[redacted]

@Mcboinkens

Asperger's didn't "come" from anywhere in the sense that it's not a fabricated contrivance, nor is it dismissable as a malfunction of personality. The condition existed long before it was defined, recognised and understood. Parkinson's disease, although entirely unrelated to ASD, also existed well before it was defined in the early 1800s. People can often be found to view Asperger's in a similar way to ADHD; a made-up condition to explain and justify deficient characters. This can always be attributed to shoddy human empathy and solipsism.

The trouble with the autistic spectrum, and Asperger's also, is that it's... Well, a spectrum. The symptoms and their intensity vary enormously between different people and no one, generalized definition seems to work very well. There's often said to be a triad of deficiencies, though; social interaction, communication and creativity.

Your classmate sounds like a fucking jackass. Very gifted? Please. It's true that a number of figures in history have, or may have had, Asperger's or a related condition, but this is incidental. Autistic people often like to exaggerate the "beneficial" consequences of autism as a means of justifying themselves to others. I regard it both as valuable neurodiversity and, in most cases, disability.

Just some advice, though... If your intent is to avoid being disrespectful, you should also be avoiding words like "disease".

But who gives a fuck.

>> ^Stu:

why oh why would someone spend weeks doing this when they could just go outside and play in the sun...


From Wiki:
Asperger syndrome or Asperger's syndrome (English pronunciation: /æspɜrɡɜrz/) is an autism spectrum disorder that is characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction.

Playing in the sun isn't generally a lot of fun by yourself. No more fun then a computer could give you, anyway.

You are such an awesome mum...

In reply to this comment by UsesProzac:
I'm so excited to homeschool my son. I'm not religious at all and don't want to shelter him from that sort of thing in any way; it's fully up to him how he decides to go in that regard. I'm just picky and I have no faith in the school system here in the US. He's a year old and I've been working on teaching him basic sign language for the last six months. It helps a lot in figuring out what he wants and needs.

Social interaction isn't something I'm worried about. It's easy to find groups of like-minded parents to mingle with. There's a slew of athletics and groups to participate in that will easily provide a healthy camaraderie and social skills. Summer camp, specific classes in schools for only a certain part of the day, museums and libraries, etc. Lots of ways to work around it. It takes a lot of effort to meet those needs but for my son, I'm willing to work my ass off to ensure a rich, engrossing education tailored just for him. I won't stifle him and I'll encourage his interests and passions and hopefully, he'll be more ready for college than I was. Or ready to do whatever he loves and be successful at it.

You don't need a teaching degree to know how to impart knowledge and wisdom, to give someone the tools to think and reason and make their own way.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Homeschooling certainly isn't perfect - but then the quality of the teachers in most public schools isn't always shining either.

When we were homeschooling, we found that parents would use other homeschooling parents as "specialist" teachers. One dad, had a love of math and would take the kids for math. One mom was an art major etc etc.

The socialisation thing is always thrown out there - but I think it's crap. Why is throwing 30 kids of the same age into a room supervised by a single adult part of natural socialisation? It's more like Lord of the Flys, with a good chance of bullying and brutality. Traumatic incidents in an environment like this can shut kids' "socialness" down for years into their adulthood.

As humans we've adapted to accept that the status quo is "normal" and the right thing to do - but as the Porgy and Bess devil says ... it ain't necessarily sooo.

>> ^xxovercastxx:

Even with good intentions, homeschooling limits the child. Generally, a home-schooled child will have 1 or 2 "teachers" who will not be trained in teaching methods, nor have expertise in as many areas as a school-full of actual teachers would, if they have any expertise at all.
The child's social interactions will be even more limited than their studies.

I'm so excited to homeschool my son. I'm not religious at all and don't want to shelter him from that sort of thing in any way; it's fully up to him how he decides to go in that regard. I'm just picky and I have no faith in the school system here in the US. He's a year old and I've been working on teaching him basic sign language for the last six months. It helps a lot in figuring out what he wants and needs.

Social interaction isn't something I'm worried about. It's easy to find groups of like-minded parents to mingle with. There's a slew of athletics and groups to participate in that will easily provide a healthy camaraderie and social skills. Summer camp, specific classes in schools for only a certain part of the day, museums and libraries, etc. Lots of ways to work around it. It takes a lot of effort to meet those needs but for my son, I'm willing to work my ass off to ensure a rich, engrossing education tailored just for him. I won't stifle him and I'll encourage his interests and passions and hopefully, he'll be more ready for college than I was. Or ready to do whatever he loves and be successful at it.

You don't need a teaching degree to know how to impart knowledge and wisdom, to give someone the tools to think and reason and make their own way.

