A final note about mad and insane

My husband, when talking about insanity, likes to define a person suffering from insanity as someone who will perform an exact action or series of actions over and over again, but expects different results from these actions each time. And often can't comprehend why the actions aren't producing a different result.
(He's a gamer, so these are the kinds of things he thinks about.)
Much like me, hitting ctrl+s and always being surprised when the blog uploads what I've written, whether I'm ready to upload it or not.
Moving on.
Mad scientists will often change their method to acheive the desired result. (World domination, a city of mindless zombie slaves, a counter clerk at the local fast food chain who isn't so brain washed by the corporate machine that when you say you don't want a super size, you just need to satisfy the shameful urge for beef fat fried potato products, the clerk actually lets you move on with your day instead of trying to persuade you in a less than enthusiastic droidal tone that 'it's only 25 cents more to super size and get an annoyingly cloying milk fat shake to go with that'.)
Take the Brain; his one goal is to take over the world. Every night he tries, but every night he tries something different. This is not to say that the Brain ever has anything more than limited success in his plans, but he does not attempt to take over the world using the same actions night after night. When something doesn't work he notes it and moves on. And he is always thinking, "Are you pondering what I'm pondering?"
Oppenheimer found himself at a profound turning point when, at the detonation of the atomic bomb in the Trinity test, he recalled thinking "Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds," a line from line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form. (By the way, I love Wikipedia. No matter the sometimes unreliable nature of it.)If that doesn't change your method, nothing will.

So, madness is further separated from insanity in that the person afflicted with madness will change his or her method. Whether it's for the better or worse is often an unknown until the results are in.

As I explore the mad scientific method further I feel it is appropriate to choose a mad scientist persona. This will go no further than a name, most likely, because I find that I don't do many mad things. I drive safely, I cook the chicken to the correct temperature, I let my cats live like cats rather than trying to elevate them to positions that only those with thumbs can dream about. (Secretary, waste management supervisor, Las Vegas entertainer.) This means that step one of the scientific method will have to wait a bit.

Hey, these things take time. Go read the NYT for the next week if you're itching for something else. There's plenty of madness there.