Burning fields our fathers sowed

[wombat_socho]

I'd gotten out of the habit of checking Wikipedia of late, so I missed the day this was the featured article. ISTR doing a post on Third Culture Kids sometime in the past few years, but I can't find it at the moment. Suffice it to say that it makes for interesting reading and may have some applicability to children born into fandom as well.

I switched over to Sprint from Cingular yesterday, acquiring a new Sanyo Katana to replace the old Nokia. I like the Katana for a lot of reasons, but the design and interface are very high on the list. Unfortunately I had to re-enter all the phone numbers manually, but since I only keep a dozen or so of the most important numbers on the phone to begin with it's not that big a deal.

Bernard Harcourt is guest-posting over at the Volokh Conspiracy. He has a couple of interesting posts up on the replacement of mental health facilities by prisons, and the implications for the crime rate. This is something that's getting more attention in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings, with calls for re-examining the commitment rate and ineffectual hand-wringing both getting exposure. I think that mental health is one of the areas where America went badly off the tracks in the 1970s, and we've been dealing with the peripheral effects ever since while studiously refusing to tackle the base issue: there are tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of people who are demonstrably insane and unable to function independently in society. Those people need to be in some kind of institution where they can receive some kind of care and structure so that they can (at the very least) get off the streets and into some kind of decent housing and possibly get some help so they can stay on their meds and possibly, God willing, become somewhat functional again. Unfortunately, right now in a lot of states it's damn near impossible to get someone committed unless you can convince a judge that they're a threat to themselves or others, and good luck with that. (Instapundit)

The reissue CD of Still Standing, the 1986 album from Jason & the Scorchers, showed up yesterday in my PO box. Longer post on that later, but wow, that brought back a lot of memories. I probably have the cassette around somewhere, but :effort:, you know?

Convergence programming meeting tonight. It'll probably be a short one, since both thaadd and I need to be elsewhere after 2100 tonight, but we should be able to get at least a rough list of who's going to be on what shifts and some more updates to The List.

Comments

[edwarddain.livejournal.com]

Don't even get me started on the state of the mental health care system - it's a abortion.

And I really don't use that word lightly.

[wombat-socho.livejournal.com]

*nods* I think there's a consensus that it's in pretty horrible shape after the radical cutbacks of the 70s and 80s. The consensus falls apart quickly when people start talking about how to fix the problem.

[edwarddain.livejournal.com]

There is no fix, the whole system is broken. It's like trying to "fix" cancer. You don't fix it, you cut it the F out and hope that the tissue that regrows is healthy.

[wombat-socho.livejournal.com]

You're right, but unfortunately there's a lot of political reasons why that isn't going to happen, any more than Reagan, Bush the Elder or W could just get rid of the Energy & Education departments with the stroke of a pen. It's kind of like piloting a supertanker: the damn things are so huge that their inertia keeps you from making any kind of course change or even stopping one without taking hours to do so...and not only are the bureaucratic systems we're talking about much larger, but they fight back. I'm preaching to the choir here, I'll shut up now.

[mplsvala.livejournal.com]

Interesting article. Thanks for pointing it out. I was especially fascinated by the articles on childhood traumatic grief linked in the footnotes.

[wombat-socho.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. Being a service brat myself, it's a subject near and dear to my heart.