cab67
cab67's Journaldiagnosis via video - why I'm taking it seriously in this particular case.
We've all seen commentaries, written or video, by psychologists, psychiatrists, and other medical professionals explaining that Old Colostomy's obvious decline is caused either by Alzheimer's disease or frontotemporal dementia. All sort of evidence is lined up - his frequent confabulation, his declining sense of decorum (which was never substantial to begin with), bruising on his hands, his posture, and so on.
It's often said that psychiatric diagnoses based on anything other than direct evaluation of the subject in person are guesswork and shouldn't carry much weight. And for the most part, I agree entirely with that.
In fact, there's an ongoing real-life example of how uninformed diagnoses can cause harm - the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). This is a system run by HHS to monitor adverse reactions from vaccines. Or at least, that's the intent. In reality, it's worthless. Reactions can be reported by anyone. This means a lot of them are from parents convinced that a vaccine gave their child autism. But beyond the reports by people without medical training, and the reports that are obviously fake (e.g. there are several reports of penises growing out of people's foreheads following vaccination), the person reporting the reaction need not be someone working with or related to the person with the alleged reaction. It could be a "concerned" neighbor who thinks the kid down the block was harmed by a vaccine. Did this person ever really interact with the child? No, but they saw a change in the child's behavior, and that must have been because of a vaccine.
Some have compared the practice to what happened during the Terri Schiavo case, in which videos of a young woman in a vegetative state were used by politicians and commentators (nearly all on the political right) to argue that she might not be in a deep vegetative state after all, that she might improve, and that her feeding tube shouldn't be removed. The videos had been edited to make it look as though the young woman was interacting with people and objects in ways someone in a permanent vegetative state would not be able to do. It was a disgusting display of partisan misuse of media to promote an agenda.
So I don't have much use for psychiatric diagnoses based on video evidence.
But in the case of the current president, I'm more inclined to take them seriously. Why?
Two reasons - first, it's not just a handful of medical experts speaking up. A lot of them are. And we're not necessarily talking about internists and OB-GYN's - these are people specifically trained in psychiatry or clinical psychology with extensive experience on the subject of dementia.
But the second, which I regard as more important, is the sheer volume of the evidence. With Terri Schiavo, we had a modest amount of video, and it had been cleverly edited. With the Orange One, we have years' worth of video, much of it shot live and not edited, going back to when he first became a public figure in the 1980's. It's not just that we're seeing a plainly obvious decline; we're seeing very specific changes in his behavior, and these symptoms show up repeatedly.
I'm not a psychologist myself. My wife is, and I might have absorbed some knowledge of the subject osmotically from her, and I saw what my mom and uncle went through with my grandfather, but neither of these renders me qualified to make any kind of diagnosis. But when so many experts are converging on one or a few diagnoses based on impartial evidence anyone can see, my willingness to accept the claims grows.
None of the claims made in the media are conclusive. They can't be - these people have never examined the president in person, nor have they given any of the tests used to generate a diagnosis. (They might have been done and not released to the public; if so, that would be a Watergate- or Iran-Contra-level scandal.) But they're not on par with someone down the street thinking I must have been compromised by a vaccine because was once seen tripping on my front lawn.
My thoughts, anyway.
The president need not be a trained herpetologist.
I do, however, ask that the president not just make shit up as he goes.
Yesterday, he told a story about a doctor who'd been bitten by a viper in Peru.
Among his claims - "28,000 people die of snakebite every year in Peru." The actual number is closer to 10.
He also mentioned mambas - black and brown. There's no such snake as a "brown" mamba; there are black and green mambas. And unless something went wrong at a zoo, no one in Peru has been killed by a mamba - mambas are native to Africa and do not occur in South America. They're also not vipers, either - they're elapids related to cobras and coral snakes.
The doctor in question was evidently bitten by a fer-de-lance a while back. Fer-de-lances actually are true vipers, though I don't know if the bite happened in Peru.
Important point? Probably not. But it shows how he just makes things up as he goes, and that's not good for any head of state.
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Useless personal anecdote added on edit: Last year, I encountered a close relative of mambas near Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia - a coastal taipan.
Coastal taipans are among the most venomous snakes in the world. But in fact, the snake was a tiny juvenile (maybe 18 inches long; they reach 8 feet), and although taipan venom is nasty, their fangs aren't very large - meaning it probably wouldn't have gotten through my jeans had it bitten me, much less my boots. And the snake knew I was there long before I saw it and was already clearing out.
But I'd forgotten of a lesson learned long ago - that it's ok to relate such stories to one's spouse, provided one doesn't provide all of the details. I told my wife that the taipan I saw wasn't a threat. But I stupidly added, "Besides - this was a coastal taipan. The coastal taipan isn't the most venomous snake in the world. That would be the inland taipan."
