More analysis of text

26/12/12 07:25 [Wednesday]
A week or two ago I started on a program to analyse text from Hansard (which is the printed - or nowadays text online - record of what is said in Parliament). The Hansard text is easily available and will likely be an educated representation of what has been said - that is it will be relatively error-free. Further the speeches reported are made by educated people speaking a fairly modern English. My interest really is in analysing the language to try to learn from exemplars grammatical rules. This follows my efforts a number of months ago with the Bible, another source of English text which is easily available relatively error-free in computer readable form.
My Hansard program has not yet got very far. It has first to identify extraneous elements introduced, such as column headers, the time of day, subject headings and names of speakers. The first task it performs which is genuinely language related is to report whether the Hansard text (block by block) includes any quote-marks. Even this is not entirely straightforward as an apostrophe is printed the same as a single quote-mark. My guess (and I have not gathered much empirical evidence yet) would be that Hansard does not often include instances of embedded direct speech. Identifying quote-marks is an easy way of finding cases of sentences nested within another sentence, but (I believe) sometimes direct quoting occurs in English (and certainly so in other languages) without the use of quote-marks, one example being where thoughts expressed in language are reported. Sometimes italicisation is used as a near equivalent to quote-marks.
The next step is to separate sentences in each block of text. (These are considerations I went through with my Bible text program, and I might end up with general procedures for analysing blocks of English text from any source.) Briefly I will repeat that a sentence ends with a terminator (full-stop, question-mark or exclamation-mark with the use of ellipses not being a clear case) but occasionally - even setting aside embedded quoted passages - question-marks and exclamation-marks occur within the scope of a single sentence, and full-stops can be used to terminate abbreviations within the scope of a sentence (especially 'hon.' for 'honourable' in Hansard).
My ideas then trend to comparing sentences to see if repeated frameworks can be identified, which might lead to notice of grammatically equivalent words or phrases (in the sense that nouns are grammatically equivalent, and other parts of speech, but that the traditional way of parsing sentences considerably simplifies such equivalences).
I commend all this to readers.
26/12/12 10:08
I am pleased to show this debug output:
Word preceding seeming full-stop: 'statement.'
Word preceding seeming full-stop: 'that.'
Word preceding seeming full-stop: 'hon.'
Word preceding seeming full-stop: 'hon.'
Word preceding seeming full-stop: 'all.'
Word preceding seeming full-stop: 'ESA.'
Word preceding seeming full-stop: 'assessment.'
Word preceding seeming full-stop: 'hon.'
Word preceding seeming full-stop: 'moon.'
Word preceding seeming full-stop: 'reform.'
Word preceding seeming full-stop: 'time.'
Word preceding seeming full-stop: 'needs.'
Prog ends OK: 31 lines were read from file

November 2011

I have uploaded my diary for November 2011 to my personal website. In that month I had just been blessed with the reduction in dosage of the Risperdal medication I am on.
http://www.colinbrough.co.uk/November_2011.html

Employment and mental illness

16/12/12 06:15 [Sunday]
Historically Society has 'felt sorry' for people unable to work due to the condition of their body or mind or severely hampered in becoming employed, and provided disabled people with money to live on from a general clubbing-together of others not costing each individual much, and provided them with other help where there is excess capacity (like buses which would run anyway but otherwise empty). In recent years - starting earlier certainly than the present Conservative Government in Britain - what has been more to the fore has been to integrate disabled people into the mainstream which means as part of it not giving them any favours. The idea is that any work they can do they should do, and because there is an inherent unwillingness to employ disabled people, perceived as less likely to be up to the job, this is countered by hopeful legislation to outlaw discrimination.
Mentally ill people when they are mentally ill are not likely to be up to the job because the condition of their mind will cause them to lack motivation or to lack skills of planning and organisation. The theory here is that on medication mentally ill people are no longer mentally ill and the debilitations countering their ability to work are corrected. The truth of the question is that for many, medication only partly rectifies their depression or confusion of mind, and for many there are periods in which they relapse. If someone who is mentally ill relapses every few months or every few years this interferes with their capacity to work and makes them less employable. The employer cannot trust that the employee will be up to the mark at any epoch where there may be a lot of demand and need for him to be up to the mark.
It strikes me then that in cases of mental illness some underlying support behind any employment income which may be achieved is a necessary thing. It isn't only DLA to help pay for aids and assistance to counter the condition of disability, but rather Employment Support to make up for the naturally greater obstacles in the way of getting employed and staying employed.
What I'm saying really is that it isn't stigma that employers are less willing to take on mentally ill employees but the hard-nosed assessment that they are inherently less to be relied on. And assessment of unemployed mentally ill people for support - that is people who have had a diagnosis of mental illness even if they are said now to be recovered - needs to allow for this fact in the way things are.

Twitter diary for November 2012

http://www.colinbrough.co.uk/Twitter2012Nov.html

Twitter diary for October 2012

http://www.colinbrough.co.uk/Twitter2012Oct.html

My politics

25/10/12 13:21 [Thursday]
I have been thinking about politics and economics. I ask myself what the reason is I regard myself as Conservative and whether I still should be Conservative, considering the situation I am in of being unable to support myself in work and therefore relying on State handouts. Some of the people I follow on Twitter are likewise unable to work for reasons of mental illness and those who declare themselves are very much against the present Conservative Government because the policy is to save money by cutting State handouts this leading (especially under the system run by ATOS the assessors for the DWP) to seemingly harsh decisions requiring people to try to work who declare they are unfit for work.
The reason I regard myself as Conservative is that my brain wiring inclines me to prefer the individual over the collective. Some animals - for example tigers - are by nature solitary, while others - for example lions - are in their nature herd animals. As in many aspects, human beings vary a lot among themselves and some are more solitary and others more gregarious. The existence of language creates a semblance in the eyes of some that humans are naturally social animals, but in fact language can be used by an individual on his own and is not just for communication. It’s true that language would not have developed outside of groups of communicating persons and equally it is true that people are initially in the society of their family. Even individuals who are by nature solitary are going to acquire language (almost all of them) on the basis that enough people in the past have been of the society from which language emerged. Mrs Thatcher believed in the family but not in society.
Socialists are in favour of the collective imposing itself. If healthcare or education are provided free by the State (they could be provided free through charity but not in the way the State can guarantee them) then taxes are imposed to pay for them. You cannot escape the fact that freedom of the individual is associated with Capitalism (to use that term as better defined than the term Conservative for the more Capitalist party in British politics) and not with Socialism. I suppose there are people who are freer under Socialism - those subject to State handouts have more money - but overall there is less freedom. I interject here what I have said before that Socialism is in vogue these days because people in general are so well off (from economies of scale with such a large population density) that they can afford without trouble to subsidise people who need or otherwise take State handouts.
I have been thinking of an example policy of the Labour Party in Britain which means something to me, that is the policy of making train fares the same whether you book online or at the booking office. What this policy does is remove the incentive for people to seek out cheap fares and book online: they will tend to leave it to the formally employed booking clerk. As things stand people doing things for themselves online are saving the provider cost and - if they are allowed a reduced charge - profiting themselves. This helps even unemployed people like myself, by allowing us to help ourselves. Of course under the Labour scheme there would be more employment for formally employed booking clerks, but they would work less hard (at finding the ideal fare, in this specific instance) than the individual helping himself.
The generalisation from this is that Socialism is associated with larger and easier employment, but to the marginal disadvantage of those remaining unemployed. The way of compensating those who have to be unemployed even if there is full employment - a lot of the long-term sick and disabled - is to give them larger State handouts. What this means is that even those necessarily unemployed who could do things to benefit themselves outside of work are deprived of the opportunity and rendered inert with more State assistance. I’m not sure that this is specifically true of the British Labour Party but on the whole Socialism would be more associated with putting old people in collective homes and less with allowing them to remain in their own home. This is the basis of why my politics are as they are: I prefer to have an active mind (even without much bodily activity) - this being helped along by the provision of opportunities for benefiting myself through doing things myself (online the way technology is in the present) - rather than to sit inert all day in front of a television in an old people’s home.
Of course in my case - at the age I am now - it would more likely be a lunatic asylum than an old people’s home, and I mention here that a few months back when I was more inclined to favour being shut away in an asylum the reason was that the level of medication I was on was preventing me having an active mind.
Something I have asked myself in thinking about these matters is whether global resources are used faster if there are a lot of people in employment but not working very hard, or faster if there are fewer people in employment but a lot of motivation for those in and out of employment to do things for themselves. The presumption behind this question is that it is better not to consume resources quickly, because then human civilisation will continue over a longer period. It is possible to doubt this presumption on the basis that we are talking about such a long period into the future that it makes no odds: what does it matter whether my cousins many generations down the line have more or fewer children of their own surviving to an old age, or whether the line dies out? For the record my guess is that resources are used faster if there is full employment (which I suppose is obvious anyway because those not in employment however hard they try to do things for themselves are not going to get as much done which consumes resources as those in employment even if those in employment laze about a lot).
I must say the Conservative Party does not say that its policy is to keep unemployment high to provide better motivation and to reduce the rate of depletion of the world’s resources: what is said (or was said when Mrs Thatcher was in power) is that the motivation provided out of less subsidisation (for the unemployed, specifically) will let market forces operate more flexibly which should in time improve the economy and improve the rate of employment. From history one would expect in fact that less State intervention would lead to a more pronounced cycle of a better then worse then better again economy.
To summarise again: the reason I am Conservative is that less State intervention provides motivation (and indeed the possibility at all) of doing things for myself (even if I am not in employment: so long as things are not so difficult that I starve, of course).
Taking up the point in parentheses there: if things are not too easy for me I acquire more information (there are learning opportunities, to put it more conventionally) and a significant part of human progression through life is acquisition and processing of information - more significant to some than others, of course, depending on ‘personality’ and brain wiring. Also, where there is variety there is more beautiful information, so it suits those of us who adhere to certain aesthetics for there not to be too much equalisation. On reflection the people I follow on Twitter who believe in palling up with others and demanding a more equal society can’t genuinely be schizophrenic: either they are mis-diagnosed or their medication is turning them.

