Ninety-nine U.S. soldiers killed themselves last year, the highest rate of suicide in the Army in 26 years.  What's even more interesting is this:

The Army also has been working to stem the stigma associated with getting therapy for mental problems, after officials found that troops are avoiding counseling out of fear it could harm their careers.

It would be interesting to know the specifics of how the army is trying to reduce the stigma; if its efforts are limited to the spouting of propaganda it's unlikely to work.

What did she do with her time?

The world's oldest woman died recently at the age of 114 and the thing i wonder about the most is what she did with her time the last decade or so of her life.  Did she read? Gossip with the other residents of the nursing home?  Meditate? Watch television? It's rather unlikely that she went skateboarding.

Last week i spent in West Virginia on retreat and most of the time involved me sitting around with my feet propped up, reading a book about Druids. I had hoped to spend a fair amount of the time hiking around, exploring the land, but various issues made that infeasible though it was possible to take a short walk past the cow pastures toward the end of the week. So lately i've been thinking a fair amount about time and my relationship to it. I'm nowhere near reaching any conclusions, except perhaps that i seem to waste a great deal of it playing games on the computer. I plan to do less of that, but i'm not sure that that is going to make me more efficient at getting other things done; sometimes it seems like the most appropriate thing to do is to do nothing, really.

Korea has a higher suicide rate than Japan. What especially caught my eye in a recent article about suicide in the former country, though, was this comment about people there who use the net to find partners for a suicide pact:

Now they're more careful. Once they've met each other, they shut down the site and switch to e-mail and cellphones. You need a lot of searching and hunches and luck to track down these people.

Perhaps it's naive of me to ask this, but rather than hunt down people who clearly don't want to be found, wouldn't it make more sense to figure out what it is about the present cultural conditions there that inspire so many to suicide and to change that?

The other day i read that the creator of the Dilbert comic strip starts work each day by spending two hours blogging, and then he'll spend the next 3-4 hours working on his comic strips.

Ever wonder what can happen to someone who steals bandwidth?
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/03/27/john-mccains-myspace-page-hacked/ Not that his site was hacked, really.

Kinda sums up my experience with quite a number of folks:

I'd be pleased to give credit to the creator of
that jpg if i only knew who that person was.

CDC reports that suicide increased among children in 2004. Some people think it might be due to a decreased use of antidepressant drugs while others point out that funding has been cut for programs that give children and teens access to psychological counselling. Personally, i wonder if the spike in the suicide rate was fueled by the muck-raking, lame excuse for journalism that was being splashed all over the net about that time.

Marin County suicide prevention office is busiest after the holiday season
the quote that caught my eye was this:

It's as much for you as the person you're talking to - in an odd sort of way.
-a volunteer at Marin's Suicide Prevention and Community Counseling program

FDA warns of the dangers of anti-depressant medication. Finally.

This has nothing to do with suicide
I've been listening to educational CDs and the latest one concerns famous Romans. In particular i was listening to the biography of Emperor Augustus and it struck me that the claim that the biblical book of Revelations is a piece of political propaganda is probably true. But what also occurred to me with as much force was how much it was a political move to claim that some fellow named Jesus was born so close to the winter Solstice, which is when many pagans celebrate the rebirth of their sun god.

The Van Stadens Bridge in South Africa is becoming increasingly popular with jumpers. One news story quotes a police detective who believes one reason for the incresase in suicide attempts there is ... that people are reading about the bridge in the papers and on the internet".

The City of New York wants its visitors and citizenry to eat healthy. Whether they want to eat healthy is another issue.

It has occurred to me that i might try to make a habit of posting my literary efforts here or else announce the addition of them to magpiebridge.net here. Would folks like for me to do that?

tanka #191 (in memoriam to the people who died on 9/11/01)

In the autumn days
The nights grow subtly longer
Smells in the air change
Some leaves fall mutely away
Others fall to earth ablaze

Judge Aiken is asking whether there were warrents issued to spy on some environmentalists and the goverment has until the 12th of this month to respond.

Recently in Australia a baby whale that was found stranded on a beach was euthanized because that option was considered the most humane and in the whale's "best interests". Given the arguments opponents of euthanasia in that country give for why euthanasia is a bad thing, i can't help but wonder (again) about the quality of life for the average Australian.

I don't really need to spell out why i think this is so ironic, do i?

A 93 year old woman with a degenerative disease that left her in chronic pain has traveled from Australia to Switzerland to die. Right to Life Australia's response was to condemn the woman's choice; if they had any constructive suggestions as to how a person could obtain satisfactory pain relief, the news media elected to not include it in the coverage of this news story. Given their babbling about how suicide makes life "cheap", though, i doubt that they actually had any such suggestions to offer.

Israeli police montitor chats for purpose of suicide intervention

Somehow i thought they had enough to do with trying to prevent suicide bombings. Shows how much i know.

Girl commits suicide after being barred from a key exam

You need to lay down your burdens and just show them what you know, Li said.

This is advice coming from a psychiatrist who seems to think that Chinese students are too stressed out and just need to relax, but given that they are in an environment where they can be harassed and penalized for something as petty as how they wear their hair, i can't help but wonder if this expert has any real grasp of the realities these students contend with.

Five girls in Vietnam commit suicide together by drowning.