The Negotiation Limerick File

Jeff and I continue to pass this cold, which in my case hasn't quite turned into a cold, back and forth. He slept for 12 hours this morning. I barely had the energy to make it through my classes Friday.

I seem to have developed a bit of a crush on both Bob Odenkirk (hilarious) and Vince Gilligan (genius).  I'm also depressed about this whole government shutdown thing. It's also depressing to know that Socrates was right about rhetoric being abused by people with no ethics. Stupid Socrates.

The more I think about this, the more it pisses me off: "Alan Turing's suicide verdict isn't supportable." According to Turing expert Prof Jack Copeland, the two reasons we should revise the common story of Turing's death are 1 - because Turing was cheerful. Right. Because depressed people always act sad and gloomy. 2. - because this man, who was a freakin' genius, "was careless" when it came to working with cyanide, which he was doing at his home laboratory.

As someone who has had depression for years and years, I can tell you that depression doesn't always result in "acting sad." For me personally, it affects my thought patterns and energy levels, but I don't go around looking obviously depressed. It's a coping strategy, for me anyway.

And getting back to Turing's alleged carelessness: " he was known for tasting chemicals to identify them." Really? Someone that smart, working with cyanide, would resort to tasting it? This makes more sense: "In his authoritative biography, Andrew Hodges suggests that the experiment was a ruse to disguise suicide, a scenario Turing had apparently mentioned to a friend in the past." But no, a philosophy PhD from the UK says that we should revise our theory about his suicide because Turing seemed "in good humor."

Copeland needs to talk to people who have suffered with depression and the kind of stress Turing was under. If we're going to talk stereotypical behaviour, isn't the stereotype of the British that they keep that stiff upper lip? You know, "keep calm and carry on"?