Skeptics put the freeze on NASA ‘hot air’ about Greenland ice | Fox News

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/07/26/skeptics-put-freeze-on-nasa-hot-air-about-greenland-ice/

Daniel J. Smith
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Assistant Professor of Economics
Manuel H. Johnson Center for Political Economy
Email: djsmith@troy.edu
Website: http://www.danieljosephsmith.com

Is the Lesson of the Aurora Shooting That We Need Better (Or More Compulsory) Mental Health Services in the U.S.?

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Is the Lesson of the Aurora Shooting That We Need Better (Or More Compulsory) Mental Health Services in the U.S.?

Maybe the problem isn’t
Hollywood, a
lack of Christian ethics,
guns,
Occupy Wall Street, nerds, or
the Tea Party. Maybe the problem is crazy people sometimes
shoot other people. And maybe what is most surprising is how little
people have been pushing the familiar narrative that a better,
perhaps more coercive mental health system could have prevented
tragedies like the July 20 shooting that killed 12 people who just
wanted to see The Dark Knight Rises. But here comes that
narrative, and maybe when the blame the Tea Party! I mean Occupy
Wall Street! screams have died down, more people will go back to
worrying that the mentally ill are all one moment from massacring
us all, especially if they’re obsessed with Batman.

Though mental illness is certainly less scientifically solid
than some experts would like you to believe (check out Jacob Sullum
on some of the problems with the holy psychiatric bible,
the Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV) it
also exists in some fashion. In spite of the terror over Sarah
Palin and angry rhetoric post-Tuscon shooting, it turns out Jared
Loughner was just pretty God damn loony. Norway’s monstrous Anders
Brevik, on the other hand, had a long-winded manifesto detailing
why had to blow up and then shoot 70-odd countrymen. Still, you
could argue that he was loony as well. Aren’t people who slaughter
other people crazy? What else do you call hunting down children in
order to keep your country free from immigrants? The debate about
James Holmes, the suspect behind the Aurora, Colorado massacre is
now beginning,; is he
crazy or a cold, calculating terrorist? What’s the difference?
Can he be both, much like Columbine killer Eric Harris turns out to
have been a probable psychopath who also had ambitions to

Daniel J. SmithSent via mobile phone
Assistant Professor of Economics
Manuel H. Johnson Center for Political Economy
Email: djsmith
Website: http://www.danieljosephsmith.com

Empirics and Psychology: Eight of the World’s Top Young Economists Discuss Where Their Field Is Goin g | Power Games | Big Think

http://bigthink.com/power-games/empirics-and-psychology-eight-of-the-worlds-top-young-economists-discuss-where-their-field-is-going?page=all

Daniel J. Smith
Sent via mobile phone
Assistant Professor of Economics
Manuel H. Johnson Center for Political Economy
Email: djsmith@troy.edu
Website: http://www.danieljosephsmith.com