Method in My Madness

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Dictionary.com defines this phrase as meaning “a plan behind a person’s apparently inexplicable behavior.” The source is no mystery. Phrase Finder notes this phrase came from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, 1602, but it has been adapted over time. The actual line from the play is ‘Though this be madness yet there is method in it‘.

Interestingly, the Oxford Dictionaries lists the quote in the modern form: “whatever he was about, there was method in his madness [From Shakespeare’s Hamlet ( ii. ii. 211)]”

Sparknotes clears this up by presenting the original text and modern adaptation side by side:

  • Original – POLONIUS says (aside) Though this be madness, yet there is method in ’t.—(to HAMLET) Will you walk out of the air, my lord?
  • Modern – POLONIUS says (to himself) There’s a method to his madness. (to HAMLET) Will you step outside, my lord?

I’m happy to see the modern version, though the translator isn’t cited. I’ve never been very fond of Shakespeare because it’s practically a foreign language. I’m sure some people will, however, be horrified at the translation.

It sometimes seems as if Shakespeare coined half of the English language.

“Let’s Kill All the Psychiatrists!”

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anatomy-of-an-epidemicL. Ron Hubbard was one of the most prolific writers in history, authoring more than 1100 books. He was also the founder of the Church of Scientology, arguably one of history’s most controversial quasi-religious organizations. Many of the tenets upon which Hubbard based his church are inarguably crackpot, but after reading Robert Whitaker’s latest offering one could easily conclude that at least one of Hubbard’s paranoid beliefs, that psychiatric drugs and the doctors who prescribe them are the tools of the Devil, may contain a grain of truth.

Whitaker’s book, Anatomy of an Epidemic:  Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America, examines two related issues.  The first is the astronomical increase over the last 60 years in the number of Americans who have been diagnosed with anxiety, depression and bipolar disorders, and schizophrenia.  These conditions, now being diagnosed in as many as 850 adults and 250 children per day, often are so debilitating that sufferers are unable to hold a job and so become dependent on Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) to survive.  The exploding number of mentally disabled being granted SSDI is threatening to bust the agency’s budget as early as 2016.

In 1955, around the time that the first psychotropic drugs like Thorazine were discovered, there were 355,000 people in the US under diagnosis for psychiatric conditions.  Almost all were housed in state or county hospitals as was then standard practice.  This number represented one in 468 Americans.  By 1987, with the closing of most mental hospitals and the treatment of affective disorders well into the age of Lithium and Prozac, one in 186 Americans was on the mental patient rolls. Since then, in spite of the promises made by the psychiatric profession and Big Pharma that Selective Serotonen Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI) drugs were the cure for America’s mental ills, the numbers are still going up.  Continue reading →

Charlie Horse

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Word Origins writes that the term commonly used for a cramp or pulled muscle “…gained widespread use in baseball jargon.” The first known use of the term was in the Boston Globe on July 17, 1886. It said baseball player Joe Quest had used the term to describe pains being suffered by other players. It is possible, although not confirmed, that the term originated when Quest was working as an apprentice in a machine shop.  There was an old horse named Charlie that walked as if his legs were stiff while pulling the delivery loads from the shop. Quest supposedly came up with the term “Charley horse” for anyone experiencing pain in their legs.

Refugee Ethics

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A reader and frequent commenter sent me an article by Richard D. Lamm that appeared in the Denver Post. The story is told of Martin of Tours finding a starving beggar during a 13th Century ride and dividing his cloak and dinner with the desperate man. The question is asked “What if instead of one cold and starving beggar, there are 100?” Considering the world situation, what if there are thousands or millions? There is another report that ISIS has slaughtered another several hundred people after taking a city in Iraq, and thousands or hundreds of thousands of people are being displaced. I have difficulty imagining there is anyone remaining in Syria other than the various fighting organizations or a place for an “ordinary citizen” to live. Thousands of people are taking the perilous trip across the Mediterranean to escape the anarchy and terror of Libya (and perhaps wishing Gaddafi could return). Lamm mentions increasing population “…and political unrest in most of the Middle East and Africa guarantee continued massive migration from that volatile area. Is Europe’s only ethical response to take them all in?”

