Tomb raider

Playing around with the idea of including her on DDP 2008, came across this article. It's in foreign, so I'll quickly summarize the most important parts. First of all, I get the feeling that the picture associated with the article is not a recent one, so don't base any decisions off of that. She's in a wheelchair and in a nursing home, but she's still cognizant enough to be giving a deep and meaningful interview. An interesting quote, and of the two big headlines, is "Death is the most beautiful moment of life," used to discuss how she has no qualms with going when she goes. Is she "another old person?" More or less, depending on your point of view, but if you really want to do this Belgian thing on a deadpool, she's probably the best shot. And she doesn't even seem like she'd mind. Famous? Well, that's subjective, but if you thought that Abbe Pierre was famous, then she should be as well. And Abbe Pierre got a UK obit as well. Between that possibility at the new acceptability of the New York Times, there's a pretty comfortable chance of an obit. She's dead. BBC obit. I logged in to announce the death of the unforgettable Emmanuelle, the woman who figured in my first adolescent fantasies. I obviously mixed her up with her little bit less attractive namesake.

Sounds like a penalty shoot out. Who missed the crucial kick? The liberals. Congratulations! Those nasty liberals drew level when Senator No popped his clogs, but the historic relevance of your success will propably proven to be far more significant. I just searched for some information on the Supreme Court's decision you mention and I must admit that much of it made sense to me. I agree that the Second Amendment was never meant to include just the militia, so from that point of view there is no reason to alter its interpretation - assuming of course that a nation is willing to base its morality on a legal phrase that was written over two centuries ago in an entirely different context and that has not been altered ever since. Leave it to an imbecile like Scalia though to defend his views by making up complete cock-and-bull arguments: Oh, plea-se! Not even the most deluded American right-winger would fall for that argument, would he? Morality, tomb raider, such a heavy concept. Please explain to me why your take on the subject is more moral than mine. To my way of thinking, it is not immoral to allow law abiding citizens to defend themselves from criminals. Maybe you believe it would be more moral to condemn them to be helpless victims? While the way that Justice Scalia describes the preference for handguns is not the same as I would describe it, I think that referring to him as an imbecile is a bit of an overstatement, wouldn't you agree? In fact, if he'd only see the argument your way, he'd suddenly become an eminent scholar. The reason a handgun is preferred is simply because most self defense situations occur indoors where a "long gun" such as a rifle or shotgun is at a disadvantage due to the close quarters. I would rather dispatch the criminal and call the police afterwards. Though I agree that I might have expressed myself a little bit strongly, I never meant to describe my moral framework as superior to yours. Of course, I believe my views on the matter to be the best but I would never claim to be a better person than you or anybody else. In fact, I enjoyed our previous discussion immensely, and though I can't say It made me change my opinion, I must admit that I was out of arguments after only two posts. That sometimes happens when it comes to debating ethical or moral principles. Calling Scalia an imbecile might be a little bit provocative but he certainly has a reputation for excentricity, hasn't he? I don't think it's fair to assume that I would have called him an eminent scholar if he were an outspoken leftwinger. I know enough about the world to know that no person is entirely good or entirely bad - no matter what moral standards you uphold. The thing is that the federal superior judges have been used for political reasons so often that I can barely take their verdicts seriously. The fact that all but two of the judges have been appointed by Republican presidents has a huge impact on their rulings. Especially when it comes to traditionally conservatives themes as gay-rights (remember the sodomy-discussion several years ago?) or abortion. In my opinion Scalia's stand in those debates clearly made him an imbecile, no matter how intelligent he actually might be. Is that an overstatement? Yes, but I'm actually very fond of overstating things. That's what drove me to this forum, actually.

Sounds like a penalty shoot out. Who missed the crucial kick? The liberals. Congratulations! Those nasty liberals drew level when Senator No popped his clogs, but the historic relevance of your success will propably proven to be far more significant. I just searched for some information on the Supreme Court's decision you mention and I must admit that much of it made sense to me. I agree that the Second Amendment was never meant to include just the militia, so from that point of view there is no reason to alter its interpretation - assuming of course that a nation is willing to base its morality on a legal phrase that was written over two centuries ago in an entirely different context and that has not been altered ever since. Leave it to an imbecile like Scalia though to defend his views by making up complete cock-and-bull arguments: Oh, plea-se! Not even the most deluded American right-winger would fall for that argument, would he?

