A Thought on Mental Illness
Freedom to be insane is an illusory freedom, a cruel hoax perpetrated on those who cannot think clearly by those who will not think clearly.
-E. Fuller Torrey
Freedom to be insane is an illusory freedom, a cruel hoax perpetrated on those who cannot think clearly by those who will not think clearly.
-E. Fuller Torrey
I thought I would share this paragraph with you: “They tramped through a land as exotic as North Africa, a land of village witches and exorcists, where the sick swallowed powdered amber or drank the dust of St. Peter’s bones. Big-wheeled carts clattered on iron rims over the cobblestones; the scenes painted on their sides…
In 1996, a man wrote to Carl Sagan asking him the distance to heaven. Sagan was a very public agnostic. He replied brilliantly: “Thanks for your letter. Nothing like the Christian notion of heaven has been found out to about 10 billion light years. (One light year is almost six trillion miles.) With best wishes…”…
Hiking in Switzerland several years ago, I came across a trail that seemed to dead-end at a farmer’s gate. I looked around for a way to avoid the property, but there was none. Instead, the trail continued through the middle of the farm. I walked through the gate, side-stepping some livestock in the way (and…
In another great New Yorker article, Lauren Collins writes about controversy over taxing wealthy people in France, a controversy that has already caused Gerard Depardieu to move to Belgium and/or Russia. At one point in the article, she interviews experts to get their views on whether such taxes are effective in raising revenue. One expert…
The food stamp program helps over 40 million Americans pay for groceries. Unlike other forms of economic assistance, this program, called SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), only pays for food, thereby constraining how recipients make use of the aid. But are food stamps constrained enough? SNAP recipients experience higher rates of obesity and diabetes…
Now that the New Year has arrived, it is of course the time for New Year’s resolutions. It’s also the time for columnists to write essays about New Year’s resolutions. One such essay came to my attention recently, because a financial columnist at U.S. News & World Report managed to weave in some research I conducted…