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| Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 | | 7:54 pm |
Have you ever heard something so racist, that you weren't even angry?
LOOK HOW FAR WE'VE COME SINCE THE 1930'S AWESOME. Also, I'm sure by now you've heard about that one guy who's opposed to acknowledging the slaves who worked to build the goddamn Capitol Building (btw, did you know: the Capitol building was build by slaves. The statue of freedom, on top of the rotunda? Yup, slaves). Anyways, the Wonkette version of this story has helpfully linked to a neat little history of Steve King (R-Iowa) doing the one thing that Steve King (R-Iowa) does best: being a colossal douchebag. Marvel, as he makes off-hand jokes at the unjustly imprisoned! Wonder, as he argues against healthcare for children! Astonish, at his wall-with-Mexico diorama! | | Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 | | 5:34 pm |
Ability, Autism, and Privilege
So, I realize that I don't talk nearly enough about the whole autism thing here. Or, for that matter, anything much at all. Yeah, my LJ's been pretty quiet lately, but I thought it'd be a good idea to broach this topic. Let me start off with a disclaimer. As a former psych undergrad, and as a health care professional, and as someone who fully intends to pursue a career as a clinician, I am very vehemently pro-science and anti-quackery. And there are very few topics in the medical sciences that attract nearly as many crackpot theories and quack remedies as autism. AIDS is right up there, as well, but one would be hard-pressed to find many others of a similar caliber. We have theories that autism is caused by vaccines, that it's caused by diet, that it can be cured with Lupron. Frankly, the vaccine theory is scary enough, thanks to the consequences of sufficiently widespread vaccine non-compliance it encourages, but Lupron? That one's downright abusive. Now, I do understand why these unsupported hypotheses gain so much traction. Frankly, amongst parents of autistic individuals, wishful thinking abounds. My mother, a dentist, was the consummate scientist, and seldom taken in by the more "out there" hypotheses, but in trying to intellectualize what her experience must have been like (because that's how I compensate, after all), I could see where the appeal might be. I'm a relatively high-functioning specimen- I made it through public school, went away to a top-tier college, and now live with a roommate in New York City. Very impressive for someone on the autism spectrum. And yet, all the same, in my childhood, my mother was faced with the prospect of raising a child (and, we later discovered, two children) that faced some severe challenges, and all while herself being physically disabled single-parent who could no longer practice her trained career. I truly can understand why even to a parent in a considerably better personal situation, the promise of some sort of panacea that would correct their broken child would have some real appeal. I'm not trying to judge, and hope any disability advocates in the audience take my use of the words "broken" and "correct" in the manner intended, because all I'm really saying here is that, to even to a parent in supportive circumstances, and even with a kid that could turn out as high-functioning as I am, I can understand why the promise- any promise- of a miracle cure would have its appeal. It's a lot of work. It promises, for many, to be a life-long struggle, and that diagnosis can completely change the experience of parenting. And that's why junk science gains traction amongst caring families. Now, that said, let me get to the meat of the issue. A lot of ire is directed, from the community of people with autism at organization such as Autism Speaks. Now, once again, I'm strongly anti-quackery, and find the emphasis they place on things like the already-discredited supposed vaccine link disconcerting, to say the least, but that's actually where most of my problem with this group begins and ends. And here's why: I'm better off than most. As I said, I made it through mainstream public school with high marks, and even participated in extracurriculars ranging from county health policy organizations to the football team. Ultimately, I went to a top-tier college, and graduated in four years. I gained a steady job within a year of graduation, and make a good salary for my age, at one of the premier hospitals in the country. In a position that requires me to interact amicably with both physicians and sick, terrified patients. Truth be told, I'm not on a real career path at the moment, and often feel that I'm not living up to my IQ or education, but: this would be a pretty good place to have reached even if I were Neurotypical. And that means something. A lot, really. See, I was on the leading edge of the explosion of new diagnoses. I had Asperger's before it was really cool. And, it's always been an interest of mine as a field of study. So, I learned a while on that most people with autism -heck, even most people with Asperger's Syndrome- aren't quite as successful at compensating as I have become through some accident of my circumstances. Add to this that my mother had the time and determination to devote to learning everything she could and advocating as strongly as humanly possible on my behalf, and I think it's safe to say that I had a lot of advantages going forward that many people that share my diagnosis or others on the spectrum do not have. I think that is important to acknowledge. Do I, personally, wish for my AS to be "cured"? Of course not. However: it's important to acknowledge that not everyone is in my situation. In fact, I think it safe to say that the autism spectrum at large does not solely comprise those members of the "autism community" that are largely self-sufficient and able to interact meaningfully with other individuals on the spectrum in Internet message boards. We're pretty obviously talking about the top 10% or so of functionality there. Furthermore, let's be perfectly frank here: a non-crackpot, non-quack cure for autism is really going to look more like the therapeutic version of what I stumbled upon by accident in adolescence -the equivalent of an intense behavioral-cognitive therapy- and perhaps, in some cases, psychopharmacology. We're not talking gene therapy, we're not talking about identifying an "autism gene", even- most population research to date suggests that autism's genetic basis is far too complex for that. And we're definitely not talking something like Lupron, realistically. Why is this important? Because this debate -neurodiversity on one side, and the search for an effective treatment, on the other- is one echoed in every disability community out there. Blindness, Deafness, Parapalegia... each and everyone one of them has a community that believes that there