Bayaka tribe, in the Central African Republic. “I am in awe of the overwhelming love to take my daughter's dream and make it a reality,” Rachel's mother exclaimed to reporters. “In the face of unexplainable pain you have provided undeniable hope.”

Another selfless last wish story is that of Brendan Foster, a cheerful curly-headed 11 year-old from the suburbs of Seattle. He was dying of leukemia, but had one final wish: feed the homeless. “I should be gone, in a week or so,” a sad but still sprightly Brendan told CNN, in 2008. Coming home from a cancer treatment appointment he noticed an area of grass covered with red tents, filled with homeless people. “I thought, I should just get them something,” said Brendan. “They're probably starving.”

Other Great Reads: Dying wishes of the rich and misogynistic

Brendan was too sick to deliver them food himself but local and national newspapers publicized his message and volunteers flocked to his side. They prepared more than 200 sandwiches, half ham and cheese and half peanut butter and jelly. “He said he didn't want to do just all peanut butter and jelly,” said one volunteer, “because what if somebody was allergic to peanut butter.” Such thoughtfulness seems remarkable for an 11 year-old, as are his views on death. When asked if he felt sad to be dying so young, Brendan responded: “I had a great time, and until my time is done I'm going to keep having a good time.” He died on November 21, 2008. The Seattle Seahawks paid for his funeral. His story inspired feed the homeless movements in Portland, Oregon, Los Angeles and Pensacola, Florida. A Vietnam vet who had lost his legs in the war was so moved by the story he gave Brendan his Purple Heart.

Both Brendan's and Rachel's last wishes were rather unusual. Most dying children want to meet a famous person or go to Disney World. In fact, final wishes have become big business, with philanthropic organizations that cater to fulfilling last wishes springing up around Orlando. Kids come from across the USA, and Europe. The first organization to grant terminally ill children last wishes was the Sunshine Foundation, founded in Philadelphia in 1976. When hotel owner Henri Landwirth first founded Give Kids the World, in 1989, an Orlando-based last wish organization, they brought about ten kids a month to the Orlando area to visit Disney World and Epcot Center. Now they bring about 100 children a month. “I never expected in my wildest imagination that this would get so big,” founder Henri Landwirth recently said in a newspaper article.

But not all last wish stories have storybook endings. Earlier this year, a six year-old with acute lymphoblastic leukemia named Enzo was denied his last wish, to cook with the famous Food Network chef, The Barefoot Contessa (Ina Garten). Enzo's mother loved the show and they frequently watched it together. Garten rejected him once, saying she was busy with a book tour, but rather than choosing another wish, as some advised him to, Enzo waited and tried again with Garten. He got rejected again, this time for good: “[Ina] participates and helps as many organizations as she can throughout the year," replied her spokesperson. "Unfortunately, as much as she would like to, it's absolutely impossible for her to grant every request she receives.”

Have a last wish story you want to share with us? Leave a comment below..

One of the most famous Incan child sacrifice victims was a 10 year-old girl named Tanta Carhua, described by one conquistador as, “beautiful beyond exaggeration.”

Shocking child deaths were all over the news last week: a 6 year-old in Collinsville, Illinois dropped dead on the playground from a brain aneurism, a California mother whose four children died in an apartment fire was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and a fifth grader in the tiny Midwest town of Ridge Farm that had been bullied at school commit suicide. Her death “devastated” the community, said one Ridge Farm resident.

In our culture, the death of a child is often even more devastating than the death of an adult, but across history and across cultures that has not always been the case. In fact, some cultures take particular pride in killing children. Like the Inca's, who ritually sacrificed children in an elaborate mountaintop ceremony known as capacocha.

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Children sacrifices celebrated key events, such as the death of an emperor, the birth of a royal son, a great war victory or an important holiday. Sometimes, sacrifices were conducted to prevent droughts and earthquakes, or epidemics. The protocol for capacocha was very particular. First, tribute payment would be collected from the provinces in the form of gold, silver, shells, cloth, feathers, llamas and alpacas. A boy or girl would be rounded up, kids between the ages of 4 and 10 and in prime physical condition. One of the most famous victims was a 10 year-old girl named Tanta Carhua, described by one conquistador as, “beautiful beyond exaggeration.” Often, the child sacrificed was the son or daughter of a chief, as it was thought that sacrificing one's own children reinforced the tie between the chief and the emperor.

