and “they might lose their scholarship”.

This is a legitimate concern. If we truly want kids to be able to learn from failure, then we need to provide an environment where they can fail. Financial ruin is not a natural consequence of failing a test.

In Bill James’s HIstorical Baseball Abstract, he put together sets of quotes from each era (going back to 1900 or so) saying that “the ballplayers of today” are not up to the standards of the previous generation. I suspect a similar principle holds for kids’ being coddled. The kids of today are always being unacceptably coddled.

In fact, .223 is not legal in most states to hunt deer with because of the lack of killing power. Its typically used for small game and varmints.

Let’s not parrot the anti-gun crowd’s ignorance with regard to firearms and phrases they don’t understand.

Life’s hard. It’s really hard when you are stupid. – John Wayne.

I just spent two weeks reminding people agitating for gun control, censorship of media violence, etc, that these types of events account for only a tiny fraction of the violence in the United States and also nothing new. Using them as commentary about popular trends or as motivations for policy is a bad idea.

And near as I can tell, no one ever remembers him acting nuts – save for a weird voicemail greeting – until after his arrest. Then & only then does he start acting and looking like he’s the real Joker. Spitting at guards. Asking how the movie ended. Appearing spacey and ‘not there’ in court. All of which can be easily faked, even by a non-genius.

I submit – with no more evidence than any other internet schmo proclaiming the guy was schizo – I submit the crazy act he’s showing us now is his Plan B. “If I get caught, better to do the time in a mental institution, where odds are I’m *much* smarter than the docs who’ll be ‘treating’ me, than in a max-security hellhole prison. A prison where I’d be a target 24/7. If nothing else, I’d get lots of drugs: might be fun, & they’d sure help the time pass.”

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=500644379961905&set=a.422029994490011.117542.114974668528880&type=1&ref=nf

I bet you’re a big Jim Bohannon fan.

Whenever some cop does something vicious (or even just something stupid), the comment gallery here can’t psychoanalyze him fast enough. Everyone knows with total certainty that he must be a power-crazed, racist steroid abuser with a 3 inch dick and a 2.20 GPA. Go try to introduce a little nuance into one of those threads, and see where that gets you.

But let a brand new guest blogger venture a bit of (perfectly cautious and perfectly polite) speculation about a current event, and HOLY FUCKING SHIT!, the intellectual quality control goon squad just appears out of nowhere, ready to smash down anything that falls short of peer review in a medical journal.

And speaking of new things…when did you all discover this profound respect for and deference to the mental health industry? These are the same people who, for better than 40 years now, have done far more than their patriotic part in keeping the drug war alive.

Whenever a behavior is deemed undesirable, they stand ready to classify it as a disease. Whenever an illegal drug is an danger of becoming socially accepted, they can be counted on to deliver new “research” proving that it is still, and always will be, the devil’s favorite poison. Whenever they’re not doing either of those things, they’re out pumping people full of legal but unproven drugs, in response to totally un-falsifiable diagnoses, on the way to an endless series of unsatisfactory patient outcomes.

By all means, let’s hear what THEY have to say about James Holmes. They can’t keep letting us down, if we don’t keep letting them try!

I mean, it’s not like Lenore Skenazy ever did anything positive for anyone’s mental health, by helping them develop the capacity for independent thought and action. It’s not like that at all.

However, the notion that “everyone is a winner” is something promoted in swimming, but with a different angle than giving everyone a meaningless medal or trophy. You “win” if you improve your times (often no trophy/medal). You “win” if you come in higher than your seed position (often no trophy/medal). You “win” if achieve a time standard goal that you set for yourself (often no trophy/medal). In other words, you “win” if you work hard at getting better and actually do get better and there isn’t always a trophy there if you do achieve your goal.

I’m sure when kids get into other sports in a serious manner it is similar.

And given the history of professional psychiatry which cooks up and discards “disorders” by popular consensus and then freely (for a huge fee) sticks those labels on people (especially children) almost at random (do any two psychiatric diagnoses ever agree?), I don’t think the word “professional” necessarily carries a huge degree of scientific credibility in this particular field.