The development of teamwork

14/10/12 15:53 [Sunday]
I have been pondering various things the pondering originating from the question why the letters of the alphabet are in the order they are in. I interject here (in my introspective way) that it gives me great pleasure to ponder, pleasure I was deprived of for decades on high dosages of dopamine-blocking drugs.
Where my pondering led me was to the realisation that modern society is a great success (to use that way of describing it) because of the existence of structures in society which allow ends to be achieved through teamwork instead of through the efforts of rare geniuses. Johannes Kepler published the first two laws of planetary motion in Astronomia Nova in 1609 but Isaac Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica in which was expounded the theory of gravitation deriving from more basic principles Kepler's laws was not published till 1687. In other words scientific progress occurred until recent years only through fits and starts as very clever people came into being and found themselves with a position in life to make their contribution. An example nowadays of the teamwork I am referring to is to be found in programming computers. The way computer languages like Visual Basic are structured latterly allows for less clever people to combine together and as a team come up with a program - in quick time too - to do whatever is required, that is whatever will find a market.
This fact of modern life goes hand-in-hand with the wide spread of democratic socialism which without a doubt arises from the high population density. Instead of a top-down originally feudal structure to society in which ways which are right and ways which are wrong are defined by edict according to the will - except in occasional cases of the Caligula type the fair-minded because disinterested will - of those higher-up the ladder: instead of that we now have the policy of letting everyone have their say to contribute to the mob decision. A lot of the explanation why this policy is now preferred comes down to improved communications technology. So instead of record company executives taking quiet decisions which bands to hire and which to exclude we have the X-Factor shows where artistes with some experience they can share (but originally record company executives still, but in public) pass comment only the ultimate decision is by plebiscite. You'd think this would work because the statistical difference between the paying public and the voting public is little, but I have to remark that the basis on which people vote is not identical to how they decide to spend their money.
Another example of mob sharing of ideas and (more easily measured for theorising) language comes in the internet. Instead of writing a book (of essays, say) and submitting it to a publisher who would do an initial short-listing to decide what to put before the public and for items put before the public edit the publication to make it conform to standards of grammar tried and tested over centuries: instead of that people publish themselves in sometimes shorter and sometimes longer formats but without the vetting and conformation to standards which publishing through a house imply. What this results in is the written language which anyone who thinks will agree should (or certainly did in its origination) closely follow rules taught in schools: the written language coming to be used in the democratic manner the spoken language naturally follows. The thing is that the spoken language does not need rules because it derives, without any effort or intention on the part of the learner if it is his mother-tongue, from the way neural networks in mammalian systems (or probably any systems of synapses) are structured. To use the written language merely to mirror the spoken language risks - as I said the other day on 'their' versus 'they're' written without reflection on the etymology and meaning - making a complex mish-mash without it on the surface - to the native speaker - appearing a complex mish-mash.
Well I believe in freedom of speech and democracy because they protect from oppression - that is if there is free WiFi in McDonalds in China or Syria oppressive measures gain world-wide publicity - but on the other hand I cannot approve of using the written language in a way which muddies meanings and makes things much more difficult for non-native speakers. What does it mean then? What it means I think is teaching the written language rigorously in schools (in countries which approve freedom and democracy) so that a great majority of users send texts and issue blog updates which convey accurately what they say and say what they convey and which can be read by an international audience.
More generally what it means is subjecting preadolescents to a top-down almost feudal régime so that they can live in a free world as adults.
---
Because I was an only child and an individualist indeed a loner until recent years what fits better with my nature is the importance of individual freedom not interacting a lot with other people for example before deciding to do things or in doing things. So I have asked myself what the good is of Society at all. An answer I have come up with recently takes as its example refuse disposal. Only through disposing regularly through schemes of collection of household trash can people live in such proximity in cities. What this means is that mankind has done so well in terms of multiplication of numbers because of arrangements made by minds agreeing together in concert. It doesn't in itself explain how it comes about that minds can make agreements together but they have been able to through recent centuries starting from joint-stock companies originating out of bands of merchant navigators sailing the seas developing into governmental and lately intergovernmental acts funded by taxing, borrowing and property-rating.
The evolution from being able to communicate in spoken language to being able to build cities and roads and spacecraft through large-scale organisation and co-operation is the same I was on about earlier speaking of bands of less clever people teaming up to do things previously assigned to small numbers of more clever people. The possibility of it has something to do with the enjoyment people including the cleverer get from the talking-shop (deriving indeed from the evolutionary advantage of sharing experience) and the proportionate increase in numbers of less clever people and their increased influence with the economies of scale accompanying the increasing population. Because life is easier (from economies of scale) there is less pressure on people to perform (eg children in State schools) but things carry on (the population continues to increase) through teamwork (which includes the breakdown of the tradition of lifelong monogamous relationships).
Reflecting further: you can see the advantages from teamwork that is the multidisciplinary approach. One person does not need to have expertise in all the various disciplines and does not need to hold all factors in mind all at once. All I need to be able to explain is why the structures needed for a team to intercommunicate effectively and retain what has been achieved as it is achieved through the lifetime of a project (à la teamwork Visual Basic): why these things necessarily came to be as people lived in closer and closer density. One thinks of things like local filing systems which large numbers of 'colleagues' have access to plus ancillary requirements such as defence against loss through fire and other catastrophe (protection against a fire like that at Alexandria) from having the fire-brigade within local reach. These factors more significant really than increasingly large organisational structures unified by (still now to a degree and certainly widely so until recent decades) a top-down hierarchy depending from boards of directors (but since the commencement of joint-stock companies the directors answerable to a proportional democracy of shareholders and more and more so lately a simple democracy of 'users' of all descriptions). These top-down hierarchies themselves rely on the ability to communicate directives (and report-back upwards) and the ability of companies of electors to come together in other words until recent telecommunications advances (and before that preliminary sorts of transport and communications improvements) on the proximity of personnel.
In summary the reason teamwork and democratic socialism have taken over is fundamentally the reason cities were a success from the outset. People in close congregation enjoy providing mutual help, whether because they do it through paid custom - getting something tangible in return - or because they can afford to get pleasure from identifying with those they help.