There would be a procession, beginning in the child's home village and continuing on to Cuzco, the crown seat of the Inca empire. Family members, priests and local chiefs would accompany the child on the journey. In Cuzco, the young victim would have the honor of actually meeting the emperor and there would be huge feasts. Priests would then lead the procession to the designated mountain. A camp would be established at the base of the mountain where llamas, carrying 80-pound loads of soil, grass, and stones, would be corralled. Stone structures were built to offer shelter to the priests and the child. On the summit, the sacrificial platform would be constructed, consisting of a platform made of stone with a large tomb-like interior. Here, the child would be placed, along with burial artifacts like llama carvings, gold and silver statues and ceremonial pots.

After Tanta was taken to Cuzco to meet the emperor she was taken in a procession that passed back through her home village. “You can finish with me now, because I could not be more honored than by the feasts which they celebrated for me in Cuzco,” she reportedly told her fellow villagers. She was then led to her sacrificial platform, high in the Andes and placed alive in the stone tomb. Tanta and other sacrifice victims were given a maize alcohol called chichi, which eased the pain of the cold and altitude. Some researchers believe the children were killed violently, either through suffocation, or a powerful blow to the head. The archeologist Johan Reinhard discovered a famous mummy called Juanita whose skull was indeed fractured, but he believes it resulted from a quick and painless knock specifically intended to spare the children a long and grueling death from exposure.

Other Great Reads: How to deal with the death of a child

Some startling evidence turned up recently that suggests even more preparation went into the sacrifices than previously thought. A 2007 study from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reported that sacrificial children were actually “fattened up” for the kill in the months before their deaths with high-protein diets. Typically, peasant children ate mostly potatoes, a diet low in protein that resulted in minimal hair growth. But the Inca elites had protein-rich diets, eating foods like maize and llama meat, and hair growth was greater. The study found that in the year before a sacrificial child was killed their hair growth increased tremendously. “It is chilling,” said Andrew Wilson, the head of the study, in a National Geographic News article. “The children, through their own tissue, give us graphic details and evidence that they were not killed on a whim, but were part of a complex process for which they were selected some considerable time before.”

Think the Incas are horrible people for practicing capacocha? Know some stories that are even stranger? Leave a comment below..

Hollywood action hero Steven Seagall was recognized by a Buddhist priest as the reincarnation of a 17th century Buddhist disciple from eastern Tibet. Celebrity reincarnation stories are a dime a dozen.

Did Amy Winehouse get reincarnated as a black butterfly and appear at her own funeral? Her father says yes. “I could hear people muttering and I thought the paparazzi had got in,” he recently told Anderson Cooper. “It landed on Kelly Osbourne's shoulder, then flew around me.”

GUESSING AMY WINEHOUSE'S DEATH

The story may seem strange, but celebrity reincarnation stories are a dime a dozen. Sylvester Stallone believes he was once a Guatemalan monkey and Loretta Lynn believes she was once a Cherokee princess who served as a mistress to a powerful king. Then there is the story of Glenn Ford, an actor who starred in more than 100 Hollywood films and is especially famous for his roles in cop movies, war stories and westerns.

Ford became interested in reincarnation while doing a movie on the Dutch psychic Peter Hurkos. In December 1975, he underwent a series of hypnotic sessions in which memories of his past lives came flooding back. Ford learned that a few lives ago he was a nineteenth century Scottish music teacher named Charles Stewart. Stewart loved horses, as did Ford, but where Stewart was a piano virtuoso Ford couldn't play a note. While under hypnosis and thinking about his life as Stewart, Ford was able to play Mozart.

Academy award-winning actress Shirley MacLaine describes her past lives in her 1983 book, “Out on a limb”, which was made into a five hour TV special. It follows her affair with Gerry Stamford, a British socialist politician, and a married man. MacLaine said he awakened in her a spiritual hunger. She later meets David Manning, an amateur painter with an interest in Eastern spirituality. At a Los Angeles bookstore, Manning introduces MacLaine to literature on metaphysics, reincarnation, and New Age philosophy. At first she is shy about embracing her spirituality. But that changes, thanks to Manning. In a pivotal moment, while standing on a beach on the Pacific Ocean, Manning lifts both arms to the sky and shouts: “I am God!  I am God!”

Later she meets Sture Johanssen and Kevin Ryerson, two mediums who reveal experiences from their own past lives. Ryerson provides a metaphysical explanation for MacLaine's attraction to Stamford: 300,000 years ago they were married in the mythical city of Atlantis. Manning then persuades MacLaine to come to Peru with him and search for spiritually-enlightened extraterrestrials. “Plato professed to know that other civilizations such as Atlantis existed,” MacLaine explains on her website. “Most of our great thinkers have professed to have had an intuition or guidance that they couldn't describe…I have discovered knowledge of other physical lives, relationships that felt as if they had been in place forever and foreign soils that felt like home.”

