(no subject)
Jan. 18th, 2011 12:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwydion* 28 Thousand people were denied mental health care in Arizona last year because they cut the behavioral health budget in half. Seriously, folks, we need universal health care, not cuts to the health care people have.
* Back when they were hunting Jack the Ripper in London, one of the measures they took to try to stop him was rounding up all the men who violently attacked women in public with knives. They hadn't been doing that previously, and it turns up there were a lot of them. As generally, men going after random with knives in public places were mentally ill, a lot of them ended up confined in sanitariums. This is one of the many reasons it's hard to solve the murders, that there were so many dangerous mentally ill men running around the east end attacking women.
The Victorian Era is when a lot of public health measures started gaining popularity. We take sewage systems for granted, but London's new sewers slowed the spread of epidemic cholera and other water borne disease, and slowly, other cities started separating their drinking water from their sewage. People started building separate contagious disease hospitals. The San Fransisco plague epidemic lead to San Fransisco taking an interest in vermin eradication and vermin resistant housing which lead to city planning and zoning spreading to other cities that wanted to cut down on their epidemic disease. A variety of societal forces combined to create a mental health movement. Yes, it led to huge abuses, but up until institutionalization, people thought it was a good idea to keep folks who were a danger to themselves and others confined for everyone's safety including that person. I am for better monitoring of facilities and better support for out patients. I am against letting people too ill to help themselves slide into homelessness, when they could be helped. I do think appropriate meds and monitoring for schizophrenics is a good idea. I do think that help for bipolar folks is crucial as I've seen what that can do and meds make all the difference. I think everyone knows how devastating depression can be.
Yet every year we seem to roll further back towards the Ripper's London, we let the infrastructure that keeps us all safe crumble and we consistently defund behavioral health services even though we know full well that mental illness can hit anyone and that providing proper services keeps people safe and productive. I don't want to live in a vermin and epidemic riddled Victorian Era city where life is cheap and short and violent. I would much rather live somewhere with clean water, modern infrastructure, and where a real effort is made to keep people from falling through the cracks. Where people not rich enough to have servants still count as people and can live with some dignity and a reasonable level of safety.
* Could Sara Palin please stop appropriating MLK to justify her agenda? I'm pretty sure he wouldn't approve of just about anything she advocates. It's extra crass give her "Don't Retreat, RELOAD" tweat about her cross hairs map and what with him having been assassinated, and this being MLK day and all.
* "Interior of Moon imaged using 40-year-old data:" http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/01/interior-of-moon-imaged-using-40-year-old-data.ars
* As someone who once made the deadly pepper cream soup, I can only snerk: http://curbed.com/archives/2011/01/17/recipe-for-disaster.php
* Re: Ricky Gervais/Golden globes; I hardly ever even watch the Oscars. I didn't see it, but I'm not surprised. This is a man who did a huge long thing in his special mocking fat people. They knew who they were hiring.
* Clearly the folks at the Syfy channel thought, "Hey, there's this really cool show on the BBC called Being human, but the characters are waaaaay too likable and the style of the show is indie and unusual. Clearly what's needed is to make the characters five or six times more whiny and unpleasant, then stir in extra melodrama, mediocre acting, and random homophobia. After all, you can't make a show about two male roomates without underscoring their heterosexuality by having them make anti-gay remarks. Oh, and the original wasn't bland enough. Let's make it more bland! Also, the original had excellent pacing. Let's slow the thing down so it feels like pulling teeth!" *shudder* I know, I know, I was expecting it to suck. I shouldn't have watched. I was curious as to how bad it would be and that time slot's all garbage anyway.
* Musical Interlude:
* Back when they were hunting Jack the Ripper in London, one of the measures they took to try to stop him was rounding up all the men who violently attacked women in public with knives. They hadn't been doing that previously, and it turns up there were a lot of them. As generally, men going after random with knives in public places were mentally ill, a lot of them ended up confined in sanitariums. This is one of the many reasons it's hard to solve the murders, that there were so many dangerous mentally ill men running around the east end attacking women.
The Victorian Era is when a lot of public health measures started gaining popularity. We take sewage systems for granted, but London's new sewers slowed the spread of epidemic cholera and other water borne disease, and slowly, other cities started separating their drinking water from their sewage. People started building separate contagious disease hospitals. The San Fransisco plague epidemic lead to San Fransisco taking an interest in vermin eradication and vermin resistant housing which lead to city planning and zoning spreading to other cities that wanted to cut down on their epidemic disease. A variety of societal forces combined to create a mental health movement. Yes, it led to huge abuses, but up until institutionalization, people thought it was a good idea to keep folks who were a danger to themselves and others confined for everyone's safety including that person. I am for better monitoring of facilities and better support for out patients. I am against letting people too ill to help themselves slide into homelessness, when they could be helped. I do think appropriate meds and monitoring for schizophrenics is a good idea. I do think that help for bipolar folks is crucial as I've seen what that can do and meds make all the difference. I think everyone knows how devastating depression can be.
Yet every year we seem to roll further back towards the Ripper's London, we let the infrastructure that keeps us all safe crumble and we consistently defund behavioral health services even though we know full well that mental illness can hit anyone and that providing proper services keeps people safe and productive. I don't want to live in a vermin and epidemic riddled Victorian Era city where life is cheap and short and violent. I would much rather live somewhere with clean water, modern infrastructure, and where a real effort is made to keep people from falling through the cracks. Where people not rich enough to have servants still count as people and can live with some dignity and a reasonable level of safety.
* Could Sara Palin please stop appropriating MLK to justify her agenda? I'm pretty sure he wouldn't approve of just about anything she advocates. It's extra crass give her "Don't Retreat, RELOAD" tweat about her cross hairs map and what with him having been assassinated, and this being MLK day and all.
* "Interior of Moon imaged using 40-year-old data:" http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/01/interior-of-moon-imaged-using-40-year-old-data.ars
* As someone who once made the deadly pepper cream soup, I can only snerk: http://curbed.com/archives/2011/01/17/recipe-for-disaster.php
* Re: Ricky Gervais/Golden globes; I hardly ever even watch the Oscars. I didn't see it, but I'm not surprised. This is a man who did a huge long thing in his special mocking fat people. They knew who they were hiring.
* Clearly the folks at the Syfy channel thought, "Hey, there's this really cool show on the BBC called Being human, but the characters are waaaaay too likable and the style of the show is indie and unusual. Clearly what's needed is to make the characters five or six times more whiny and unpleasant, then stir in extra melodrama, mediocre acting, and random homophobia. After all, you can't make a show about two male roomates without underscoring their heterosexuality by having them make anti-gay remarks. Oh, and the original wasn't bland enough. Let's make it more bland! Also, the original had excellent pacing. Let's slow the thing down so it feels like pulling teeth!" *shudder* I know, I know, I was expecting it to suck. I shouldn't have watched. I was curious as to how bad it would be and that time slot's all garbage anyway.
* Musical Interlude:
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(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-18 03:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-19 03:10 am (UTC)