Phase 1 may bore but try Phase 2

09/10/12 13:08 [Tuesday]
(Phase 1)
A few months ago I exposed the power switch on an old laptop I possess by cutting a hole in the case using a Stanley knife. My objective was to automate the turning-on of the computer by connecting it up to a mains-powered timer such as you buy to turn table lamps and what-not on and off according to a schedule. I got as far as soldering a wire to the power side of the push-button and making a connection to the earth side getting at that via a USB port (because it was too fiddly, certainly using the soldering-iron I had, to connect to the earth side of the power switch directly). This worked, in that making a link between the two connections simulated closing the power switch so that the computer turned on.
As I say, matters stood like that for a number of months. But yesterday and this morning I have completed the project (but for actually testing the automatic turning-on of the mains-powered timer, which I have set to occur at 5 am). The mains-powered timer has a transformer plug plugged into it this driving a 12V relay whose contacts make the link between the power side of the computer on-off and the earth side. More than this: because the mains-powered timer stays ‘on’ for a quarter of an hour minimum I have rigged a 5V relay to a USB port from the computer this relay breaking the power to the 12V relay once the USB port becomes live. I have tested this set-up by switching on the mains-powered timer using its manual switch, and the laptop starts up correctly.
I now have the pleasure of writing a VB program to fire up when the computer turns on, initially simply recording (in a log file written to the hard disk) the time the computer has switched on and, probably, a note every minute that it is still switched on. My hope is at the next stage to get the program to shut the computer down (although the API call in VB6 to do this doesn’t work I find on modern operating system versions).
(Phase 2)
Something that has been in my mind on and off since I was at university is the nature of error. I have in a sudden inspiration got further this morning with my thoughts on the nature of error than I have previously (which I take to mean the Risperdal at the present dosage is helping me to think clearly).
I tie this idea of what error is in with my ideas on democracy. That is, it is possible for a majority of people to believe something or accept something or do something and it still be in error. This is proved by the existence of mistakes of fact in Wikipedia, or almost proved (because a majority of people might know the facts are wrong but never bother to correct them).
Specifically this morning I have considered mistakes in grammar. The modern trend in language theory is to be descriptive rather than prescriptive, but you still can’t get away from the fact that some usages are in error. If I say, ‘Their coming at 5 o’clock,’ when what I mean is, ‘They’re coming at 5 o’clock,’ it is an error. Supposing there were some similar construction which was used by a majority of English-speakers it would still be erroneous (but what is found in practice I imagine is that people using grammar erroneously are not consistent one with another, so that there is no democratically agreed mistaken construction).
I’m still working on how I can be certain that ‘Their coming at 5 o’clock’ is erroneous but it is something related to the unnecessary complexity of presuming that one meaning of ‘their’ is a possessive pronoun but another is an alternative contraction of ‘they’re’. The difficulty with that is the fact that in English (especially British English) there are unnecessary irregularities, for example doubling a consonant sometimes after an unstressed syllable when the usual rule is to double if the syllable is stressed (‘marvellous’ in British English). I seem to be arriving at the idea that unnecessary complexities are correct and not erroneous if they are democratically elected by majority usage over a period of time, not simply in the current period.
I must say this ties in rather well with my notions of what is ‘good music’. Modern popular music may be democratically chosen over a short present period, but surely I must be right to think music by Beethoven is better: because Beethoven has been democratically chosen on the moving average of votes over a number of centuries (and over a number of jurisdictions).
In mathematics it is possible to say with certainty that some structures are erroneous the reason being they are self-contradictory. It is possible for mistaken proofs to be accepted for a period, but in this case too they get found out by the passage of time (as far as I can assess).
I’m almost coming to the question of hesitancy versus confidence here. ‘I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.’

Twitter

I have turned my twitterings into a diary and uploaded it at colinbrough.co.uk/Twitter2012Sep.html.

Risperdal and interest in life, or motivation

27/09/12 16:42 [Thursday]
I have to say this present dosage of Risperdal I am on is a great success. I am not completely deactivated so that I didn't find anything of interest in life, as I was on the higher dosage last year; nor am I so rushed in what I am doing that I cannot have leisure to think about it in advance, as I was when on no medication at all. Part of the interest I have in life now is introspecting - as I am doing here - that is observing myself doing stuff and commenting on it. If this introspection gets out of hand it adds to the 'processing' load so that I have no resources - I am too rushed - to do anything other than introspecting: but I don't think it gets to quite that stage now I am helped by this medication.
So I will cut the introspecting on introspection and say that what I have in mind to do - what I am planning - is based on another thing I find interesting in my present life which is to say saving money. This interest - which amounts to a need - is founded in the fact that I am surviving at present entirely on benefits. Another aspect of this source of interest derives from my way of thinking in mathematical terms, so that for example one vague intention I have is to graph my spending over recent years on gas and electric: then I can see how the spending has varied over the years and how it varies over the seasons. I have for around eighteen months now - starting at the time I was looking forward to being discharged from hospital in the Spring of 2011 - been taking my meter readings frequently and recording my usage in a form which is of more use to me than kWh, that is in 'meter units'.
However my primary interest is in recording on the internet somewhere I can conveniently access the data using my mobile phone how much I have paid for groceries in supermarkets. This would give me an idea - while actually in the supermarket for new spending, and without needing to carry a big notebook - whether things I might buy are cheap or dear. I have for a number of months been recording the prices I have paid, but as I say without carrying the information with me it is not available (except in my imperfect memory) when I am in the supermarket anew. Also I ask myself if other people - people obsessive in the style I am - might be interested in this information which, therefore, I wish to upload in a publicly available version. Furthermore if possible I'd like to be able to search through the text - my list of items and prices - to see how much I paid for selected items and do this using my mobile phone. (The alternative to that would be to upload also an index to all the items in my list.) At present the solution might be to use Facebook Notes, or alternatively to add easily accessed pages to my own website colinbrough.co.uk.
Other information it would be useful for me to be able to access using my mobile phone consists of train and bus timetables specially tailored to my requirements (in other words not going through the nationalrail.co.uk or similar app which in any case doesn't cover buses).
The last thing in my mind this evening is the fact - which I have discovered some days after the event - that Morrisons charged me £2.29 for Rightguard deodorant when the shelf-edge said something like £1.14 (which I presume was supposed to represent half-price). The Morrisons receipt - unlike Asda and Tesco which I am familiar with - does not have a website address for me to put in my comments. So I shall have to try to find an email address for Morrisons from their website.
27/09/12 17:38
A specific example of this Risperdal doing me good: in planning to go to Asda this evening I have explicitly considered whether it will be open in the evening. I don't feel I need to actually go to the website and check, but because I have reason to believe the Asda I am on about shuts earlier on a Saturday (and it has limited hours on a Sunday) if it were the weekend I would check. It is because my head is not running-on with other truly less significant questions that I am able to realise the question whether Asda will be open and make a clear decision on the need to check.

Oxford Dictionaries

This sort of thing interests me: the mathematics of language. You can take this poll at http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com (I show the response statistics at a recent date).

Cost of treatment

17/09/12 11:51 [Monday]

I have had thoughts consequent on revising my website and as an aside to it altering ‘no charge’ in my description of the cost to me of treatment over the years to ‘mostly free of charge’. What I mean by the alteration is that in the past when I needed tablets to counter the side-effects of the injections which were the primary means of medicating me I (or in truth my father) had to pay prescription charges. The way I regarded it when I was more angry than I am now (when I was not on the present lightweight régime of Risperdal) was as getting money out of me (or out of my family) through threats. That is, if I did not accept the primary medication I was locked up, and if I accepted the primary medication I could not do without the anti-side-effect medication (and suffered a lot even with it).

I must criticise the NHS psychiatrist who played such a large part in spoiling my life over decades: Anthony Dew Armond. My thinking now, with the success in my case of this treatment with Risperdal I am now getting, is that extraordinary lengths should be gone to to gain the patient’s acceptance of the treatment plan. Armond had a completely different view from this and enforced drug treatment on me by keeping me liable to be detained over a period of years (that is on a Section but having long periods of leave at home), ignoring my protestations about side-effects totally. The conclusion I drew from the experience I had with medication was that I must be super-sensitive and unable to tolerate any dosage however low of dopamine-blocking drugs. This has been proved wrong by the success of my present treatment, and it is thanks to the doctor I had at the time of my detention in 2010 and 2011 and for a few years before - Dr Matthew Kurian - who followed the policy of attending to what I said about the initially higher dosage of Risperdal I was on and reducing it, in other words as I say the policy of doing everything reasonably possible to gain the patient’s acceptance.