Hollywood action hero Steven Seagall has starred as an ex-CIA operative, a retired Special Forces soldier, a Navy SEAL and a vengeful gun-toting environmentalist. He has also spent more than 20 years studying with high Buddhist priests in Japan and Tibet and was recognized by one Penor Rinpoche as the reincarnation of a holy 17th century Buddhist disciple. When asked if he had memories of past lives, Seagall answered: “If you practice [Tibetan Buddhism] and practice and dissolve into the emptiness with the practice and you are concentrating on bodhicitta more than anything else, you will probably start to slowly dissolve the veil of who you think you are into your true nature, which is a combination of all your lives. We just have to remember them.”

BUDDHIST DEATH RITUALS

And in the end all that takes are some past-life hypnotic sessions, such as the ones Glenn Ford was so fond of. A second session revealed that in an even earlier life, during the time of King Louis XIV, Ford was a member of an elite 17th century French cavalry unit. His name was Launvaux and he came to a violent end. An aristocrat accused him of committing adultery with his wife and hired a skilled swordsman to challenge him to a duel. Launvaux lost. While under hypnosis Ford perfectly described the location of the stables in the palace at Versailles. In a final hypnosis he went even further back, remembering a past life as a young Christian martyr, killed by lions in the Colosseum in third century Rome. In less notable lives Ford was a 17th Century Royal Navy sailor who died in the Great Plague and a cowboy in the early American West.

Know another celebrity reincarnation story? Have one of your own? Think it's all bogus? Leave a comment below!

At Hartsdale Pet Cemetery, in New York, some 700 people have been buried with their pets, though the practice is now under scrutiny. In the sixth and seventh centuries, Anglo-Saxon warriors were often buried with their horses.

Carol Mundy, of Cornwall, England already has her cemetery plot picked out. She wants to be buried beside her husband Robert, and Dylan, the couple's 17 year old golden retriever. Nearby will be Merlin, their Irish thoroughbred, an abused dog the couple rescued from Romania. Merlin's plot cost about $1,000, Dylan's cost nearly $5,000. “I don't see why he shouldn't have the same resting place as me,” said Mundy. “Nothing makes me more angry than people saying ‘it is only a dog'. Some think you're screwy but they need to realize what a difference animals can make to people's lives.”

Burying people with their pets has become more common in England and also America, although in the US the practice has recently come under scrutiny. Just this past June, the New York Division of Cemeteries issued an order to animal cemeteries to stop the practice of burying human ashes with animal remains. The ruling infuriated customers of the Hartsdale Pet Cemetery, the nation's oldest pet cemetery, located in the suburbs north of New York City, where several people had already prearranged to have their ashes interred alongside their pets. “Suddenly I'm not at peace anymore,” said one woman, who planned to be buried with her two dogs, BJ I and BJ II. “You want to be with the people you are closest with, your true loved ones…the only loved ones I have in my life right now are my pets.”

THE RICHEST DOG ON EARTH DIES

Hartsdale Cemetery officials estimate some 700 people have been buried with their pets in the cemetery. A total of 75,000 animals are buried there, mostly cats and dogs. Despite the new order against pet/human burials the cemetery's owner says he plans to continue them . “My uncle wants to be buried beside his wife and what he considered to be his children and I'm not letting anyone stand in the way,” said a lawyer representing the cemetery. “His love for those dogs was just as real and just as strong as any parent's for any child.”

The first pet/human burial at Hartsdale was in 1925, when a woman had her ashes sprinkled over her dog's grave. The inscription on a tombstone for one Edward Way, who died in 1976, reads: “Miss Bibi Way, 1959-1973 – Here we sleep forever, I and my beloved Bibi, my loving companion for fourteen years, together in life, together in death.” Cemetery records indicate Bibi was a cat. One Arthur Link, who died in 1995, is buried beside his wife and their 16 cats; Aspen, Fritzie, Ginger, Gidget, Muffin, Bambi, Cricket, Snoopy, Gina, Patches, Foxy, Buttons, Dudley, Omar, Khayyam and Valentino.

PET DEATH LEGAL ISSUES

Wealthy New Yorkers are not the trendsetters here. Anglo-Saxon warriors were often buried with their horses. Graves with both human and horse remains dating from mostly the sixth and seventh centuries have been found in Scandinavia, Germany and Britain. Sutton Hoo, a British site excavated in 1991 is famous for its ship burial, which contained a host of precious artifacts now at the British Museum, such as a metalwork dress fitted with gold and gems and silver plates from the Eastern Roman Empire. Equally impressive are a group of 20 earthen mounds.

