"And further, while we're on this lovely subject :), is there any view in Orthodoxy about cremation?"
Cremation is forbidden unless the state absolutely requires it (as in Japan.)
Some bishops will allow a memorial service (pannikhida/parastas) to be served for someone who has been cremated, but I don't think that funerals are ever allowed for someone who has been or will be cremated.
Cremation is a pagan practice that symbolically rejects the idea of the resurrection of the body.
You are correct about Orthodoxy allowing cremation where required by law, as is the case in Japan, and memorial service.
The reasoning is that cremation constitutes desecration of the body. There is really no easy or tasteful way to dispose of a body. American Indians would leave the body to be mauled by wild animals. Eskimos did the same thing. Hindus cremate theirs. Egyptians with money used to be altered chemically so as to last forever. We allow the body to rot. No matter how you look at it, the body is destroyed one way or another.
Cremation is natural. It involves no human hands or dismemberment, or chemical alteration (by injecting dies and preservatives into the body, after it has been drained of fluids), etc. It's dignified.
But the Orthodox Church will never accept it.
Thank you both for your comments on this. For a while I did wonder whether cremation could have any effect on a resurrected body. But then I thought of those who were vaporized in nuclear explosions, and of course 9/11. So, I figured it couldn't really make a difference in the end. And I agree that if you do it on purpose, then that really kind of is spitting in the face of the idea that we all believe. I want to be planted and take up space anyway, that's my personality! :)