Dopamine-blocking drugs have powerful effects on the patient’s mind, indeed in his overall life, as do psychotic illnesses these drugs tackle. A doctor who sees the patient every few weeks or every few months will not be able to see for himself the sometimes devastating effect of the medication, and the only thing to do is trust what the patient says certainly once he has recovered from what may be plain delusions. The far-reaching effects of dopamine-blocking - especially since these drugs affect some people in ways which show more obviously than in some other people - are not fully understood and certainly not fully reported, and the only individuals who know the ins and outs of the effects on them are the patients taking the medication (and they may not realise all the effects which are in truth caused by the medication rather than by the illness or anything else).

So my summary is: once the patent is no longer out-of-touch with reality care must be taken not to ride rough-shod over his possibly weak-egoed objections to aspects of his treatment. Every effort should be made to gain his willing acceptance of the treatment prescribed.

Activation

09/09/12 07:48 [Sunday]

Since I was a teenager I have been very introspective, questioning myself on the reasons I do things or make the choices I do. I’m sure this introspection derives from my brain wiring. But anyway through introspection I have come up with theories about what I call activation, which has to do with the level of activity in the brain/mind being like stimulation but more to do with mental processing than anything physical. What I am wanting to mention first is the failings in generally available theories of personality from not taking activation (or simply rate of activity) into account. Theories of personality which form the basis (for example) of questionnaires which match people for ‘dating’ purposes are based on measuring topics people are interested in rather than their level of activity in interacting with the environment, with other people or with themselves within their own mind, and in this they fall down.

When I was not on dopamine-blocking medication my rate of interaction with the environment and with myself was very high (leaving, actually, little resources for interacting with people except briefly and superficially). On the higher dosage of Risperdal I was on last year my rate of activity was very low: I sat about unable to decide to do anything and this I found unpleasant and it manifested (paradoxically) as anxiety. If I was required to interact (with people or with the environment in the form of things which needed doing in my home) I could not come to any firm conclusions what I ought to do, and to a large degree took no action.

My natural condition is to be more tied up in things within my own mind, and to stop the overactivity along these lines which led me into difficulty around 2008-2010 (not so much withdrawing into my own mind but deriving things from my own way of understanding which led me headlong into sending a lot of correspondence and making as it were a lot of noise and in the process into wasting a lot of money; also misunderstanding the basis of my own condition of mind - introspectively observed - this misunderstanding being really what led to my hospitalisation): to stop this overactivity I now accept that some dopamine-blocking through medication is essential. The thing is it is necessary to strike a balance, so that I am not completely deactivated. As I say, I cannot get away from the fact that what is in my own mind is a large factor in my considerations and my behaviour, and a result of this is that I don’t have a lot to say to other people. Still, with the very low dosage of Risperdal I am currently on - and hope to remain on, and no higher a dosage - I can think of things including things which get said to other people (and things which find their way, at a much lower rate than in the years 2008-2010, onto my blog) so really although the effect of the medication is not ideal - cutting down my mental activity without increasing my interaction with other people to normal levels - still I think it is the optimum that can be achieved.

What originated this diary entry was my reflecting that in the years when I was not on medication life was full of interest and variety, but when I was on the higher dosage of medication life was flat and empty. The way the activity went in 2008-2010 had to do with my being disorganised in most things I did. I did a lot because of the basic overactivation I have stressed - sleeping very little at night: which itself made me disorganised in that I fell asleep at unhelpful times in the day - and observed introspectively that things went wrong (for example in my use of computers). I did not however accept responsibility and understand the reason things went wrong was the racing of my mind: instead I blamed some external force which through hypnotism or through mind-altering drugs being got into me interfered. The upshot was that more activity was generated, and more disorganised activity, as I tried to fight back and counter these hypothetical intrusions from outside myself. As I say, life was full of interest and variety as I dashed hither and thither in what genuinely was confusion but which I thought at the time was a reasonably founded game-plan of opposition.

07/08/12 20:05 [Tuesday]

Looking up the word ‘dis’ in the online OED I came upon the following rather amusing quotation from The Independent.
Independent 11 May 2000: Seething at seeing his life’s work in pesticide research being dissed by the organic lobby, he called in the Advertising Standards Authority.

Character recognition

16/05/12 15:25 [Wednesday]

I have been thinking about character recognition and visual field analysis again. The latest I was doing involved trying to settle on a best resolution, given a visual field, as a prerequisite before getting into the business of recognising objects at all. What I thought was that finding a measure of ‘busyness’ and observing how the measure altered as resolution increased might be the way to go. I see now that if instead of busyness I think in terms of information content, then what is certainly required is an optimal trade-off between that measure and the resolution since as resolution increases so processing cost increases. In other words in the animal kingdom would-be pattern recognisers need to gain maximum information (through recognising objects in the environment, ultimately) for the least possible expenditure of time and effort on processing.

What I have further thought is that the measure I developed of ‘clustering’ should be used as the measure of information content. Having toyed with simply counting black fragments (on the basis that many fragments means many objects being observed) it strikes me that whatever the number of fragments if they are better clustered it means they are better defined and thereby more likely to give up useful information through being recognised. Now I can measure clustering for a field of greyscale and this obviates the need to distinguish black from white. If a pixel at x_i has blackness (inverse greyscale 0 .. 255) b_i then the measure of clustering is

∑b_ib_j.exp -d(x_i - x_j) ²

In effect we are counting each unit of blackness as a separate black pixel.

I am wondering whether to use as a function of resolution giving an estimate of processing cost, ∑b_ib_j. The processing the computer does is adding up a lot of exponentials and processing cost is only saved in cases of b_i = 0, but for animal processing systems I feel they must model each unit of blackness separately which leads to very dark fields being puzzling and headachey.

30/07/12 13:17 [Monday]

About two weeks ago I wrote a program based on the ideas above, but found I needed to alter the measure to be maximised to

∑b_ib_j.exp -d(x_i - x_j) ² / (1/n)∑b_ib_j

where n is the number of pixels (width x height of the rectangular field). The reason is the numerator has a number of terms proportional to n rather than n ² because for each pixel i the multiplication is not by the b_j values over the entire field but only those for which exp -d(x_i - x_j) ² is non-negligible and this value is independent of the width or height of the field (as long as width and height are not too small).

Using this measure to find the best resolution for the field over my sample of cases (ie finding the resolution which maximises the measure of information content in ratio to the processing cost, as above) gives results like the following:

It must be admitted these divisions do correspond well with the natural scale of structures within each image. For the picture of the garden each quarter of it can be seen to be basically light (especially the quarter showing the sky) or dark. For the portion of a printed letter the reason the resolution arrived at is so high (corresponding in fact to the scale of the width of lines making up printed characters) is that the black print shows up so clearly against a very white background.

The question is where do I take this next? The next thing is to analyse each subdivision arrived at of the image, using the same technique of distinguishing light from dark at a natural grainsize. Repeated subdivision will end when cells are found which are not suitable candidates for further subdivision because they vary so little in greyscale across their entire size: this stage will be marked by very low values for the ratio measure defined above because really there will be no information content to speak of within each cell.

Basis of my theories

22/07/12 22:24 [Sunday]

About a month ago in the course of sorting stuff out for our eventual removal (when this bungalow shall finally sell) I found a handwritten diary note I made in June 2005. I do come across handwritten diary notes from time to time (they are almost always from years more recent than 2005) and usually scan them to add to my computerised diary to make it complete, but on this occasion I transcribed the note which was dated 17-Jun-05. I think I had it in mind, in making the transcription, that I could put the note into my Blogger blog, and my intention now is to do so. I am able to add remarks in the clearer state of mind I have now achieved, and hope to benefit medical science.