Even with good intentions, homeschooling limits the child. Generally, a home-schooled child will have 1 or 2 "teachers" who will not be trained in teaching methods, nor have expertise in as many areas as a school-full of actual teachers would, if they have any expertise at all.

The child's social interactions will be even more limited than their studies.

@blankfist, if you're talking about the history presented in Life, Inc., I think you're misrepresenting it a bit. It wasn't "corporate charters" they invented (as in legally recognized business entities that can own property), but charter corporations, as in the nobility picks a company and makes them a state-sanctioned monopoly.

Basically it's a great liberal thesis of history -- corporations were invented to be tools of the aristocracy, but then the aristocracy became their tools (at which point the corporations became the new, real, aristocracy), and the main way they've kept rebellion to a minimum is through the promotion of the ideology of individualism, selfishness, and viewing society through the lens of the market, all while demonizing unions, sharing, community social interaction, and anything that might lead to collective solidarity at all.

Also, his argument against central currency is essentially that it lowered the barriers on long distance trade too much, and removes the strong incentive for people to make purchases of locally produced goods that they had under the barter system.

He's not talking about Ending the Fed and returning to the gold standard, or even returning to gold coins -- he's talking about ending the concept of legal tender itself. Again, this is not because of a general suspicion of government influence, but because he fears that common currency encourages globalization of our economy, which he sees as a cultural illness.

He's also not an authority on either history or economics. His background is in fine arts, and media.

>> ^westy:

lol so funny how people that really get into wow are totally ignorant of how much of a shit grind it is.
Its so limited and restricted its a joke .

MMORPGS need at least another 10 years of technical development and faster internet before they can even start deliver a sophisticated play experience.
aside from the bullshit in this video , the comping was nice , dragged on quite a while though. would make a nice commercial for the game.


There's no bullshit in this video. You're just ignorant of why Massively Multiplayer ORPGs are so popular. It's about the social interactions. When these people talk about why they play the game, it's about stuff like boss battles with 24 other people, or duels with other players, or gaining recognition in an online community. Nobody plays WOW because of the grinding.

kceaton's basically getting at the fact that our sense of reality is a summation of our sensory input, with noise filtered out, and then combined with our ability to estimate missing information; and simulate the near and far future, based on both logic and experience. You get a good sense of all this from optical illusions.

Each of those components are variable, and there's a lot of dependencies in that which would cause your perception of reality at any given moment to differ if changed.

I think the heart of what he's getting at is that if there are so many variables to create a resolved reality, and which can differ from person to person; can we say there is really a single canonical 'true reality'; or are our experiences a personal and fluctuating abstraction?

It also leaves you to wonder what your identity is. I think many people feel that their identity refers to something real and solid; whereas these considerations show serious flaws in that concept.

I believe the filtering, and simulation parts of that process are what we refer to as 'rationale', and are grounded by empathising with others. That gives us reference points for what is sane, and what is noise. I think that's also what leads to social interactions such as fashions and trends; as well as the ability for groups of people to 'drink the kool-aid' and be irrational together.

Btw, I had schizophrenia between the age of 6 and 10. From this video I can say it was probably far milder than what this little girl is going through. It wasn't a pleasant time in my childhood and it's something I've never shared with anyone. It mostly affected me whenever I felt tired or bored; and always when I was alone. As I had no way to express what was happening and even at that age was aware of how crazy people were treated, I never told anyone. Only at the age of about 17, when reading a psychological thriller novel that happened to be prefaced with a medical description of schizophrenia (rather than crappy Hollywood style split personality portrayals) did I actually realise what I had gone through.

Strangely, and thankfully, it all ended rather suddenly one day when I was about 10. I was alone, and got extremely frustrated and demanded as loud as I could in my head that it stop; then I refused to entertain the thoughts ever again. In the 10 years after I probably felt something like it again on two occasions; both very mild and I just accepted it and it went away in seconds. In the last 10 years I've been completely fine.

/me sharing

This dude makes George Bush look Presidential. WE have only ourselves to blame for electing such dolts..


Dolt-
One who is incapable of rational thought, an organized logic, or reasonable social interaction. Know to those around them as an idiot or stupid. Usually, a dolt will not have the capacity to understand just how stupid they really are and will likely blame others for their failures and inabilities.

Patterns. I'm hooked on patterns. It was interesting while she was saying that she could see the pictures in her head. I can very clearly remember spacial objects, but it is always in relationship with the other objects.

