Human beings are nothing if not industrious.

If one of us figures out how to do something, be it planes, trains, automobiles,

you can bet someone is going to try to do it better, smarter, cooler.

That's how we got our Netflix, our hybrid cars, our crystal clear Pepsi.

What we do with our dead is no exception. We are always trying to do death better.

Some innovations have been game changers. Cremation.

Reduce a body to ash in the name of public health

and save space and crowded cemeteries?

You can do that?

Okay.

Embalming.

Amazing.

Transport a civil war body back home across hundreds of miles without it turning into a

smelly, gooey nightmare?

Will wonders never cease?

Cemeteries that are like parks, cremation with water, caskets that burp.

Whether you want it for your own death or not, when you really think about it,

some of these inventions must have seemed pretty bone-headed at that first pitch meeting.

Yet we've embraced them and made them a part of how we do death.

But not every invention catches on.

For every cheesy Gordita Crunch crunch there's a Colgate

brand beef lasagna. Yeah, the toothpaste people made at TV dinners. For every

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