Siddharta Mukherjee wrote a column for the New York Times Magazine about his experience watching funeral pyres in India as a boy, his experience as an oncologist watching Americans die of cancer, and the problems with the American way of death. The contrast between a body in flames as it passes from this life and a body in a dress and lipstick on display in a funeral parlor makes for an essay worth reading: "The Letting Go."

Also from the New York Times, Kevin Slack reports about "Nuns, a 'Dying Breed' Fade From Leadership Roles at Catholic Hospitals."

And I wish I could send you to the full TIME article about "Autism's Lone Wolf," which offers Simon Baron-Cohen's hypothesis that the increased rate of Asberger's and autism has to do with like-minded (like-brained, to be more specific) people pairing up and having kids.