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Thinking the unthinkable

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Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#391

Post by rkwz »

kamaal wrote: post #158
polyfractal wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re handwriting: If you are still into improving your handwriting, buy yourself a fountain pen. It makes it a lot of fun to experiment with new characters and drastically alter your handwriting. I've always had meh handwriting. Not horrible, but not pretty either. I've been slowly converting my scratchy characters over to smoother, more flowy characters with embelleshments, since fountain pens make it so easy to play.…

Hand writing is a big thing here in India. And generally many super intelligent kids lose out to mug pots because of hand writing. Coming to my case, I consider any one who boasts about great hand writing a loser. The moment I stopped writing exams I started giving a damn about hand writing. Hand writing improvement initiatives were the biggest things I hated in school. It was a exercise in futility. Looking back I f…

>Coming to my case, I consider any one who boasts about great hand writing a loser.

I dedicated a lot during my school days trying to improve my handwriting without anyone's involvement. Naturally, I'm proud of how much my handwriting has improved. Thanks for the 'loser' tag.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#392

Post by ht_th »

syncopatience wrote: post #269
ht_th wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is interesting to see of the Norway shooting falls in the same statistical category of "mad shooter" or in something like "homeland terrorism". But yes. There seems to be a rise of similar incidents all over the developed world, although access to guns is in the USA a lot easier than elsewhere and that reflects on these excesses. For example, knivings (is that a word?) seem to be more common than shootings around…

The most common term is "stabbing", e.g. "stabbings are up 25% this year."

That makes sense: with a gun we shoot -> shooting; with a knife we stab -> stabbing. Although it could also be a slicing or dicing then, I suppose :-)

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#393

Post by ht_th »

elteto wrote: post #293
ht_th wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Her kid is also extremely intelligent and seems to have mastered sweetness as a way to get his way still. I wouldn't be surprised if he could behave "normally" for a long stretch of time to get out of whatever institution they put him in. Unless these diagnoses are for life and these institutions are basically a hotel Calofornia.

But it would leave a paper trail, just like the social worker said, and this would prevent them later on from getting a firearm legally, which is the way most of the weapons used in mass murders are obtained.

Ah, there are some regulations with respect to getting a firearm then? But given the enormous amount of firearms around, would it be hard to get one illegally? I suppose everyone knows someone with a healthy mental outlook and with a serious gun. It does not seem as if you have to go to some heavy criminals to get one.

But it is good to hear that there is at least some sort of barrière to obtain a dangerous weapon.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#394

Post by hmbg »

hammer_man wrote: post #229
bambax wrote: post #107

> Then another tortured soul shoots up a fast food restaurant. A mall. A kindergarten classroom. There are crazy people in every country on earth, many (most) of which have worse "health care" systems than the US; yet only in the US do kids shoot other kids with automatic weapons. I very much doubt it has anything to do with mental health (nowhere else in the world are young children medicated for being kids to such…

" there are two main reasons why there are so many shootings in the US 1/ ... 2/ guns are everywhere" Quite the contrary, there aren't enough guns. If the teachers were carrying, if the school had armed security guards, if the principal had a handgun, etc. then this "crazy" person would likely not have acted out. As Quannel X says, a person may be "crazy" but that doesn't mean they're crazy. That is, most persons who…

"Quite the contrary, there aren't enough guns"

I struggle to find an example of a country with more guns and lower murder rate. Care to help?

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#395

Post by bjourne »

DanBC wrote: post #142
bjourne wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm betting on that you are completely wrong about that. That the signs were completely obvious to everyone around these guys. People knew that they were some deeply fucked up kids with huge mental problems long before they went on their killing sprees. But mental illness is something incredibly shameful around the world and maybe even moreso in the US. Almost no parent will ever be able to admit that there might be…

There are plenty of deeply fucked up people with huge mental problems who do not go on to kill anyone. Should we lock up those people to prevent the small number who might go on to commit violent crime?

There's a huge number of possible ways to offer help to people. A million things can be done, but what everyone does is pretending the problem doesn't exist.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#396

Post by guard-of-terra »

grabastic wrote: post #346
guard-of-terra wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I for one always identify myself with a sad kid. Why should not I? I was a kid and I was sad too and I could become mad if told what pants to wear.

