The Power of Irrationality

If you haven’t read Kay Redfield Jamison’s “Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament” run out and get a copy. She is a psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins and is bipolar herself.

“I believe that curiosity, wonder and passion are defining qualities of imaginative minds and great teachers; that restlessness and discontent are vital things; and that intense experience and suffering instruct us in ways that less intense emotions can never do. I believe, in short, that we are equally beholden to heart and mind, and that those who have particularly passionate temperaments and questioning minds leave the world a different place for their having been there. It is important to value intellect and discipline, of course, but it is also important to recognize the power of irrationality, enthusiasm and vast energy. Intensity has its costs, of course — in pain, in hastily and poorly reckoned plans, in impetuousness — but it has its advantages as well.”
Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison, Author and Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Johns Hopkins University
in “The Benefits of Restlessness and Jagged Edges”
NPR Morning Edition, June 6, 2005

There is a video of a speech she did about Exhuberance on YouTube that was quite inspiring. She wrote a great book about the love of life called Exuberance: The Passion for Life
.

Now THIS is a Knife!


Amazon.com: Victorinox-Swisschamp XAVT “BIG DADDY” Knife: Sports & Outdoors

Hey, Girl Scout friends! Now THIS is a knife.

Get one of these bad boys and you can throw away your tool chest, cutlery, fishing tackle box, and corkscrew. Oh, and fire your auto mechanic. It’s all there.

I can’t help it, I love to window shop at amazon.com. I have NO idea what I was looking for when I found this. I was thinking about getting one for hubby for Christmas as a joke.

What’s really strange is that as I was typing this in, hubby came in with the Hammacher catalog. They’re selling one that has every tool Victrinox ever made. It’s about 5 times the width of this (and 5 times the price) and is simply bristling with screwdrivers for hardware that most people will never even see, much less need to tighten.

Dysfunction and Censorship

Letter to a good Christian woman:





I think we can all agree that consistantly objectifying women is not just wrong, it is dysfunctional. By “objectifying” I mean that the viewer isn’t concerned with the woman’s needs and desires but only with his own. This lack of empathy, when taken to extremes, is the hallmark of a sociopath or a narcissistic personality.

In Muslim cultures this objectification is so ubiquitous that the women must wear burqas to protect themselves from being attacked. Displaying the female form, the clerics claim, incites sexual excitement in men and invites rape.

We heard this same argument when miniskirts were popular in the US.

The United States actually has a great deal more censorship than most European countries. It started with the Comstock Laws, laws that were intended to oppress women by denying them healthcare information. In Europe, casual nudity is unremarkable and nobody is inappropriately aroused by it, while in the U.S. a little too much neck or leg on TV provokes a great outcry.

If I’m understanding you correctly, you are telling us that Americans are incapable of appreciating the human form, male or female, without being sexually overwhelmed. Does your minister also promote rape? I hope not.

Prehistoric fertility totems, ancient Greek statues, and Renoir’s nudes: if you have your way they will be censored along with the sleazy garbage that you and I don’t care to look at.

Stone Him With Stones

Just in case anyone is still complaining that Islamists are violent, here’s something from the KJV bible. It’s pretty clear what a good Christian is supposed to do to non-Christians.

Deuteronomy 13

6 If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers;
7 Namely, of the gods of the people which are round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth;
8 Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him:
9 But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people.
10 And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.

Mental Health Parity in the Bailout Boondoggle H. R. 1424

This refers to a previous bailout, not to the latest ripoff.

H. R. 1424: Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008

Here is the full text, and I suggest that everybody read this bill. It was pushed through with only a couple of days debate by lawyers who have little understanding of the workings of Wall Street or The Fed, and who have huge financial interest in the institutions that will benefit from it. To add insult to injury, they tacked a lot of pork barrel spending onto it to BRIBE Congress to agree to it.
http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/financialsvcs_dem/essabill.pdf

Some comments:

“To amend section 712 of the Employee Retirement Income
Security Act of 1974, section 2705 of the Public Health
Service Act, section 9812 of the Internal Revenue Code
of 1986 to require equity in the provision of mental
health and substance-related disorder benefits under
group health plans, to prohibit discrimination on the
basis of genetic information with respect to health insurance
and employment, and for other purposes.”