Inside Mound 3 are the ashes of a man and a horse, in a wooden trough together with a Frankish iron-headed throwing-axe, the lid of a bronze ewer, part of a miniature carved plaque with the winged Goddess Victory and fragments of decorated bone. Under Mound 4 are the cremated remains of a man and a woman, together with a horse and what is likely a dog. Mound 7 contains cremations in bronze bowls, gaming-pieces, an iron bucket, a sword-belt fitting and a drinking vessel, together with the remains of horse, cattle, red deer, sheep and pig.

Even earlier pet/human burials can be found amongst the pharaohs of ancient Egypt, who were often buried alongside mummified cats, monkeys and birds. Cats were embalmed and adorned with papier-mâché masks then placed in a mummy case or bronze coffin and buried with mummified mice and pots of milk for the afterlife. In 1888, a farmer in the Egyptian town of Beni Hasan accidentally discovered a massive cat tomb. Inside were the remains of thousands of felines, dating from 1,000 to 2,000 B.C. Most of the remains were shipped to a plant in Manchester, England, where they were turned into fertilizer.

More than 200 corpses lay entombed on Mt. Everest. Many people remain in the same position as when they died, almost perfectly preserved because of the cold.

Peter Kinloch, a 28 year old IT specialist, had just summited Mt. Everest and was descending the mountain when he began to go blind. He lost coordination and collapsed. A trio of Nepalese Sherpas spent 12 hours trying to resuscitate him with amphetamines and oxygen but by 2 a.m., bad weather was approaching and the group was still 28,000 feet high on the mountain. They were forced to abandon his body. Months later, Peter's friend Rodney, attempting an Everest summit of his own, spotted it. “I instantly knew it was Peter,” said Rodney. “You could see his face. It was like he was lying on his back taking a rest.”

WHAT TO SAY AT A FRIEND'S FUNERAL

The body was on a dangerous ledge about 1,000 feet below the summit. Unable to reach his friend's remains, Rodney paid his respects and left him there, yet another corpse, one of more than 200 entombed on earth's highest mountain. Steep terrain, hazardous weather, lack of oxygen and the difficulty involved in packing out 200 extra pounds make it nearly impossible to get a body off the mountain. Many people remain in the same position as when they died, almost perfectly preserved because of the cold. For climbers en route to the top, corpses have become part of the scenery.

A website featuring photos of the Everest dead shows a body from 1996 in a red parka, purple snow pants and fluorescent green boots, in the lee of a rock wall with powdery snow drifted across his torso. Such a landmark is this body that it has been given a nickname, green boots. Another man lies half buried in a scree pile, with his climbing ropes still across his shoulders and his clothing ripped open across his back, revealing his pale white skin to the elements. One body is nothing but a skeleton in a sherbet colored parka, with the head cocked to the side and the teeth intact. It seems to be grinning.

THE WORLD'S MOST BEAUTIFUL MUMMY

Cleanups have become more common, though most have stayed below 26,000 feet, the start of the notorious “death zone”, where there is one-third as much oxygen as there is at sea level and brain damage and death can set in in a matter of hours. Peter Kinloch died in the death zone. Last spring, a team of Nepali climbers headed there with special bags to collect bodies. Their aim was to retrieve five, lower them down the snowfield and carry them across the glaciers to base camp. One was the body of a Swiss climber who died on the mountain in 2008. His family consented to him being brought down by the Sherpas and cremated. But not all family's want their loved ones removed from the mountain. It's “where he'd like to have stayed,” said the wife of Rob Hall, one of eight climbers to die in a blizzard near the top of Everest in the spring of 1996, a disaster that became the basis of the best-selling book Into Thin Air. The Sherpas don't necessarily agree bodies should be left there forever. “The mountain is also a source of water,” said one.

The most famous body to be taken off Everest is also one of the first ones to be left there, George Mallory, an English mountaineer who disappeared with his climbing partner Andrew Irvine high on the northeast ridge, just a few hundred meters from the summit, in 1924. He would have been the first climber to conquer the mountain. The pair set out from base camp on June 4, it is assumed they died four days later, on June 8th, or perhaps, June 9th. Mallory's funeral was held at St. Paul's Cathedral, in London, and attended by the British prime minister, Ramsay Macdonald as well as King George V and the Royal family. His body had not yet been found.

