YASPIJ
body count:3; usual method
Lest there be any confusion, please note that this one involved 2 men and a woman whereas the previously reported incident involved two women and a man.

Not all attempts to suicide succeed
Latest pact in Japan leaves 2 dead and 1 in critical condition.

YASPIJ
body count:4; usual method

Australian Democrats leader Sandra Kanck is planning a parliamentary speech which may possibly be in violation of the Suicide Related Material Offences Act in that country which makes discussion of suicide methods or anything which can be construed as incitement to commit suicide a criminal act. We'll see what happens.

Idle musing
Reading one of Aleister Crowley's books[1], i've recently discovered that the Hebrew word for "blood" is "dam". So that got me thinking about what it means to "damn" someone and whether in the original sense to damn someone was to punitively draw hir blood. That in turn prompted me to try to find some sort of etymological discussion of the word. According to one Christian the word derived from the Latin word "damnare", which means loss or harm. That could conceivably cover the instance of shedding someone's blood. The Hebrew word for "shedding" is quite different from "dam", but given the way languages mutate over time and the way languages borrow from each other it wouldn't surprise me if originally the Latin word was a way of saying someone bloodied someone else. But what i found most interesting about all this was that apparently we have the Xtian religion to thank for turning the word "damn" into a profanity. It seems that with the help of some sloppy translation of the original Greek into English, a perfectly servicable word was converted into mild blasphemy (if blasphemy can ever be considered mild), and this seems to be, yet again, an example of how people in power wield power arbitrarily.

[1]"Magick Without Tears"

YASPIJ
body count: 6+3=9; CO method was used with both groups.
The group of 3 had apparently met at a hospital. I'm waiting for people who clamor to have suicide fora shutdown to start clamoring for the shutdown of hospitals. Feh.

Roger Graham has been deported from Cambodia for having a website that encourages people to travel to that country for the purposes of committing suicide.

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.