Delegates of Florida and Michigan

The blog 2008 Democratic Convention Watch has great graphs for 5 of the most likely scenarios for seating the Florida and Michigan delegates. 

In the fifth scenario, Clinton and Obama get pledged delegates based directly on the popular votes of those primaries, which means that Obama would get none from Michigan. In this scenario, according to DCW, the total delegate count needed to win would be 2209, and Obama would need to get 57 of 86 delegates in order to have a majority of pledged delegates. Obama's lead would shrink to 70 (from 184), and Clinton would have a much better shot at getting the nomination.

It's highly unlikely that the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee will choose something like the fifth scenario. 

If the rules change at this point, causing Clinton to win the nomination, it's almost certain that the party will fracture. In fact, it's possible that a large portion of the Democratic Party would split off to coalesce around Obama. 

For a historical perspective, consider T. Roosevelt's Bull Moose Party. During the 1912 primary season, then President Taft won 48 delegates, and TR won 278 delegates. 258 seats remained contested until the convention.  

President Taft and his supporters controlled the RNC, which awarded Taft 235 of the contested delegates at the convention. TR took his delegates and left. The 1912 Bull Moose platform: "To destroy this invisible Government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day." Sound familiar?

Of course, TR lost to Wilson, but he came in second, the last third-party candidate to do so. 

For bonus points: Who seconded TR's nomination at the Bull Moose Party Convention? Jane Addams.

Continued madness

As J-P mentioned in comments to the "Mad" post, mad pride doesn't help those who have been deinstitutionalized. According to the Treatment Advocacy Center, of the 744,000 people who are homeless (according to 2005 statistics), one-third have untreated psychiatric illnesses.

TAO reports that the DOJ's 2005 data reveal that of the 2.2 million prisoners in local, state, and federal jails and prisons, approximately 10% have severe psychiatric illnesses. TAO says, "There are now more severely mentally ill individuals in the Los Angeles County Jail, Chicago's Cook County Jail, or New York's Riker's Island Jail than there are in any single psychiatric hospital in the nation." Many of these inmates committed crimes at least in part because of their mental impairments (e.g., disordered thinking, hallucination, delusions). 

We don't adequately support people with severe mental illness, many of whom refuse to admit or don't know they are sick. The process of deinstitutionalization began in the 1950s and continues, even though the number of people who need treatment is increasing.

I'm not saying that inpatient treatment is the way to go. Having been a patient in a private facility, I can only imagine what the state-run facilities are like. Even at Bridgeway, staff focused on keeping patients "calm" (or more accurately, sedated) and the facility's making money, not treating patients. That's another story for another time, though. 

What may work is assisted outpatient treatment, in which people with mental illness receive mandatory treatment but continue to live in the community. AOT laws typically provide support for finding housing and coping with tasks of daily living. Although I'm uncomfortable with the paternalistic air of AOT, it may be that we as a nation bear the responsibility for helping people with serious mental illnesses who cannot help themselves, just as we must help those who cannot afford to feed their families.

The civil rights questions surrounding AOT go right to the heart of how the government should view individuals who cannot for whatever reason abide by its laws. To what extent can individuals be required to take psychotropic medication? Should the focus be on protecting the public or rehabilitating/treating the individual? Who gets to make decisions about an adult's wellbeing, and how are those decisions made? I'm still thinking about the answers to these questions and more. Stay tuned.

Year 7

Yesterday was the culmination of a week-long celebration of our wedding anniversary. We've been married 7 years now, and marrying Sam was the best move I have ever made so far.

Mad

Yesterday, the New York Times published a somewhat fluffy article on the mad pride movement. (The link directs you to the MindFreedom website so that you can avoid having to log in to the nyt website.)

I'm not sure what to think about the idea of mad pride. Fighting the stigma associated with mental diseases is great, but convincing people that psychotropic drugs are unnecessary? Not so much. Next month's Bonkersfest (London) sounds like a lot of fun in theory, but then again, it's just not accurate to portray people with serious mental illness as zany, madcap, or eccentric but brilliant. And serious mental illness is not some kind of "mad gift," as the Icarus Project claims. (Serious mental illness as a category comprises schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.)

Mad Pride rides the line between civil rights movements (e.g., feminisms, GLBT rights) and patients rights movements. On the one hand, serious mental illness cannot be cured, only managed, and so I can see why some people would turn it into an identity. On the other hand, I have serious misgivings about putting schizophrenia and bipolar disorder in the same identity categories as race, gender, and sexual identity. And to talk about Cancer Pride is nonsensical. 

Also, my memories of being deeply depressed are still vivid, and I still don't feel quite like myself. (I might never, now that my mood is controlled.) I would catch myself smiling and feel guilty about that little bit of brightness. Now, that's fucked up. 

I don't think I could ever celebrate a disease that includes such utter despair. 

To J-P's appendix

As a former part of my friend, you could argue for more sympathy. I suppose being useless and cooped up can make an organ angry. "I wanted to be somebody!" I can hear you exclaim.

But you meddled in the anniversary plans and made J-P hurt and Melissa worried. You attacked the man who nurtured you, and that is unacceptable. 

No longer will you lurk, making dark viscera plans. You're gone. You're off the team.

