ASH (alt.suicide.holiday) is over 10 years old. It’s evolved into a website, a chatroom and a community by people who believe that suicide is a choice. Yet, over 10 suicides have been linked to ASH and folks are wondering if they are to blame for these deaths. They do have recipes for suicide, funeral arrangement directions, calculators that compare the pain of various methods and a variety of other resources.

I believe the suicide is a choice and expect that one day i’ll be in enough pain to call it quits. All of the blame talk about getting assistance always bugs me because i think that there should be a way to leave this world with some grace and honor rather than as a vegetable. Because of this, i don’t think that providing information about suicide makes you an accomplice (and frankly, i want a kind accomplice who understand my needs over the weird social values of the system). Therefore, how do you help people kill themselves when they feel the need to quit and help them see the point to life when it’s really just not time yet?

Update: While I support the right to die, I do not believe that the decision to kill oneself should be made lightly or alone. Many people choose the path of suicide because the pain exceeds their resources for coping. Pain caused by terminal illness is different from pain caused by depression. The latter can be treated and there are resources out there to help. If you are considering the path of suicide and you are not facing a terminal illness, please consider seeking advice before you make your decision. There are many organizations out there that provide support for people who are facing this decision. Your options include:

• Send an anonymous email to The Samaritans
• Call 1-800-SUICIDE in the U.S.
• Teenagers, call Covenant House NineLine, 1-800-999-9999
• Look in the front of your phone book for a crisis line
• Call a psychotherapist in your area
• Carefully choose a friend or minister or rabbi, someone who is likely to listen

To learn more about suicide and to get a valuable perspective on being suicidal, check out This entry was posted in digitalness on February 3, 2003 by zephoria.

A Nation of Voyeurs: How the Internet search engine Google is changing what we can find out about one another – and raising questions about whether we should

This is another great article on the concerns raised by our past collapsing into the present. The writer uses anecdotes to explain why this can be troublesome, yet it’s so appealing that we wouldn’t want Google to disappear; he even shares the stories of revenge where people get hurt under the powers of Google. Unfortunately, i haven’t really run across anything that suggests what *should* be done to way out the cons with the pros. (They just typically share the scary stories, the good intentions of the Google creators and the legal impressions of Zittrain/Brin/Lessig/Rosen.)