Tie Me Kangaroo Down

This was my favorite song as a kid. My friend Max respun it for me.

Rolf Harris – Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport – Max’s Mix 2008

Educating Autistics

Asperger’s dropped from revised diagnosis manual | General Headlines | Comcast
xfinity.comcast.net

Asperger’s will be dropped from the next revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the book that standardizes diagnostic criteria for mental illness.

Brilliant. By eliminating an autism spectrum, the psychiatrists will be encouraging discrimination against “Aspies” (their word for themselves) who have higher IQs and marginally better social skills, i.e. are more capable of working.

All in all, it’s looking as if the DSM-V is categorizing the mentally ill by the DRUGS used to treat their illness. Dangerous.

It’s not that Aspies are at risk losing services, it’s that in order to get services they are at risk being treated – both in the medical and the social sense – as if they are sicker than you really are.

Simplify, Leslie… I mean the high-functioning autistics will have to prove every day that they are indeed high-functioning. Autism is not one-size-fits-all. I suspect, however, that the Aspergers diagnosis was invented when the shrinks realized that they could throw a net over shy, introverted children who are technically inclined. In the old days we called them “geeks.”

The DSM-V also gets rid of pediatric bipolar disorder, or so I’ve been told. It took YEARS for the shrinks to admit that some children were experiencing psychotic manias from the stimulants given to children with ADHD because they didn’t have ADHD! The seminal book on the topic is The Bipolar Child: The Definitive and Reassuring Guide to Childhood’s Most Misunderstood Disorder, Third Edition

Another thing that is STILL missing is an anosognosia specifier. It is my nightmare to be trying to convince some evil bastard that I am not insane.

Anosognosia means you are unaware that you are exhibiting the symptoms of your illness. Self-awareness, i.e. the ability to be objective about yourself, isn’t a guaranteed just because you’re human, but when a mentally ill person doesn’t have it, they can get in extra trouble.

The DSM-IV has specifiers for “last episode depressive” or “with psychosis” but there isn’t one for “painfully aware that she is batshit insane.”

It’s not enough to stay calm and not talk about space aliens. The powers-that-be ASSUME you’ll be on your best behavior. Once on a psych ward even a sane person would be hard-pressed to get back out. There was an experiment a few years ago in which psych grad students feigned hearing voices to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Once in, they behaved normally and tried to be released. In all cases the students had to submit to the will of their captors and admit they were mentally ill before being allowed to leave.

“The uniform failure to recognize sanity cannot be attributed to the quality of the hospitals, for, although there were considerable variations among them, several are considered excellent. Nor can it be alleged that there was simply not enough time to observe the pseudopatients. Length of hospitalization ranged from 7 to 52 days, with an average of 19 days. The pseudopatients were not, in fact, carefully observed, but this failure speaks more to traditions within psychiatric hospitals than to lack of opportunity.”
http://psychrights.org/articles/rosenham.htm

Anyway, back to autism. Aspergers have poor social skills. However, they are often brilliant in other areas. My fear is that Apergers will get thrown into social skills classes, never taught math and science, and held back by a curriculum intended for severely impaired students. You know, because autistics are usually not very intelligent.

Dr. Temple Grandin has some strong opinions about educating autistic children.

She is autistic herself and has a PhD in Animal Husbandry. She is probably the number one designer of humane slaughterhouses due in part to the fact that she thinks in pictures rather than in words. I draw the line before “because she thinks like an animal.” The powers-that-be love to say that autistics are like animals, a statement that is always used to dehumanize and to justify abuse.

Dr. Grandin’s book Thinking in Pictures, Expanded Edition: My Life with Autism is enlightening. Ms. Grandin is unable to conceptualize an abstraction such as long-term goals, so she concretized with the metaphor of a flight of stairs leading to a door that represented the goal of graduation.

Dr. Grandin has written a number of excellent books on the topic of educating autistics, including one called Developing Talents: Careers for Individuals with Asperger Syndrome and High-Functioning Autism.

All-in-all Dr. Grandin has made some startling statements about how autistic children are being mishandled in our schools. The powers-that-be think they know better than her. After all, autistics think like animals. :-(

Goodbye, Dewey Decimal

I’ve discovered that the Dewey Decimal System is too exact for what I am doing here. I’ll be changing the categories to something simpler and deleting some tags too.

Epiphanies


Cthulhu: Genetic risk and stressful early infancy join to increase risk for schizophrenia
Me: Dr. Fuller Torrey says schizophrenia caused by cat shit. Pfffft!
Cthulhu: Ah, the Toxoplasmosis link? Yeah, I’m a little wary about that myself. I’d have to see more data on that published than has been.
Me: Empirical data shows that sometimes antipsychotics work. Therefore antipsychotics must kill T. gondii. So UNSCIENTIFIC.
Me: Same prevalence of T.gondii in Europeans but less schizo. Sad part is, this doc the head of a major bipolar research org.
Me: I think it turns people into cat ladies. LOL!!
Cthulhu: Yes, that does reek of pseudoscience. It reminds me of quack claims of the “one cause of all disease.”

