![[dr. bob]](/dr-bob-sm.gif)
Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
[email protected]Shown: posts 1 to 16 of 16. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by Brenda on May 8, 2000, at 20:17:27
boB,
Have I missed your posting recently? Or do you have a new "name?" Been thinking about you.
Brenda
Posted by Cass on May 8, 2000, at 21:01:56
In reply to Where's boB?, posted by Brenda on May 8, 2000, at 20:17:27
> boB,
> Have I missed your posting recently? Or do you have a new "name?" Been thinking about you.
> BrendaI've been wondering too. I posted a thread about it, but it got archived. I know Dr. Bob told him he had to change his name because it was too similar to bob's. I hope boB reveals himself or comes back soon.
Posted by Dr. Bob on May 8, 2000, at 23:08:18
In reply to Re: Where's boB?, posted by Cass on May 8, 2000, at 21:01:56
> I've been wondering too. I posted a thread about it, but it got archived. I know Dr. Bob told him he had to change his name because it was too similar to bob's.
I hope that didn't put him off. (But still I think it's a good policy.)
Bob
Posted by bob on May 8, 2000, at 23:38:39
In reply to Re: Where's boB?, posted by Dr. Bob on May 8, 2000, at 23:08:18
> I hope that didn't put him off. (But still I think it's a good policy.)
bob to Bob, I'd have to agree. (Sorry, boB).
I went back searching through the archives to find confirmation of my suspicion -- that he might have been one of those potentially "unwilling" to return IF a registration system was put in place, but I found none. No statements of the sort from him that I spotted, tho IF I were to choose a name like boB and should I potentially be concerned about the possible risk to privacy of such a system ....
I *do* miss both his tortured-obfuscations and his alternative reality checks.
DOH! (...just remembered something I should have thought of sooner).
cheers,
bob (not boB or Dr.)
Posted by Mark H. on May 8, 2000, at 23:45:48
In reply to Where's boB?, posted by Brenda on May 8, 2000, at 20:17:27
Hi Brenda and Cass,
I have boB's email address at work (at least one of them). I know he was planning to start a new job about this time if all went well. I suspect he's just busy or on assignment (he's a journalist). I'll let you know if I hear anything.
Mark H.
Posted by Brenda on May 9, 2000, at 0:16:09
In reply to Re: Where's boB?, posted by Mark H. on May 8, 2000, at 23:45:48
> Hi Brenda and Cass,
>
> I have boB's email address at work (at least one of them). I know he was planning to start a new job about this time if all went well. I suspect he's just busy or on assignment (he's a journalist). I'll let you know if I hear anything.
>
> Mark H.Mark - that would be much appreciated!
Brenda
Posted by boBB on May 10, 2000, at 0:14:47
In reply to Re: Where's boB?, posted by Brenda on May 9, 2000, at 0:16:09
Turned the job down. Well, actually, just didn't suck up in the interview, because they were republicans and I lend aid and comfort to other factions. So i didn't have to bother turning down any jobs this time.
The new reg system put me off, for a while, and writing on this site tests my intellect and my emotions. Actually, a real, person-to-person relationship would be more rewarding, but in America we are generally not free to speak about what we feel if it is not consistant with the systems expectations, so I tend to isolate. Hence, I let it bleed sometimes on sites such as this. But still, the emotional effort of wanting to reach a greater understanding, and the intellectual effort of discussing advanced science with few resources to reference, that is all really a lot of work. I appreciate the interest here in my posts, and I can say honestly that I wouldn't participate if I was not getting something out of it, and if I didn't think I had anything to contribute to the other people here.
I noticed Fred posting, and appreciated his outrage at the way he was tortured by medical professionals and decided to rejoin the fray. I was not sure what to do about the handle, but Bs are cheap, so I just added one and jumped in.
Posted by Cam W. on May 10, 2000, at 6:43:11
In reply to Re: Where's boB?, posted by boBB on May 10, 2000, at 0:14:47
boBBy - Way to beat the registration system! Welcome back! - Cam
Posted by harry b. on May 10, 2000, at 8:26:23
In reply to Re: Where's boB?, posted by boBB on May 10, 2000, at 0:14:47
boBB- Glad you're back. I/we missed you.
Posted by Brenda on May 10, 2000, at 11:23:29
In reply to Re: Where's boB?, posted by boBB on May 10, 2000, at 0:14:47
> Turned the job down. Well, actually, just didn't suck up in the interview, because they were republicans and I lend aid and comfort to other factions. So i didn't have to bother turning down any jobs this time.