This means that you only get parity if your employer provides your insurance AND that insurance already has mental health coverage. It doesn’t seem to require them to cover it. How many of you all work full-time?

There is a cost exemption so to limit mental health coverage if it increases costs by some undetermined amount. The insurance companies can still deny claims bases on their definition of “medical necessity” or by their definition of “reasonable and customary” services.

‘‘(2) COST EXEMPTION.—
6 ‘‘(A) IN GENERAL.—With respect to a
7 group health plan (or health insurance coverage
8 offered in connection with such a plan), if the
9 application of this section to such plan (or cov
10 erage) results in an increase for the plan year
11 involved of the actual total costs of coverage
12 with respect to medical and surgical benefits
13 and mental health and substance use disorder
14 benefits under the plan (as determined and cer
15 tified under subparagraph (C)) by an amount
16 that exceeds the applicable percentage described
17 in subparagraph (B) of the actual total plan
18 costs, the provisions of this section shall not
19 apply to such plan (or coverage) during the fol
20 lowing plan year, and such exemption shall
21 apply to the plan (or coverage) for 1 plan year.”

Discrimination on the basis of genetic information only affects illnesses for which genetic tests have been developed. This bill ignores a lot of of the provisions of the ADA, while modifying ERISA in ways that are completely meaningless. I am concerned that this will weaken the ADA by tightening the definitions to exclude non-genetic diseases.

Specific diagnoses this bill applies to will be determined by the GAO, which has 3 years to study it and present a report.

“(h) GAO STUDY ON COVERAGE AND EXCLUSION OF
4 MENTAL HEALTH AND SUBSTANCE USE DISORDER DIAG5
NOSES.—
6 (1) IN GENERAL.—The Comptroller General of
7 the United States shall conduct a study that ana8
lyzes the specific rates, patterns, and trends in cov9
erage and exclusion of specific mental health and
10 substance use disorder diagnoses by health plans
11 and health insurance.”

Congress can continue to modify this Act.

I doubt this will change anything in the near future.

A few years from now you’re going to hear Congressdroids bitching because they didn’t have enough time to collect the facts before enacting this bill. Listen to them whine about how they were boondoggled into exercising the Bush Doctrine on Iraq.

Toeing the Party Line

David Brooks: The Class War Before Palin

Over the past 15 years, the same argument has been heard from a thousand politicians and a hundred television and talk-radio jocks. The nation is divided between the wholesome Joe Sixpacks in the heartland and the oversophisticated, overeducated, oversecularized denizens of the coasts.

I think both parties have completely lost their way.

Republicans used to be fiscally conservative. They were for small government. They tended to be socially conservative but they also stayed out of people’s lives. What the hell happened? Twenty years post-Reagan, laissez-faire economics and dozens of Party-financed Think Tanks later they’ve lied their way into the heads of the citizens who are the most damaged by trickle-down economics, mostly by appealing to Christian moral issues that the average politician completely ignores in his own personal life. The NeoCons – “Teddy Roosevelt Republicans” – even lie to themselves. There is nothing there for me.

The Democrats used to be social activists, wanting big government to create a nanny state that gives away all the middle class’s money to the disadvantaged. Instead of developing a unified political platform, the only thing the Dems agreed upon was women’s rights. The rest of the issues were totally repressed in the name of Political Correctness. Denial is the main party line.

I don’t know what’s going on now. The whole country has moved to the right. The Republicans have become rabid authoritarian moralists. The Dems have moved into a centrist, fiscally conservative position and are displaying their authoritarian insistence on denial.

I’m not sure where that leaves me. I’m certainly not a female Joe-sixpack. I’m not a member of the Liberal Elite either. I’m kind of in between.

