ZetaSagittarii comments

In my view, the cases that could truly warrant suicide are extremely rare, like clear proximity of death (e.g. from incurable sickness, torture, etc.) or self-sacrifice in order to save someone else's life, and I really can't think of any other right now. Everything else, for me at least, falls pretty much either into the area of damaged mental health or it denotes plain and ugly cowardice, utter irresponsibility, and a failure to even grasp the monumental chance one's been offered in experiencing life.

While the cases involving mentally affected people raise pertinent moral, social and scientific questions (it's hard to fight a malfunctioning brain), I can say that I truly despise casual suicide of the second type, just like I despise the martyrdom seekers. If it was only for the suicide himself/herself kissing his/her life goodbye and successfully qualifying for a Darwin Award, I swear I wouldn't sweat a brow. By all means, clean the gene pool of humanity and feed the worms!

However, what I cannot understand is this: how low a human being one can be to act as a life taker for innocent people around him/her, like the poor 5 years-old being in this sad story clearly was? As much as I understand that there might be some alien cultural "subtleties" - that I don't even consider of trying to grasp - humans are humans everywhere on this planet. What makes somebody think that if they're a failure others will automatically follow the same fate? Why aren't they men/women right up till the end and leave this world on their own, without dragging innocents along with them?

IF the police estimation of this particular case is sound and I had the means, I swear I'd revive all three of them, give the boy new memories and a fresh chance to fulfill his life. As for those "parents", 20 years in prison, execution, resurrection; repeat three times, minus the last revival. Keep memory intact. That way, they couldn't say they didn't live their share of sorry life!

The only party for which I really feel sorry is their elders, who probably didn't deserve to live through this tragic mess they left behind.

Monday, Aug. 10: more weird news from Japan :(

Pregnant nude photography: definitely a (celebratory) form of art for me.

@ xpidf1: that's probably a temporary license suspension of up to 30 days from the day of the accident if she wasn't a novice driver (Road Traffic Law, Art. 103-2).

By the way, has anyone tried to run a search on "hit-and-run" in the JT's search engine? Personally, I keep getting no returns on this particular string, whereas other keywords appear to function properly (and so does a Google 'site:japantoday.com hit-and-run', with 1,500 results). Just being curious about some statistics on this topic.

[...]police found a bicycle that resembled the one the youth was riding parked outside an apartment building[...]

This general article lacks data, like usual, but I guess the robber, not thief, must have ridden a very distinct bicycle and lived close to the place of action. Anyway, his IQ apparently floats somewhere in the low double-digit zone.

Not trying to be pedantic here, but I don't understand the (ab)use of exclamation marks on the cover!

[...] training will be carried out to make sure conductors know the correct procedures.

One would think that this "training" and the subsequent verifications should have been completed before handing him the command of a multiple unit.

Ve do not agree vith zis interpretation. Signed: das Herrenvolk.

Crimsonsil: Wait, so she's not a robot? Just an assassin?

In the true Japanese spirit of shortenings and concatenations, who knows? Maybe "robo" stands for "lobotomy"?

I'm new here, so I thought I'd better ask: for full time employees, is there a correlation between the unpaid overtime anyone complains about and the less often mentioned June and December bonuses?