Helena Bachmann, who lives in the Lake Geneva region, has written a good overview for Time magazine on assisted suicide and Switzerland’s efforts to rein in death tourism. She reminds us that the current law dates back to 1942 and brings us up to 2009, with the Swiss government saying the law is now too lax and must be rewritten. Bachmann includes an interesting interview with maxillofacial surgeon Jerome Sobel in Lausanne, who is the president of French-speaking Switzerland’s Exit office (Dignitas is the other main organization that offers suicide assistance). As with so many issues, this one is not as black and white as we might like it to be and her article explores some of the gray areas. Recommended reading.

William Safire brings to mind conservative American politics to many people, and rightly so. He worked closely with Nixon and had a wrting career as a journalist and conservative columnist that spanned decades. He died in New York Sunday 27 September at the age of 79.

It took me many years to learn to appreciate Safire, in part because my politics in the 1970s, when I was a student protester, were in sharp contrast to his. Equally off-putting was that my mother read his writing lessons aloud to me over the breakfast table when I was a teenager, and there is probably no better way to alienate someone that age. His sharp mind and clear thinking won through in the end, and he converted me, as he did many other budding and experienced journalists, to an appreciation of the importance of concise language and well-constructed sentences. He was a keen observer of the continuous evolution of language and the continual changes in the way we use words.

I do think it’s sad that we can’t read his obituary in the New York Times online without subscribing. He was not a man easily silenced, but new media economics seems to have done the trick, despite the lingering magic of his words.

Obituaries, comments: Editor & Publisher, NPR