Wednesday, January 13. 2010
Old Haiti has needed our prayers for many years, but they sure need them now. Their doctors are praying too, and sometimes that's all one can do. Or the most one can do.
I have been thinking quite a bit about Sociopathy (aka Antisocial Personality, aka Psychopathy, aka in the young "Conduct Disorder") lately. People without a conscience who view others as objects of gratification or as tools to be used. I have missed the diagnosis several times over the past few years, to my regret. Many experts are known to miss it until something happens to wave the red flag in front of your face.
It's not just an important diagnosis for us shrinks to make: it's important for everybody out in the world. 2-3% of humans probably have enough sociopathic traits to be of concern in life. It's a strange partially genetic adaptation. Some end up as leaders and moguls, many end up addicts, dead, or in jail. Sociopathy knows no economic, cultural, or ethnic boundaries.
What is this "condition"?
It's a tricky thing, sociopathy. It has been well-described from many points of view. We analysts often think of it as being based in an absence of empathy - an inability to experience others as other than as objects to be exploited, used, predated upon, etc. An inner coldness and calculatingness towards others, but not to be confused with obsessional personalities who simply protect their emotions, and not be confused with those with immoral or amoral impulses - everybody has those.
However, successful sociopaths learn to create a warm, caring, engaged, and often charming presentation of themselves to the world. Very successful and smart sociopaths learn how to live honest lives and to channel their talents, guile and wiles into honest paths.
Full-blown sociopathy is generally considered an untreatable and incurable condition. I am not convinced that that is true - but I think it requires special methods which are outisde of regular Psychiatry. Sociopathic traits are far more common than the supposed 2% of the population that are said to be full sociopaths. I am not going to write an essay on this complicated topic, but will just offer some links for those who are interested:
Wiki has a simple introduction to the topic
A classic book by Cleckley: The Mask of Sanity: An Attempt to Clarify Some Issues About the So Called Psychopathic Personality
An interesting paper: THE SOCIOBIOLOGY OF SOCIOPATHY: AN INTEGRATED EVOLUTIONARY MODEL
I have more links on the topic, but no more time right now.
A quote from Yuval Levin's Capitalism at NRO:
Part of the problem I have with some versions of the libertarian case is that they take capitalism (if not classical liberalism more generally) to be an argument against the need for restraints on our appetites and passions, rather than an argument for the possibility of such restraints — to be an argument for libertinism rather than liberty. I’m with Edmund Burke, who said that “men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites.”
Is the MSM beginning to get it? From Jack Cafferty via Watts:
As the debate continues about global warming, the month of December was the 14th coldest in 115 years in the United States… and some scientists insist the earth is entering a cooling trend.
- Wind chills brought temperatures in the Dakotas to 50 degrees below zero, while record cold in parts of Florida is damaging some of the orange crops, and South Carolina called an early end to shrimping season.
- Parts of Canada have seen actual temperatures of 30 below zero… And freezing temperatures and record snowfalls are pounding parts of Asia and Europe too.
- Britain has experienced the worst snowfalls in half a century.
- In India – it’s estimated at least 100 people have died due to the cold temperatures… with dozens more killed in Bangladesh.
- In China and South Korea, heavy snow and unusually cold weather have brought chaos to travelers – blocking roads and trains, canceling flights. After one recent blizzard in Beijing – officials had more than 300-thousand people clearing the streets.
Meanwhile some of the world’s top climate scientists suggest this winter is only the start of a worldwide trend toward cooler weather, which could last for 20 to 30 years. They base their predictions on changes in water temperatures in the oceans
Good judgment comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgment.
Anon., from Theo's Old Farmer quotes
How often have we heard complaints about the inappropriate cheesecake on Maggie's Farm? Countless times.
So here's some beefcake instead - Scott Brown, MA Senate candidate, as a law student (via a piece at Powerline). The photo should help with the gal vote, don't you think?
Betsy has a very good update on the MA race. Also today: Union plans major ad buy for Coakley. We also note the conspicuous absence of a major national politician to support the Dem in this campaign. The O not invited, apparently.
We support Scott Brown, even if we enviously resent his good looks:
Tuesday, January 12. 2010
From VDH on The Way Our World Works (h/t, Am Digest - with Randy Newman's Short People):
...those on the left are moralists, smarter people who pass up their own personal agendas to help the community. They think of society, not self, and so when they err, they do it under stress, in accidental fashion, and with no lasting significance — not like their selfish Neanderthal cousin conservatives, for whom transgression is a valuable window into their flawed souls. Bushisms became a media pastime, but no one suggests that a president who says Cinco de Quatro, or 57 states, or references the “Austrian” language is a Dan Quayle wrestling with potato.
