Hens and foxes

Pieter, being the polite guy he is, passes up a perfect opportunity to make nasty remarks about the psychiatric profession in his otherwise excellent piece on the Dutch treatment of the criminally insane. I on the other hand, being a genuine asshole, have no such reservations. Pieter writes:

Society at large considers those convicted with a TBS-sentence (psychiatric treatment after being convicted of a usually very violent crime, ZE) as criminals, whereas the professionals that run these outfits view their clients primarily as patients, sure to be cured at some point in time.

Funny, no quotation marks around 'clients'. Convicted felons are clients nowadays? Anyway, I digress.

< metaphor mode>
There's an expression about a fox guarding a hen house. Now I'm not a native speaker, but it's my understanding that this is generally considered to be a bad idea. Thus, it seems to me that having hens guarding a kennel full of foxes would be even worse. I mean, if hens are so good at assessing the mental health of foxes, why are the latter still higher up in the food chain? In other words, don't trust a psychiatrist treating convicted killers unless he's killed someone himself - er, no, I wouldn't go that far.
< /metaphor mode>

Most psychiatrists and psychologists are total pussies. I know. I used to try to become one, but Exaqetal, Dutch God of Illegal Drugs, spoke to me and I was saved from almost certain eternal damnation.

What I guess I'm trying to say is this. You don't become a psychologist unless you're trying to save the world (i.e. the people therein), which in time often leads to the belief that every single person in it is not beyond redemption. Sadly, this usually isn't the case, but psychologists, being the delusional optimists they are, tend to be unable to be convinced otherwise - or quit psychology when they are persuaded.

(So my dating advice for today is: date psychology coeds. They'll understand you, even if you're a total and utter wanker. Well, they'll fake it. But since when hasn't that been good enough for most blokes?)

23:09

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Sad

I like birds. No, not just chicken parmigiana or the kind that flocks to pubs on Saturday nights, but the feathery ones. So I was kinda disheartened this morning when I read about the death of the one black vulture we have, or rather: had, in the Netherlands. It got hit by a train. Yet another reason to hate public transport.

(BTW, it sort of reminded me of this incident.)

9:39

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On surveys

I empathize with Jeff Jarvis, who probably gets bombarded with interview and survey participation requests a lot more than I do. Nevertheless, I get my fair share and lately I've been declining a few. As Jeff does, I already say 'no' to organizations which do research on behalf of a company. They can hire me for an hourly fee, if they like. Unless, of course, I have personal ties with said organization.

Yesterday, for the first time ever, I threw away an email by a student who was doing her MA paper. I make it a matter of personal pride to always help out students, but this was different. She wanted me to answer survey questions, but couldn't even be bothered to draft more than a very brief standard message. Not only did it address readers as 'Dear journalist' (there's only 10,000 of us in the Netherlands), she didn't even bother to explain what the survey was about exactly, how respondents were selected (i.e. how she got my email address), or whether interviewees would be sent a copy of her paper. There was, however, a very long url to a badly designed website on which I was supposed to fill out lots of questions.

I don't mean to discourage any student from contacting me, but it seems to me that someone who's trying to get a degree in communications might have realized that this is not a very good way to communicate.

9:15

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And so it begins (4)

Russia and China are having joint military exercises. And there's more to come, according to the CS Monitor.

8:56

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