This craze is truly underway now, with Amazon currently listing twenty titles, including a board game, the Guardian book of hand-compiled puzzles, the Independent book of Super Sudokus, and even a guide to completing the puzzles by Carol Vorderman (or, if you prefer, Sudoku for Dummies).

It’s been clear for a long time that this is a major craze – even my original post on the subject has topped the charts for most popular post, but has consistently been leagues ahead of every other post each month. But this level is, as any idiot can see, unsustainable. And, frankly, I’ll be glad when the craze has finished and I can just do the (single) daily Sudoku puzzle in peace, without having to have it taking over every media outlet. But if you are truly obessed, then make sure you’re tuned in to Sky One on Friday 1st July, for Carol Vorderman’s Sudoku Live. I only wish I was joking.

If you buy your Sudoku supplies through the Amazon links on this site, you’ll be helping to keep the site going – you can check out the very latest titles and their prices here

I must thank Tom Reynolds for his Guardian piece which reunited me with the almost fatally depressing ‘Brick’ by Ben Folds Five. I can’t think why I’ve come across it before, but I have, and it still retains the same sense of hopeless tragedy that it did the first time I heard it. But then, I guess it’s difficult to write a cheery song about getting an abortion.

Here’s what Mr Reynolds had to say about it (complete with corrections presumably added after he wrote the original):

(NB: Many listeners, including me, first assumed Brick was about a relationship ending. We discovered later that it’s about a couple getting an abortion. The following is based on the first scenario. Therefore it’s all wrong.) A gloomy piano-and-voice song about a couple breaking up (wrong), Brick tells of a guy who picks up his girlfriend, bitches, takes her someplace, bitches, waits for her, bitches, then brings her back home, referring to her as a “brick” (this is true). We never learn what’s transpired in between (this is wrong). All that’s certain is the couple wants to split up (this is wrong). Brick offers the same pleasure that comes with dropping one on your foot (this is really true).

He only rates it as number 13 in the most depressing songs ever. I think it’s far worse than that.

Lots of good stuff around to read at the moment, but most of it doesn’t feel deserving of a full post – mainly because there’s nothing more I can say about it. So I’m putting it all in this post instead.

Andrew Brown wonders, quite rightly, what’s happened to Terry Schiavo’s autopsy results, which we were promised very quickly after her death. Where have they got to, and why haven’t we heard anything about them?

Hopping back just over a week, Sarah Left is amusing herself about the fact that bloggers are always asking for straight answers to straight questions, and now they’ve got a straight ‘Nee’ from the Dutch, they’re not entirely sure what to make of it. She links to Edward at A Fist full of Euros, who send us over to The FT for a list of twenty reasons why ‘Nee’ doesn’t really mean ‘No’. Good grief.

Also on the Newsblog, Jane Perrone reports about a shocking discovery by NASA, who discovered space suits for space spies in a room that no-one had opened. And to think NASA say they’re underfunded – they have rooms that haven’t even been opened for years, let alone used.

Nothing to Declare tell us that the Daily Express have finally lost patience with their readership, after their front page announcement that “94% of you believe Diana was murdered”. NTD always makes me smile.

And finally, b3ta have announced the winners in their Phallic Logo Awards (via Onlineblog). As they say:

The game designers across the nation are playing is; can they design a logo and get it approved without the client realising it’s a big spurting penis?

From the results, at least, it appears they can.

This seems to be almost living in my inbox recently:

This is a genuine psychological test. It is a story about a girl.

While at the funeral of her own mother, she met a guy whom she did not know. She thought this guy was amazing, so much her dream guy she believed him to be, that she fell in love with him there and then… A few days later, the girl killed her own sister.

Question: What is her motive in killing her sister?

If this actually worked, then I would be some kind of raging psychopath, given that I didn’t just get the ‘psychopath’ answer, I got it instantly. It was perfectly obivous to me. I’d love to sit and debunk it myself, but Snopes does a much better job than I would.

And if you’re interested, the answer’s there too.

Somebody’s had the marvellous idea of publishing Stoker’s Dracula in real time on a blog. Such a simple idea, it’s strange no-one’s thought of it before, really. If you’ve never experienced this excellent novel, spoiled by its rushed and frankly rubbish ending, then now you can read it in bitesized chunks. I think it’s a good idea, anyway.

