A funeral is a ceremony connected with the final disposition of a corpse, such as a burial or cremation, with the attendant observances. Funerary customs comprise the complex of beliefs and practices used by a culture to remember and respect the dead, from interment, to various monuments and rituals undertaken in their honor. Customs vary between religious groups. Common secular motivations for funerals include mourning the deceased, celebrating their life, offering support and sympathy to the bereaved; the funeral includes a ritual through which the corpse receives a final disposition. Depending on culture and religion, these can involve either the destruction of the body or its preservation. Differing beliefs about cleanliness and the relationship between body and soul are reflected in funerary practices. A memorial service or celebration of life is a funerary ceremony, performed without the remains of the deceased person; the word funeral comes from the Latin funus, which had a variety of meanings, including the corpse and the funerary rites themselves.

Funerary art is art produced in connection with burials, including many kinds of tombs, objects specially made for burial like flowers with a corpse. Funeral rites are as old as human culture itself, pre-dating modern Homo sapiens and dated to at least 300,000 years ago. For example, in the Shanidar Cave in Iraq, in Pontnewydd Cave in Wales and at other sites across Europe and the Near East, archaeologists have discovered Neanderthal skeletons with a characteristic layer of flower pollen; this deliberate burial and reverence given to the dead has been interpreted as suggesting that Neanderthals had religious beliefs, although the evidence is not unequivocal – while the dead were buried deliberately, burrowing rodents could have introduced the flowers. Substantial cross-cultural and historical research document funeral customs as a predictable, stable force in communities. Funeral customs tend to be characterized by five "anchors": significant symbols, gathered community, ritual action, cultural heritage, transition of the dead body.

Funerals in the Bahá'í Faith are characterized by not embalming, a prohibition against cremation, using a chrysolite or hardwood casket, wrapping the body in silk or cotton, burial not farther than an hour from the place of death, placing a ring on the deceased's finger stating, "I came forth from God, return unto Him, detached from all save Him, holding fast to His Name, the Merciful, the Compassionate." The Bahá'í funeral service contains the only prayer that's permitted to be read as a group - congregational prayer, although most of the prayer is read by one person in the gathering. The Bahá'í decedent controls some aspects of the Bahá'í funeral service, since leaving a will and testament is a requirement for Bahá'ís. Since there is no Bahá'í clergy, services are conducted under the guise, or with the assistance of, a Local Spiritual Assembly. A Buddhist funeral marks the transition from one life to the next for the deceased, it reminds the living of their own mortality. Congregations of varied denominations perform different funeral ceremonies, but most involve offering prayers, scripture reading from the Bible, a sermon, homily, or eulogy, music.

One issue of concern as the 21st century began was with the use of secular music at Christian funerals, a custom forbidden by the Roman Catholic Church. Christian burials have traditionally occurred on consecrated ground such as in churchyards. Burial, rather than a destructive process such as cremation, was the traditional practice amongst Christians, because of the belief in the resurrection of the body. Cremations came into widespread use, although some denominations forbid them; the US Conference of Catholic Bishops said "The Church earnestly recommends that the pious custom of burying the bodies of the deceased be observed. See also: Christian burial and Cremation in the Christian World Antyesti "last rites or last sacrifice", refers to the rite-of-passage rituals associated with a funeral in Hinduism, it is sometimes referred to as Antya-kriya, Anvarohanyya, or Vahni Sanskara. A dead adult Hindu is cremated, while a dead child is buried; the rite of passage is said to be performed in harmony with the sacred premise that the microcosm of all living beings is a reflection of a macrocosm of the universe.

The soul is believed to be the immortal essence, released at the Antyeshti ritual, but both the body and the universe are vehicles and transitory in various schools of Hinduism. They consist of five elements: air, fire and space; the last rite of passage returns the body to the five origins. The roots of this belief are found in the Vedas, for example in the hymns of Rigveda in section 10.16, as follows, The final rites of a burial, in case of untimely death of a child, is rooted in Rig Veda's section 10.18, where the hymns mourn the death of the child, praying to deity Mrityu to "neither harm our girls nor our boys", pleads the earth to cover, protect the deceased child as a soft wool. Among Hindus, the dead body is cremated within a day of death; the body is washed, wrapped in white cloth for a man or a widow, red for a married woman, the two toes tied together with a string, a Tilak placed on the forehead. The dead adult's body is ca

Richard E. Culatta is the CEO of the International Society for Technology in Education. Prior to holding this position, he was the chief innovation officer for the state of Rhode Island and the director of the Office of Educational Technology for the U. S. Department of Education. Richard Culatta grew up in Rhode Island, he received a bachelor's degree in Spanish teaching and a master's in instructional psychology and technology from Brigham Young University. He is the son of Richard and Barbara Culatta, both educators and researchers in the field of communication disorders. Culatta began his career as a high school teacher. During the early 2000s he was a technology advisor for the David O. McKay School of Education at Brigham Young University, helping redesign the technology component of the school's teacher preparation program. During this time, he was the director of operations at the Rose Education Foundation, which helps schools in rural Guatemala, he worked at CIA University as a Learning Technologies Manager became an advisor on education issues to Senator Patty Murray.

Culatta was Senior Advisor to the Secretary and Director of the Office of Educational Technology from 2013 to 2015. During his tenure, the office ran the #GoOpen campaign, which encouraged schools to use learning materials with open copyright licenses and proposed that all educational materials produced with grant money have open licensing; as director, Culatta helped author the 2016 National Educational Technology Plan. Culatta left the Office of Educational Technology to become the Chief Innovation Officer of the State of Rhode Island. During his tenure, Rhode Island was used as a "lab" state for educational reform. A major focus was the personalized learning initiative, which aims to create learning experiences that are dynamic and individualized for each student. Rhode Island became the first state to offer computer science in every K–12 school during this time. Culatta is the CEO of ISTE; this society creates standards for using technology in education. A current focus for Culatta and ISTE is finding ways to use technology to close equity gaps and redefine Digital Citizenship.

U. S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Technology, Future Ready Schools: Building Technology Infrastructure for Learning, Washington, D. C. 2014. U. S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Technology, Ed Tech Developer’s Guide, Washington, D. C. 2015. Culatta and Katrina Stevens. "There's an App for That. Well, Maybe." Medium. August 21, 2015. Accessed May 30, 2018. ISTE.org

The phrase "Consume, be silent, die'" embodies a critique of consumer culture, capturing what Raoul Vaneigem called "the poverty of abundance". Variants include "work, consume, be silent, die" and "work, consume, die"; the phrase traces to 1970s environmental protests but regained prominence during the Occupy Wall Street protests of 2011. Some claim. One of Benny Zable's GreeDozer costumes includes the phrase. Early photos of this costume are undated, but Hutton and Connors report sightings in 1979, it was familiar to train passengers in Sydney as graffiti on the wall of a tunnel approaching Central Station as early as 1972. The Belgian philosopher Raoul Vaneigem expressed a related sentiment in his 1967 book The Revolution of Everyday Life: "Work to survive, survive by consuming, survive to consume; the poetry journal Moria published a photograph by the photographer Ana Viviane Minorelli of the phrase as graffiti. The punk band "Man Will Destroy Himself" have an album entitled Consume... Be Silent...

Die.... The Summer Camp Riot album Mole Patrol includes the song "Work Buy Consume Die". Https://web.archive.org/web/20120317070705/http://peternicholson.byteserve.com.au/poetry.html http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6073/371/1600/BennyZable.jpg http://www.nimbinaustralia.com/bennyzable/benny-zable-story.html https://web.archive.org/web/20111129202945/http://ed-strong.com/consume-be-silent-die