I'm not trying to be accusative but I was just wondering: why do you have guns? You seem to be a smart guy who is perfectly capable of making a well-thought and balanced decision and I just don't get it. There's huge risks to having a gun in your house - hundreds of dead american kids a year are proof of that - and I cannot think of any reason why you would consider those risks to be acceptable, especially not when your potentially criminal, mentally ill or just sloppy neighbour might be cherishing the same legal privileges as you do. Of course you might keep a shotgun or pistol for hunting or sporting, but those are not part of the debate. Would having a semi-automatic and loaded gun under your pillow really add to your safety? How many Americans could say that they rescued their own lives by being able to defend themselves with armory against a rapist or a murderer? When a criminal enters your house, what's the odds of you having unlocked your safe, grabbed your gun, and loaded it before the villain strikes? Two frequently stated arguments are that bearing arms is part of American culture and that the right to bear arms is protected by the Constitution. I'm willing to accept that you consider your shotgun a typical specimen of American life. That you so ardently place yourself in a tradition like that logically means that you believe that habit to have brought your people certain goods. Apart from your ancestors being able to defend themselves against wildlife and exterminating the native Americans, what good did the freedom to possess arms ever did to your country? I really cannot think of any. I'm not an American and in my culture the ban on possessing fire-arms is never discussed. I know that Americans tend to idolize their Constitution and cling to their legal privileges - especially those that were as hard to obtain as this one. But it's a logical fallacy to defend the right to bear arms by pointing to the Constitution: ít's our right because the Constitution says so' equals 'it's our right because it's our right' and reasoning like that is not going to convince anyone who is in his right mind.

Surely this could be solved quickly an easily by changing the right to bear arms to be the right to bear non-lethal arms? Using tazers, capsicum spray, non-lethal projectile guns, etc. as a means of self-defence has to be preferable to finding yourself up on manslaughter charges after "protecting your property," and it would stop dumb-arsed kids blowing their brains out playing Russian Roulette with the loaded gun they found hidden in the sock drawer. Would you believe that I have actually never even thought about this solution? In all its simplicity, it tackles the notorious cock-and-bull stories of those retarded pro-arms-activists about not being able to defend themselves and their families without keeping a loaded gun within reach of their kids. In fact, the only remaining argument is that they have the right to bear arms because it says so in the Constitution. It really takes an American to not understanding the logical fallacy in that... 'It's our right because it's our right' makes sense only if your idea of succesful higher education is becoming a football captain and shagging as many dumb blondes with skirts and pom-pons as possible. That a nation that cannot part with the idea that it actually makes their streets safer to provide every lunatic with a lethal weapon has turned out to be the world's only remaining superpower really proves that God has a massive sense of irony. Not trying to be provocative, though.

In Jeopardy your nick would be the most suitable answer to the question: 'what used to be Arthur C. Clarke's favourite pastime?' The obits don't seem to stress his...er... juvenile inclination too much though.

The Dutch newspapers picked up the story on Patrick Swayze's very-severe-but-not-as-lethal-as-rumoured illness. They also seem to be aware of the fact that Swayze's claim to fame dates back to ancient times. The AD for example publishes a photograph of that extremely overrated, embarassing and horrid chickflick in which he leads some ugly brat to maturity. The caption reads: 'Actor Patrick Swayze (left) suffers from a terminal illness'. Out of the two I would certainly have picked the right one without that comment, wouldn't you?

Just a couple of days ago the Veryrichi Lotsamoney Yogi Bear announced his retirement from leading that bunch of profiteering swindlers the Incontinent Intransparant Transcendental Meditation Movement. Those guys really have the gift of sooth-saying, don't they?

Just how many hoaxes does it take to get to the death of Castro? Along the same lines of how many Cuban revolutionaries does it take to change a light bulb... What's the point with all these imminent-death-announcements of Castro? Does anyone believe that his final breath will come any faster by wishing him dead or something? And (completely off-topic): does anyone know where my fellow Dutchman Magere Hein hangs out? Haven't seen him for months and there doesn't seem to be a thread on his sudden disappearance.

