Blog Archive

Tuesday, March 30, 2021

George Floyd

The case of George Floyd has recently started. Part of me wonders if somehow the police will wiggle out of this one. No doubt there is more complexity to any case than just a video but it makes me wonder why does the balance of the evidence almost always seem to confirm the status quo. Maybe it's simply because society has built into it things that bend the arc of injustice toward the status quo.

Indeed, when you think about who makes the laws and sets the mores of a society, isn't it usually the people in power? 

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Sunday, March 21, 2021

ADHD (Continued)

I'm continuing to read the excellent book on ADHD by Dr. Russell Barkley. I like the way the book has moved from the primarily theoretical to mostly practical. I am diligently reading it and taking notes. When I took an inventory to see if I had ADHD--about three years ago--I was in "extreme" range. It felt good to confirm what I had suspected.

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Sunday, March 14, 2021

Taking Charge of Adult ADHD

I'm reading a very good book on adult ADHD--Taking Charge of Adult ADHD, by Russell A. Barkley, PhD. I had started to read it years back and I found it maybe too theoretical and not practical enough. Yet, it was because I didn't really read it with the right intent.

The right intent would have been to take my time reading it and try to get as much good information out of it as I could. I didn't do that.

The main thing I like about the book is that the author is extremely well-read on ADHD and stresses the scientific rather than the purely anecdotal.

Good to see a book like that, especially these days.

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Sunday, March 7, 2021

Darkness Visible

I was reading some from the great book, Darkness Visible, by William Styron. It's the best writing I've ever seen on clinical depression. Here is some of it:

Depression is a disorder of mood, so mysteriously painful and elusive in the way it becomes known to the self--to the mediating intellect--as to verge close to being beyond description. It thus remains nearly incomprehensible to those who have not experienced it in its extreme mode, although the gloom, "the blues" which people go through occasionally and associate with the general hassle of everyday existence are of such prevalence that they do give many individuals a hint of the illness in its catastrophic form. (p. 7)

Every time I read some of it, it always seems fresh.

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