It is plain from the note I made that I felt hurried yet responded to the hurry by slowing down. (This may relate to what I was saying recently about my underactive thyroid, in that perhaps I was unable to rush as my state of mind would have had me do, because of the slowness of my metabolism.) The fact is that I was unable to make plans in my head to cope with the speed which was necessary, on the occasions it was necessary. In other words even if I did need to rest I should have scheduled my resting better instead of simply downing tools as soon as I was the least weary.

The other main comment I would make is that I interpreted what went on in terms of ‘the Authorities’ and my being hypnotised (and Dawn being hypnotised too, I often conjectured) without much reflection. This was because there was too much going on in my mind to permit a leisurely survey of possibilities and probabilities. Even though the ideas I had about being hypnotised did not square with what I myself knew about hypnosis (and most troublesome in my theorising was to tally up the fact - what I had read - that a person cannot be hypnotised unless he consents, and I had no recollection of ever having been asked to consent): even though the notions I had did not fit I came to make an assumption they were correct and that given enough time to work things out they could be made to fit. I suppose I have to add that even if I didn’t have leisure to work things out thoroughly, on the face of it I need not have presumed such a thing as that I was surreptitiously hypnotised, unless there were things I noticed which caused a need for some such hypothesis. The ‘things I noticed’ were exaggerated coincidences (this following from the way dopamine is implicated in pattern recognition and from my having overactive dopamine) so that, for example, when I over-responded to things I heard said being very similar to what was in my mind at the time I had to make the presumption that I had been hypnotised to respond with those thoughts to some preceding cue (set up by people following me about, or present where I was because I had been led there by hypnotic suggestion). I can understand that some people who over-respond to these coincidences interpret the concurrence as resulting from telepathy, but with the scientific training I had at school and with the utterly materialistic world view I have, I know telepathy is a mirage. Hypnotism is not a mirage and I did my best to bring it in as the only possible explanation for the coincidences (despite the fact that it did not tally in all particulars).

Finally I note that I was het up and had headaches and various bodily reactions from over-sensitivity (to heat in the case in question).

17/6/05. 4.50 pm. Transcribed from handwritten note.

We have stopped near Walsall (near Tame Bridge Parkway I believe) having found ourselves too late to hope to get to the Telewest office at Merry Hill Dudley tonight.

Problems started near Castle Donington where we parked for a while in a lay-by known to us and doubtless to the Authorities. As it is now over four hours since we left Worksop (in our motor caravan) it seems clear to me we were delayed by a hypnotic trance at that lay-by.

We left the lay-by hurriedly after Dawn became annoyed at the time I had had there on the computer and I reacted with anger. I felt sleepy and had a bad headache (which persists now).

The main error (apart from being hypnotised at all) was my wrong estimate of the time available when we came off the M42. This was caused by the break in time due to the hypnotic trance.

[X582DAO in margin.]

I intended to leave the M42 at Tamworth but was distracted at that junction (losing awareness I would say through a post-hypnotic effect). I did not intend to leave at the next junction but turned off at the last minute (again doubtless cued through hypnosis).

After leaving the M42 we found ourselves at the point where in May I chucked our former mobile phone away and where we were spectators at the aftermath of a faked accident (near Drayton Manor Park). This is suspicious in itself.

Driving along since leaving the M42 we have seen a number of reversing vehicles and other referential sights. A few minutes ago I would have re-joined the motorway but was deliberately blocked by a car (RK54TZW I believe) in the outside lane.

I have a sore throat, a headache, and irritability of the skin in this heat.

Sheldon Cooper

17/07/12 14:54 [Tuesday]

So one of the features distinguishing human kind from the brute animal is the ability to suspend judgment which is to say steel oneself to bear negative experience - even holding one’s hand in a flame (an example I often come up with) - for the sake of gathering information useful in the longer term. My understanding is that this feature depends on dopamine through the mechanism of bringing into action the frontal brain which can overall direct the brain and specifically can ‘disconnect’ the pathways which ordinarily lead from negative experience on to withdrawal or on to some vigorous action along the lines of fighting back. My view too is that higher levels of dopamine bring into action more the frontal brain and that higher levels of dopamine arise in schizophrenia not as a constant factor but if the necessary stimulation impinges, because of over-responsivity in schizophrenia of dopaminergic neural systems. Thus the schizophrenic - and it is certainly so in the catatonic type - holds himself aloof and puts up with all sorts of experience (including, often, negative experience) without exposing any immediate response, or indeed any response in any sensible timescale.

Mankind is bivalent on this subject. Suspending judgment and also holding oneself aloof in the midst of negative experience are regarded as praiseworthy, but to tell the truth, only up to a certain degree. And in the context of evolution, what good is it to do nothing but gather information for the longer term, when what those which persist should be doing is enjoying life through eating good food and procreating children?

I think the answer to why those who are religious maniacs or similar - including Sheldon Coopers who never eat good food and never procreate children - why they persist is that when they come into being they are cossetted by the powers that be who can see that it is useful for the longrun of the race for these people to gather information - that is to research - on behalf of the body politic. I must say the TV programme Big Bang Theory does a good job through Sheldon Cooper of showing up the relationship between lunacy and genius and reminds us of Isaac Newton, Paul Dirac and many another.

27 January 1977

I give below some extracts from my diary of 27-Jan-77 when I was in my 21st year. More similar can be found at http://www.colinbrough.co.uk.
...
It has rained tolerably heavily today, on and off, and when I went out ... I got wet. I am reminded of what was probably my first Sunday morning walk at Cambridge. On reflection, during my first few weeks here in October 1974 it rained a lot. Anyway, getting wet on this first walk caused me to feel very dismal. Recollections are returning to me. I was worried about unforeseen consequences with which I might not be able to deal. It is the newness of situations which is frightening, or depressing. I did not know, for example, at that stage whether I would be able to manage without overspending my grant. I did not know where any of the shops were in the town.
...
I think though (really I do) - that I, being schizoid, am more sensitive to strange situations than the average person. I have never been alone into a restaurant, or a theatre, or an opera, etc., etc., etc. (to quote The King and I, or at least, the king. I do not like going into strange cinemas. I nearly went to see The Devils sometime last year, but decided against it on seeing the waiting queue. I have noticed of late that I do not like standing about in shops, investigating the wares. People look at me and expect things of me.
...
One true thing one could say about me is that I am sensitive to people’s expectations of me. I am now analysing my schizoidism, you understand. I am coming to believe that my being schizoid (I am not really sure this is the right term; some authors prefer schizothymic) is explicable from the sole hypothesis of sensitivity to criticism.
I am reserved because I do not wish to provoke criticism of my actions. Of course, sometimes I feel people are criticising me (not necessarily explicitly, naturally) (forgive me for editing this [by deletions], but I do not wish to write absolute rubbish) for my lack of activity, especially speech activity, but I would expect you, the reader (whoever you may be), to understand that I prefer to be criticised for doing nothing rather than for doing something wrong. That does not read quite right. Perhaps criticism sounds too much like explicit criticism, where I mean tacit criticism.
The point is, that doing something is more likely, if it provokes criticism at all, to provoke responses unarguably critical, from which I would suffer more; whereas doing nothing provokes at worst hesitant criticism, which I may not even be sure is criticism, from which I suffer (relatively) little.
To write down my self-consciousness in performing certain acts makes me feel a right idiot. But there you are, it feels different when it is not exteriorised.
The answer is to make lots of friends, and do things with them. However, I do not want friends.
...
I imagine the average person, so far from suffering physically from the presence of others, obtains physical pleasure from it. I suppose people like companionship. But I, for example, have a physical aversion to looking into people’s eyes. This sometimes manifests itself even when I am looking at pictures (I have noticed this only recently), at newsreaders (for example) on the television, or into the mirror.
This is a very odd phenomenon. I only realise all these things together on occasions like this, when I am writing them down. I live from day to day for long periods without exactly noting the oddness of my behaviour.
...
I think nonetheless I would not be happy on a desert island, lacking the stimulus even of books and television.
...
I have noticed in the company of [my best friend] that I find it easier to talk when walking [as did Emily Brontë]. I am relieved of having to worry about whether I am looking into my opponent’s face, and what to do with my hands, ampersand cetera.