>
> The new reg system put me off, for a while, and writing on this site tests my intellect and my emotions. Actually, a real, person-to-person relationship would be more rewarding, but in America we are generally not free to speak about what we feel if it is not consistant with the systems expectations, so I tend to isolate. Hence, I let it bleed sometimes on sites such as this. But still, the emotional effort of wanting to reach a greater understanding, and the intellectual effort of discussing advanced science with few resources to reference, that is all really a lot of work. I appreciate the interest here in my posts, and I can say honestly that I wouldn't participate if I was not getting something out of it, and if I didn't think I had anything to contribute to the other people here.
>
> I noticed Fred posting, and appreciated his outrage at the way he was tortured by medical professionals and decided to rejoin the fray. I was not sure what to do about the handle, but Bs are cheap, so I just added one and jumped in.boBB - Glad to hear from you. I think depression also tends to cause our isolation. At least it does mine. Writer's rule! - A perfectly good use of a mammal. Think about it - without the writers how would all us isolaters(sp) remain part of the world. How about writing a book?
Brenda
Posted by Todd on May 10, 2000, at 14:01:36
In reply to Re: Where's boB?, posted by Brenda on May 10, 2000, at 11:23:29
boB, my bruthah! Glad to see you back! Life just wouldn't be the same without your sardonic wit and wisdom. Groove on!
Todd
Posted by Phil on May 10, 2000, at 17:59:34
In reply to Welcome home, boB!, posted by Todd on May 10, 2000, at 14:01:36
And we're all better for it. Back to bidness.
Phil
Posted by grrrilla on May 10, 2000, at 19:32:04
In reply to Welcome home, boB!, posted by Todd on May 10, 2000, at 14:01:36
...........and we B happy now!{:0)
Posted by boBB on May 10, 2000, at 20:46:37
In reply to boBB back.........., posted by grrrilla on May 10, 2000, at 19:32:04
When I die, you can all eat little pieces of bread and sip red wine and call it my body every Sunday as an anti-depressant!
Oops, messiah complex coming through. Or do they call that dillusions of grandeur?
Maybe I am a bit egomaniacal, me loving having my own "we want you" thread. I liked Cindy W's "Love equals______" post about the tree frog. I'm impressed.
For efficiency sake, I'll confine today's babble to this thread rather than comment in each thread that stirred some kind of response in my mind...
I was thinking on Brenda's suggestion that maybe it is the depression that causes me to isolate. Seeing as how Dr. Bob is kind enough to share his server with us, I really try not to be too dogmatic with dismissing the medical model, and the possibility that some of us are born with genetic conditions that effect our mood, or that we develop chemical "imbalances" that are best treated w/ designer meds. But I am pretty confident my personal isolation (I have a quite public life, professionally) is a result of my value system that does not coincide with the values of a dominant society. The best similarity I can easily bring to mind regarding the way I live is like a "sleeper" in the spy world - a person deployed into an unfriendly territory to live unnoticed among the people there until some mission requires their duty. These people (I've heard - never knew one, or knowingly knew one, if I did) seem to survive for many years in a contrary ideological environment, but survive because of the hope of returning home some day.Well, as Dire Straits sings in Brothers in Arms, "these mist covered mountains, are a home now to me. But my home is the lowlands, and it always will be... someday we'll return to our valleys and our farms, and no longer burn to be brothers in arms." Except, reaching middle age now, I have little hope of ever returning to the natural, earth based way of life I longed for as a young man. I might get lucky, but the ambition is gone. I was always torn between the need to get a placid home for myself and the sense that, to keep such a home, one would have to be available for everyone who has such a longing. Now, I spend my time in a quiet army, my only real ambition in life to eventually (maybe in another 500 years) make that accessible to whoever wants to live that way. But my day-to-day life has come to revolve around developing the skills of psychological warfare. That is why I gravitated into writing - not because I had a degree - I quit high school and bummed for many years.
I am lucky because I have a well-formed sense of what I long for. I have little hope of finding it, but I have learned to live without and to sustain myself, as best I can, with whatever temporal satisfaction I can find that does not too severely violate my core values. I can see how others, perhaps who never enjoyed the opportunity of living among tribal people and learning to live in "two worlds", and who never reached a clear picture in their own minds of what they would like the world to be, or that never thought they had the right to help direct big things, like culture and society, I can see how lost and frustrated that can leave a person.