Several expeditions went looking, hoping not just for corpse closure but also to end the heated debate over whether or not Mallory reached the summit. A Chinese climber named Wang Hung-bao apparently stumbled across a dead Englishman at 26,570 feet in 1975. Based on this info, in 1986, the Mt. Everest North Face Research Expedition went looking for Mallory but were waylaid by heavy snows. In 1999, the Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition resumed the search, accompanied by Nova and BBC film crews. On May 1 they found a body and checked a name tag still readable on the clothing, it read “G. Mallory”.

But the debate over whether him and Irvine made it to the summit continues. “I would love them to have got there,” said climber Sir Chris Bonington, who first summited Everest in 1975. “Whether they did or not, I think that is something one just cannot know.”

Stripper funerals are common in rural Taiwan, the more chaotic the better. At one event a stripper went into the audience and rubbed a man's genitals. (Photo courtesy of Marc Moskowitz)

Have you ever been to a funeral where strippers dance on glowing flatbed trucks? Marc Moskowitz has. In fact, he has made a movie about it, called Dancing for the Dead. Moskowitz, a University of South Carolina anthropologist, has spent the past two decades researching pop culture in China and Taiwan. Digital Dying spoke with him about just how raunchy Taiwan stripper funerals get, why city folk don't like them and how the trend could come to America.

What does a Taiwan stripper funeral look like?

Women sing and dance as a truck with blinking neon lights follows a funeral procession through the streets. The trucks are called Electric Flower Cars, or EFCs. Vendors sell things alongside and there is some really fabulous singing and a whole range of performances, taking off clothes is just one part. Often there's a host, a middle aged man or woman who tells jokes and interviews performers between events. Usually the strippers wear bikinis, or an outfit like you might see at a nightclub.

But isn't it strange to have naked dancers at a funeral?

There's a concept in Taiwanese culture called renao, which refers to the hustle and bustle of an exciting event, the hot and noisy. For it to be successful it has to be renao. Even if you go to the mountains or the beach, it is renao. Think of a quiet rock concert, that would be a failure. Or a quiet amusement park. The EFCs also perform at weddings and religious festivals. Nudity attracts more people and more people make it more hot and noisy. Making the funeral a noisy event means people will talk about it for years. To some extent the more extreme the better.

FUNERAL CUSTOMS ACROSS THE WORLD

What's the most extreme thing you've seen at a stripper funeral?

I didn't actually witness full nudity at funerals but on a couple occasions at temple events I did see women going into the audience and giving men lap dances. I saw one woman go into the audience and rub a man's genitals, through the pants. I didn't include these things in the film because I didn't want to get people in trouble. I talked to an American professor who said he saw EFCs in the early 1980s in southern Taiwan and women were shooting water out of their private parts, like a sex act in Thailand.

Why would a family want a stripper funeral for their loved one?

They advertise an individual's economic power, so the number of people you can get at a funeral attests to how important that person was in the community. Or, maybe the old guy liked this kind of thing while alive so it makes a good sendoff. Others told me it was done to impress new ghosts, those who have died recently and like real people enjoy gambling and womanizing. New ghosts are often beat up by old ghosts, who have been dead for centuries and are more likely to obey laws of righteousness and morality. Stripper funerals can be a way to distract older ghosts so new ghosts can get their bearings.

What are the logistics of arranging a stripper funeral?

They're more commonly arranged by friends, not family. Say when a big figure in gangster society dies, some of his gangster brothers might hire several EFCs. Usually, people wait for auspicious days to bury someone. They'll set up funeral tents in front of someone's house and put the coffin in the tent. It will sit there for several days with people keeping vigil. On the day when it's scheduled to travel to the crematorium the EFC comes. In the morning there's a banquet, then the procession begins.

SEE THE WORLD'S DUMBEST, SEXIEST DEATHS

How did the practice come about?

EFCs came along in about 1980 though there probably was a non-motorized form that existed well before that. In the 1980s two important things were going on in Taiwan. The government was nearing the end of its martial law period and becoming more permissive, and it was a time of incredible economic flourishing. Suddenly, people had lots more money than they did before. Taiwan has an incredible religious life, so one of the first places people started demonstrating this wealth was with religious phenomenon like EFCs.

Is Taiwan's government really okay with this?

EFCs are legal but since the mid-1980s full nudity has been restricted, though it still happens. On one hand there's a belief in freedom of religion. On the other hand politicians are afraid of having naked people dancing in the street. There are also tensions in Taiwan about issues like freedom of speech and where that ends. You have something that began as a folk practice in rural areas and became more mainstream. Interestingly, the only people who critiqued it were educated male urbanites.

Why are the poor attracted to this but not the rich?

