There was so much useful news this week that News You Can’t Use almost had an existential crisis and questioned the meaning of its very existence. I had to intervene but I wasn’t quick enough to prevent this meditation on death. So this week a robotic suicide machine, the murder of albinos, and a fortuneteller who predicts a military coup are maybe a little more useful than you’d normally expect.
Suicide 2.0
Although the “commonest way people use to end their life in that age group is by hanging,” an 81-year-old man in Australia opted for the truly bizarre and built a robot to kill himself. Though the device probably won’t be available in cheap plastic at your local Ikea for a while, all Pete Tovey had to do was download the plans from the Internet and put the contraption together.
His bounty for the hours of painstakingly intricate assembly? Three bullets to the head. Why traditional projectile-emitting devices, such as the ever-popular gun, weren’t attractive is unclear.
Although there’s no information about whether Tovey was terminally ill, his death, along with the recent introduction in Germany of a suicide machine that’s available for rent — no word yet on how brutal the late-return fees will be — has reopened discussion of assisted suicide.
More than 700 terminally ill patients from around Europe have traveled to Switzerland, where assisted suicide has been legal since 1942, for the services of Dignitas, an assisted-suicide organization specializing in the best of suicide technology.
Except maybe killing people isn’t so easy. Dignitas’s current technique, gassing with helium, sometimes takes several minutes to be effective. So some reform advocates are getting behind Germany’s invention: a machine that injects a person with potassium chloride at the push of a button.
The ever-literal lawyers claim that renting out the contraption doesn’t count as assisting in suicide as long as the patient is the one putting finger to trigger. Incidentally, potassium chloride has been criticized for taking minutes to work when administered to death-row inmates in the U.S.
But hey, at the very least these guys got a choice in whether they wanted to end up dead.
Murder for good luck
The normally tight-knit witch community has been bemoaning the erosion of trust within its ranks. In Tanzania, it seems that it’s the witchdoctors who are now terrorizing the albino population, a group that’s traditionally been accused of practicing witchcraft. The albinos have begun to be preyed upon for their organs, which are then used in magical potions.
One of the hallmarks of black-market-organ harvesters used to be that they’re indiscriminate. Getting a full medical history before digging into a victim is time-consuming, so any liver or kidney used to be as good as the next. However, Tanzanian witchdoctors have recently concentrated their efforts on exploiting the already ostracized albinos.
Murdered albinos have been found sans tongues, genitals and organs. One body was found where a particularly economical witchdoctor had cut off every limb. Though in life albinos are hated, after they’re brutally murdered they serve the miners and fishermen well enough in potions that are supposed to bring particularly good returns. How the curse of the albino can be turned into the good luck of the witches is a recipe that’s been quite well-guarded.
An understanding of genetics seems not to be a requirement for getting a witchdoctor license, because although receiving two recessive genes is what causes albinism, many people in this African country still believe the condition is a sign of being cursed. A hundred years ago, albino children were killed at birth because it was thought the mother must’ve had an affair with a European.
No one can predict if these witches will ever begin to use their powers for good instead of evil.
The fortuneteller who got it wrong
Criticizing a fortuneteller, or really anyone endowed with magical powers, for getting it wrong is often a dangerous proposition. They already know how the story ends! They can cast spells on you! But the prime minister of Thailand, Samak Sundaravej, ripped into a fortuneteller who predicted the PM will stage a coupe against his own government in May.
Sundaravej is claiming foul, that the untrue prediction is slander, and that it has hurt his legitimacy and reputation. Personally, I’ll feel bad bad for the fortuneteller if there is no coup. A screw-up this public will mean even Miss Cleo, who ended up in jail, won’t have a spot for him on staff.
Though he wasn’t named, most sources say that the fortuneteller being referred to is Warin Buawiratlert. With hindsight — the non-magicians’ favorite trick — it looks like Buawiratlert is connected to members of the military that were involved in a 2006 coup. One doesn’t need a Magic 8-Ball to answer the question, “How shady is that?” I consulted one anyway and the answer is, “Quite shady.”
The fortuneteller and the PM had already done supernatural battle: predictions by Buawirtlert that Sundaravej would lose the last election were, almost too painfully, obviously untrue.