Showing posts with label diagnostic manual. Show all posts
Showing posts with label diagnostic manual. Show all posts

Sunday, December 2, 2012

You've gotta stay on top of these things....

I see the Board of Trustees of the American Psychiatric Association met this weekend and approved several revisions to their diagnostic manual.  Beginning in May when the new manual is published people with "abnormally bad and frequent temper tantrums will be given a scientific-sounding diagnosis called DMDD."  

What was wrong with "PMS"?  How is going from a three-letter acronym to a four-letter acronym considered progress?

Which reminds me of a true story from back in my airshow marshalling days.  For about 20 years my hobby was volunteering at airshows across the country, working with a team of marshallers who were responsible for all the show aircraft moving in and out of the parking ramp.  It was somewhat similar to the tongue-in-cheek definition of combat:  "Hours and hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror."



At one event a few guys from Colorado approached us and asked if we would teach them how to marshall so they could go back and work at some of the smaller airshows in their area.  They were nice guys and we said we would be happy to.  They said they were going to call themselves the "Precision Marshalling Squadron".

In the course of conversation they mentioned they were going to put together some sort of uniform with their group name across the back and initials on their caps...."PMS".   Ummm....guys...

S