Sociopsychopathicosis

John Seabrook, in the 10 November New Yorker, writes about a Dr. Kent Kiehl using MRIs to study psychopaths' brains in prisons, in "Suffering Souls." Some of the more interesting bits of information, from a perspective outside the realm of psychology, comes in the history sections of the articles. For instance, in the 1920s and 30s, psychopathic beahavior was thought to occur more due to external rather than internal forces, and

“sociopath,” coined in 1930 by the psychologist G. E. Partridge, became the preferred term. In 1958, the American Psychiatric Association used the term “sociopathic personality” to describe the disorder in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. In the 1968 edition, the condition was renamed “general antisocial personality disorder.

Psychopath means "suffering soul", and altho sociopath refers to the same thing, it would appear to not have so much a real etymology so much as a fabricated history. That is, "sociopath" would have no sensible meaning looking at its Greek origins.

Post-Election Pre-Election Stories

The 17 November issue of Newsweek contains a seven part series about the Obama and McCain campaigns leading up to the election. It was written by a team of reporters who were able to follow from within the campaigns from the beginning, "on the condition that none of their findings appear until after Election Day." Currently five of the chapters are available for reading online.

Some excerpts from part one, "How He Did It," covering the beginning of Obama's run and his early challenges with the Clinton campaign:

At Coretta Scott King's funeral in early 2006, Ethel Kennedy, the widow of Robert Kennedy, leaned over to him and whispered, "The torch is being passed to you." "A chill went up my spine," Obama told an aide. The funeral, he said, was "pretty intimidating."

A taped recording, of Obama discussing with strategists the stupidity of debate questions: "Well, the truth is, Brian, we can't solve global warming because I [fucking] changed light bulbs in my house. It's because of something collective." This certainly calls to mind John Kerry's use of the word in his Rolling Stone interview, four years ago, tho without the same calculating slant. Kerry knew it would be published immediately, Obama did not know when after the election, if at all, it would come to light.

And what political report would not be complete without President Bill Clinton doing something utterly ridiculous and hilarious:

An aide approached McAuliffe and said the president wanted to see him. McAuliffe was escorted to the Clintons' suite by a Secret Service agent. He found Bill Clinton watching a bowl game on TV. The ex-president seemed perfectly relaxed and jovial. "Sir," said McAuliffe, "have you heard the news?" "What news?" Clinton asked. "We're going to get killed," said McAuliffe.

"What!" exclaimed Clinton, who then called out in a loud voice, "Hillary!"

Newsweek chooses to end the fifth page of the article here, to comedic effect. As a commercial break, it works perfectly, altho the story continues on the next page. One would assume that this applies to the online edition more so than the print, but it is funny nonetheless.

Taxes

On Monday, a guest column appeared in the Opinion section of The Oregonian, titled "What the numbers tell us" and written by Ray Link, a CPA and chief financial officer of FEI Company. He begins by stating that "Unlike Joe [Biden], I have no real issue with high-income people paying more taxes, although I can't say I ever felt it was my patriotic duty." His contention is that higher taxes are not a duty for wealthy Americans, but they make financial sense for those individuals when the broader economic picture is looked at. He writes:

The key then seems to be a combination of modest tax rates coupled with modest deficits, and it's hard to have a modest deficit with really low tax rates.

As one of those "fat cat" Republicans in the maximum marginal tax rate, I'd gladly pay another 4.6 percent in tax on income above $300,000 if it resulted in higher returns on my investments and helped lower the deficit that otherwise is eroding my purchasing power.

In Link's opinion, he and other high income earners stand to gain more than they lose when their taxes are raised, particularly by such a small percentage.

Link finishes his opinion with an apology, to that other Joe, Joe the Plumber, saying, "So sorry, Joe, I'll pay more. Not because it's my patriotic duty. It's just good business."

Language and Social Interaction

Two recent articles, one in the most recent Wired, "I'll Be There 4 U" (apparently renamed to "Scott Brown on Facebook Friendonomics" in the online edition) by Scott Brown, the second appearing in the 20 October New Yorker, "Thumbspeak" by Louis Menand, deal with social networks and language, respectively. Brown's complaint is that with the advent of social networking, namely Facebook, it is increasingly harder to let old friends go by the wayside. He writes:

Third, and most grave, we've lost our right to lose touch. "A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of Nature," Emerson wrote, not bothering to add, "and like most things natural, friendship is biodegradable." We scrawl "Friends Forever" in yearbooks, but we quietly realize, with relief, that some bonds are meant to be shed, like snakeskin or a Showtime subscription. It's nature's way of allowing you to change, adapt, evolve, or devolve as you wish—and freeing you from the exhaustion of multifront friend maintenance. Fine, you can "Remove Friend," but what kind of asshole actually does that? Deletion is scary—and, we're told, unnecessary in the Petabyte Age. That's what made good old-fashioned losing touch so wonderful—friendships, like long-forgotten photos and mixtapes, would distort and slowly whistle into oblivion, quite naturally, nothing personal. It was sweet and sad and, though you'd rarely admit it, necessary.

He ends with the statement, "I've never lost a Friend, you see, and I'm starting to worry I never will."

Menand's thesis regards text messaging, specifically, and the evolution of language more broadly. He makes a point late in the article, that "People don't like to have to perform the amount of self-presentation that is required in a personal encounter. They don't want to deal with the facial expressions, the body language, the obligation to be witty or interesting." This idea hits at the heart of Brown's problem with not losing friends. When interactions between real friends come down to 160 bytes of text, distinguising them from Facebook Friends becomes increasingly difficult. One cannot then delete a friend from Facebook, lest he or she delete a friend in real life.

On Verbiage, Verbage

James Wood wrote a short piece in this week's New Yorker, entitled "Verbage" (subtitled: "The Republican war on words."). It ends with a quote from Governor Palin:

Well, it was an unfair attack on the verbage that Senator McCain chose to use, because the fundamentals, as he was having to explain afterwords, he means our workforce, he means the ingenuity of the American people. And of course that is strong, and that is the foundation of our economy. So that was an unfair attack there, again, based on verbage that John McCain used.

The conclusion Wood comes to is that "the coinage of 'verbage'" is the best example of "the Republican disdain for words [...], so close to garbage, so far from language."

Wood is alluding to the origin of "verbage" as a misspelling or mispronunciation of "verbiage." (See: verbage, verbiage.) However, it is also interesting to note that Palin calling McCain's words verbage is not without irony, unwittingly comparing his quote to garbage.