I am told I am “sick,” that I am “disabled,” that I am “abnormal” and that a cure is being searched for for my “condition” and others who suffer from it[Read More]
Guest on 03/24/10 | No Comments | Read More
your dreams will be reduced down to breathing, and you will be grateful
The thing about not-being-a-person is:
They will say those people and the price of being a person is to nod and agree that yes, those people aren’t people at all.
They will have no idea who they are talking to.
You yourself will start to forget, too.
They will say a million small things that sow the seeds for violence done against you, and you will smile and let them.
You will do math, constantly.
How much do I want to be a person today? How much do I want this …
...[Read More]Julia Bascom on 03/5/12 | 2 Comments | Read More
That I might have featured Asperger’s when I was young never crossed my mind until this year. I’d been studying autism for 12 years. Working for 12 years with the thesis that testosterone inform[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 03/22/10 | 2 Comments | Read More
Rainbows End (a landscape model of autism)
I am not a scientist; indeed like Moliere’s Monsieur Jourdain I only recently discovered that I have been a Whorfian [1] relativist all my life. I am in a sense a consumer of numerous scientifi[Read More]
Guest on 03/22/10 | No Comments | Read More
Quiet Desperation and the Larger Picture
It’s an odd business, blogging for a constituency that’s not only unaware that you exist and are writing for and about them, but also unaware that they exist and are many enough to make up a const[Read More]
Mark Stairwalt on 03/19/10 | 4 Comments | Read More
Melting Down an Autism Stereotype
By now, I expect we’ve all seen plenty of articles, books, and other media depicting the “autistic meltdown,” wherein a slight change in routine supposedly triggers some kind of mass[Read More]
Guest on 03/18/10 | 2 Comments | Read More
Language, Rhetoric, and Expression: There’s Power There
Recently, Kowalski posed the question, “So you really think you’re smarter than Jenny McCarthy?” in response to some parents venting on a facebook thread about the McCarthy article over at Huff.[Read More]
KWombles on 03/17/10 | 2 Comments | Read More
Mark Stairwalt, one of the editors over at Shift Journal wrote an article (about me, or a previous post of mine), and brought up something I’ve been meaning to write about. He writes: ̶[Read More]
Clay on 03/15/10 | 4 Comments | Read More
… It’s Hard to Remember Your Original Objective Was to Drain the Swamp
(continued from When You’re Up to Your A** in Alligators) With that in mind then, how to make full and best use of a site like Shift Journal? Actually a tiny, excellent example happened just thi[Read More]
Mark Stairwalt on 03/12/10 | 4 Comments | Read More
When You’re Up to Your A** in Alligators …
One thing I’ve kept an eye on over the six months since Shift Journal launched has been, “What can we be doing here that isn’t already being done well elsewhere?” Last weekend KWombles and I e[Read More]
Mark Stairwalt on 03/12/10 | 2 Comments | Read More
I am fascinated by the relationship the autistic have with music and rhythm. There is evidence that when language is tied to melody, it is easier for many with autism to absorb the words. The autist[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 03/10/10 | 1 Comment | Read More
I’d been studying Asperger’s and autism in connection to human evolution for maybe ten years before it dawned on me, after reading Michael Fitzgerald’s Autism and Creativity, that Asperger’s w[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 03/8/10 | 4 Comments | Read More
Sometimes I ask for feedback on pieces I’ve written before I post them, and sometimes I’m lucky enough to get a reply that’s in itself more compelling than what I’d intended to post in the fir[Read More]
Mark Stairwalt on 03/5/10 | 2 Comments | Read More
Diversity and Inclusion: How Society Fails Us All, How We Fail Ourselves
Leave aside for the moment your immediate foray into divisions, into the ideas of a neurodiversity movement. Leave aside for a moment the split into camps of curing and not curing, the false dichotom[Read More]
KWombles on 03/3/10 | 3 Comments | Read More
How far would you be willing to go for a more attractive and socially pleasing look? Would you choose to sacrifice part of your cognitive functioning, leaving your brain less able to process verbal a[Read More]
Gwen McKay on 03/1/10 | No Comments | Read More