Having now completed The Times Su Doku Book One, I’ve now bought and moved on to Book Two – which is available now, even though it isn’t technically scheduled to be released until 6th June. Sadly, the people at The Times have clearly not had the time to write another introduction or foreword to the second book, as those pages are direct copies from the first. But there are 100 new puzzles, and that would seem to be the most important things.

Also available now is the Telegraph’s Sudoku book, which I haven’t had a proper chance to look at and see whether or not it is much good. Forthcoming titles in this crazy world of puzzle mania include: The Times Su Doku Book Three, The Big Book of Su Doku, The Telegraph Sudoku 2, and The Official Su Doku Puzzle Book: The Utterly Addictive Number-Placing Game, Book 1. I think it’s fairly clear to see that this simple puzzle is turning into a publishing craze, as well as a newspaper craze.

Since I last wrote on this topic, The Guardian have launched a Sudoku section of their website, joining those of The Times, The Telegraph, The Daily Mail, The Sun, The Mirror, and very possible many others that I’ve missed. The Times and The Sun also now allow you to download Su Doku to your mobile phone.

The Su Doku craze must surely be reaching its peak by now. Even as someone who’s been playing the puzzle for some time, it’s becoming quite tiresome to hear about it constantly. And I even feel obliged to come on here and write about it, because it’s all over the media. I hear that there are even plans to make it into a television show. But for those of you who aren’t tired of the craze, you can click on any of the book titles above to buy them from Amazon, and I’ll get a nice kick-back to keep the site up and running.

Of course, the most interesting question here is not so much about the puzzle itself, as much as it is about why it has become quite as popular as it has. It’s clearly got something to do with the fact that the rules are simple, there is a big feeling of satisfactation upon completing the puzzle, and there’s no prior knowledge required. But that logic could be applied to any number of number puzzles. If the books weren’t making bestseller lists, I would insist that the puzzle isn’t as popular as it appears, and that it’s all a media ploy to get people to buy a particular newspaper. But that suggestion isn’t borne out by the evidence. So why is this craze happening? And how long will it last? As with all things, only time will tell.

A couple of days ago, the Head of Communications at the Voluntary Euthanasia Society sent me the following email, which essentially asked me to reconsider my position on voluntary euthanasia in the light of three recently published documents: Lord Joffe’s Bill on Assisted Dying, a select committee report, and the most recent report into the way in which Oregon’s system works.

I’m surprised as I glance through the archives of this site that I’ve never gone into my position on euthanasia any more than in my brief comments here. But those comments do represent the general basis of my position: I’m in favour of voluntary euthanasia in theory, but have yet to see a workable model in practice.

I’ve read the bill, I’ve glanced at the Oregon report (but admittedly not studied it), and, most clearly, looked at the handy Flow Chart provided by the VES. And I still have my concerns about it, and still wouldn’t be able to support this particular bill. Here, I will explain some, but not all, of my reasons behind this decision.

My first, and possibly greatest, concern is that doctors will be asked to play an active role in killing someone, be this through supplying them with the medication to do so or actually administering them when the patient is unable to do so. This, whilst perhaps not in a legal sense, certainly in a moral sense changes the nature of the doctor. I see the role of a doctor in the traditional ‘first do no harm’ sense, and to ask doctors to actively kill patients changes that perception irrepairably, even if this is what the patient themselves wants.

The situation reminds me somewhat of the often-quoted medical case of the man who wants his left-leg amputated because he believes that this is important for his religious beliefs, as he has sinned and must pay for these sins. Despite the man’s clear request, and despite him having reasons which appear valid – even crucial – to him, it is still unethical to amputate the man’s leg, as it would do him harm with no particular medical benefit.

Clearly, there is something of a gulf between amputating the leg of a healthy man and helping a terminally ill patient to die with dignity, but the underlying ethical principle is, perhaps, not that much different. I recognise, as the Hippocratic Oath states, ‘that prolongation of life is not the only aim of healthcare’, but I equally agree, as it also states, ‘not [to] provide treatments that are … harmful’. We can then get into a philosophical argument as to whether the ending of someone’s suffering is actually harmful or helpful, but I think the meaning of the Oath is quite clear.