The first time I learned that was when I told my (now ex) spouse about the Mozambique cobra I encountered in a coffee plantation in Tanzania. Saying I saw the snake was fine. Adding that I was out of spitting range went too far. I thought that would have been good information, but reminding her that cobras can spit was more alarming than it should have been.
What's happening in Norman is an outrage.
First, some disclosure - I have connections to the University of Oklahoma. My maternal grandparents were both OU alums, and I still have relatives living in the OKC and Norman areas. My mother, in spite of having gone to the University of Kansas, was a lifelong Sooner fan. It caused a conflict when I went to the University of Texas for graduate school.
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Some of you have no doubt followed this story. An OU student was asked to critique an article in her psychology class that discussed the interplay between transgender youth and peer pressure. She and her classmates were given very specific instructions to follow when writing their critique.
She followed none of them. Instead, her response was a straight-up sermon on why her interpretation of the Bible sets fixed genders we're required to follow.
She got a 0 on the paper. And the instructor went way above and beyond by providing a lengthy explanation for why the paper earned no points. The instructor made it clear that the student's opinions, in and of themselves, were irrelevant. The problem was the student's disregard for the instructions she was provided. This instructor also asked another instructor to evaluate the paper, and the second instructor concurred.
Did the student sit down with the instructor to discuss the result? Nope. She screamed from the highest heights about being persecuted. She even wrote to the governor of Oklahoma. State legislators have spoken up, and most of them have come across as seriously uninformed about the issue. Worse, OU appears to be backing down, even putting the instructor on leave.
Here's the thing - the student wasn't dinged because of her opinions. She was dinged because she didn't follow the instructions. Don't believe me? Both the article assigned to the class and the student's paper can be viewed online, as can the instructor's response to the student explaining the score. Any objective reader can see that the student simply didn't follow instructions - none of which, by the way, required a student to agree with anything in the article.
I've been approached by students who've expressed discomfort at some of the subjects I teach, either for political or religious reasons. Here's what I tell them - I can't require any student to actually believe or agree with anything I say. I can only require that they understand it. Hence, if I ask a question about evolution or climate change and the student simply puts down "I don't believe in this stuff, it's an atheistic or communist lie," I'd mark it wrong. But if the student says "I don't believe in this stuff, it's an atheistic or communist lie, but the answer you're looking for is the following...." and then proceeds to provide the correct answer, that's full credit. I hold students accountable for how well they grasp what I'm teaching, not for their personal beliefs about it.
I understand the pressure universities are under - especially in red states. I teach at a public university in a red state. Still, I would have hoped that in this case, the president of OU, Joseph Harroz, could have been a voice of clarity and honesty. He could have defended the professionalism of the instructor, who went way beyond what most instructors would have done to cover her bases and make the reasons for the zero-credit assessment fully clear and transparent. He could have explained that OU is a public university open to students of all faiths, and that free expression of that faith is the right of every student, but that students are still expected to be, you know, students. That means following instructions on assignments if they want to succeed. It doesn't mean holding back on their views - had I been the instructor, I'd have been totally cool if this student had added a paragraph explaining why they firmly believe sexes to be strictly binary and fixed - but it does mean facing views that differ from yours and addressing them not as abominations to be dismissed without reason, but as concepts that should be handled with deliberation and thought.
And it goes without saying that OU should reinstate this instructor and provide a huge apology to her.
Those who are claiming a student who didn't follow instructions is being persecuted only for her beliefs are doing her no favors whatsoever.
They were evidently in the neighborhood this morning.
ICE knobs, that is.
I wasn't there, so everything I know is through my wife (who also didn't witness it), but supposedly, these masked cowards were grabbing adults waiting to pick kids up from school. I'll try to confirm.
No child should live in fear that their parent might disappear before they get out of school. I really hope this isn't what happened.
I'm exquisitely proud of my daughter.
There's a school near our neighborhood (Evanston) with a large Latinx community.
Earlier today, I was told that a call had been put out by the school for candy. Evidently, most of the students in those neighborhoods stayed in last night, so they want to make goodie bags for the kids when they come back to school on Monday.
My wife mentioned it to our 9-year-old. She didn't even get to the call-for-donations part; she merely stated that students in that area stayed in to be safe. But our daughter immediately ran to the bowl we used yesterday, which was still full of candy, and said, "can we get this to them?"
I will admit, I was hoping for more of the "fun size" 3 Musketeers, but our daughter informed me that we have to give to those who have nothing. And I can't argue with that.
(As an aside - why are these the "fun size?" Are larger chocolate bars not fun?)