Lamm mentions that “…the U.S. has its own substantial pressure from south of its boarder (sic).” He then poses the ethical dilemma. “A moral response to an individual or manageable group might not make sense if there are hundreds of thousands. Sheer numbers can totally change the ethical implications.” “The maximum generosity of the developed world cannot absorb the staggering numbers fleeing political chaos, war, violence, and lack of economic opportunity.” Later in the article he writes, “No nation can be expected to commit social and cultural suicide. No ethics can demand what the ecosystem or social fabric of a society cannot support.”

I have fretted since the first reports of ISIS slaughters in Iraq that we as a nation should feel ashamed. Regardless of your beliefs about the justification of the second Iraq War, we did overthrow Saddam Hussein and established a fledgling democracy. We then decided we were “war weary” and withdrew our soldiers. The situation that evolved was predictable. There was an opportunity, perhaps a slim opportunity, to assist in establishing a stable and perhaps even prosperous country where people wouldn’t be slaughtered because they practiced the wrong religion. We instead chose to fulfill a political promise. Is there anyone out there who continues to believe withdrawing was the right thing to do? We also helped “decapitate” the dictatorship in Libya and then sat behind our comfortable borders while terrorists took over.

Perhaps we should be asking whether we’ve learned anything. Are we going to repeat what we did to Iraq in Afghanistan?   I understand the Taliban developed a motto after the announcements that we were going to withdraw on a schedule. “You have the watch and we have the time.”

Dead Wake

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dead-wakeMy wife recommended this excellent book by Erik Larson, and I’m glad I read it. The Lusitania was a luxury ocean liner, and considered to be a “greyhound,” the fastest liner in service. It sailed out of New York harbor carrying a record number of children and infants despite a German warning that the seas around Britain were a war zone. (My wife wondered why there were so many families travelling to Britain in a time of war.)  Captain William Turner was said to have placed faith in “…the gentlemanly strictures of warfare that had for a century kept civilian ships safe from attack.” Germany and Walther Schwieger, the captain of the Unterseeboot-20 was determined to change the rules of the game. The book presents meticulous details of the hunted and the hunter to the point of their historical connection. Detailed descriptions are given of numerous Lusitania passengers, and I found it eerie wondering whether the people being described in very human terms survived or died. I actually found myself hoping that some of the many accidents of history that brought U-20 within torpedo range of the Lusitania would somehow magically change and cause the torpedo to not be fired or miss. I knew I was hopelessly wrong thinking such thoughts, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself from wanting history to change. Larsen in a note to readers preceding the book must have had some of the same thoughts. He wrote that in his research, “What I learned both charmed and horrified me…”

Most, or at least many, of the passengers on the Lusitania had read notices placed by the German Embassy in Washington on the shipping pages of New York newspapers that “…vessels flying the flag of Great Britain, or any of her allies, are liable to destruction and that passengers sailing on such ships ‘do so at their own risk’.” Captain Turner had told passengers that he had received warning of fresh submarine activity off the Irish coast, but “…assured the audience there was no need for alarm.” The Cunard Company that owned the ship issued an official response to the German warning. “The truth is that the Lusitania is the safest boat on the sea. She is too fast for any submarine. No German war vessel can get her or near her.” One Greek carpet merchant apparently wasn’t reassured. He put on a life jacket and spent the night in a lifeboat. Another passenger took comfort from the revolver he always carried. Continue reading →

Dollars to Donuts

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The Phrase Finder comes to the rescue once again. The expression means something is a certainty. It is “…a pseudo betting term…a pleasant-sounding alliterative phrase which indicated short odds—dollars are valuable but donuts aren’t. The phrase parallels the earlier English expression ‘a pound to a penny’.” The phrase originated in the mid-19th century, with the earliest printed example found in an 1876 edition of The Daily Nevada State Journal.