The Eclipse. A little too flashy, d'ya think?
If you’ve never had freedom taken from you, it’s easier to take it for granted. If you have, freedom becomes more precious and vital to survival and advancement. This is of much more than a matter of personal freedoms within Unfree countries. The despots ruling them also pose major threats to other countries.
For the 4th year in a row, according to Freedom House’s invaluable annual analyses since 1972, freedom has declined in the world. One can only hope that the Obamites are paying attention, as there is more evidence of they not giving much of a damn.
In 2009, declines for freedom were registered in 40 countries, representing 20 percent of the world’s polities…. The year also featured a drop in the number of electoral democracies from 119 to 116, the lowest figure since 1995.
Still:
By absolute historical standards, the overall state of freedom in the world has improved over the last two decades. Many more countries were in the Free category and were designated as electoral democracies in 2009 than in 1989, and the majority of countries that made major progress 20 years ago have retained those improvements….
But over the last four years, the dominant pattern has been one of growing restrictions on the fundamental freedoms of expression and association in authoritarian settings, and a failure to continue democratic progress in previously improving countries due to unchecked corruption and weaknesses in the rule of law.
Freedom House doesn’t measure promises or commentators’ perceived portents. Freedom House sticks to what actually exists. For example, 88% of the people in the MidEast and North Africa region were in Unfree countries. Check out this map: http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/fiw10/FIW_2010_Map_MENA.pdf Note the only speck of freedom is in tiny Israel. Wonder why the rulers of Islamic countries and their Unfree allies concentrate on eliminating Israel’s threat, by comparison alone, to their satrapies lack of freedoms or economic advancement.
There’s much more detail in the Freedom House reports.
The best sermons are lived, not preached.
Anon. (h/t, a collection of good farmer quotes at Theo)
Pow! "It's not Kennedy's seat, it's not the Democrats' seat, it's the peoples' seat." Scott Brown:
WSJ:
Among the astonishing things about the ObamaCare debate—or lack thereof—is that Washington is inundated with warnings about the destructiveness of this plan, and it doesn't matter. The agency that runs Medicare rung the latest alarm bell on Friday, and good luck finding any media mention.
Whole story here.
Have you read The Shack yet?
Horowitz' 8-part series on Rules for Radicals
To walk, or not walk, away from your mortgage
Pope gets religion: Pope Denounces Failure to Forge New Climate Treaty
More on The dirty little secrets of ObamaCare
Why Peak Oil is Peak Idiocy: Endless Oil
Dr. Sanity: CALIFORNIA WASN'T SACKED IN A DAY--or, How A Golden State Became A Failed State
The Logic of Liberty: Whose Responsibility Is Your Health?
Jules:
...if you don’t support race-based preferences and assorted left-leaning social programs, you’re a racist. But if you make bizarre ”light-skinned” and “Negro dialect” remarks and support the above, you’re not only not a racist, but deserve a vigorous defense.
A doc's angry letter to Sen. Nelson
The filth of one-party politics in Massachusetts. The allegedly SEIU push-polling is disgusting. Related: The Scott Brown campaign aimed to raise $500,000 in one day on the internet. They raised over one million. The election is next Tuesday.
Monday, January 11. 2010
The crisisification of everything from weather to fatness to flu season trivializes real crises.
Just One Minute mocked the NYT's crisisification of the Atlantic Menhaden population. Fair enough. It's not a crisis, but it is a serious concern to all those concerned with ocean wildlife - and one which could be easily solved by limiting the helo-guided factory-fish harvest of these bottom-of-the-food-chain schooling fish.
Even as recently as 6 years ago, when fishing on Long Island Sound, you could catch your bait for Bluefish or Bass by tossing a bare hook into a school of Menhaden, aka Bunker, and just dragging the hook through the thick schools. Since the factory ships appeared, those giant schools have been harvested like the herds of Bison and the sky-darkening flocks of Passenger Pigeons.
Here's The Most Important Fish in the Sea
Here's Meet menhaden - before this ecologically critical fish vanishes
Images via links above
Via Phi Beta Cons:
...the academic rigor in graduate ed courses is comparable to that in preschool. I put more work and effort into one week of an engineering or computer-science class than into a full semester of an ed class. Would you believe that an episode of Frontline was an acceptable source for a master's-level research paper? That Wikipedia was also an acceptable source?
Just for today - Insty calls it a Scott Brown moneybomb. Every little bit helps.
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Magnifico: The Brilliant Life and Violent Times of Lorenzo de' Medici