Fellow contributor Clay is happily bemused this week over at Comet’s Corner, reflecting on his recent release from some of the lifelong difficulties that finally led to his late-life diagnosis of au[Read More]
Mark Stairwalt on 02/26/10 | 7 Comments | Read More
We all do it, to some extent anyway. Whether we’re neurotypical or neurodiverse, we find it easier to say things that we’ve already said. When President Obama gives a speech, I’m s[Read More]
Light moves at a speed of 186,000 miles per second. Speed as a concept is also integral to biology. I hypothesize that the speed with which information passes between the two cerebral hemispheres im[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 02/24/10 | 3 Comments | Read More
There is this thesis that I’ve been playing with. Like the experience physics theorists have described, it seems too beautiful to not be true. Nevertheless, Stephen J. Gould has described the trap[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 02/22/10 | No Comments | Read More
Covert Ops in Autistic Self-Advocacy
Pandemic autism that’s hidden in plain sight, an autistic spectrum populated overwhelmingly by undiagnosed fellow travelers and autistics-in-hiding—if this is an accurate description of autism’s[Read More]
Mark Stairwalt on 02/19/10 | 5 Comments | Read More
Autism, Diet and Sexual Hormones
I’m still trying to grasp the concept that testosterone and estrogen and their associated hormones are together managing ontological, social and biological evolution by adjusting to changes in the e[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 02/18/10 | No Comments | Read More
Autism and Societal Individualism
There is a paradox I’m trying to tease out here having to do with raising a child when we as a species were still largely lodged in primary process, the way an unconscious or dream self thinks, [Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 02/17/10 | No Comments | Read More
Here’s a link to an excellent PBS Nova show I saw the other night. It’s nearly 2 hours long, 1 hr 51 min, but I hope those who are interested will find time today or over the long weekend[Read More]
Clay on 02/15/10 | No Comments | Read More
I’ve never been able to take in the big picture at family reunions. Between the carnival of overstimulation that comes with all that social interaction, and being the odd neurology out as an adopte[Read More]
Mark Stairwalt on 02/12/10 | 1 Comment | Read More
Creoles, Aboriginal Identity and Autism
… I might suggest that particularly ancient aboriginal societies, matrifocal cultures, for example, might display earlier stages of biological/neurological/hormonal evolution. If those particul[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 02/11/10 | No Comments | Read More
On page 575 of the May 1 issue of Science there is an article, “Africans’ Deep Genetic roots Reveal Their Evolutionary Story.” Examining the blood of 3,194 Africans from 113 populations, researc[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 02/9/10 | 2 Comments | Read More
Open Letter to Joel Johnson (Gizmodo)
Hi Joel – I’ve waited twelve years now to see the word “autistic” begin to come out of the closet in the tech world, but your otherwise dead-on post the other day about “iPad Snivelers” wa[Read More]
Mark Stairwalt on 02/6/10 | No Comments | Read More
Rich Shull: HBO Temple Grandin Special
Rich Shull writes with an intensity that befits a man struggling to whittle a rapid-fire slide show of thousand-word pictures down to a sentence or two at a time. Mr. Shull is a part of a longstanding[Read More]
Mark Stairwalt on 02/5/10 | 3 Comments | Read More
Corpus Callosums, Autism & Aboriginals
Regarding autism, I’ve hypothesized that the autistic brain is an ancient brain primed for aesthetic manipulation/appreciation with a larger brain size and larger hemispheric bridge having evolved a[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 02/3/10 | No Comments | Read More
Autism, Asperger’s, and Chicken Broth
Anyone who has been in the online “autism community” for any length of time, whether they’re autistics or parents, knows that there is a sort of person who trolls autistic advocates&[Read More]
Clay on 02/2/10 | No Comments | Read More
Emergence of a Universal Language
There is a phenomenon in linguistics where language complexity is directly related to how isolated a particular language is from its neighbors. A new language is difficult to learn for adults. When [Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 02/1/10 | 1 Comment | Read More