Mr. Anderson's appendix, you went too far, and you got what you deserved: exile. 

To J-P and Melissa: Happy anniversary. You didn't get to NOLA, but you got through this emergency together. I wish you many more years of happiness, mutual support through times of trouble and illness, and the unremarkable but amazing connection that we all see, all the time.

Virgil's Aeneid

This is the first of two planned Aeneid posts. (The second will be devoted to Dido, the tragic queen abandoned by Aeneas.)  I've always been fascinated by Tartarus, the deepest pit of hell in Greco-Roman mythology. Virgil, Plato, and Dante, among others, wrote chilling descriptions of the terrors, and many people remember figures like Tantalus and Sysyphus.

Here's Dante's description of sinners submerged in Phlegethon, the fiery river of blood that circles Tartarus (verse translated by Mark Musa; line breaks removed for the sake of more space): 

So with this trusted escort [Nessus] we moved on along the boiling crimson river's bank, where piercing shrieks rose from boiling souls. . . . Then I saw other souls stuck in the river who had their heads and chests above the blood, and I knew the names of many who were there.

Older sources describe Tisiphone, the guardian of Tartarus. From Virgil (prose translation from W.F. Jackson Knight): "An iron tower also rose high into the air; and there sat Tisiphone, with bloody robe girt up, the never-sleeping guardian of the entrance-court by night and day." There's more, but it scares me.

I think I've found a great costume for Halloween.

Mea culpa

I was thinking this morning about the Indiana results, then about odd ideas people have about tattoos--kanji? on your back? I just don't understand--and then, because I was reading the internet, about the stupid writing mistakes people make.

Note that this entire progression of thought has to do with other people's errors. Fault-finding is not an attractive quality, and having firm ideas about style and mechanics tends to be unrewarding. I wish for a massive bullhorn to help me exclaim, "The acceptable plural forms of 'octopus' are 'octopuses' and 'octopodes.' And stop saying 'is faced by.' You can usually just say 'faces.'" The shouting would never end. Instead, I have some mental editing stamps: "purple prose," "bad comma use," "passive voice," "arrgh!" 

My critical eye turns inward, as well. I'm constantly trying to refine my style. So far, I've discovered, and struggle to change, tendencies toward overusing modifiers and relying on weak verbs. The previous paragraph contains examples of both.

So, what can I do? I can see Phlegethon from here.

The final Dear Student until the fall (I hope)

Dear D Student:

I have looked at the course evaluations, and I'm pretty sure which one you wrote. I've been reading your crappy writing all semester, so I should know. Evidently, my office hours were hard to get to, and the class was slow and "desorganiaed." (Did you mean "disorganized"? I may have mentioned this: Misspelling decreases one's credibility.) 

Please note: The difference between my evaluation of your work and your response to my class is that your response doesn't really matter. It doesn't affect me scholastically. I don't have a GPA to keep up.

Unfortunately for you, dear Student, you do. 

Incidentally, your classmates did not agree with your assessment. Four other students also took the time to write comments, and they were all positive. One said simply, "Love McColl!" Now, I can't tell if that's an incomplete sentence or a command, but either way, it works for me. 

Grades Are Done

Dear students: I've calculated your grades based on how much I like you. Not really. I based them on how much I dislike you. 

Confidential to the student who got a D: I let you write another draft of Paper 2, and I gave you a lot of feedback about it. It was still awful. You wasted my time, and if I ever see you on campus, I'm going to give you a really dirty look. But the D you earned. 

----

Today, I drafted some material on "The Mystery of the Leaping Fish" (1916). I actually do think it's funny. Detective Coke Ennyday shows the crook a photograph and asks, "Is this you?" (It obviously is, right down to the glue-on mustache.)  The man replies, "Yep, that's me!" and escapes on an inflatable fish. I won't even mention the opium part. That and the "Jap"/Chinese conflation won't fit into the diss, but it would make a good article. Hurrah, Scientific Detective Ennyday!

I'm the smartest person you know. Ha!

I'm grading today. Wish me luck. (One early paper begins, "A birthday is the annual anniversary of the day on which a person was born." No lie.)

It counts as work, even though I don't have an object to show for it. As I've mentioned in more specific terms in an earlier post, I often get the impression that many of my acquaintances don't respect what I do, and my being at Vanderbilt likely doesn't help. 

I think for a living. Everybody thinks--why should certain people get paid for it? That answer is simple. I read complex books, they inspire complex thoughts, and I communicate those thoughts to students and colleagues clearly and economically. It's difficult, it's necessary, and not everyone can do it.

Apparently, believing the last two sentences means I fit one of America's most pejorative categories: the elitist intellectual. 

Now, let's see if I can say this without whining. Far more people heap scorn on elitist intellectual types than vice versa. This is true in public and private discourse. I could cite dozens of examples. (Someone once told me that being my friend made her feel stupid, so she couldn't be my friend anymore. And we were both adults at the time.) Of course, academics are sometimes snottish assholes. You can find assholes who think they're better than others in every profession. 

The category of elitist intellectual reminds me of namecalling on the playground. I hope that at some point, public and private discourse will move on to more pressing issues than whether someone is a stuck-up dork.