Stumbling on sociopaths

This post is to justify my interest in the Casey Anthony case. I've always been amazed by sociopaths. I'm sure you've known at least one or two in your lifetime. They say its more of an anti-social sliding scale than a simple and singular diagnosis. In fact, it's not a diagnosis at all. But I digress: they fascinate me. When I first heard the story of this 22 year old who claimed someone kidnapped her daughter, but she didn't bother to report it for a month, I thought "Either this person knows exactly where her daughter is and just doesn't want to say anything or she is by far one of the biggest sociopaths I've ever seen." I said that because she was clearly not even a little bit concerned about her kid, so I figured she had to know where she was. Because even a sociopath would be upset that they got caught ... she didn't seem like she had a care in the world.

Well, we know the truth now. She's very far on the anti-social scale, but I don't think as much as Bundy or Ramirez. Especially Ramirez, who actively hates humanity. What I think makes her case so fascinating is the complete lack of forethought that went into her crimes (remember the check-forging, stealing, etc). All the other sociopaths that I am aware of (and obviously I am no expert) had a strong sense of self-preservation. Casey seems completely incapable of worrying about anything except what is happening to her at that very moment in time.

I read a book recently called Stumbling on Happiness. In it, the author talks about how happy lobotomized mental patients are. They found that the reason for this was that the prefrontal cortex controls planning and forethought. In the early days of lobotomies they had assumed the prefrontal cortex was not useful at all, but removing it had the pleasant side-effect of making their most anxiety-ridden patients as calm and happy as clams. The reason being that much of anxiety has to do with what you're thinking might or is going to happen. Take away that part of the brain and poof - no more worries. Literally.

So I got to wondering if Sociopaths have something wrong with their prefrontal cortex. I looked it up and guess what? They do have some strange wiring in the prefrontal cortex after all. Evidently it's well known, but hey, it was news to me.

Here's an interesting article about it: http://indioheathen.blogspot.com/2007/01/sociopathy-and-sado-authoritarianism.html If you're interested, google sociopaths & Prefrontal cortex. You'll get a ton of info about the biological roots of clinical sociopathy.

So who else among you has been following this case? What are your thoughts on Casey's motivations, her psychology, and anything else that would bring a person to the point of murdering their own child and not even bothering to do a half-way decent job of covering it up?

Fuel Alternatives

I'm wondering what the most viable energy alternatives are. Ultimately what's needed is to find a chemical reaction that results in a high yield of energy and a truly harmless waste product. Better still, a useful waste product. Oxidizing (or whatever the right word is) hydrocarbons results in CO2 and H2O. I guess that's where the idea of Hydrogen power comes from: H + O2 and we get an exothermic reaction with a byproduct of ... H2O. And who can't use what amounts to distilled water? They could even put it in a collection tank and you could empty it into a reservoir at your house that is specifically used for waste water. Right now we use the same water source for drinking and flushing the toilet. Why not use our cars' waste for our personal waste? Or... we could make the collection container so that the owner removes it and places it on a water cooler. Obviously you would have at least two of these.

I guess this idea hasn't taken off yet because of the whole "I don't want to be immolated by my car"/Hindenburg thing... Plus, where are we going to get all of that pure O2 and H? And the cost of shipping it ...

Maybe the answer to global warming is reducing hydrocarbon consumption as much as possible while working on figuring out what to do with our bumper crop of CO2 that's just floating around. Surely someone wants a lot of CO2... Maybe there's an interstellar CO2 market that we need to tap into.

I don't know. I'm going back to work now. If there is one thing that we've learned in this monologue its that we need the help of CO2-deprived aliens. And that means we're that much closer to solving the world's energy crisis. You know, having figured out the alien component and all.