Insanity v. Brainwashing

One of the first things that I did after sitting down today was browse a little for an interesting story to comment on. Lucky for me, the first headline I saw not only provides adequate material for this endeavor, it also is such a story that I think everyone will be able to join me in a little

"WHAT?"

How about everyone takes a moment to look at the story about a Maryland mother who joined a cult and starved her son to death? Here are a couple of different versions:

CNN,
Washington Post,
Associated Press.

It's difficult for so many reporters to get the same story differently, but just in case you don't like one organisation, well, there you go.

What I would like to know is, how are we defining insane nowadays? I was talking about this "event" with the head copy editor, and we were trying to decide if this lady was really insane or not. My first impulse is to maintain that while I wouldn't necessarily say that the woman is insane (I go more for brainwashed), I believe this "Queen Antoinette" person probably is insane. I mean, who else would take on a name like that? Not to mention convince her followers that a member's baby was a demon because he wasn't old enough to handle saying "Amen" after meals...

On the other hand, "insanity" seems to have a much broader definition than I had previously thought, according to Merriam-Webster's Online Medical Dictionary:
Main Entry: in·san·i·ty
Pronunciation: in-san-t-
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -ties
1 : a severely disordered state of the mind usually occurring as a specific disorder (as paranoid schizophrenia)
2 : unsoundness of mind or lack of the ability to understand that prevents one from having the mental capacity required by law to enter into a particular relationship, status, or transaction or that releases one from criminal or civil responsibility

Some officials are saying that Ms. Ramkissoon is not, in fact, insane; and I would like to agree with them. However, can insanity be taught, as through being brainwashed? Isn't that what brainwashing is? Creating a "severely disordered state of the mind"? Maybe that's the reason they're still sentencing her, because of the ambiguity of the definition.

If this is how the dictionary defines "brainwashing":
Main Entry: brain·wash·ing
Pronunciation: brn-wsh-i, -wäsh-
Function: noun
: a forcible indoctrination to induce someone to give up basic political, social, or religious beliefs and attitudes and to accept contrasting regimented ideas

Then perhaps it really is possible to induce insanity, if the "contrasting regimented ideas" mess so much with a person's head that it is impossible for them to understand things going on around them. Read that as saying: That it is impossible for them to understand that murder, no matter what sort of resurrection you're waiting for, is wrong.

Is forced homicide insanity or brainwashing? And does it matter?

A list of amusing things

It's rather amusing:

1. When I use spellcheck on Quark, it wants to change internet addresses that end in ".org" to "orgy."

2. Hearing a reporter on her phone behind me ask a source, "So...let me get this right: The dog was just sitting on the floor?"

3. Being able to hit the keys for spellcheck (Shift+Option+Apple+L) all with fingers on my right hand.

4. Watching Eric Bellamy, one of the photographers, pantomime Salazar's signature (read: only) photo pose. "What's that? A photographer? I must put my foot up on this chair, lean forward, and tip up the brim of my cowboy hat. And smile."

5. Reading the "Good News/Bad News" article in the business section of the Tribune for tomorrow's paper. It lists all the good things that are taking place in the economy, and then reminds us how the numbers are still worse than forty years ago.

6. Hearing that same advertising girl from last night still complaining about her life. Did you know that her biggest pet peeve is people who leave dishes in the sink? I do, now.

7. Finding out about The Greeley Report. They tout themselves as the Tribune's even-handed competitor. Half of the copy desk didn't even know they existed until five minutes ago.

8. Watching hockey on the TV across the desk but only being able to hear the sound from the Leno show from the TV on the sports desk.

9. Getting to work on my first-ever wire page! OK, so Ryan sat next to me and guided me through a good chunk of it, but I still put most of it together myself! And worked on trimming stories by myself!

10. How excited I am to work on a single page (A5, check it out in tomorrow's Tribune), even though it took me about two hours. So...much....reading.....

Tick-Tock Clickety Klack

I am such an amazing person. I'm spending my spring break....at work!
OK, so I'm not spending the entire break here, I'm just doing the same number of hours at the desk as any other week while all of my peers are lounging on the beach and pretending that they don't have papers to write and textbooks to read.

I can't pretend. Life moves too quickly for me to forget about those papers. Oh well.

Time has really been flying by tonight; that is, up until about two minutes ago, when I caught up to everyone else at the desk. I started out earlier doing some editing for a project called "Panorama," a review of really awesome Weld County residents who spend a good chunk of their time volunteering and just generally helping other people. There are about 15-20 profiles in the whole conglomeration, and while the pages were done being put together, Ryan needed me to check styles and stuff and fix a couple of headlines.

It took almost two hours. That's the only reason it takes so long to put together a newspaper (ignoring, of course, the fact that you have to research stories. Psh, who researches stories, anyway? Kidding, kidding...); we spend so much time clicking between programs, checking photographers' names, reporters' names, cutlines, frames on the photos, page numbers, jumps.....that's not even the entire list!

And then, right after I finished that project, I had four pages to check the copy on. And now...silence. Hallelujah. About an hour ago, it was anything but silent, and oh man, I was about to go crazy with Theresa's stapler. Or the phonebook. Something heavy. One of the girls from the little advertising (at least, I think that's what it is) area was on her phone for a good half of an hour complaining to who-knows-who about someone telling her to fix things but not being specific.

I can still hear her whining voice in my head. One of the copyeditors (I won't divulge his or her name) sitting across from me slapped his/her fingers down in front of her keyboard at one point, growled, "That's it, I can't take it any more," and pulled his/her earbuds out of his/her pen drawer/purse. So much for no personal calls at work.

So, yes, this silence is golden, for it is the simple non-silence of a newsroom at work. I've come to love this, hearing at least two or three different TV channels on, along with the police scanner, and people clicking their mice and tapping on their keyboards like rain falling on a skylight. It's funny what sorts of sounds become soothing for you once you get used to them. I used to hate my alarm clock--it tick-tocked so loudly at night that I almost went insane the first two weeks I owned it. Now that I use my cellphone as an alarm, I still leave my old alarm clock on my bedside table. The battery is dying and it never stays on the correct time, but the constant clicking of the minute and hour hands somehow reminds me to relax.

Or maybe the clock is creepier than I think. Maybe it's just saying, "I'm-Watch-Ing-You. I'm Watch-Ing-You." Great. Now I have a stalker alarm clock.

I've run out of projects to do. Two and a half hours left in my "day" and now I can only sit and wait for someone to finish something so that I can look at it. I'm still not cool enough to do much besides putting together the obits page, writing brief headlines, and making minor changes to pages. Someday, someday. I must be getting tired: I just spent a good thirty seconds poking my fingers into Theresa's squisky wrist rest. Wow.

I'm sorry I'm not very copyedit-y tonight. I really thought I would be, since I don't hate being here. But sometimes I pull up my blog page, place my fingertips on the keyboard, and can't think of a single new thing to say. Time it takes to put together pages? Check. Sounds and environment? Check. Current project status? Check.

I could give a play-by-play of the women's basketball game that's going on on the TV across from me. That is, I could do that if I knew the rules of basketball. Now, if it were a soccer game, that I could do. In class last week, the girl next to me was watching a NCAA game on a live feed on her laptop (No, she wasn't supposed to be doing that. That's rude to the teacher. And very distracting, of course), and the guy sitting next to me nudged my shoulder and told me to whisper him the play-by-play in French.

Not until this moment did I realize how creepy that sounded. Interesting. Anyway, I laughed. I don't know any French sports terms, which is too bad. I should have paid better attention. Or maybe sportscasters should stop using "GO-AAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!" as a word for every language.