More Sunday thinking

08/07/12 15:11 [Sunday]

I concluded towards the end of my adolescence that the universe is a sequence of events which take place. If the universe is just a passive sequence with nothing of the teleological in it, then the sort of thing that comes to mind is: there’s nothing we can do about it so why worry? And this as a person who had been subject to a lot of anxiety and worry in my younger years I found a desirable way of looking at things.

But it is not quite the case that ‘there’s nothing we can do about it’ because plainly human action - even individual action - can and does have a pronounced effect of ‘altering’ what happens in the world. I put ‘altering’ in inverted commas because my view is that human action does not cause a real alteration because the human action itself is predetermined according to the molecules knocking about in the synapses in people’s brains. If a person does something - votes in the House of Commons, say - it seems to create a change but it isn’t genuinely change because the ‘decision’ of the MP to vote is itself part of the sequence of events taking place to constitute the universe.

So where does this leave modal verbs? Modal verbs express things which are desired as a possibility and the urgency people feel to get the desired achieved. If a thing ‘should be’ then it isn’t the same as saying it ‘is’. The existence of modal verbs shows up the fact that human users of language naturally think in terms of teleology, of things being intentioned and brought about through wilful effort.

The facts modal verbs express can almost be explained in terms of mathematical probability. The punter feels urgency for his horse to win the race - he is half-way to striving with the horse - and that horse does win, in a certain percentage of trials. Probability is another way the individual who worries can cease to worry: there is some threat (he can tell himself) and in x% of cases the threat will eventuate but in (100-x)% of cases the event threatening will not occur.

To tell the full story I need to explain what intention is, and bring in ‘striving’. A goal which is intentioned through the Will is just that - a goal - and anyone who has read up on Artificial Intelligence (which I’m not sure exists any more) knows that goals are achieved (in x% of cases) through mechanisms of feedback. That is if the agent is going wide of the mark he takes action to bring himself back into line. If the horse is not winning the race the horse tries harder and (taking a step backwards, that is in the chain of causality) the jockey kicks him harder. Although it may be predetermined whether or not I am going to post this on my Blogger blog the sequence I go through in deciding - sometimes it is more of an effort - is part of what is predetermined, and the degree to which I will strive, and the specific steps I take in striving, are part of it too. And then - what we may not have thought in the first place when conjecturing that the universe is nothing but a sequence of events which take place - we have all the interest of explaining what goes on when people (or horses) strive plus the interest of teaching them in specific fields what best to do in striving. We have the interest of judging whether the striving will succeed, which for some means backing horses and showing a profit.

Underactive thyroid

08/07/12 08:14 [Sunday]
I believe I mentioned that I go to see my GP every two or three months the original idea (I suspect) being that he could keep an independent eye on my mental state. When I started going to see him in early summer of last year he sent me for a blood test. I suppose he thought he should check out my general health through that means (as well as through what he could see himself and what I reported to him) and indeed nowadays much more so than when my parents were alive - that’s only ten years ago I’m talking about - the overall direction in the NHS (and the much-mentioned Department of Health) is to check over the population’s health on a regular basis instead of merely providing doctors for people to go and complain to. That blood test in June 2011 seemed to show that I had an underactive thyroid, so the GP sent me for a second blood test to verify it. That second blood test showed a normal result for the thyroid.
But cutting to the chase the blood test two or three weeks ago - I’m not sure whether he sent me for this one because it’s a year since the last or whether it was a follow-up because a blood test I had a month or six weeks ago arranged automatically by the GP practice and not the GP himself omitted checking the thyroid, or whether it has more to do with the fact that I may be moving home soon - that blood test two or three weeks ago showed clearer signs of an underactive thyroid than the one last year. So the GP has put me on levothyroxine tablets which he says I will need lifelong. The fact that people with underactive thyroid don’t recover from the condition - and it tends to be a more natural factor as people age anyway - is recognised in the rules for paying for prescriptions: that is those on a régime of thyroxine medication don’t have to pay for their prescriptions whatever their circumstances.
If the thyroid gland is underactive it slows down the metabolism - the thyroid gland being a sort of controller overall of bodily mechanisms of growth and energy conversion - and an underactive thyroid can slow down mental and emotional processes this resulting for example in depression or confused thinking. The way I understand myself this must have been a factor in the mental condition which took me into hospital in 2010 and 2011. I believe my thinking - mediated by the neurotransmitter dopamine - was too much racing and my brain was trying to process information in too close detail, whereas my body (through the thyroid and its production of the thyroxine hormone) was unable to keep up with my brain this exacerbating the condition.
It has struck me that if I share links to other websites then when readers come across the links in future years the target document may not be there. Still I do give this link - see http://www.jennifermoyer.com/2012/the-thyroid-and-mental-health - guessing that readers who are interested, if the link doesn’t work, can search the internet themselves.
I am presently on a very low starting dose of levothyroxine but I have to say I notice I do feel more energetic after about two weeks so far of the treatment. I tend to do less sitting still pondering why things can’t be better than they are. In truth these days - since the lowered dosage of my Risperdal kicked in really, but helped along certainly by my new-found greater physical energy through the thyroxine - I am more active: not in terms of walking more miles (although when I visit Dawn we do more walking than I do in Kingswinford) but in terms of taking a greater interest in life. I have been selling on eBay some of the surplus computer equipment I amassed when I had less sense, and that’s given me a definite structure to follow each time I sell an item, and it is a structure I have had to learn because I had never sold anything on eBay before. So you can see that being more active in the physical universe carries with it the necessity to be more active mentally, and it all helps to combat stillness, inertia and low mood such as I suffered when on the higher dosage of Risperdal.
I will mention anxiety again. Anxiety is usually associated with being restless and trying to do too much. In fact an overactive thyroid can lead to restlessness and anxiety. But anxiety is also commonly juxtaposed with depression and depression has to do with being underactive and living too restricted a life (a prime example being depression if we should call it that in bereavement, after a major source of stimulation has been lost). The anxiety I was suffering last year - caused by the too-high dosage of Risperdal - derived from an underactive intellect through the mechanism of not thinking up ways round problems (and most specifically from not being able to talk to tradesmen I needed to help me at the bungalow: not being able to talk to them because my mind was a blank) and therefore being subject to buffeting by circumstances. This was rather how things used to be for me up to when I left university, when (in my teens) I was what I learned to call schizoid, that is socially avoidant and with my mind going blank when I needed to talk to people about real-world problems. I think the way it worked in terms of dopamine was different in my teenage years - I think it was what I may metaphorise as refraction of dopaminergic neural systems rather than underactivity of dopamine per se - that is so many things came to mind to be said, and most of them very unnatural-sounding and stilted or too intellectual and not a bit relaxed and easy-going, that I remained silent. I’m sure there are many people the same some of whom are teenagers and some of whom it remains with into adult life - and let me say here my belief is that the internet is a great help to such people and it’s a pity we didn’t have the internet when I was at uni.

A link shared

04/07/12 17:32 [Wednesday]
I have had an email from somebody - or an organisation, it may be - who (or which) seems well attuned to my website. They sent me a link to an article 8 Exercises to Improve Your Mental Health and it seems such sensible and useful stuff that I give the link to my readers.

Anxiety, or not

11/06/12 14:23 [Monday]

I am on my way by train to see Dawn (near Doncaster) and on a service from Birmingham to Derby I noticed that I was mildly anxious. The basis of the anxiety was that instead of waiting at Birmingham New Street for a train right through to Doncaster I had boarded one to take me to Derby. This is allowed as I am travelling via ‘any permitted route’ as it says on the ticket - that is Birmingham - Derby - Sheffield - Doncaster - but I suppose I was slightly worried that I might have to explain myself (and there were several reasons conspiring together why I had got on that train at New Street). I was reminded of the occasion last summer when I conveyed a large kitchen bin from Kingswinford to Doncaster which Dawn’s daughter had bought on eBay. That time I was very anxious and noticed it more because I had not been accustomed to being anxious in recent years. The cause of my anxiety last summer was the Risperdal I was on at the higher dosage (37.5mg instead of presently 25mg).