I didn't understand a word of that Try to read it aloud, replace every 'ou' with 'o' and things will clear up. English not being my native tongue either, I quite understand why a foreigner like our beloved Rocking Pavel has such severe difficulties with spelling. Still, I can't help wondering why such a virulent Castro-hater can't even spell his target's name properly. My bet would be that Pavel is not a legitimately frustrated victim of Castro's regime, but just some sort of retarded moron who loves trolling and spilling his email adress all over the web.

About banning the cents, I still don't get the point. If Brooke Astor and Ruby Muhammad get an obit in the UK, they are to be considered famous enough for Deathlist. If the committee would have selected 50 obscure (super)centenarians it would have been different, but there were only five of them on this year's list, and Hoffman, Niemeyer and Lane were never disputed. If Hoffman, Niemeyer and Levi-Strauss (now 99) live out the year, it would be a shame not to be able to select them for the DL 2008 because of some new and completely arbritrary age-limit. Brooke Astor was not the high-profile celeb that CR would have liked, but her surname almost guaranteed an obit, even if she would never have reached centenarian-status. It's the same as the late Princess Alice, the Duchess of Gloucester. She'd never done anything noteworthy in her life, apart from visiting cocktailparties and spending ridiculous amounts of money, but she was famous because of her husband's last name and the fact that she lived to be 100+ was just too good a chance to let slip. Ruby Muhammad has always been more of a dubious pick, but hey, if it wasn't for us the lady would have been ignored completely on the web, so grant her the honour. For all we know, she is still alive and in excellent health, so she has not yet turned out the easy target CR is complaining about.

TFBM was world famous only if your americanocentric vision is strictly limited to the borders of the United States. Come on! Here in Europe -the land far far away as the yanks call it- hardly anyone outside the deathpool-watching community had ever heard of her before the (ahum) quality press mentioned her passing. I really don't see why you qualify her as a more interesting pick than Ruby. Face it: speculating about the death of a woman that seems to linger on and on and on, closely watched by nobody but a select group of deathpool-fanatics, is as much fun as watching an equally obscure nobody who's slowly been eaten away by cancer. The only intriguing thing about Tammy Faye was her extravagant transvestite-look and her ridiculously optimistic girlish notes on her website, which I admit caused a little bit more dynamics around her than around Ruby Muhammad who could have been dead for years without anyone of us knowing it. Lou Rawls (whom I never had heard about before, but that tells more about my music-related ignorance than about his alleged fame) was sentenced to die if my memory serves me well, but anyway, I never suggested that it discredited him as a DL-pick. (Quite the opposite, I'd say!) He could well have lived on to survive the year - he would not have been the first terminally ill to do so - but exactly the same applies to Ruby Muhammad or Brooke Astor. I never stated that it was unfair to pick a sick celebrity, I only questioned the unfairness of picking an extremely old celebrity. In my opinion, mind, growing old can be considered an illness in DL-fraseology because of it's life-expectancy-reducing capacity. You're right! In fact: for reasons of nostalgia I would like to recommend the committee to select fifty celebs who are under-45, and who are supposed to be in excellent health! As it would take decades for any of them to die, the fun would wear off rapidly, don't you think? I do not entirely disagree with your glorifying the true DL-spirit, but please don't exaggerate the romanticism of it. I really couldn't care less what person you'd pick for the DDP. If I wanted to discuss the DDP I'd visit the therefore established thread or the DDP-website itself. The DDP is a completely different branch of sport... well, not completely different of course, but it's a completely different concept of predicting death, in which you can differentiate succesfull picks by their likeliness because of age by awarding more or less points. The only DL-argument that counts -apart from the victim being famous, of course- is whether a pick is dead or not, and none of them is 'better' or 'worse' than another. You're free to discuss the fairness of the concept, you're welcome to discredit any pick you like, but please try and avoid using irrelevant arguments.