We need a third party.

Positive Deception

Positive deception is when you change the parameters so that you don’t have to lie.

Throwing the ball easy to a little kid so that he succeeds and develops a good attitude toward the game.
Giving every kid a trophy so they don’t get discouraged.
Putting everyone in the school on the Honor Roll so that they all feel good about themselves.

Unfortunately, this instills the kids with total lack of concern for quality.

FEMA Concentration Camps

Rex 84 – From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Exercises similar to Rex 84 happen regularly.[5] Plans for roundups of large numbers of persons in the United States in times of crisis are constructed during periods of increased political repression such as the Palmer Raids and the McCarthy Era.

CIVIL SECURITY PLANNING

Since WWII, the U.S. government has had contingency plans in preparation for a large scale disaster or attack. However, during the last twenty-five years–beginning with civil unrest at the height of the Vietnam War–the government’s plans have increasingly on focused ways of controlling political dissent.

US FEMA Camps

The United States Federal Emergency Management Agency has numerous detainment camps throughout the United States. Some camps have been recently constructed and / or renovated and are fully staffed. The existence of the camps coupled with Presidential Executive Orders giving the President and Department of Homeland Security (of which FEMA is now part) control over ‘national essential functions’ in the event of ‘catastrophic emergency’ have resulted in concerns that the camps will be used to forcefully detain American citizens for unconstitutional purposes.

FEMA CONCENTRATION CAMPS: Locations and Executive Orders

There over 800 prison camps in the United States, all fully operational and ready to receive prisoners. They are all staffed and even surrounded by full-time guards, but they are all empty. These camps are to be operated by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) should Martial Law need to be implemented in the United States and all it would take is a presidential signature on a proclamation and the attorney general’s signature on a warrant to which a list of names is attached.

U.A.F.F. – FEMA DEATH CAMP WATCH PAGE 2009

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11921 allows the Federal Emergency Preparedness Agency to develop plans to establish control over the mechanisms of production and distribution, of energy sources, wages, salaries, credit and the flow of money in U.S. financial institution in any undefined national emergency. It also provides that when a state of emergency is declared by the President, Congress cannot review the action for six months.

The sites listed above are talking about emergency housing set up in strategic locations by FEMA so that in an emergency they don’t have to ship evacuees all over the country like happened after Katrina.

Some of them can hold up to 100,000 people. For reference, stadiums hold 50,000 to 75,000 people.

The conspiracy theorists are saying that the camps are to put people when the US goes into another Depression and there isn’t enough room in the jails for the rioters.

Another theory is that if the U.S. government suspects a terrorist lives in a town they will sweep up the entire town and put them in one of these camps so that they don’t have to waste time figuring out exactly who the terrorist is.

A third theory is that when they take over the government, the Christian Right will be putting atheists in the camps so that we can’t poison their kids’ minds.

The other theory that I’ve heard is that if we’re friends with Cuba again we’ll have to move the prisoners out of Gitmo so we’ll put them in the camps with any more terrorists we might catch.

I’m reminded of several scifi movies such as Soylent Green and A Boy & His Dog in which the populace lives in squalid conditions while the few elite live in luxury in heavily-guarded neighborhoods. A dystopian future used to seem rather far-fetched. But I suppose the victims of Nazi Germany thought it was rather far-fetched, even as they were being loaded into cattle cars.

Homework Excuse

I’m sorry, but I had an existential crisis last night and in a fit of Kafka-esque boredom I morphed into a centipede and ate my computer.

Thinking Machine 4: Chess Visualization

Thinking Machine 4: Play the game.

Chess visualization

Chess visualization

I don’t have the patience for chess unless mentally enhanced by certain herbs. Until my local health food store starts selling it, I’m not going to be playing chess.

Nonetheless, I found this site interesting. The picture above visualizes a computer opponent’s “thought” process as it examines series of moves and responses.

Bad Behavior has blocked 950 access attempts in the last 7 days.