Monday, November 28, 2005
Irony of the Week
Via Marginal Revolution (via JMPP, apparently) comes an unusual story of an American expat who may (or may not) find himself in trouble with what passes for the law in Cambodia.
It seems he is the proprietor of a site with the URL www.euthanasiaincambodia.com (and you may cut and paste that into your own browser window should you be so inclined, but as a confirmed thanatophobe I am not disposed to give a hyperlink to a person who defines "life" as "the way to death"), and he has been accused of... erm... erm... at any rate, he has been accused by the family of a British woman who believe that prior to her suicide she visited his site, and it encouraged her in her subsequent course of action.
One wonders how she found it in the first place: google "euthanasia" and the only Cambodian-related entry in the first five pages is a story on The Register about the suicide of the aforementioned Brit. (As a UK resident, I default to www.google.co.uk; YMMV).
At any rate, it is something of a mystery to me why the family of the aforementioned Brit should have focused their ire on this particular website and not, say, the estate of the late James Clavell ("There's a very easy solution... Die. You do not have to endure the unendurable"). FWIW I agree with Tennyson, Crowley and Richard Bandler that a permanent solution to a temporary problem is less than ideal, but the reason I found this particular story so poignantly ironic was its final sentence:
Needed more time to make a decision....
Like the man said, the two saddest words in the English language are if only...
It seems he is the proprietor of a site with the URL www.euthanasiaincambodia.com (and you may cut and paste that into your own browser window should you be so inclined, but as a confirmed thanatophobe I am not disposed to give a hyperlink to a person who defines "life" as "the way to death"), and he has been accused of... erm... erm... at any rate, he has been accused by the family of a British woman who believe that prior to her suicide she visited his site, and it encouraged her in her subsequent course of action.
One wonders how she found it in the first place: google "euthanasia" and the only Cambodian-related entry in the first five pages is a story on The Register about the suicide of the aforementioned Brit. (As a UK resident, I default to www.google.co.uk; YMMV).
At any rate, it is something of a mystery to me why the family of the aforementioned Brit should have focused their ire on this particular website and not, say, the estate of the late James Clavell ("There's a very easy solution... Die. You do not have to endure the unendurable"). FWIW I agree with Tennyson, Crowley and Richard Bandler that a permanent solution to a temporary problem is less than ideal, but the reason I found this particular story so poignantly ironic was its final sentence:
Prosecutors who questioned [the owner of the site] said they had not filed any charges against [him] and needed more time to make a decision.
Needed more time to make a decision....
Like the man said, the two saddest words in the English language are if only...
