Yesterday I mentioned
that I was a bit dubious about the consistency of my peanut brittle.
Having stuck it in the fridge overnight to set, I was rather
disappointed this morning to find it wasn't so much "peanut
brittle" as "peanut soggy." But rather than
throwing it out as a mistake I decided to give it a little longer to
solidify with a view to eventually eating it with a spoon.
Any future batches will
have less water and more boiling in the recipe.
Fudge was particularly
soppy this morning and he cuddled on my lap whilst I watched more
on-line psychology lectures. This morning's talk was interesting -the
chap speaking touched on an interesting
experiment done in 1973 where psychological workers investigated
mental hospitals. The basic premise of the research was that sane
people faked serious mental illness to see if they could get locked
up for being doolally. The ruse was to pretend to hear voices in
their heads which is apparently a symptom of being crackers. (I
can't see what's so mad about hearing voices,but what do I know?)
And once locked up these actors then started acting sane to see if
they could get let out again. Presumably their being sane wasn't
pretending?
It turned out that it was
far easier to get diagnosed as "being round the twist"
than it was to be diagnosed as "not barking mad".
Interestingly the so-called expert psychologists were completely
taken in by the people pretending to be shot away, and then had all
sorts of excuses and reasons about why a mad person would exhibit
absolutely no signs of madness at all. However real nut cases saw
right through the ruse straight away, thinking these people were
actually journalists doing an expose on the nut houses..
This research
(understandably) upset those who make a living out of
diagnosing people to be mad, and the superintendent of one such nut
house challenged the people doing this research to send him some
"make beleive loonies." He wanted to prove that his
establishment could sort the genuinely mad from those faking it. This
nut house then proclaimed that forty of the next one hundred patients
were stooges pretending to be mad when in fact the researchers hadn't
actually got round to sending anyone along to play at being
"bow-wow-wow".
It all rather leaves me
somewhat dubious about the entire concept of diagnosing mental
illness.
Once I'd done my learning
I set off to work. And then came back home again to pick up my phone
before setting off again.
I took a rather scenic
route to work today via Wye where I found a geocache which for some
odd reason I hadn't looked before. It was easy to find and was in a
rather beautiful location. Flushed with success I stopped off in
Thanington to find another cache - this one came to light under a
bridge by the river. I was quite pleased with myself for having found
two caches, and went into work feeling rather chuffed.
The feeling of
chuffed-ness lasted most of the day, which was surprising. I wasn't
actually supposed to be working today. I'd swapped into this weekend
to get out of working another weekend (the planned camping for which
has since been cancelled), and I was also missing out on a curry
night and the chance to meet up with Terry who was down for the day.
Mind you as the day wore
on so the rain started and got particularly heavy. I'd rather be at
work when it's raining...
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