Whereas animals experience emotions - fear, for example, and indeed anxiety, as well as a range of others - and come entirely under their grip, human beings are to a degree able to ‘disconnect’ emotions, that is stand outside them and take the awareness of the feelings as data to be processed. My belief is that people do this more to the degree their dopamine levels are high. High dopamine levels correspond to a lot of processing carrying on (and as part of it implicating the more frontal regions in the brain). Before I was on this Risperdal medication (which blocks dopamine) I did not experience any anxiety - this leading me into trouble such as getting stuck out of doors overnight as I was not at all guarded - or indeed any human emotions to speak of. Of course not everyone who is on Risperdal gets anxious: rather they are more in the grip of unintellectual emotions whichever of them it is in their personality to feel. I myself have it in my personality to experience anxiety - and before adolescence I did experience a lot - because my mental constitution makes me subject to a large intake of information whose processing - especially before adolescence and also if dopaminergic processing is undermined later in life - is an occasion for difficult uncertainty. High levels of dopamine which were too high for effective processing - around 2008-2011 my brain processes were swamped by dopamine - still secured me from anxiety by disconnecting me from ‘lower’ emotions so that in effect I was in a world of my own untroubled by the vagaries of everyone else’s world.

I am tempted to say that on the current dosage of Risperdal I have the balance right, that is I experience unintellectual emotions including anxiety but can stand aside from them and use the feeling as information for useful processing. This is proved by the experience I had on the train before Derby, of noticing I was anxious and comparing and contrasting that anxiety with the greater anxiety I had last summer.

Care in the Community

28/05/12 07:24 [Monday]
Last October I wrote a blog entry which for many months was on my front page at colinbrough.co.uk, saying that I regretted the fact that I was not being looked after in an asylum of the old type. This view I had derived from the medication I was then on, at a higher dosage than now, making it virtually impossible for me to do things for myself and specifically I mean things related to looking after the bungalow I live in. The first thing to say here then is that prescribing psychiatrists are not at all aware of the effects which the drugs they use can have and of the need to tailor the dosage with exceptional care.
The past two or three days I have been feeling bored - something I never felt when not on medication - and have been looking up details on the internet of the history of the former County Asylum system now replaced by the system of ‘care in the community’.
‘Care in the community is a failure’
Reflecting on the fact that the reason I myself might have needed to be looked after in an institution was medication prescribed at an inappropriate dosage, I ask myself if there are others who cannot cope for reasons in their nature. I refer readers to this blog and note the writer although seeming to be distressed by what I may summarise as over-responsivity states that to be ‘locked up’ would make matters worse. The basis of that of course is that she would be taken away from familiar things and would over-respond to a new and alarming context. This fact would not apply if she were given a home in an asylum year after year.
I have come across an article from the British Journal of Nursing which would please Conservative thinkers as lauding the old way of doing things this including effective charity provision:

British Journal of Nursing, 2011, Vol 20, No 22: Article by Diane Carpenter (Extracts)

• Abstract: This article outlines the asylum building programme of the mid-to-late nineteenth century and focuses on case studies of the two Hampshire asylums built during this period, the subject of the author’s doctoral thesis. It demonstrates the plight of ‘pauper lunatics’ before asylum reform and contrasts this with the improved quality of life provided by the Hampshire County Lunatic Asylum and the Borough of Portsmouth Lunatic Asylum respectively. Asylum care during this period followed the moral treatment regime which became the Victorian blueprint for mental health, components of which are illustrated. Criticism of this regime is addressed briefly and arguments are made against anachronistic analysis. Comparison with contemporary in-patient care and treatment is made concluding with a call to reconsider some of the better aspects of earlier care delivery. The particular experience of patients in Hampshire asylums at Christmas is used to exemplify the points raised.
• Charles Dickens, 1852: ‘There were the patients usually to be found in all such asylums among the dancers... Among them, and dancing with right good will, were attendants, male and female -- pleasant-looking men, not at all realising the conventional idea of “keepers” -- and pretty women, gracefully though not at all inappropriately dressed, and with looks and smiles as sparkling as one might hope to see in any dance in any place. Also, there were sundry bright young ladies who had helped to make the Christmas tree; and a few members of the resident-officer’s family...’
• From annual report Borough of Portsmouth Lunatic Asylum 1884: ‘The patients’ amusements continue as before. Dances are held weekly; and concerts and other entertainments at short intervals. Last January, 100 patients visited the Portsmouth Theatre Royal, by the kind invitation of Dr. Boughton, who presented each one with a book of words. Mr. White kindly supplied conveyances to take them there and back... On Christmas day, by the kind liberality of the Hon. Alice Baring, every patient had a Christmas card given to them. Some, who had also been patients here, sent small presents of apples, oranges, etc.’
• KEY POINTS: Moral treatment was a blueprint for mental health during the Victorian era and was based upon good diet, exercise, fresh air, adequate clothing, meaningful occupation, entertainment and an aesthetically pleasing environment as well as good relationships with staff; Current mental health care could usefully revisit the best that asylum care offered; Criticism of the asylum period is often anachronistic, failing to take adequate account of the historical context.

Directors of Dudley Mind

Click here to view the directors of Dudley Mind and see if you recognise any names.

Feelings of urgency

24/05/12 15:03 [Thursday]
I was on a bus the other day going down into the centre of Kingswinford and it broke down. I felt a little of the urgency which I used to experience, that is urgency kin to anxiety but not exactly the same thing, and this led me to have thoughts on how I was then (without dopamine-blocking medication) versus how I am now (with it). I can't remember just what I had in mind to do when I got to Kingswinford on the occasion I am referring to, but part of it was to go to the café in the Co-op. Likely the rest of it was simply to do my shopping in the Co-op. Anyway, when the bus broke down and we had to get off and wait for the next, I felt as though I might do less well by being later in the Co-op café. On reflection, I realised it was not necessarily so - in fact I might do better later as it might be less busy - and what the basis was of my feeling was simple urgency without working things out. This sense of urgency which (as I say) I had in Spades when I was not on any dopamine-blocking medication derives from, just so, the high levels of dopamine being transmitted in my brain. In the past (not on the medication) I rushed to get things done without any pause for comparing possibilities - more efficient ways of getting the things done - or for consideration whether the things needed doing at all. The things I rushed to get done had to do with basic notions I had what I might be stymied in, and if I suffered frustration and especially in cases - and this possibly included all cases where I came upon any impediment - where I suspected I was being deliberately thwarted by human agency, I became more concerned with the things to be done and more urgent about getting them done. The most usual cases where I felt deliberately thwarted involved the computer systems I used, and I suppose this fact arose from the complexity that computer systems have (making me suspect some human agency must be behind the complex things going wrong, I mean). Simpler things going wrong - a bus breaking down or a train meeting a hold-up - I thought in all instances must be deliberately aimed at myself, but I laughed at them instead of feeling rushed. It was as though I found frustrations beneath contempt except in the complex cases, and in these I did get involved in trying to solve them or get round them.
Of most concern to me was the idea - arising from natural computer malfunction or less-than-perfect system performance, I now see (and mainly arising from faulty reading from or writing to optical discs) - that my computer records might be subject to loss or theft. I have explained recently the ideas I used to have - which still persist although in a more theoretical sense than before - about keeping a record of my activities and especially the activity in my mind (a diary in fact) as a means of preserving them in a sort of immortality. Well, my concern with records of this type was what led to the concern I had about losing my records this concern rising to great heights of urgency if there was any indication I was 'under attack' and subject to deliberate loss say through theft. The outcome of this urgent concern was my making many backups on DVD of anything I did on the computer, and sometimes it was several backups of the same thing - slightly altering from hour to hour - through a single day.
I have recently found motivation to begin again to make backups to DVD and leaving aside whether to do so is the right thing or the wrong thing, I am sure this re-found motivation arises from my being on a lower dosage of the Risperdal. The things I do seem more of interest (to myself) and better worth recording against loss, so that I can reconstitute records - and specifically it was an image appearing on my website in the recent instance - if they have become degraded or (I suppose) lost completely.
I will speak of something else which has been in my mind. I have since I last uploaded a diary entry to Blogger written two documents on the computer both related to programs I was writing (or was thinking of writing). These are the only documents anything like diary entries I have created. What I'm thinking is if I don't put them in order in my Blogger blog, what becomes of my notion of preserving my doings through the fact of diaried doings being read and thereby passing through the mind of miscellaneous readers? I suppose the answer is that nowadays I do a lot of stuff which does not get diaried so - unless I am able to get back to the state I was in on no medication (of typing-up stuff several times a day and whatever was going through my mind) - why worry?
Having got onto the subject of what I do with my time, I will say that one of the categories of things I spend time doing - on the computer because I enjoy the physical fact of using the computer - are surveys. With these survey companies you rack up points and when you have so many they pay you a small amount or give you a shopping voucher. But it takes a lot of time and attention for only small reward so while the payment is a sweetener a major part of it is the mental activation of reflecting on your answers. I will say that in the past when on no medication questions arose in my mind from myself but coming with such little effort that they appeared to originate from outside myself, these questions making life seem very interesting. I used to send my written-down thoughts - answers to my own questions, as it were - to politicians and imagined they did not fall on deaf ears (but suspected the Civil Servants did not like the communications, mainly that is to Tory MPs). I now know my thoughts in answer to these surveys do not fall on deaf ears (because I receive payment for doing it) even though my 'thoughts' are aggregated with many others and have statistical effect only. But the point is, it's the same sort of thing I'm doing, that is sending my reflections and opinions and feeling it is worthwhile to do it.

