a note on the description line: the quip about fuzzy bunnies has been replaced with a quote from Sir Thomas Browne because in a small way it reminds me that the Renaissance had more to it than fancy bloomers and artists like Shakespeare. It's also a rather playful swipe at the folks who righteously burble about the "death culture" that can be found on the internet and how awful they think it is.

We are all but variations on the same theme, folks.

University of Washington students decided to not create a memorial to honor World War II veteran Col. Gregory "Pappy" Boyington. Angered by the decision, various people around the nation have suggested, among other things, that the students should commit suicide.

I find myself wondering if the parents of said students would approve of the sentiments. In any case, there's an element of irony in all this that is exquisite.

Given that over 30,000 suicides occur in Japan annually, it's rather bizarre that the journalists should describe the number of suicides in Japan connected to pacts made via the net as "soaring" to 91 in the previous year. 91 deaths don't even account for 1% of the suicides that occur in Japan.

A bible question for the Xtians:
In Luke 8:10, Jesus after telling a crowd a parable says to his disciples:

To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God; but for others they are in parables, so that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.

Now, if someone goes around the countryside preaching, what is the point of obfuscating one's message? If it's important to keep Truth(tm) away from the mob and reserve it for a select few wouldn't it make more sense to keep one's yap shut in public?

A man participates in a suicide pact and fails to die, getting convicted later of manslaughter for the death of the other person in the pact.

Moral of the story: get it right the first time.

Meanwhile, earlier this month a college student from Marin County, California, clearly committed suicide by shooting himself.

Two teenaged girls in Wisconsin died after being hit by a train. The relatives object to the official ruling that it was a double suicide. If it wasn't a suicide, maybe they should be nominated for a Darwin Award.

Google tells the U.S. Justice Department to sod off. Perhaps not in so many words, but the ideas is clear enough. Good for Google.

Oregon's assisted suicide law has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. It's nice to know the States still have some perogatives.

Euthanasia campaigner Philip Nitschke is holding workshops on the "peaceful pill" in New Zealand.

Researchers believe they have found Mozart's skull (sans jawbone). Now, can someone tell me why it's acceptable for people to dig up a stranger's skull and make it part of some museum but if you or i were to put someone's skull on display in our homes it would be considered macabre if not ghoulish?

YASPIJ
body count:4; the usual method

'Tis the season to be jolly...
Especially when news of such irony as the clash between Xtians and Wal-Mart reaches one's attention. It seems Wal-Mart has decided the proper way to greet customers this time of year is to use the phrase "happy holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas". Certain Xtians have been objecting to this, citing it as a secularization of Xmas, but since the more zealot Xtians have been deriding the commercialization of Xmas for a number of years now you'd think they'd be glad to see an attempt on the part of merchants to make their sales techniques less exploitive of that particular holiday. Or, at least, less blatantly an exploitation of that holiday.

YASPIJ
Two separate pacts, actually, with a total of 8 dead. More than one method was employed, apparently.

A holiday greetings to you.

A middle-aged man kills himself, apparently using information that he acquired on the net. Apparently the man's father figures the guy was too stupid to figure out a way to die without consulting the net first.

One of the most interesting news stories i've read about the suicides in Japan was posted recently on the Japan Today site. Aside from pointing out that the most popular method of suicide in that country is hanging (in contrast to the impression one might get from news coverage that the most favored method uses carbon monoxide), there's an interesting blurb by psychiatrist Takahashi about women being "physiologically better equipped to resist the suicidal impulse than men." I'm not quite sure what that means; does it mean that female bodies are actually more robust than males?

Nitschke will relocate Exit International's website from Australia to New Zealand due to the repressive legislation of the former country.

CNN is Yellow

There’s something ironic about a show named “Paula Zahn NOW” airing a story about an event that happened over two years ago. Even allowing time for the investigations required to produce the investigative journalism for which CNN supposedly prides itself, one has to wonder why it would take so long to sort through the facts and to listen to the opinions of all the parties involved. Part of the delay in airing that news segment on television was apparently due to the story being bumped in favor of covering the events related to a number of hurricanes that have recently left parts of the southern U.S. in shambles, but that wouldn’t account for why the story is airing years after the event took place. Given the nature of the news trade, one has to conclude that the story of Suzy Gonzales’ suicide really isn’t considered important by the CNN journalists; it’s one of those “filler” stories that is used to take up time in a news show when there’s nothing more interesting to report. It’s the equivalent of what’s called “small talk” in casual conversation.

There’s nothing wrong with small talk per se, but when investigative journalism indulges in it one would hope that the people producing the story would at least try to present a balanced view rather than try to palm off opinions as objective fact. The show blames the posters to Usenet group alt.suicide.holiday for the death of Suzy. Suzy’s father states that the newsgroup “brainwashed” his daughter into killing herself. But by her own account she had started thinking about suicide when she was 11 or 12 years old, years before she started interacting with the posters to that group. Why isn’t that mentioned in the show? The news story claims that posters of ASH “gave her the tools” with which to commit suicide, but if there was evidence that someone from ASH shipped her the cyanide or other paraphernalia with which she killed herself, why hasn’t that person been prosecuted under the existing laws of the land which prohibit such assistance?

Given that there are people who attest that their experience with ASH has actually encouraged them to live and that one of these people was interviewed for the news story, why wasn’t even 15 seconds of the 4 hours that were spent filming an interview with him included in the story? Is it because a “heartbreaking belief” makes better copy than the whole story?

And why doesn’t this “cautionary tale” provide any suggestions as to how parents could actually open a dialogue about suicide with their progeny? Earlier in the show there was a segment that encouraged parents to discuss with their kids what exactly it is they are learning in school; is the message here that it’s more important to know what one’s kids know about sex than it is to know if they are thinking of killing themselves?

Three girls commit suicide together without using the Internet.