Congresswoman shot in AZ (Update: in stable condition)

edit: the online community? Ahhh. That explains the guys whole currency is worthless, sustainability worldview.

 

Zeitgeist: The Movie is a conspiracy theory documentary with a big 9/11 section.

 

Not only that but you need to ensure younger people are skilled as the older generation retires but instead we have a very short-termist attitude driving employers which is that they demand the perfect candidate, with qualifications and experience - if you ain't got both, get lost.

That this tends to ignore that most people can only get one or the other and have it be of high quality is quite infantile, as is the dismissal of the idea that people may need to learn on the job, make mistakes and learn by doing.

Then, I don't know if it's different in the US, but for UK schools, what is taught in schools is diametrically opposed to the world of employment which is: Shove your way to the front, get ahead, look out for no. 1, basically the opposite of all that emphasis on ethics and respecting authority. The world is run by gits for gits and those gits tend to be the one in charge of HR. Said gits will bin CVs, send no responses and go for the cheap option.

The problem is a sufficient number of rejections will hit anybody's sense of self confidence, which in turn can spark a downward spiral. Never mind if you've gone the qualifications route, you've done what society expected of you, behaved yourself and then find it doesn't count for squat. Yeah, we've been lying to our young people for years and aren't anywhere near as ashamed of it as we should be.

Which gets us to the current fiasco which could see an entire generation screwed over by forces they have no control over, by people who are older and have benefitted greatly from the prosperity of earlier times but see no reason why they should help their successors, despite once occupying that position and being helped by their wiser predecessors.

 

Agreed. I actually don't see the kind of horrors as the Holocaust in the near future (Most people of my generation are pro-gay marriage, so killing Jews is way out.), but I do see the possibility of other radical activity.

 

I've been thinking about the apparently sudden onset of this guy's mental problems and the severe aphasia and lack of logic demonstrated and it seems to indicate maybe he has a brain tumor.

Schizophrenia doesn't have the type of symptoms he is showing. Paranoia, yes, but the logic gaps seem to show something else is wrong.

It's one for the doctors, definitely.

 

A brain tumor? 'eh...I'm still thinking it's mental. You can develop more than one mental disorder, I believe. It's been a while since I studied this stuff.

 

Fido,

A brain tumor can cause insanity. And, yes, it is possible to have multiple mental illnesses, but with the rapid onset of this guy's symptoms, it might be more than just mental illnesses.

And I'm glad the Congresswoman is making such a wonderful recovery. I hope it continues.

Thought Obama did a great job on the speech. Maybe it will help the grieving families on their road to recovery, as well.

 

What other symptoms does this man have? I've read his posts...they definitely seem schizophrenic. The disjointed speech and thoughts. Since no medical history has been taken on him it's a little early to speculate he might have a brain tumor as schizophrenia does have positive and negative traits to it. From what the sheriff's department said they said that he's just been smiling at the wall and saying nothing. That sounds very much like just schizophrenia to me. Along with the delusions about the Mars rover being faked and days being infinite.

Funny story: I was with my therapist today and I was discussing this guy's view that days, months, and years are infinite. I honestly had trouble piecing it together a bit. But his argument was that it's the same day and we only treat it as if it were different. Which was pretty clever thinking on his part. Except...you know...the whole sun revolving around the Earth and things being time being finite.

 

I think it seems like people keep saying that he had issues with monotony and the status quo.

And the thing that bugs me about the Obama v Palin comparisons is that Palin has been framed as being Obama's counterpart. Yes, she's more popular to Republicans than Democrats or independents, but her favorability rating (as of October, quickest I could find) was 44% with Republicans. Contrast that with Obama's favorability rating (the quickest I found were for June of last year), when Obama's favorability with the Democrats was 84%. A more recent poll this January looking at the favorability margins (% highly favorable - % highly unfavorable) with Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, found that Palin was 4th, after Huckabee, Gingrich, and Romney. She also has the highest strongly unfavorable of any candidate. Her high visibility is really the only thing that gets her that high in the highly favorable category, as there's several candidates that aren't that well known but those that know of them like them a great deal. So it doesn't seem fair to view this as Obama against Palin, also that this isn't how they're both responding to the tragedy, but that Palin is responding to being associated with the tragedy, and Obama isn't.

