Re: Goodbye and Thanks for All The Code
Re: Goodbye and Thanks for All The Code
- Subject: Re: Goodbye and Thanks for All The Code
- From: Michael David Crawford <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2015 02:35:44 -0700
I wrote:
> while the legal
> rights of the mentally ill are well-established in legislation as well
> as court precedent, those rights are not only not enforced, they are
> largely unknown.
One way I determine whether psychiatric hospital staff are aware of
the rights on mental inpatients is by fighting tooth-and-nail when I
am requested to wear a hospital gown. While I don't like them it's
not that I won't wear them however my objective is to educate the
hospital staff.
In California specifically this is provided for under the
Lanterman-Petris-Short Act.
In the emergency room at Stanford Medical Center:
"I have the right to wear my own clothes. I want my suit back."
"Sir you are on an involuntary hold. If you don't calm down, we have
the right to sedate you."
"That's _completely_ cool but when you do I want to be wearing my damn suit."
In reality my concern is not for myself but for those who are too far
gone to even know that they have rights. I once had a close friend
who was completely cool that a "toxic rain" was falling from the sky.
She wore a rain hat indoors and would cover her head with a newspaper
while outside.
"Look up at the sky."
Hesitantly, she does.
"Do you see that it's blue? That there are no clouds? Do you feel
the warm sun?"
"Oh yes! It's very nice."
But when she looks down, she experiences the continued chemical weapon attack.
While some mental illnesses are chronic, I have the good fortune that
my Bipolar-Type Schizoaffective Disorder - somewhat like being
manic-depressive and schizophrenic at the same time - is episodic, in
that the symptoms come and go.
I used to worry quite a lot about my professional reputation but
decided to go completely public with my illness as a result of the
Heaven's Gate UFO Cult mass suicide in San Diego during the Spring of
1997. My reason was that I wanted to warn the public that reality is
not as concrete as it may seem. I discuss this in "The Reality
Construction Kit":
http://www.warplife.com/mdc/books/schizoaffective-disorder/reality.html
My interest in cult phenomena commenced during the rise of Communism
in Cambodia in the early seventies when I read at first that Cambodian
children were taught to report their parents to the authorities,
shortly after which I learned that everyone in the entire country who
wore eyeglasses disappeared virtually overnight.
Computers are cool and all that, I really _do_ enjoy writing code but
some things are really more important than how many mice one's app
scores in a trade rag product review.
Michael David Crawford, Consulting Software Engineer
email@hidden
http://www.warplife.com/mdc/
Available for Software Development in the Portland, Oregon Metropolitan
Area.
On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 8:23 PM, Michael David Crawford
<email@hidden> wrote:
> I've been out of work for most of the last five years. Many
> well-meaning yet sadly misinformed people give me what doubtlessly
> would be good advice for others, for example that I should go on
> disability, get into subsidized housing or to stop linking my essays
> about my mental illness from every page on my website, but those
> well-meaning people do not understand my values.
>
> For reasons having largely to do with the way I was raised, it is far,
> far more important to me to solve the problems of others than it is to
> solve my own problems.
>
> I sent this just now to an administrator at the Northwestern School of
> Law at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. I have many
> reasons to study law but primary among them are that while the legal
> rights of the mentally ill are well-established in legislation as well
> as court precedent, those rights are not only not enforced, they are
> largely unknown.
>
> That led for example, to my being very nearly beaten to death by two
> Oregon Health & Sciences University campus police officers. When I
> regained consciousness three days later, while I could correctly
> visualize the spelling of my name when I thought out it, I could not
> spell it correctly when I tried to write it by hand with a pencil.
>
> I asked the American Civil Liberties Union to represent me in a Civil
> Rights complaint against OHSU but recieved a form letter that pointed
> out that they focus only on Constitutional concerns. That doesn't
> make a whole lot of sense but that is what the ACLU actually said.
>
> To Wit:
>
> Ms. Sullivan,
>
> After a great deal of consideration, I have decided to change careers
> from Software Engineering to Public Interest as well as Civil Rights
> Law.
>
> However I'm not real sure how to get started. I am of very modest
> means; were I to go back to Physics grad school, I know my way would
> be paid by my advisor's research grant. I don't have a clue how I can
> pay for law school but given my lifelong dedication towards the
> service of others I expect some way can be found to pay my expenses.
>
> I wish to request an appointment for an Informational Interview,
> either with yourself or some other Law School staff that you
> recommend. My schedule is wide open. My number is (503) 688-8345 or
> my email is email@hidden.
>
> Among the reasons I want to read the law that I was taught from a very
> early age that the reason America exists was so that we would not live
> in the kind of country that in my actual experience, America has
> become.
>
> A great-great (not sure how many greats) uncle of mine, Roger Sherman,
> signed the Declaration of Independence - on the back of the $2.00 bill
> Uncle Roger is fourth from the right of the five founding fathers
> standing before the signing table, the tall guy with the tall
> forehead. I'm also related to the two Union Army General-in-Chiefs
> during the American Civil War, George B. McClellan and William
> Tecumseh Sherman.
>
> As a physicist and a computer programmer I know many ways to employ
> technical measures to protect our privacy and our rights however my
> experiences with those who don't take interest in technology is that
> engineering falls far short of the mark. My mother for example knows
> to shred her paper documents but there's no way I could ever convince
> her to use The Onion Router to protect her privacy.
> (http://torproject.org/)
>
> Mom attended Lewis and Clark her first year in college but transferred
> to the U of Idaho after she met my father.
>
> I attended Solano Community College and UC Davis for just a few
> classes after passing the California High School Proficiency
> Examination. I majored in Astronomy at the California Institute of
> Technology, then transferred to UC Santa Cruz where I obtained my BA
> in 1993. I enrolled in graduate school with a focus on Elementary
> Particle Physics, but dropped out as I was not prepared financially.
>
> While I would love to go back into Physics I don't see it as solving
> the kinds of problems I see.
>
> My experience is that while I do not get the best grades I am very
> well-known for asking the most-insightful questions.
>
> There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that my difficulty finding
> work in my present profession is due to my being so notoriously
> outspoken; a while back I wrote an online book called "Solving the
> Software Problem: a Taxonomy of Error". While I wrote it
> pseudonymously as "Jonathan Swift", on my "Contact" page I wrote:
>
> =================
>
> I suppose this is a good place to clue you all in to the fact that my
> real name is Michael David Crawford.
>
> I use Jonathan Swift as a pseudonym not because he wrote the
> well-known book Gulliver's Travels but because he wrote the more
> historically important pamphlet A Modest Proposal.
>
> A Modest Proposal suggested that the problem of Irish poverty could be
> solved by slaughtering Irish infants that their meat may be served on
> the dinner tables of wealthy Britons. For his contribution to the
> social discourse of the day, Swift got a price put on his head by the
> British Crown.
>
> Perhaps if I work very, very hard to perfect my craft as a writer, I
> too might get a price put on my own head.
>
> One Can Only Hope.
>
> ==================
>
> Ever Faithful,
>
> Mike Crawford
> Michael David Crawford, Consulting Software Engineer
> email@hidden
> http://www.warplife.com/mdc/
>
> Available for Software Development in the Portland, Oregon Metropolitan
> Area.
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