Another thing our neighborhood does is hold a "pumpkin smash" the day after Halloween. So the jack-o-lanterns of last night will be composted, and the kids are entertained in the process. That's where my daughter is now.
ICE is all over the neighborhood right now. UPDATED
Some of the schools are in lockdown, or so I'm told.
My daughter is already terrified of ICE. Now, the ICE f**kers are expanding their raids on Halloween.
The neighborhood association here is actively discussing alternatives to standard trick-or-treating.
F**king inexcusable.
Update - I just ran into a neighbor who was walking back from a nearby school. She was wearing a whistle around her neck, and she was one of the parents who volunteered to assist with dismissal at the school. It's an elementary school, but ICE dirtbags were seen nearby.
I suppose it's heartening to see the community come together to resist what's going on.
Know why I may never forgive the current president?
Our daughter, who we adopted, is of Mexican ancestry. She's in 4th grade, and we're in an area with lots of ICE activity.
We've tried to shelter her from the worst of the news, but she's fully aware of what ICE is, what ICE is doing, and the fact that people who look kind of like her are frequent targets. ICE agents have been seen in parks near her school.
This morning, my phone went off. Amber Alert - missing child. My daughter was next to me when it arrived.
She looked at me with real panic. "Was it ICE?!" she asked. She then ran off crying, worried that ICE might come for her. She wasn't play-panicking, either - she was genuinely terrified.
My daughter shouldn't have to afraid to be herself in the neighborhood. She's afraid unknown adults will come and grab her. No child should experience that.
I did some research on Nobel Peace Prize nominations
There was obviously a lot of talk about Captain Combover being recommended for a Nobel Peace Prize, but I wasn't sure whether such recommendations would even be accepted, much less considered, by the Nobel Peace Prize committee.
Other Nobels (physics, chemistry, medicine, etc.) are awarded by committees in Sweden, and they have very strict criteria for who can and cannot submit a nomination. I learned this when a quack named Hammesfahr started showing up on right-wing news outlets claiming he could cure Terri Shiavo, a women in a persistent vegetative state who'd become the focus of a political storm over whether life support should be terminated.
The case was a serious tragedy (and Charles Pierce's Idiot America has a great chapter discussing the whole thing), but the Hammesfahr thing was mildly amusing because, supposedly, his congressional representative had nominated him for a "Nobel Peace Prize in Medicine." That this would be like winning an Olympic figure skating gold medal in the 100 meter backstroke never crossed the mind of anyone interviewing him, but it was soon revealed that nominations from US congressional reps don't fulfill the criteria - meaning Himmelfarb's "nomination" was meaningless.
Anyway - I wasn't sure about Nobel Peace Prizes, which are awarded in Norway rather than Sweden. And I was surprised at what I learned.
Turns out Old Colostomy's nomination might have been considered acceptable - and by "acceptable," I mean "submitted by someone who fulfills the criteria," not "it's acceptable that the orange windbag was being considered for this award."
You can find the criteria here: https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/peace/
Nominations can be accepted by people who fulfill one of seven criteria. The first of these is "members of national assemblies and national governments (cabinet members/ministers) of sovereign states as well as current heads of state."
That means any of the organisms in the House or Senate who've merged with Trump's body the way a male anglerfish merges with a female of the same species could have sent in a letter nominating him, and it would have been seen as fulfilling the criteria.
The fifth criterion is "university professors, professors emeriti and associate professors of history, social sciences, law, philosophy, theology, and religion; university rectors and university directors (or their equivalents); directors of peace research institutes and foreign policy institutes." It doesn't specify Norwegian academics. It doesn't even specify academics at accredited institutions. So a right-wing religion professor at some place like Hillsdale could have submitted a nomination, and that would be considered to fulfill the criteria.
Again - I'm not trying to add legitimacy to any such nominations. Trump deserves a Nobel Peace Prize the way he deserves a Bessie Award for his dancing. The concept is absurd. But it turns out such nominations might, indeed, have met the rules at a bare minimum.
Lists of nominees who didn't get the award during a given year are kept secret for 50 years, so if the shaved orangutan was nominated this year, we won't know until 2075.
Serious objection to the chyron on CNN right now.
It reads "US strikes a second narco boat from Venezuela."
If the first boat we struck from Venezuela was a narco boat, that might be meaningful. But it wasn't. So it isn't.
About that "voter ID" executive order....
The president obviously cannot require states - where elections are managed - to require a photo ID.
But I don't think that's the point. I'm sure those around him are fully aware of this.
I think the goal might be to delegitimize future elections if he doesn't like the results.
If the Republicans get their clocks cleaned in November of 2026, Captain Combover can claim the results from certain states should be ignored because his photo ID executive order wasn't followed.
He'd be just as wrong then as he is now, but I suspect that's the underlying rationale.
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