 

Secret Service Probes Psyche of U.S. Assassins

That was an interesting bit. I find it interesting that three quarters were not delusional. Kinda puts an interesting spin on our current situation. Maybe he's trying to be like Ted Bundy and fake insanity.

 

I'm not even sure he's trying to fake insanity. I mean, his views seem to lack logical consistency and aren't well founded, but that alone doesn't seem to make for insanity. Although I'm not entirely sure what counts as insane versus other labels of mental health.

 

Schizophrenia's onset often happens in the late teens and early twenties.

 

Given his posts and what people who knew him had to say about him, I think that if he's faking insanity, he was faking it for a long period of time.

 

True. He'd have to be pretty good at it. Still, given that most people are utter morons in the US...well...I'd fake insanity, too, just to keep them from talking to me.

 

Blasphemy! Hail Time Cube!

 

What use is it for commonfolk to try to piece together the state of mind of one lone criminal among 300 million citizens?

Why this fascination with the uncontrollable? I find it all rather morbid.

I think you'd be hard-pressed to establish an individualistic society with that many people in which stuff like this just doesn't happen. These things will keep happening.

Keep dreamin'.

 

Personally, I think the greater benefit isn't from trying to diagnose the specifics here from what we know, but more to look at what signs we should've been looking for, and then also what could have been done. So more, how to prevent these and tell that there's a risk than the specific points of his logic. More useful to focus on the broader points that repeat.

And yeah, I'm seeing plenty of indication that it's not going to happen because too many people on both sides don't want to do that... but if we don't have dreams, what do we have to strive for?

 

Not saying you shouldn't have dreams, just that maybe it'd be more fruitful if they're realistic. I think it's unrealistic to want freedom of speech, the internet, a privatized media sector, and more civility as well. At least, in times of global recession.

Of course, it's commendable if individuals strive for more civility. What I'm saying that it's not something that can realistically be expected from all citizens of a whole nation, if no laws are changed... it's a pipe dream.

 

It's possible to imagine a killer so coldly calculating that he seeks to place evidence of his own mental illness into the public record months and months ahead of a crime he was planning. this is a movie script for Edward Norton - the mass killer who deliberately drops fabricated evidence of his own insanity all over his life: at school, at home, among friends, on YouTube.

Of course, only an insane person would be so crazy as to plan a year or more ahead for his own defense.

Also, neuropsychologists have some fairly sophisticated assessment tools to test for malingering, but the tests aren't infallible. A friend of mine specializes in expert testimony on malingering cases. It's not particularly easy to fake mental illness.

 

If that's the argument they're making, they've got it wrong. Gage's injury was confined to the left orbitofrontal cortex - the tamping rod he was using went through his left cheek, behind his left eye, and out the top of his head. I use Gage all the time when I talk about the mind/body problem, and have some books/pictures they need to examine.

 

No, the error's mine. They mention Gage but don't give the incorrect description of his injury that I gave.

 

Agreed. A society can't have liberty without the consequences of that: violence, crime, corruption, etc. The only difference is our society makes these problems overt and on the surface for all to see while other more authorititarian societies keep them under cover. But they still happen.

 

Everyone forgets about those extremist Puerto Rican nationalists.

 

Well, worth pointing this out... seems the issue over rhetoric could be tied to that someone was recently arrested over making threats toward a political organizer in Arizona. The Tucson Tea Party founder Trent Humphries suggested that gun control discussion should be delayed until after the funerals and J. Eric Fuller took a picture of Humphries and said "You're dead". Witnesses also say that Fuller yelled "You're all whores" as he was being led out by police. Fuller's been charged with one count of threats and intimidation, and might be a familiar name as he was shot in the knee during the Loughner shooting.

 

To be fair, I certainly think he has a right to be angry about that.