If you're a multimillionaire and you own a company of course a funeral is going to be lavish and bring respect, but there are other ways that person gets respect. In poor areas weddings and funerals are the main events where people can flaunt their symbolic capitol. Urbanites are also more connected to global culture. They wear the same clothes and watch the same television shows as people in Paris or New York. Their knee jerk reaction to EFCs is one of amusement or horror. No one has said this but I think the underlying issue is urbanite Taiwanese think this is an embarrassment in the eyes of the global community. Poor people are more invested in local culture and don't care what people in the US think. Globalization could potentially erase this phenomenon, that would be a pity.

Will stripper funerals ever come to the US?

Sign me up! I don't know about full nudity but I'm a huge fan of the performances. My gut reaction is it's not likely to take off in America but you have to remember there are huge Asian communities in the US. My first book was on abortion ghosts and you think, okay, that's something that's not going to happen in the US, but in fact in places like Washington and Hawaii there are now abortion ghosts. I went to a shopping mall in Charlotte, North Carolina and there was a little altar for a fetus ghost. So, I think anything can happen. But I don't think you'll see it happening in downtown Manhattan anytime soon.

Why not, are we just lame?

The US funeral tradition comes from our American Protestant heritage. The stiff upper lip, the idea that emotions are a bad thing, the puritanical disdain for celebration. America has inherited this idea that events are cold. We see this in everything from funerals to museums. If you go to a museum you have to be quiet and restrained. I suppose this is out of respect for the artists, but this is very much a social construction. There's no reason why museums have to be quiet and restrained. The same goes for funerals.

Do you think the Taiwanese have a better handle on death than we do?

In Taiwan, the dead and the living can coexist. During ghost month the gates of the underworld open and ghosts come up. There are parades and people burn incense and put out food. But I'm not sure there's a way to handle death well. It's dramatic for everyone, though I think Americans are exceptionally removed from the process. America suffers from this bowling alone phenomenon. In Taiwan, communities are much stronger. Everyone is connected to everyone else in some way. Death is something you're more aware of walking down the street in Taiwan, but I don't think people are any more emotionally ready for the event. In the end, there's no way for us to confront these emotions in a well-balanced way.

After a rollercoaster life, Dorothy died at a chimpanzee rescue center in Cameroon. This photo, showing her chimp family observe the burial, went viral on the internet and raised the question, can animals really exhibit funeral behavior?

Dorothy's mother was killed by hunters. They then sold her to an amusement park in Cameroon where she was chained to the ground and taught to drink beer and smoke cigarettes for noisy crowds. Poor diet and lack of exercise made Dorothy obese. In May of 2000 she was brought to Cameroon's Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center and rehabilitated. She became a favorite at the center and even mothered a child of her own. But in September of 2008 she died of congestive heart failure. The management let her chimpanzee family witness the burial. “Some chimps displayed aggression while others barked in frustration,” a worker who photographed the event later explained. “But perhaps the most stunning reaction was a recurring, almost tangible silence. If one knows chimpanzees, then one knows that they are not usually silent creatures.”

The photo of the chimp funeral went viral on the internet and was published in the November 2009 issue of National Geographic. It shows Dorothy under a light blue sheet in a wheelbarrow being pushed to the burial site by a park worker. Another worker holds Dorothy's head gently in her hands. Behind a fence in the background are more than a dozen chimpanzees, staring intently, looking visibly sad. Chimpanzees, along with African elephants, ants and magpies are some of the few animals known to exhibit funeral behavior. Interestingly, they are all social animals. “Perhaps their grief reactions function as a social signal that allows for reshuffling of status relationships, facilitates filling of the reproductive vacancy left by the deceased, or fosters continuity of the group,” speculates Janis Dickinson, of Cornell's Ornithology Lab, in an essay on yellow-billed magpies.

READ ABOUT HOW GORILLAS, PARROTS AND HORSES COMMIT SUICIDE TOO

When a yellow-billed magpie dies other magpies will swoop down to the carcass and hop about, making loud squawking noises. The display is considered a funeral related action and was discovered in 1972 by a biologist named Nicholas Verbeek. “Could the magpies be expressing grief?” questions Dickinson. Until further research is done, nobody really knows for certain. But Mark Bekoff, of the University of Colorado, thinks they just might be. In 2009, he released a paper describing the results of a study where he spent time observing magpies alongside a magpie corpse. Two actually approached the corpse, gently pecking at it, then stepped away. Another flew off, only to return with some grass which it laid on the body. “We can't know what they were actually thinking or feeling,” said Bekoff. “But reading their action there's no reason not to believe these birds were saying a magpie farewell to their friend.”

