Anyone see the Frontline show on funerals? I missed it, but (thanks PBS!) will try to watch it online. I see those smart people at Washingtonpost.com had a live chat with the producers, too.

Related: I've also become an erratic fan of the quirky new TV show "Pushing Daisies" which is frothy and funny and only tangentially about dead people.

Should news obituaries contain information about memorial and funeral services?

At The Washington Post, the answer is no. Our long-standing policy says since we're writing about a person's life on the occasion of their death, service information doesn't belong in the article. But from time to time, readers question that rule and they make some good points.

I had the pleasure of working over the past couple of days on a news obit about John Dougherty, a Washington lawyer who lived a very interesting life. His son runs startup news site in Chicago, and in his blog, he wrote about the experience of so many -- he never really paid attention to obits until someone close to him died. And he raised an excellent question: By leaving out the memorial service information, and requiring people who want to run that information to take out a death notice (which is a paid advertisement), are newspapers "treating death like a profit center"? I'd welcome your comments below.

BTW, Mr. Dougherty's memorial service is Nov. 19 at 3 p.m. in the Bethlehem Chapel of the National Cathedral in Washington.