Well, I also agree with Janice that this is a tough genre of writing, this internet board dialogue, because what we say can be interpreted in many ways. I write on-line usually, so the litte frame doesn't allow me to view my prose in its own context. The edit function is great, compared to some other sites, but even then, it requires back-tracking, which hampers the thought process.Anyway, in this culture, with TV and consumer goods and career expectations, we are expected to repress our feelings. We watch murder and mayhem on TV and never react. We emote over love relations that are nothing more than a dazzling array of lights with which we cannot interact. We are expected to make things better for ourselves, but somebody else, who we elected, or who was smart enough to inherit a multi-national company is supposed to decide about the big things, like whether we need a consumer society to maintain industrial/military world domination.
I can't hard-sell my fragile life plan any more than I can tolerate the hard-selling of licensed pdrugs, (Damn, those anti-anxiety drug commercials piss me off! maybe I am a bit to anxious?). I encourage people to think about, not how they feel about themselves, but the way they feel about their culture and their society. Psychiatry and clinical psychology circa 2000 tend to presume society is normanative and it is a measure of health how well we fit in. I differ. I see as a measure of health our ability to critique society, and a measure of personal strenght the willingness to sacrifice our personal mental comfort for the benifit of an unorganized collective that includes more than just human life.
My best friends invoke a metaphor of pushing a giant ball up a steep hill. If we push with all our might for all our lives and move that ball just a little, it was worth it. Soldiers die in battle defending one stupid little foxhole that is lost the next day and filled in and plowed for bloodstained crops the next year. Their actions are considered heroic.
One final thing - I was ridiculing myself for being a writer. Carpentry was a bit more honest and healthy profession. Most of what we do as journalists is to craft cute little stories that make people feel like everything is normal. Even the hard news- murder and crime- has a normalizing effect. I got into the line of work to have more than that kind of effect - to make a real difference. I changed jobs since then, and gained skills and respectability but lost much of the opportunity i had several years ago to make a more direct and specific impact. Maybe someday I will use this skill group for what I created it for, but for now it lets me get out and get to know people without having to expose too much of my controversial core self. I guess, in the social heirarchy, it is a privilage for which I should be somewhat appreciative.
One more ditty - I know a guy that was driving around town pulling another car all the time.
I asked him why he alway has another car behind his car.
"Oh, this is my wife's car."
"Where's your car?"
"Mine is the one I am towing."
"Why are your towing it?"
"It has a chemical imbalance. I need to get it treated but for now I'll just tow it."
So I went to see his wife, to learn more about this odd situation.
"What's wrong with your husband's car?"
"Its out of gas."
Posted by bob on May 10, 2000, at 21:22:58
In reply to Re: boBB back.........., posted by boBB on May 10, 2000, at 20:46:37
> When I die, you can all eat little pieces of bread and sip red wine and call it my body every Sunday as an anti-depressant!
>
> Oops, messiah complex coming through. Or do they call that dillusions of grandeur?Well, maybe dilutions of grandeur would be more helpful if you were going to pass yourself around ...
;^)
bob
Posted by Brenda on May 10, 2000, at 21:23:23
In reply to Re: boBB back.........., posted by boBB on May 10, 2000, at 20:46:37
>
Wow boBB - That was quite a mouthful - and thought provoking. I lived on a commune in Hawaii and another in Nevada in my younger years. Is this similar to what you're referring to "getting back to a placid lifestyle" sans society (sic). It was pretty cool at the time (mid 70's), though I don't really think it's possible now. My husband has a young nephew desperately seeking the lifestyle I once had and he can't find it. I really don't think it's out there anymore. I believe its a spiritual craving for some kind of harmony within ourselves.
Also, when I had a high pressure, high profile, human resources job I was exhausted and drained most of the time. Now that I work by myself and for myself that's all changed. Too much people contact drains the life out of me.
Be well - Brenda
When I die, you can all eat little pieces of bread and sip red wine and call it my body every Sunday as an anti-depressant!
>
> Oops, messiah complex coming through. Or do they call that dillusions of grandeur?
>
> Maybe I am a bit egomaniacal, me loving having my own "we want you" thread. I liked Cindy W's "Love equals______" post about the tree frog. I'm impressed.
>
> For efficiency sake, I'll confine today's babble to this thread rather than comment in each thread that stirred some kind of response in my mind...
