Shootings In Tucson

All the mass shootings we've had in the last decade, elementary and college students, teachers, postal workers, police, even nuns ... everyday people. But now that it's one of theirs, the rich and powerful don't feel so secure anymore and they don't like it. Congress is changing its rhetoric. Time magazine dedicates an entire issue. And where does the blame fall? Mental illness. Hey, no sane person would shoot one of us!
In an A/P piece, Jacques Billeaud wrote, "Investigators have said Loughner was mentally disturbed and acting increasingly erratic in the weeks leading up to the shooting. If he pleads not guilty by reason of insanity and is successful, he could avoid the death penalty and be sent to a mental health facility instead of prison."
This will set the reform of attitudes toward mental health back a generation if not a lifetime.
Want confirmation of the us-and-them attitude? See how much coverage a Detroit Police Shooting got.

A Lifetime In Darkness

The despair of a life in physical and emotional pain. The despair of being unable to love. Chasing after the "right person" when the inside is broken.

Perception and Truth

"All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy." Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862) American Author
"There is no truth. There is only perception." Gustave Flaubert
Krishnamurti and the Direct Perception of Truth Prof. P. Krishna (Fabulous! ed.)

Uncertainty

Living with Uncertainty Anthony Campbell
"As the biologist J.B.S. Haldane famously remarked, the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, it is queerer than we can suppose."

Mindfulness

"Living Well With Pain and Illness" by Vidyamala Burch, http://www.wildmind.org/blogs/book-reviews/living-well-with-pain-and-illness-by-vidyamala-burch
"Lessons For The Living" by Stan Goldberg
"Mindfulness for Pain Relief: Guided Practices for Reclaiming Your Body and Your Life" by Jon Kabat-Zinn

Natural Selection

Do all human drives and emotions boil down to reproductive success? Power? Greed? Love? Anger? Fear? Joy? Grief? More and more scientists, health professionals and others are couching various "personality traits" in terms of "survival value". "If it didn't have survival value, it would have disappeared from the gene pool." Isn't this just restating Darwin's theory of natural selection? It's a profound idea, though, when applied to what modern society considers aberrant behavior or mental illness.
Bipolar, sociopathic personality, depression, schizophrenia. What is the survival value of these characteristics? What are thieves and killers when their abilities are directed against a competing tribe? Warriors, heroes?

On Ideas

Are ideas an evolving part of human evolution? An idea must stand on its own. It doesn't matter who said it or what institution is behind it. It is useful, illuminating, suggestive, inspiring or it isn't. It survives or it doesn't. Survival suggests that ideas live within time. Some ideas are displaced by others over time. If we're lucky, this evolution of ideas represents positive development in the human specie; development of the sapiens part of the name that, in our arrogance, we've given ourselves

Early Sci-Fi And Computers

It seems odd that the scifi writers of the 1930s and 1940s were so far off when it came to calculating machines and data storage. They wrote about high energy weapons, faster than light space travel, telepathy and telekinesis, antigravity and instantaneous communication, among other scientific achievements, most of which have yet to be realized. But nothing about computers. In many cases they have navigators performing mostly manual calculations to plot courses in both normal and hyper space, an impractical if not impossible procedure. The calculating machines they did write about used tape for storage, even four centuries into the future. How did they miss the obvious need for calculating power beyond what humans can do?

The Failure of Logic

Using logic to argue a point is a waste of time and energy. Logic follows strict, closed rules. It is black and white. A conclusion is either right or wrong. If two people come to two different conclusions using strict logic, then either someone's logic is flawed, or the difference is in the assumptions. (Interestingly, in the context of logic, assumptions are analogous to beliefs.) If they can't agree on the assumptions, then all further logical argument is pointless.