Choosing to be sane

Don Imus-of MSNBC's Imus in the Morning-just finished a great interview with George Stephanopoulos. They first talked about Stephanopoulos' interview with President Clinton on last Sunday's This Week on ABC. (see title link above)
The president was approached to come on the show by S. Their estrangement had lasted for several years. But sanity prevailed and the result was wonderful. During the interview S. characterized the situation in Basra, Iraq, as "crazy," referring to local militias fighting amongst each other and the Brits having to rescue two of their own from the Iraqi army. S. also pointed out that President Clinton does not support an immediate pullout from Iraq, a view with which I agree.
On insanity -
The Imus interview got me to thinking about how government officials must behave in rational ways:

• My favorite columnist, Molly Ivins, writes on "The Definition of Insanity," in piece on Alternet earlier this year. Coincidentally, a 2002 column is entitled, "Mr. Bush, stop the insanity."
• Afghanistan's President Karzai is behaving sanely when he suggests that it may be time to withdraw U.S troops from his country.
• This Tom Paine post suggests that New Orleans be rebuilt as a solar city. The writer's argument is convincing; that is a very sane idea.
• This Washington Post editorial makes a very rational argument suggests that it does not make sense to require official identity cards of anyone who votes. It is insane to think that there is enough risk of fraud to make such a demand of someone very poor, very old, or disabled.

These items are about insanity, too, according the people who chose the names": Hot Sauce, a touring group, and a skate park caught my eye. You missed your chance to cash in, however, because Nintendo already has the patent on insanity.

As a much more serious matter, here is a very rich About.com site on the "insanity defense," and a list of Catholic saints for those wanting to find comfort from mental illness.

On sanity -

In my web wanderings, I also encountered wonderful little examples of sanity:

• I found out that the use of the semi-colon is ok for serious writers. I still happen to like semi-colons.
• This citation focuses on another of my favorite books by Martin Seligman, Learned Optimism. In recent weeks I had forgotten that my preferred psychological stance is optimism. This classic book can be like a island of sanity in the current sea of insanity.
• This morning, for some unremembered reason, I chose to have the classical music radio station playing as I write on my computer. It is always calming for me. There's good scientific evidence for what is behind that in this article.
• I close today's post with a link to one of my favorite writers, Wil Wheaton. His most recent blogpost is called, "Life is Good." It is great!