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The Washington Post brings to our attention David T. Fagan, father of eight and author of Guerrilla Parenting. (link) There are people you disagree with, but respect or like. There are others who share many opinions with you, yet still irritate you. I see value in how Fagan describes the rearing of his children: instilling self-reliance and industry, willingness to chart an independent path, not idolizing formal education, but he annoys me, and the most compact explanation why is that he is a salesman.

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For a couple years I had an office at UCLA in a building called Engineering IV, a much nicer building than the utilitarian name might imply. My office and those of most I dealt with were on the fourth floor, but many mornings I would first ride the elevator up to the fifth floor to look out a large floor-to-ceiling window toward the southwest. Now and then the haze was light enough that I could see the ocean. There were no classrooms or lecture halls in this building, only offices and lab space, but it was a public building on a public university campus, so the hallways were open to the public, and we were told not to kick any strange people out, just call campus security if there was a problem.

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Concussions being the worry du jour, my county now requires all high school athletes to perform a baseline test. CDC helpfully explains, “Baseline tests are used to assess an athlete’s balance and brain function (including learning and memory skills, ability to pay attention or concentrate, and how quickly he or she thinks and solve problems), as well as for the presence of any concussion symptoms. Results from baseline tests (or pre-injury tests) can be used and compared to a similar exam conducted by a health care professional during the season if an athlete has a suspected concussion.”

So, the football and soccer teams were examined last week. And then the cross country, tennis, golf, and volleyball teams. I have no idea in which year or decade the last high school tennis player was knocked out, but when the next one returns a serve with her forehead, she’ll have documented evidence of how much dumber that misfortune will have left her.

According to the Sacramento Bee, “Nevada health officials no longer will send psychiatric patients alone on buses to cities across the county.”

“The Bee’s investigation found that Rawson-Neal [a psychiatric hospital] purchased Greyhound tickets for more than 1,500 patients since July 2008, dispatching people to every state in the continental United States. About a third of those patients were sent to California.

“One of those patients, James Flavy Coy Brown, who suffers from schizophrenia, was discharged in February to a Greyhound bus bound for Sacramento, a place he had never visited and where he knew no one. He said a doctor at Rawson-Neal told him to call 911 when he got to Sacramento.”

Perhaps I should disclose that I rode Greyhound from Las Vegas to California a few times, but in all cases I paid for the ticket myself.