Tuesday 15-May-12

15/05/12 19:36 [Tuesday]
I did not do what I said with Colin-Packard: instead I have reconstituted partition 1 from the Nero BackItUp backup of it stored on partition 2. This means the suspect Vista is still on partition 2 and what I am now thinking of doing is getting rid of it by re-formatting partition 2. The reason I had an operating system on partition 2 was that I thought it was necessary in order to run BackItUp to back-up partition 1, but with the experience I have now gathered it is clear BackItUp can run simply from a CD. If I re-format partition 2 the boot menu asking for a choice between Windows 7 (on partition 1) and Vista will still appear (because - and I understand these matters better now than ever before - the boot partition is partition 1 since that was the first partition with any operating system on it) but I think I know enough to be able to edit it to disappear.
I recovered the Irish Vaio in a similar way using BackItUp based on the files storing the copy of partitions 1 to 3 which I created by taking the hard drive out of the Vaio and using the docking station I have mentioned several times. I now know that I didn’t need to take the hard drive out: I could have backed-up the system partitions using BackItUp running off a CD. The recovery has gone according to plan except that the Recovery partition has ceased to be invisible and has been allocated the letter H:.

The reason I recovered the Irish Vaio was the failed install of Nero 9 and I have yet to make a repeat attempt to install that software.

15/05/12 20:05

I was on a train recently and this poster took my attention. What I find jarring is the appearance of two sentences the same but not quite identical:

• DO NOT step onto any rails
• DO NOT step onto ANY rail

Similarly in the one place cables are called cables and in the other place they are called wires.

(I cannot discover how to get this image round the right way.)  

Wednesday 09-May-12

09/05/12 06:41 [Wednesday]
In the course of trying to find a backup from 2009 of the website image I referred to on 29-Apr-12 I copied two encrypted folders made around January 2009 from DVD onto Colin-Packard (onto partition 2 in fact) that is the Packard Bell netbook computer I use. Having finished my search I have tried to delete these encrypted folders, of size about 4GB each. They got moved to the Recycle Bin but when I then tried to empty the Recycle Bin a message came up saying certain files with unrecognisable names (at least one beginning with $) could not be deleted as they were being used by some program. The outcome is that the Recycle Bin appears empty (so that it cannot be further emptied) but it is occupying about 8GB which I could do with freeing up.
Having thought about this this past night - this disturbing my sleep and causing me to get up very early - I conclude that the files in question, that is versions in the Recycle Bin of the big files I had deleted, had been locked by having a particular flag set in their entries in the index by a rogue program. Because this flag is not expected to be set for files in the Recycle Bin - because if the file is locked it means it is in use and cannot at that stage be moved to the Recycle Bin - trying to completely delete the files in emptying the Recycle Bin produces anomalous results, that is the files disappear from listings but still reside on the hard disk occupying space. I have had this type of problem in the past and concluded the files ‘secreted’ in the Recycle Bin were being retained in the hidden form for later retrieval by somebody ‘spying’ on me, that is retrieval either by illicit upload on connecting to the internet or by physically obtaining the hard disk after I had got rid of that computer (often in the past by giving it away to one of Dawn’s children). Some support for this suspicion derives from the fact that a hard disk was removed from a laptop left in the house which was Dawn’s in Worksop in August 2005 and stolen. Thinking about this now it is impossible to think up any reasonable explanation why the hard disk might have been stolen but not the entire laptop, other than by conjecturing that the information stored on the hard disk was what was wanted. Then again it is impossible to believe people authorised by the Department of Health would steal a hard disk and I can’t imagine who other than the ‘Department of Health’ or a related body would be interested in my ‘information’. The way I used to think was that I must be in some legal thrall to ‘the State’ so that what I thought of as my own was not in simple truth my own but was subject to the whims of my ‘Guardians’. (Sorry about all the inverted commas but they seem absolutely necessary.) This way I had of thinking came about since I was deprived of freedom and in thrall through several years of the 1980s, and subject to the whims of Armond who signed detention orders and the whims of those he represented (because he personally had no specific interest in me). I took the view that there was no point in my making an effort to get back to work because at any time without forewarning I might be seized again and conveyed away to detention. To treat people who are sensitive in the way they are treated when they are suddenly taken away to a mental hospital is bound to produce exaggerated reactions of this type, surely. Possibly Armond was a particularly bad culprit in that I was suddenly seized - literally seized that is clamped by the arms of ambulance-men - and taken away the first time on that Tuesday in November 1980, without any prior discussion or suggestion to me that I might need to go into hospital. When I was taken away - again on a Tuesday - in September 2010 it was slightly better. I did not need to be seized as I knew that if they said I had to go then I had to go, and I was allowed time to get my things together (including even my netbook laptop although the Social Worker involved had his doubts). To be honest the way I think is I was better treated in 2010 because a police officer was involved throughout, and it was he who said I could have time to collect my things and to make sure to lock the place up properly.
Thinking that what appeared to be my own was not in truth my own led to my giving up any attempt to conserve money in 2009-2010 so that I wasted a very large quantity. I also fell into the difficulties I had with my home insurance when I allowed it to lapse, thinking ‘the State’ was responsible for looking after me even if the bungalow I lived in fell down or was otherwise destroyed.
To get back to the fault on the computer which has developed recently reminding me of the same fault in past years: I cannot tell whether the illicit program which set the flag on those files for the Recycle Bin which could not be deleted ran on partition 1 - Windows 7 Starter Edition as it came originally with this netbook - or on partition 2 - the Vista I installed myself from a source which I have long had suspicions about. I remark though that I have had other problems with the partition 2 Vista, for example when I plugged-in the hard disk docking station I was using to make a copy of the system partitions from the Irish Vaio.
What I am intending to do is reinstall Colin-Packard from the recovery DVDs and then - I believe having had experience with Nero BackItUp I can do this - backup the system partition without installing Vista or any other operating system but simply using Nero BackItUp running from a CD. I must say recovering the system by copying back the system partition using Nero BackItUp is a quick process even though making the backup in the first place takes two hours or so.
I mention that as part of this project I have tried to install Nero 9 on the Irish Vaio, but the install hung up at 13% and I had to shut the computer down leaving the system possibly in an unstable condition from the part-install. Why the Nero 9 did not install I do not know as I’m sure I have used Nero 9 previously on the Irish Vaio, but it’s another anomaly to annoy me and cause me to have suspicions what the basis of the failure might be.

Sunday 29-Apr-12 Part 2

29/04/12 15:50
Anyone looking at my website colinbrough.co.uk at present will see the following image in January 2009:

I have been able to retrieve the full version from DVD backups I made in those years gone by, and this has suggested to me that I ought to be making monthly backups to DVD now, instead of relying (as I had come to do more and more) on backups at only one remove - and therefore preserving nothing as an archive - from the hard disk on whatever computer I am currently using to alterable media, that is either a memory stick or a plug-in hard drive.

I say whatever computer I am currently using to indicate that when I am travelling - to see Dawn, mainly - I use a small netbook computer whereas when I am at home I use my Irish Vaio laptop which has fuller functions.