This is not just a sad kid and this is not just about pants. Did you ever grab a knife and threaten to kill your mom in front of your 7 and 9 year old siblings?

You're avoiding discussing action by discussing reaction.

Of course grabbing a knife is not good, but that if all his bizzare reactions are due to kinds of nonsense?

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#397

Post by guard-of-terra »

shanev wrote: post #251

I never see diet mentioned in articles dealing with mental disorders. Research[1] shows that eating a natural foods ancestral diet free of gluten and casein can reduce symptoms of ADHD and autism. The recent rise in mental disorders seems to be correlated with the rise in diabetes. Could it be all the sugar and processed food we are feeding our children now? Why are we so quick to prescribe drugs with fatal side effe…

"can reduce symptoms of ADHD and autism" Both positive and negative or just negative?

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#398

Post by rimantas »

polyfractal wrote: post #178
kamaal wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hand writing is a big thing here in India. And generally many super intelligent kids lose out to mug pots because of hand writing. Coming to my case, I consider any one who boasts about great hand writing a loser. The moment I stopped writing exams I started giving a damn about hand writing. Hand writing improvement initiatives were the biggest things I hated in school. It was a exercise in futility. Looking back I f…

Interesting. Here in the States (at least, where I grew up), handwriting is a real mixed bag. When you are learning how to write as a small child, it's a big deal to write clearly (for obvious reason). Then you are forced to learn cursive, and its a big deal to write cursive clearly. Then it doesn't matter anymore. Literally everyone stops caring as long as it is legible. It's a weird system. While you are learning t…

  > big deal to write cursive clearly
The fact that cursive in US is considered some kind of special writing and is uncommon was one ot the biggest "This year I learned". This topic pops up on reddit from time to time, and usually there is a comment from non-US "we just call it writing". AFAIR I learned to write cursive from the very beginning. The first letters we wrote might have been capital ones, but I am pretty sure first words were in cursive.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#399

Post by DanBC »

jcromartie wrote: post #322
DanBC wrote: post #172

Here are some numbers from Gloucestershire, a rural county in England. In a population of about 800,000 people there are about 4,000 people on the books of specialist MH treatment services at any time. There are about 2,000 people with a diagnosis of psychotic illness (eg, schizophrenia). There are about 3,000 people with a diagnosis of mood disorder (eg, depression). There are about 60 beds for 'adults of working ag…

You should be thankful that you have 1000 murders a year. We have 3X as many per capita in the US.

Well, I'm really just comparing rates of murder to rates of completed suicide. From a very quick bit of web searching I find that rate of completed suicide in US is about 11.3 per 100,000 while rate of homicide is 5.5 per 100,000 people. Completed suicide numbers are roughly double homicide numbers.

Here's my sources:

(http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/suicide-in-the-u...)

NIMH (national institute of mental health) say about suicide in the US:

> In 2007, it was the tenth leading cause of death in the U.S., accounting for 34,598 deaths. The overall rate was 11.3 suicide deaths per 100,000 people.

(Suicide statistics can be tricky and there are normally a bunch of caveats.)

(http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm)

For 2009:

> Number of deaths: 16,799

> Deaths per 100,000 population: 5.5

> Cause of death rank: 15

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#400

Post by NhojRettal »

dinkumthinkum wrote: post #371
trylater wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

:) Next you will say man never landed on moon. Move on! I do see that JohnLatter/LatterJohn/ has created multiple accounts to post. But that doesn't make me as a sock-puppet account. It actually makes me believe that he indeed has some issues. Just because he has a different POV(and that coming from living with something similar, at-least as per his post), it doesn't make it right for folks to simply deflect it as "s…

No, it's obvious. I won't disclose to you why it is obvious it is you, it's not the name. It's really sad; any intelligent person can see that it is you posting several times echoing your own position.

Unfortunately, its definitely separate entities except for me.

Something that stuck out at me is this was accepted exactly as I had hoped it would be. This micro-conversation has enlightened me to a variety of diverse social attitudes towards the subject.

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