Danielle Levy

Aja Riggs has been ill with cancer and been given a terminal diagnosis. Lately it’s been too much and she wants to be able to die, so she had to sue for the right. She just won her case in New Mexico where the judge ruled that terminally ill patients like Riggs have the right to “aid in dying” under the state constitution, and that such cases are not considered assisted suicides. “Aid in dying” means that doctors can prescribe a dose large enough so that as the judge described it, “a patient can have a peaceful death and thereby avoid suffering”. In her ruling, she also said that the court could not envision a right more fundamental, more private and more integral to the liberty, safety and happiness of a New Mexican. It’s not a ruling with big waves, and it may be appealed, but in tandem with laws in Oregon, Washington and Vermont that allow aid in dying and Montana and Hawaii which have no laws against assisted suicide, it begins to entrench the idea of the right to die as separate from the notion of suicide. Suicide is laden with numerous pre-conceived notions, and stems from a variety of motivations, some of which are defensible and valid, but which still cloud the aid in dying issue. The right to die is more basic. In the same way that we choose how we live, there are times when we ought to choose how we die.

Vinny Bruzzeze is a new Hollywood discovery, not the heart throb kind, but the kind that can show producers and other bosses how to make money by suggesting plot or character changes based on movies which have historically succeeded at the box office. A former professor of statistics he has found a way to analyze scripts by comparing their various parts to those of successful movies in the past. He gets paid about $20,000 a script, and now has a track record, so much so he is thinking of applying his trade to Broadway and to TV. To many, to movie producers certainly, being able to ascertain the financial success of a picture is desirable, sought after, good for the companies involved and of course therefore seen as good for the society. But what does that say of the impact the movie may have, will create? Of the values it puts forth, of the general tenor it will contribute to, of the way it will participate in the overall fabric of the culture and help move it either towards the good or not? The worth of a movie is not in how much profit it makes, the worth of a movie is in whatever iota it can help us be a better world. Although by today’s standards, such statements make me naïve, it remains that if there’s truth in them,naïve or not that truth would still stand.

The pre-meeting report of The World Economic Forum, that sought after yearly gathering of 700 high powered decision makers, politicians and others in Davos Switzerland, states that worsening income inequality is the risk most likely to cause damage around the globe in a next decade. The report clearly called the widening gap between rich and poor and the squeeze it places on the world’s middle classes in developed economies as clearly a global risk in 2014. For the third straight year income disparity topped the list of the five most likely global risks over the next decade. The other risks were extreme weather events, unemployment and underemployment, climate change and cyber attacks. That some of the world’s global leaders recognize the importance of income inequality has got to be one of the best news the trend has seen since it was first identified.