All this crap about picking easy targets (or 'low hanging fruit') that is said to be taking the sport out of the death-picking-game is annoying me. Why would it be unsportsmanlike to select a somewhat obscure and perfectly healthy centenarian as opposed to an equally obscure terminally ill 65-years-old preacher's wife!? Selecting 73-year old braintumourpatient Lou Rawls - who was not likely to live out the first week of january - was as much a cheat as picking one 200 year old Halibuta whose only fame is that some sources abusively declare her the widow of Elijah Muhammad. As I mentioned previously in the Ruby Muhammad-thread, picking the ancients has never turned out to be a guarantee for DL-success. Centenarians tend to be in fairly good health - otherwise they wouldn't have made it to their ripe old age - and though they are of course likely to die within the next couple of years, their chances to survive one particular year are not as slim as those of a terminal lungcancer-sufferer.

I doubt she'll get as much as a passing mention to be honest. And exactly what is the difference?

Nobody's saying from her end but if the evidence is at it seems we HAVE to be talking days. Even OoO's prayers for her hanging on until Friday might not be answered. Take it from personal experience, if she's in a hospice, we are talking days..... I hate being a spoilsport, but being in hospice care (which could last for years) is not the same as actually staying in a hospice (an accomodation for people with a life expectancy of no more than a couple of months). It has been mentioned before in this thread, I believe.

Hmm, that would have been an excellent DL-hit. Let's hope that the obesed eunuch arrogant wop operastar lives out the year. The thing that struck me is that his parents are still alive. There can't be many 71 year olds who can say that. Ehm... Handrejka: nor can Pavarotti, his parents died five years ago. He was reported to be very eager to meet them... in the afterlive I suppose.

Promising news about Luciano Pavarotti! According to an important dutch newssite, the italian tenor knows that his days are counted. For those who did not yet find the time to catch up their dutch: Hmm, that would have been an excellent DL-hit. Let's hope that the obesed eunuch arrogant wop operastar lives out the year.

Sniff... this was the first time I had a scoop in announcing a long-awaited death on DL... I feel matured somehow... It DOES pay of to be unemployed and bashing the F5- key all day.

DEAD!!! According to Dutch news sources!!! Finally the second success of the year! Hip hip... hurray!

O my God, the squiddy idiot from the Castro-thread is spreading all over the forum... The problem is that the success ratio on mr. stupid's predictions do not constitute a good sign for Tammy Faye's life expectancy. Mebbe, but - like - the real test of a predictor is someone who brings in a candidate that the others haven't considered. TFM and Castro are fairly easy targets, though his imminent demise isn't by any means assured. I mean, Ariel Sharon looked a goner this time last year. You're right. DL shows us that there are no easy targets. The squid has not predicted one single death in all the years he's drooling his incoherent dribble over the forum.

O my God, the squiddy idiot from the Castro-thread is spreading all over the forum... The problem is that the success ratio on mr. stupid's predictions do not constitute a good sign for Tammy Faye's life expectancy.

Ouch! That's some diplomatic blunder... He took a leave out the Duke of Edinburgh's book, didn't he? Anyway, the very same link provides us with some new candidates for the years to come: I wouldn't exactly call it a relief, but nevertheless it is quite an amusing story. Edward William Fitzalan-Howard, 18th Duke of Norfolk DL (!) is currently the Earl Marshal. (Before he inherited that position, he was known as Earl of Arundel, which sounds more Middle-Earth-ish than anything else.) Born in 1956 (and asbestos being a notoriously slow killer) he is not likely to be a Deathlist-candidate in the near future though.

Then why bother with mentioning his sorry ass? This place is supposed to be about death and dead people. It is not about talentless persons who needed to go on Star Search to even get noticed and have done nothing since. You obviously did not bother to follow the link... Nor did you read my post properly. And please: register if you want people to take you seriously.

By the way, when did this happen. DAME Wendy Richard. surely its not true ??? her official website shed's no light. No, it's not true. She received an MBE, but only a Dame Grand Cross (GBE) or a Dame Commander (DBE) is admitted into knighthood and therefore allowed to call herself 'Dame'. This might of course be general knowledge in Britain, so I probably sound like a pedantic foreign prat, but orders of chivalry and heraldry are some of my hidden (and admittedly trivial) interests, so I couln't withstand the temptation.

Now that Dame Thatcher is neglected on this year's list, I voted for the person who shows the closest resemblance to her: Rowdy Roddy Piper. I've always detested them bagpipes anyway.