Deathday Newspapers

The Death Clock gives you a doubtless most inaccurate death date, mine being the eighth of April two thousand and fifty-seven. Whereas it is generally implausible to anticipate most of the contents of any newspaper which might be printed on the day of one's death, certain things can be more or less guaranteed or forecast. The possibilities include the following:

* Planned events such as the Olympics, elections in fixed term countries and release of government papers under the thirty-year rule.

* More or less completely predictable events such as the position of the Voyager and Pioneer spacecraft, eclipses, horoscopes - a horoscope of the forecast day of one's death is entirely feasible.

* Extrapolations of current trends such as divorce rates, secularisation, inflation, crime, climate change, population.

* Articles worded so vaguely and generally that they could be interpreted as true no matter what.

* Same old same old stuff which always happens such as political scandals, celebrity gossip and war in the Middle East.

* In some cases, seasonal events such as Christmas, Easter and Eid will occur on the death date.

* An obituary of the recipient of the newspaper based on where their life is going at the moment, anticipating events such as promotion or the lack thereof, how long their marriage is likely to last and what they are likely to die of, health problems and so forth based on their current lifestyle, occupation and the like.

The irony is, of course, that in many cases by the time of a person's death, newspapers in their current form will probably have ceased to exist, so i anticipate that if this were to be put into action, it will eventually become the only kind of physical newspaper worthy of the name which exists and the old style newspaper which purports to cover real events will be forgotten.

The value of this newspaper could be similar to the memento mori or Dickens' ghost of Christmas yet to come, as a dreadful warning of where the recipient's life or the world is going. Actual forecasts could be modified according to personal beliefs, such as scepticism or otherwise about global warming or belief in a fixed date of the end of the world. Someone could be depicted as suffering from COPD, heart disease or other diseases derived from the realistic risk of those conditions developing based on their current lifestyle, or they could be warned of an impending trend towards separation, unemployment or of less personal events such as the depletion of the planet's indium resources, thereby motivating them into doing something about that lot. Alternatively, it might just be a cheery affirmation that they should carry on doing what they're doing now because if things continue in this manner, they will be the next Pope or something.

Nostradamus, St Malachy, JW or whatever type of prediction will also be available as news items, belief system permitting.