Blumenthal Bites the Dust. The culture of death. Suffice it to say, in a country where you can get arrested for smoking in a bar, handcuffed for not wearing a seat belt, thrown out of school for possessing an Alka-Seltzer, and dumped on by the Supreme Court for praying at an Alabama ball field, you should be able to get yourself executed for blowing up 168 people. There's no way McVeigh can get his due, of course, though he's getting off far too easy with an injection. At the very least, he should be ushered into the afterlife with the help of a roaring flamethrower.
Solutions are available, but first the downward trend is worth a closer look.
Burial was once very much the noble norm. There was a poetic symmetry in returning to the earth from which we came, and a haunting finality in the sound of the first shovel of dirt smacking the coffin. Then came the placement of the tombstone, with its dates and closing thought etched in granite, followed by visitations by survivors, many of whom spoke softly above the sod to those who lay beneath it. Yet earth burial lost much of its majesty when the funeral industry began digging graves with backhoes. One digs sewer lines with a backhoe.