Posted by DC on August 11, 1999, at 8:29:06
In reply to mad scientists & stuff, posted by Elizabeth on July 25, 1999, at 22:47:40
It seems to me like you must spend an awful lot of time on here. Maybe you'd feel better if you got outside more. But dang, you are a smart gal. You'll probably be a great psychiatrist and make loads of money. You're smart, on the right track. So what's the problem? Just a biological feeling totally unrelated to life circumstances? I feel like that sometimes. But there is something to be said for studying philosophy, religion, delving into the creative arts. Science is great but I wouldn't want to waste all my time investigating drugs when I could be writing the great american novel or traveling on peace missions or protesting the superficiality of american culture. I mean you got to admit that--our society is whacked. We're inundated with nonsense that is bound to make a sensitive person go nuts. The ones who adapt so well are most likely missing parts of their brains. American culture is anti-intellectual, pro-superficial. If you're really really happy in this land, then I'd say you're probably a boob.
> > Aren't you the mad scientist? Just the kind of person I like to keep in touch with. No one is smarter than a crazy scientist.
>
> Sometimes! The trouble with mad scientists (I don't place Nancy in this category - sorry Nancy, you're just not nuts about) is that they have very creative ideas, but most often it's hard to separate the truly brilliant parts from the parts that are just nuts! There was a guy who was notorious at MIT for this - "the bald guy," this guy (bald of course) who carried around two shopping bags full of loose papers and smelled like he never showered. He would sit in on all the trendy math and physics classes (I came across him in differential geometry and GR) and ask totally off-the-wall questions that seemed pretty irrelevant and possibly just nonsensical, except that they could very well have been brilliant and we just didn't know any better. (Judging from what my professors had to say, though, most of his questions were just plain loopy.)
>
> Rumor was that he had been a physics professor at BU until he had an accident (car?) that resulted in some sort of brain damage.
>
> >Science doesn't interest me, but god, getting better does.
>
> That's a shame, that science doesn't interest you. For me, it's a lifestyle. I don't share Nancy's confidence that there will be a cure for manic-depressive illness in the next few years (and I'm pretty sure that gene therapy won't be the answer, though it might be used to prevent the disorder in children with the relevant genes), but I certainly do think that science and technology are the keys to treating and preventing illness of all kinds, despite the current popularity of new-age therapies of various sorts.
poster:DC
thread:7962
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/19990726/msgs/9896.html