African elephants have been known to gather around decaying corpses and bawl. They touch the bodies with their trunks and sometimes bury the carcass with tree branches. They'll even remove bones and tusks and pass them around, or carry them off. In 2008, a 38 year-old elephant named Tequila living at the Toronto Zoo died suddenly. Staff found her daughter Thika standing beside her mother's body for hours, digging at the ground and throwing dirt over the body. “Elephants are extremely intelligent,” explained one zoo official. Two years prior, zoo staff videotaped the funeral behavior that followed the death of a 40 year-old elephant named Patsy. “The elephants who got along with Patsy came up to touch her with their trunks while the ones who fought with her stood further back,” reported a newspaper article.

FUNERAL ETIQUETTE—WHAT TO SAY AND WHAT TO DO

And then there are ants. We have all seen the lines of them weaving along the floor of the forest, or our living room, mysteriously keeping to the same path. What not everyone notices is that when an ant dies in line, a certain ant comes along to remove the body, the undertaker ant. It will gather up all the corpses and make a pile, then mine sand from the colony's tunnel system, one grain at a time, and use it to cover them. One particularly contemplative blogger describes the experience of observing undertaker ants at work: “Questions entered my mind as I watched them. Why didn't they just bring the bodies down into the tunnels with them instead of bringing the sand up to the bodies? Why did they want to bury the bodies in the first place? Are there minister ants to speak at the funerals?”

Dr. Jack Kevorkian, more than anything else, was an inventor. His Thanatron suicide machine looked like a hastily assembled high school science fair entry.

We all know Jack Kevorkian was a doctor, but few know he was also a painter and a jazz composer; his 1997 CD, “The Kevorkian Suite: A Very Still Life” features Kevorkian on the flute and organ, alongside The Morpheus Quintet. Perhaps more than anything though, Kevorkian, who died last Friday, was an inventor. He masterminded several suicide machines, the first of which, the Thanatron, looked like a hastily assembled high school science fair entry.

The device consisted of a metal frame with three canisters, each containing a syringe and an IV which connected to a patient's arm. The first canister held saline solution, the second a sleep-inducing barbiturate called sodium thiopental and the third, a mix of potassium chloride, which stops the heart and pancuronium bromide, a muscle relaxant that prevents spasms during the dying process (the same three drugs are used in lethal injection executions). The process is initiated with the saline solution. The patient then begins the barbiturate drip themselves by throwing a switch, pushing a button or pulling a string. Either a timer or a mechanical device triggered by the patient's falling arm, which becomes sleepy as the drugs take effect, starts the lethal potassium chloride flow. Death usually occurs within two minutes.

HOW TO HANDLE GRIEF AFTER A SUICIDE

Just two people died using the Thanatron before Kevorkian lost the medical license that gave him access to some of the drugs involved in the process. In response, he invented a machine that didn't need them, the Mercitron. It consisted of a canister of carbon monoxide attached to a face mask with a tube. A valve, turned by the patient, started the gas flowing. This method took 10 minutes longer, according to Kevorkian. He encouraged patients to take sedatives or muscle relaxants to keep calm as they waited for the gas to take effect.

In the mid-1990s, as Kevorkian was coming under scrutiny from law officials, an Australian doctor named Philip Nitschke was developing the Deliverance Machine. It looked just as sci-fi as it sounded; a laptop attached to a large black medical box. A piece of software on the laptop called “Deliverance” asked patients a series of questions, automatically administering a lethal injection of barbiturates if certain answers were given. The idea being that patients had full control over the decision to take their own lives. Four terminally ill patients used the Deliverance Machine in Australia's Northern Territories before the act legalizing the procedure was overturned.

SOUTH KOREANS PLAY DEAD TO LOWER SUICIDE RATE

In 2008, Nitschke invented a euthanasia device with Exit International consisting of an ordinary barbecue gas bottle filled with nitrogen and a plastic suicide bag and plastic tubing. By inhaling the pure nitrogen, patients lost consciousness in just 12 seconds, without the twitching sometimes caused by using helium, the gas used in earlier models. Another advantage to the machine, according to Nitschke, was it used ordinary household products available at any hardware store. “It's extremely quick and there are no drugs,” he said. “Importantly this doesn't fail – it's reliable, peaceful, available and with the additional benefit of undetectability.”

Nitschke's latest device is very similar to the one that recently landed a charming if a bit eccentric 91 year-old San Diego woman a visit from the FBI. Sharlotte Hydorn had been selling suicide kits online; a clear plastic bag and medical grade tubing, they come in a box decorated with butterflies and cost $60. Customers place the bag over their heads, connect the tubing from the bag to a helium tank, turn the valve and breathe. Within minutes they are asphyxiated.

