Madness and the Chinese
	From: Random <alreed@freeside.scsd.k12.ny.us>

There's a passage in Neal Stephanson's /The Diamond Age, Or A Young Lady's
Illustrated Primer/, an excellent sf book if you like that sort of thing,
in which Stephanson describes how it a Chinese traditon that the mad and
the old are to be respected, even revered...if a soldier from an opposite
side walked into a Chinese encampment, he would be accepted, even fed, in
reverence to his madness...this as you know is true all over the
world...most cities are just collections of the encampments of various
wars...I mean, if you mumble to yourself on the bus, or hug strangers, or
whatever you have to do, hey, you get your own seat...you get let in
places you could never gain entry to if sane...you are perceived as
harmless, and so you have access to higher information, like Cheif Bromden
in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest....old formula, nu? 
The big question is, do we as Malks alter our perception or do we alter
the percepted? and what are the implications if we discover that it
doesn't matter which?
-random "why don't we try that argument on the Tremere library-keepers,
eh?" reed