> I was thinking on Brenda's suggestion that maybe it is the depression that causes me to isolate. Seeing as how Dr. Bob is kind enough to share his server with us, I really try not to be too dogmatic with dismissing the medical model, and the possibility that some of us are born with genetic conditions that effect our mood, or that we develop chemical "imbalances" that are best treated w/ designer meds. But I am pretty confident my personal isolation (I have a quite public life, professionally) is a result of my value system that does not coincide with the values of a dominant society. The best similarity I can easily bring to mind regarding the way I live is like a "sleeper" in the spy world - a person deployed into an unfriendly territory to live unnoticed among the people there until some mission requires their duty. These people (I've heard - never knew one, or knowingly knew one, if I did) seem to survive for many years in a contrary ideological environment, but survive because of the hope of returning home some day.
>
> Well, as Dire Straits sings in Brothers in Arms, "these mist covered mountains, are a home now to me. But my home is the lowlands, and it always will be... someday we'll return to our valleys and our farms, and no longer burn to be brothers in arms." Except, reaching middle age now, I have little hope of ever returning to the natural, earth based way of life I longed for as a young man. I might get lucky, but the ambition is gone. I was always torn between the need to get a placid home for myself and the sense that, to keep such a home, one would have to be available for everyone who has such a longing. Now, I spend my time in a quiet army, my only real ambition in life to eventually (maybe in another 500 years) make that accessible to whoever wants to live that way. But my day-to-day life has come to revolve around developing the skills of psychological warfare. That is why I gravitated into writing - not because I had a degree - I quit high school and bummed for many years.
>
> I am lucky because I have a well-formed sense of what I long for. I have little hope of finding it, but I have learned to live without and to sustain myself, as best I can, with whatever temporal satisfaction I can find that does not too severely violate my core values. I can see how others, perhaps who never enjoyed the opportunity of living among tribal people and learning to live in "two worlds", and who never reached a clear picture in their own minds of what they would like the world to be, or that never thought they had the right to help direct big things, like culture and society, I can see how lost and frustrated that can leave a person.
>
>
> Well, I also agree with Janice that this is a tough genre of writing, this internet board dialogue, because what we say can be interpreted in many ways. I write on-line usually, so the litte frame doesn't allow me to view my prose in its own context. The edit function is great, compared to some other sites, but even then, it requires back-tracking, which hampers the thought process.
>
> Anyway, in this culture, with TV and consumer goods and career expectations, we are expected to repress our feelings. We watch murder and mayhem on TV and never react. We emote over love relations that are nothing more than a dazzling array of lights with which we cannot interact. We are expected to make things better for ourselves, but somebody else, who we elected, or who was smart enough to inherit a multi-national company is supposed to decide about the big things, like whether we need a consumer society to maintain industrial/military world domination.
>
> I can't hard-sell my fragile life plan any more than I can tolerate the hard-selling of licensed pdrugs, (Damn, those anti-anxiety drug commercials piss me off! maybe I am a bit to anxious?). I encourage people to think about, not how they feel about themselves, but the way they feel about their culture and their society. Psychiatry and clinical psychology circa 2000 tend to presume society is normanative and it is a measure of health how well we fit in. I differ. I see as a measure of health our ability to critique society, and a measure of personal strenght the willingness to sacrifice our personal mental comfort for the benifit of an unorganized collective that includes more than just human life.
>
> My best friends invoke a metaphor of pushing a giant ball up a steep hill. If we push with all our might for all our lives and move that ball just a little, it was worth it. Soldiers die in battle defending one stupid little foxhole that is lost the next day and filled in and plowed for bloodstained crops the next year. Their actions are considered heroic.
>
> One final thing - I was ridiculing myself for being a writer. Carpentry was a bit more honest and healthy profession. Most of what we do as journalists is to craft cute little stories that make people feel like everything is normal. Even the hard news- murder and crime- has a normalizing effect. I got into the line of work to have more than that kind of effect - to make a real difference. I changed jobs since then, and gained skills and respectability but lost much of the opportunity i had several years ago to make a more direct and specific impact. Maybe someday I will use this skill group for what I created it for, but for now it lets me get out and get to know people without having to expose too much of my controversial core self. I guess, in the social heirarchy, it is a privilage for which I should be somewhat appreciative.
>
> One more ditty - I know a guy that was driving around town pulling another car all the time.
> I asked him why he alway has another car behind his car.
> "Oh, this is my wife's car."
> "Where's your car?"
> "Mine is the one I am towing."
> "Why are your towing it?"
> "It has a chemical imbalance. I need to get it treated but for now I'll just tow it."
> So I went to see his wife, to learn more about this odd situation.
> "What's wrong with your husband's car?"
> "Its out of gas."
This is the end of the thread.
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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
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