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
Albert Rees was a University of Chicago trained economist who wrote some of the most influential works in the field of labor economics. Despite his Chicago training – Chicago being the epicenter of the idea that humans are guided largely by rational choice – he was well aware of something crucial missing from economic theory:…
I came across an interesting quote in the New Yorker recently, reflecting on the US banking system. It reads: The power and the growth of power of our financial oligarchs comes from wielding the savings and credit capital of others. The fetters which bind the people are forged from the people’s own gold. Pretty timely thoughts,…
In the New Yorker this July, Jon Lee Anderson wrote a fascinating article about Timbuktu, where Al Qaeda is working to become a legitimate political power. A scary story. But a beautifully written one. Take this paragraph when he introduces readers to the city in question: Timbuktu is a small, unlovely city in shades of…
The Cornell Alumni Magazine had a wonderful article recently, on its famous former professor, Carl Sagan. Here is my favorite Sagan quote from that article: Look again at that dot. . . . On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their…
Can beliefs make you fat? The answer to this question might seem pretty obvious. If I believe that the best way to lose weight is to super-size five meals a day at McDonald’s, while consuming bags of Doritos to tide me over between meals, that belief is probably going to make me fat. If I…
Recently my employer, Duke University, announced it would be charging $10 more per month to offer health insurance to smokers (see story here). Duke’s policy has a couple motivations. Smokers get sick you see, and those smoking related illnesses cost Duke money. So it’s only fair to pass some of those expenses… (Read the rest and view…