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Sir Terry Pratchett Succumbs To "the Embuggerance," Aged 66
New submitter sp1nl0ck writes Sir Terry Pratchett, the creator of Discworld, has died aged 66, following a long battle with Alzheimer's Disease. Sir Terry announced that he was suffering from The Embuggerance in an open letter to fans over seven years ago, and recently had to cancel a planned appearance at the International Discworld Convention last summer, and donated over £500K of his own money to research into the condition. He also spoke in favour of a euthanasia tribunal, the members of which would consider the case of each '...applicant...to ensure they are of sound and informed mind, firm in their purpose, suffering from a life-threatening and incurable disease and not under the influence of a third party'. Sadly, he didn't survive long enough to see such a tribunal — or indeed any kind of assistance for those suffering from an incurable condition who wish to end their own life — come into being. More at the BBC.
Funny, thought-provoking, and above all, a great story teller. If you like that sort of thing... side note, my username is a pratchett reference...
It does. But if he was interested in euthanasia tribunals he was probably considering it for himself. So maybe it's for the best.
True, but it does lead to a question: Why a "tribunal"? Unless you're too physically incapacitated to do it yourself, it's relatively easy to buy an oxygen mask and a bottle of compressed nitrogen... put it on, eat a couple of sleeping pills, fall asleep, never wake up. Relatively zero pain, and no mess... *shrug*
IMHO, and in spite of living somewhere where it's actually 100% legal to do it, Euthanasia as policy is at the top of a slippery slope... even though Oregon requires psychiatric approval before an individual does it, very few folks get one before offing themselves. Too many safeguards have been ignored or glossed over, because progress.
Maybe it's just easier to do what we've always done... leave it alone and if someone does it, they do it. Just make certain they didn't get any 'help' (as in, intentional homicide) to get it done.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
It does. Suicide is a sin. That's why they would be against it.
Suicide is never directly named a sin in the Bible. In fact, King Saul committed suicide.
Theologically speaking, however, suicide is considered arrogating the right of God to determine when and how you will meet your end and putting oneself on a plane with God is considered at least one deadly sin (Pride).
Which is why we have good Christian people demonstrating for the right to forcibly hold vegetative people alive even when they would not be able to live without artificial assistance and are likely enduring at best a living Hell, because "life" and "living" are 2 different things.
Then again, many of these self-same good Christian people have absolutely no problem with a Death Penalty, even though it removes even the slimmest chance that the person so convicted might wake up one day 50 years hence and repent. Or for that matter, be exonerated.
I feel like I've lost a member of the family.
I started reading the Discworld novels to my daughter when she was seven years old. She decided that Hogfather was her most favorite novel and brought it to school for book appreciation day in second grade. (Around 2001.) This caused a hasty parent/teacher conference where I was asked pointedly why I was reading books to my grade school daughter where the main character was Death.
A few years later I wrote about this incident to Terry and passed along a question from my daughter -- what's on the other side of the discworld? Is there a bottom discworld, or just a big brass sign that says "content on other side"? [1]
On the incident, Terry responded "Ah, teachers. We used to have ones that were educated. Once you could respect them." and went on to say that The Amazing Maurice which also has Death as a character, won the Carnegie Medal from children's librarians. About the bottom of the discworld, he said there would only be wet rocks and perhaps some specialized form of life.
God, I'm going to miss him.
[1] I was a Laserdisc enthusiast, and daughter knew that this was the message you got when you played the wrong side of a one-sided disc.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I'm not religious, but curiosity got the best of me so looked up all your citations and I just don't see it:
Luke 1:41-44:
https://www.biblegateway.com/p...
We all know Mary has a magic fetus, and the fact that it's nearness to another fetus, which jumps in the womb in response, seems a special case. Most fetuses aren't exposed to gods.
Psalm 51:
https://www.biblegateway.com/p...
"Shapen in iniquity and conceived in sin" -- so sex is a sin that sets in motion a chain of events that leads to people. That seems pretty thin, especially when the writer near the end talks about how god doesn't care about burnt offerings, and then four lines later about all the burnt offerings he is going to give god. If sex is a sin, so are the products of it. Doing an abortion would be a corrective action and should have god's support.
Psalm 139:
https://www.biblegateway.com/p...
This one seems basically at odds with 51 which decried conception as a dirty nasty sin. Now we're hearing how the writer was "knit together in my mother's womb" and how awesome god is at knitting. When does a ball of yarn become a sweater? That isn't answered here. Is a partially completed garment the same as the marvelous completed garment? That isn't answered here either. What is jarring though, is that right after explaining how god is the uber-knitter, he goes into talking about how much he wished god would help him kill and destroy all his enemies. Psychotic.
Jeremiah 1:5
https://www.biblegateway.com/p...
Sounds like god is talking to a specific person who will be a prophet to all nations. I'm guessing Jeremiah was that dude? Is there any evidence that all people in all times and places were getting this special attention from god, to be prophets to each other? If they all know the same stuff -- why would they have to be prophets to all nations?
Hosea 12
https://www.biblegateway.com/p...
So this sounds like a denunciation of some dude name Ephraim who became rich using scales calibrated in his favor, made a treaty with Assyria, trades with Egypt, and by the way, the people who live in Gilead really suck, they sacrifice bulls! About the only part I can see related to abortion is that Gilead grabbed his brother's heel while in the womb (I assume they are twins, else this gets really crazy), but it comes in this long stream of insults, kind of like calling him a motherfucker even if not literally true. I don't really some much on topic here -- it's just a big long insult and people say all kinds of shit when insulting people.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good