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DIGITAL LIFE
"It is no longer necessary to spend hours fuming in the traffic,
daffodils wilting and tempers fraying, to pay one's respects
to the mortal remains of Nonna (Granny). Rome now has its
own cyber-cemetery, a web-site where mourners can click
their way to virtual gravestones, and leave either thoughts or
electronic flowers. The flowers thus deposited do not die;
and there are no problems with weeds, vandals, subsidence
and property developers.
Sunday Independent, 30 March 2003"
Extract from THE GOOD CEMETERY GUIDE
Assisted Suicide of Healthy 79-Year-Old
Renews German Debate on Right to Die
FRANKFURT -
...Her last words, after swallowing a deadly cocktail of the antimalaria drug chloroquine and the sedative diazepam, were "auf Wiedersehen," Mr. Kusch recounted at a news conference on Monday.
...While Ms. Schardt was not suffering from a life-threatening disease, or in acute pain, her life was hardly pleasant, Mr. Kusch said. She had trouble moving around her apartment, where she lived alone. Having never married, she had no family. She also had few friends, and rarely ventured out.
In such circumstances, a nursing home seemed likely to be the next stop. And for Ms. Schardt, who Mr. Kusch said feared strangers and had a low tolerance for those less clever than she was, that was an unbearable prospect...
...The larger lesson of Ms. Schardt's solitary death may have to do with the way Germany treats its old.
"The fear of nursing homes among elderly Germans is far greater than the fear of terrorism or the fear of losing your job," said Eugen Brysch, the director of the German Hospice Foundation. "Germany must confront this fear, because fear, as we have seen, is a terrible adviser."
http://www.nytimes.com
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Pope Benedict XVI in papal red shoes
Roger Kusch, with a video of Bettina Schardt, 79, whom he helped to commit suicide.
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Murder most virtual over messy divorce
JAPAN -
Things have taken a surreal turn in the virtual world as a messy divorce has led to a crime of passion with repercussions in real life.
In Japan, a piano teacher was arrested last week for the murder of her "virtual" husband after he precipitously divorced her in the online game, Maple Story.
...The 43-year-old woman faces a maximum of five years in jail if she is found guilty (of illegal access on a computer and manipulating electronic data).
...The jilted virtual wife is accused of hacking into the profile of a 33-year-old office worker from Sapporo about 800km away. The couples' avatars were happily married until he unexpectedly demanded a divorce... she logged into the game and destroyed the character that he spent a year creating.
The Times, South Africa, 28th October 2008
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