GOD CREAT DISEASE

Me: There was graffiti on a bridge abutment that stayed for YEARS. “God creat disease.”
Me: Some bitter old drunk thought he was being profound. “God creat disease.”
Cthulhu: I think one of humankind’s greatest faults is the tendency to overestimate ourselves, especially our deepitudinosity of thought.
Me: The odd thing was, after they removed the graffiti the words stayed with us.
Cthulhu: Hmmm.
Me: Hmmmmmmmmm….
Me: Truthfully, read Alan Watts “The Value of Psychotic Experience.” Medicate a spiritual crisis?
Cthulhu: I remember having an epiphany of sorts myself in 2007, I thought about my own mortality for months, then accepted it afterward.
Me: I confronted that one in 1979, AND it can be unexpected, AND fairness does not apply.
Cthulhu: Agreed. Mine happened after an accident I had. I remember thinking for days afterwards while recovering.
Cthulhu: After I looked the Reaper in her bony eye-sockets that first time, I thought, “Sorry dudette. We dance some other time, not now.”
Cthulhu: “Dudette”… What a weird thing to call death, but also weird how unfrightening it seemed at the time.
Cthulhu: I decided that I had no inclination to go back to theism, even afterward, since I now think eternal life conceptually horrific.
Cthulhu: At some point, whether 100 years, 1,000 years, or 10,000 years, I’d just want it all to end.”
Me: Sorry, eternal life is obligatory. Here’s your harp.

breastbone harp

Harp

Me: You might get a kick out of this. Need to focus and end it with another mind parasite.
Me: Hmmm, that shit would make a great opener for a really scary book.
Me: Mine was after an accident. Had closed head trauma. When you aren’t sure you’ll survive the night you come to terms with things.
Me: Oh, right, yes. Went to the ER and they wouldn’t see me because I didn’t have insurance. Now even the irresponsible get treated.
Me: That, and was tripping when I was in the accident. (I was in the bed of a pickup.) So I had several hours to go when I got home.
Me: In the space of a year I had 3 concussions. The accident one left me with a migraine that subsided after a month and visual effects that didn’t. I think they are called scotoma. They come and go, usually when I’m tired.
Me: They have certain uses but I don’t want to get into it right now.
Cthulhu: After the thing in 2007, I started reading Sagan a lot, especially “Billions & Billions.” & “Varieties of Scientific Experience.”
Me: In 1980 I was in an accident that left me with a vicious migraine for a month, and occasionally thereafter and that’s when I discovered Sagan at the local library. I didn’t get to see all of the TV show because I didn’t have a TV.
Me: Or I had one but it wasn’t working. Or something. I just gave away a couple of his books but I see at least one on the shelf.
Me: I thought it bizarre that his spaceship looked like a dandelion?
Cthulhu: Cosmos! That show was so cool, and though some of the science is dated, much is still valid.
Me: I like that science is self-correcting.

 

Photo Credits:
Flower Power

Source
Flickr
Author
anomalous4

Death Panels

Your private insurance company decides when you die, not the government.

Lamento Di Arianna by Monteverdi


Lamento Di Arianna by Monteverdi (1608)

Arianna has been abandoned, left to die on the island of Naxos by her lover Theseus. Arianna’s despair is conveyed most eloquently. The opera itself has been lost to time but this achingly beautiful aria has survived and is still performed.

This lament reshaped the nascent genre of opera to include more emotion in the music. It is said that Monteverdi had experienced personal tragedies whose deep pain was his muse.

Turn back, my Theseus
turn back Theseus, oh God!
Turn back to gaze on her
who abandoned
her country and kingdom just for you,
and who will leave her bare bones
on these sands as food for fierce and merciless animals.

TFTD: Demons


When life gives you demons, make demonade.

Mouse Song

Male mice sing ultrasonic songs. I’d like to hear them.

Singing Mice, Songbirds, and More: Models for FOXP2 Function and Dysfunction in Human Speech and Language

Although the most widely appreciated vocalizations of mice are audible, it has been known for several decades that mice and other rodents also vocalize at ultrasonic frequencies. In the Holy laboratory, we recorded and analyzed the vocalizations of a sizable population of adult males. When the recordings were computationally shifted into the range of human hearing, these vocalizations were found to be subjectively reminiscent of bird songs.

Photo credit:
hello!
Source Flickr
Author patries71

“middle income” vs. “the middle class”

void57

Romney says “middle income,” $200K-250K.
Obama says “the middle class,” $19K to $91K.

They aren’t even speaking the same language!

[Source]

TFTD: Shark Week

 

Live every week like it’s shark week.
 

Photo credit:

Source: Flickr

Author: WIlly Volk

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