Another reason not to trust doctors with this power is that they’re notoriously bad at discussing death. Many patients who should have discussions about whether or not they want to be resussitated don’t have them, because we all find it difficult to sit down with a patient and say, ‘Well, it looks like you’re going to die. Shall we discuss it?’. And there is, as far as I can see, no provision in the bill for further education for doctors to overcome this difficulty, nor any procedure by which this topic will automatically be discussed with patients who are in this category. If the doctor doesn’t bring this up, and there is no system of making patients more aware, then you effectively disenfranchise those patients of lower socioeconomic backgrounds, who may not be up-to-date on DoH policies on such things.

And it’s also worrying that, as part of the declaration process, a solicitor of all people is asked to judge whether a patient is ‘of sound mind’. What possible training does a solicitor have to recognise such attributes? The bill also states that the patient should ‘understand’ what the declaration means. What exactly is meant by the word ‘understand’? Are they to be given an explanation of simply the outcome – that they die – or the process? And if the process is to be explained, to what level is the explanation to be given, and how is the understanding to be tested? In most cases, doctors make a judgement here, but when it is quite literally a matter of life and death, I wouldn’t want to be the person responsible for giving the explanation, or indeed checking that the patient understands. The language is far too woolly.

Whilst I have these practical objections, I think it is a terrible scar on the conscience of our society that we force people in terrible pain to extend their suffering. The patient’s right to death is as important as their right to life. My problem is simply that I can’t see an effective way of putting this system into practice, as I’m not comfortable with the treatment being administered by doctors, yet cannot see who else would be a natural choice for performing the procedure. And I don’t think it’s right, on an issue as important as this, to go with a bill that’s simply ‘as good as we are going to get’. This bill needs to be looked at in much more detail, examined as with a microscope until even scintilla of doubt can be removed from the whole process. There’s no room for ‘no reasonable doubt’ in a bill to do with certifying people to death – there must instead be an abscence of all doubt. And until such a time as I feel that this has been effected, I simply cannot support this bill.

There’s not much in life that’s more entertaining than reading the Mail’s sometimes ridiculous claims. Look, for example, here:

The Daily Mail was the first national newspaper to bring Sudoku to this country

Well, no it wasn’t. It’s not true. It’s plainly false. The Times first published Su Doku. Then the Mail picked it up, decided it’s readers couldn’t cope with a ‘foreign’ name, and called it Numbercrunch. The Times was first.

while the Mail on Sunday went one further with the introduction of Super Sudoku

The first Super Su Doku was published in the Indy. Not the Mail.

You might think that this is a minor correction… but the Mail splashed over half its front page that it was first. And it wasn’t. Besides which, as entertaining as Su Doku is as a puzzle, there really isn’t all that much to say about it, and its becoming quite frustrating to not be able to open a paper without some special feature or other about a number puzzle.

And just as I was about to hit ‘Publish’, it appears that Janine Gibson from The Grauniad has written along similar lines. Choice quotes:

Kudos, by the way, to Sun Doku which launched on Tuesday and distinguished itself immediately by being a puzzle that someone else has already half completed. The Guardian launched its own version on Monday, sprinting for the high ground with “the original Japanese puzzles hand-crafted by its inventors” and gently putting the boot in to the computer versions run by other papers. The others responded with suitable outrage. “We were first,” said the Times. “We’ve got four!” shouted the Independent. Sighs from baffled readers everywhere.

[T]he first Sudoku puzzle hit the UK press in the Times six months ago. The Daily Mail launched one shortly thereafter, though it was called Codebreaker and everyone else ignored it. In fact the Mail was in danger of being written out of the collective history of the Sudoku Phenomenon as it emerged day by day last week, until it devoted half of its front page to a bold “we was first” claim. It’s possible the Mail may now be regretting eschewing the Japanese name, which we can only assume it did in case its readers got upset by the idea of it being foreign.

And, I think, a perfect one to finish on:

I propose a truce. We’ve all got one now, let’s just leave it alone. Do the puzzle, don’t do the puzzle, just don’t talk about it.

Thanks to this post on Andrew Brown’s Helmintholog, the word mailscience is now officially entering the sjhoward.co.uk lexicon.

Or, rather, 110 lucky cookies, as 110 people who played the numbers found within their Wonton Foods fortune cookies actually won, netting $100,000 each.

I do love these US feel-good stories. I think I might start posting more of them.