I watched this talk a couple of days ago. It didn't really click until I was watching a show on Hulu while waiting for something. One of the children ends up having aspergers. His dad was talking with him and another boy came by and said hello. The boy with aspergers said nothing in response. His dad scolded him about not saying hi back because the other kid will think that he doesn't care and the aspergers kid just shrugged. It was a flashback to my childhood and how my dad would tell me things on how to fit in with the kids at school. Luckily, I played and was good at sports so I was automatically was part of an"in" group. But it was my dad's constant, yet not pressured, advice that really helped me out. That's when I started learning the patterns of social interaction in order to fit in better so I would be left alone. An uncanny recognition, but easily shrugged off. Later it showed the kid constantly jumping in a puddle. Again and again. When I was 3, I spent about 4 hours hitting a puddle with a stick. I remember it to this day. It was so utter fascinating watching the cause and affect while trying to figure out exactly what was happening. (On a somewhat related note: I think that is why I find Richard Feynman sift so damn interesting. I love seeing the passion and curiosity that existed in him. And also listening to the explanations. Simply wonderful.)

So I don't know if I'm acting like a hypochondriac or if this is real - I'm too close to have real perspective, but I think that warrants further investigation.

Wonderful sift, btw.

pprt - being a feminist does not imply that you "give up your children as soon as they leave the teat"
how about the shift in household attitudes, where dads are now becoming MORE involved with the housework and child rearing than they were 100 years ago. what are the societal impacts on that?? children are still being taken care of. society is structured differently than it was 100 years ago. moms dont have to spend hours making clothing, it doesnt take hours to wash the clothes or the dishes or prepare meals anymore. household responsibilities just dont take as along anymore. and all american children are in school during the day. you cant cling to a century old societal model as your argument and then complain when i call your argument archaic.

p.s. i stayed home with my kids until my son was 3 and a half and ready for more social interaction and montesorri school and my daughter went off to kindergarten. i got a job that allowed me to work only weekends and only in the middle of the night. i spent 5 days a week as a stay at home mom, they spent the night with gramma the nights i was at work then came home for lunch, nap, dinner and bath with mom, then back to spend the night with gramma. not a bad system and i dont think society will suffer for it.

"they're black people, not chimps you racist!11"

this is really more about social interaction than 'human learning'
the kids are intimidated by the foreigner with their 'magic box' and rather obey the directions when the foreigner is right next to them

on a second thought.. i take my joke back.. this IS racist..
why go to africa to do these things?
is it supposed to mean that they're more primitive and more suitable for human study or what?
you could go to your local kindergarten and have a toy with candy
teach a child to instruct the test-child so the tester doesn't feel that the test instructor is at a position of authority toward them

>> ^thepinky:
EDIT: I got the needed nerdy assistance.

Hey, watch those epithets against people who know HTML. After all, comic book nerds might be clueless about them, and it's conceivable that in this day and age cool people might know the basics.

>> ^imstellar28:
thepinky wrote:
"I think that most of us believe that violence against the weak is more wrong than violence against the strong"
I agree with what you are saying, but you are wording it in a misleading way. Its not more wrong because of the inherent "weakness" of each person, it is more wrong because the same act of violence will cause more damage to a weaker person.

I both love and hate how you always present your opinions as if you're explaining the fundamental facts of the universe. I don't disagree with the idea that conflict between unequal parties is inherently unfair, and that when we're talking about violent conflict, the damage can be much, much worse (see the above clip, plus the Iraq wars).

Thing is, I don't think it's correct to call it sexist to feel that male-on-female violence is more wrong. Here's what the scholarly inflatablevagina had to say about the female point of view:

>> ^inflatablevagina:
I think a good thing to think about when viewing this video is how men and women deal with conflict differently. Ask any teenage girl.. more often than not, if you piss off a girl she will attack you emotionally. Guys attack each other physically more often than not. On a certain level we don't expect anyone to get physical with us because, for the most part, we would rather ruin you from the inside out. It can be much more effective.


Much as we're taught to instinctively deny the differences between man and women these days, the truth is that men and women truly have different ways of looking at social interaction. Perhaps that's a product of culture more than biology, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's a mix of both.

I think given the differences between men and women and their approach to conflict resolution, I think the general societal expectation -- sometimes phrased as "real men don't hit women" -- is merely a recognition of the fact that men and women deal with conflict differently. The idea being that when men have a conflict with a woman, they should restrain their impulse to physical violence, since women aren't generally encouraged to have fistfights over disagreements the way men are.

I don't see that as sexist, I see that as a rule of etiquette. Polite men are expected to behave differently in the company of women than they would in the company of men. I don't see anything discriminatory about that at all.

Therefore, it's "more wrong", because you're breaking the rules of social interaction, as well as breaking more fundamental rules like "don't hurt people". I'd still feel that him attacking her was extra wrong, even if she did some cool martial arts move, and knocked him on his ass and hadn't been harmed at all.

I think we should reserve the word sexism for behaviors that treat one sex as being of less value than the other, as opposed to social mores that help the differing cultures of men and women learn to live together in peace.

Saying that men hitting women is "more wrong" because women are naturally weaker seems like the more sexist explanation, even if on average it is true.