Banning Discussion of Suicide?

Newspaper and pages are currently impressed with the melancholoy story of two stangers (Joanne Lee and Steve Lumb) who met on a suicide discussion forum and subsequently met for the first time in order to fulfill a suicide pact, dying together in a fume-filled car.

Of course the circumstances of these deaths are incredibly sad and we should have sympathy for those affected by their demise. However, when individuals like the understandably distraught father of one of those now dead call for the banning of newsgroups and forums focused on suicide on the grounds that they provide an opportunity for depressed individuals to be both encouraged to end their own lives and instructed on preferred methods, they’re simply mistaking the medium of communication for the message.

Have you told a lie today? Tell me about it!

No, I do not want to hear anyone’s confession. It is only that since I read yesterday’s article in the Independent about the science of lying, researched by Robert Feldman, Professor of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts, I do very much think about how much I have lied and how much those I am talking to have lied in the last 24 hours. If this question is bizarre for most people, it is even more so for a philosopher. We are interested in the TRUTH, not in how the truth is bended to fit our or anyone’s purpose. The article claims however that the latter is what we are doing constantly.