One problem authorities have with the device is it is not being used exclusively by the terminally ill. Last December, one of Hydorn's devices was found over the head of a 29 year old Eugene, Oregon man. “This is analogous to putting a gun-vending machine next to a depression clinic,” the man's outraged brother told reporters at the time. As much backlash as the Oregon incident spawned, it also doubled Hydorn's sales, which rose to about 100 per month. It got the Feds on her scent too, though. Still, Hydorn doesn't seem concerned.

“Do I look like a criminal?” she asked reporters gathered at her home last week. “People commit suicide by jumping out of windows and buildings, and hanging themselves,” she continued. Her product, she says, ends lives peacefully, leaving people “eternally sleepy.”

As has happened with Osama bin Laden, revenge often begets killing, which can lead to more revenge and more killing. One of the most incredible stories of revenge killings comes from the highlands of Papua New Guinea.

He killed nearly 3,000 Americans on September 11 2001, earlier this month we killed him, ten days after that his followers attacked recruits at a paramilitary training center in Pakistan, killing 80 men.

“We have done this to avenge the Abbottabad incident,” said a Taliban spokesman.

The men who lost their lives in this revenge killing were part of the Frontier Constabulary, an ill-equipped force that has been given the challenging task of confronting Pakistan's Al Qaeda element. The group receives US funding. The men had just completed a six month training and were about to go on break. They were gathered at the training center's main gate and were in the process of filing into minivans for the return trip home to their families, many bore gifts. They were in high spirits, said one recruit. Some were seated inside the vans, others were still loading luggage atop the vehicles. The two suicide bombers wore explosive vests packed with ball bearings and nails and detonated their devices one after the other. At least ten vans were destroyed, showering the scene with shards of metal, glass and blood. “I cannot forget the cries of my friends before they died,” one 21 year old survivor told reporters.

LEARN ABOUT THE DIFFERENT STAGES OF GRIEF

And if he truly does not forget, will he too seek vengeance? Will there be another blast sometime in the not too distant future, and more bloodshed? Revenge may be sweet, but it is also bitter and bloody and as of late, an increasingly common topic in the news.

In Libya, the bound and gagged bodies of Colonel Qaddafi's internal security officials have been turning up in morgues as well as ditches on the side of the road. Many people suspect rebels may be settling old scores. In the past several decades numerous Libyans were jailed without trial, others died in prison or were murdered outright by the government. Many people still remember the killing of a Benghazi man named Mohamed al-Hami in 1996, after murdering him security forces reportedly crucified him then paraded his body around the city in the back of a pickup truck. “The killings,” noted a New York Times article from last week, referring to the gagged and bound bodies turning up across the country, “appear to be rooted in revenge.”

Last Sunday in East Jerusalem, Israeli soldiers fired tear gas and rubber bullets on mourners attending the funeral of a 16 year old Palestinian boy said to have been shot in the stomach by a Jewish settler during a dispute. As mourners marched to a mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem, they chanted, “God is greatest” (Allahu Akbar) and “With our blood and our soul, we shall sacrifice for the martyr.” In an attempt to quell the possibility of revenge, Israeli forces fired tear gas and rubber bullets at the crowd. Israel has been on high alert for vengeance killings recently, last week marked the 63rd anniversary of Israel's occupation of Palestine.

READ ABOUT MULTICULTURAL, OR "ADAPTIVE" FUNERALS

Revenge killings take place in the US too. Earlier this month in New Orleans, a 26 year old named Derrick François knocked on the front door of his good childhood friend, Chandrick Harris, whose mother answered the door. She didn't think twice about letting Derrick in. He proceeded to her son's bedroom and shot him dead. It was revenge; just the day before, Derrick's younger brother was murdered by a man he believed to be connected to Chandrick.

One of the most incredible stories of revenge comes from a 2008 New Yorker article by anthropologist Jared Diamond which tracks a complex case from the highlands of Papua New Guinea. It began when a pig from one tribe trampled through a garden belonging to someone from a rival tribe. When the garden owner demanded compensation the pig owner refused, so he assaulted him. The epic revenge saga that followed lasted over four years and left 17 people dead. Diamond juxtaposes this story with that of his late father-in-law, a Polish Jew named Jozef whose entire family was killed during World War II. When Jozef returns as a soldier to his village he is led to the man who had been in charge of the group that killed his parents. Handed a pistol and encouraged by those around him to seek revenge, Jozef cannot bring himself to do it, an action he regretted till the day he died: “Every day, still, before going to sleep, I think of my mother's death, and of my having let her murderer go.”