is a culture worth preserving in those disabilities, and efforts to mitigate the disability by treating it are efforts to undermine and destroy that culture. Further, they often look askance at parents that choose to go that direction for their children. Now, as this relates to autism, there are some interesting wrinkles. Obviously, high functioning autism, being a neurological disorder, can certainly make a stronger claim to a distinct culture than most other disabilities*. On the other hand, though, there's a pretty huge segment of the autism community that is effectively incapable of self-advocacy on this, or any subject. Which actually leads me to my main point. I suspect, that "disability community" advocates are unwittingly exercising a form of privilege. Or rather, several forms. For other disabilities, I suspect that these are more conventional forms of privilege. If you're wealthy and well-supported enough to afford to write a memoir or give lectures or create art unique to your disability, you're really only advocating on behalf of others who have that particular set of social and economic advantages. If you're wealthy and well-supported enough for corrective surgery to be an option for you, let alone an option you can afford to reject, you can hardly claim to be advocating on behalf of everyone who lives with your disability. With autism, once again, it's a bit different. These forms of privilege certainly exist- it's doubtful an autistic kid in, say, Harlem or the South Bronx will even get a diagnosis, let alone something resembling an effective treatment. And if a panacea cure really were found, it's doubtful that parents like my mother- single, low-income, disabled parents already struggling to keep their families fed- would think twice about it. Even beyond that, though, the members of "autism community" that are self-advocating in this manner also share an Ability privilege. We are not- cannot be- capable of advocating on behalf of all people with autism, only the very high-functioning few. I imagine that enforcing the notion of neurodiversity, while a nice picture, means something very different to those of us who are nonverbal, and I, at least, hesitate to try to speak for them. I wrote a paper on this subject, way back in my freshman year of college. I had just read Temple Grandon's book, and found extreme differences between my experiences and what she had described, in general terms, of being common amongst all high-functioning autistics. Recalling the warning my professor had given us all at the beginning of Abnormal, I coined a new term- " Reverse Med Student Syndrome", whereby, because you have a particular condition, you assume that everyone else with the same condition experiences it in exactly the same manner as you do. The thing is, though, they don't. And, the autism community -ironically enough, one where our particular neurodifferences lend themselves to our making these assumptions more often- is also one where the diversity of our profiles makes these assumptions all the more pernicious. *At least, to the extent that high-functioning autistics can necessarily stand to be around each other- as a bit of an admission, I find adult males with AS to be fucking intolerable as often as not. Oddly enough, though, I do get along with probable-Aspie women quite well. But, that's another topic for another post. | | Wednesday, June 10th, 2009 | | 3:12 pm |
I really can't help but note that Newt and Huck are apparently reading a vastly different Declaration of Independence, if they managed to surmise that the US is special because it was "founded with God's blessing". Let's go to the video tape, or in this case, umm, parchment: ( Cut for those who have actually read the Declaration, rather than spouting off on it without knowing what they're talking about )Now, Newt's claim is that the first line in the first paragraph, this one: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.means that in the US, and the US alone, citizenship starts with a Creator. Now, there are a few rather odd things about this claim. First, I sincerely doubt that theocracies such as Iran don't ensrine even more overt connections to a Creator than this particular line. Even if the US were a Christian theocracy in this particular manner, that simply puts it on equal footing with every other theocracy in the world. Christianity is hardly the only religion in the world with a Creator, or even the only one that claims loudly to be the One True Faith, and also posesses omnipotent Creator. Second, Newt invoked this specifically in response to Obama's (and, incidentally, also Reagan's) self-reference as a citizen both of America and of the world. Newt goes on to say that he is not a citizen of the world, because Americans are special and non-Americans are not. The only problem? That line he's referencing. that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. Guess what they were saying? In this world? We're all created equal, nationhood (or in this case, extra-national colonial status) be damned. Third, nothing about that particular line actually says anything about citizenship or particular Governments. This is perhaps partially because this was a declaration of war, not the founding document of a nation, and nobody could say with certainty what sort of government America would eventually have. Instead, that particular line is a reference to natural human rights. In order to find a the first reference to where governments and citizenship comes in, we have to jump to the very next sentence, which reads, --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,In other words, while natural human rights may be god-given and all that wonderful deistic stuff, but governments and nations are products of man, not God. As a point of fact, I'm pretty this means that Newt and Huck's commentary, if they actually agree with the founding fathers on this point, amounts to lifting the works of man over those of God, and could be accurately termed as tantamount to the worship of graven images. Oops. Current Mood:  bloggy | | Monday, April 27th, 2009 | | 9:17 pm |
| | Tuesday, February 17th, 2009 | | 2:50 pm |
Circuit City is going out of business and has great sales. I bought a camera for my trip, and also Guitar Hero, which was 50% off. I need to convince ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) crystalpyramidto save me a second trip by going down there to stock up on ink cartridges. Relatedly, I *really* need to focus on packing. Maybe GH wasn't the best choice. | | Friday, January 30th, 2009 | | 1:18 pm |
On Politics
I have to admit, the House stimulus vote was kinda hilarious. Basically, Obama's talk of "bipartisanship", as far as I can determine, was a way of saying, "play ball with us, and we'll pretend that your input in this process still matters and we still need to make concessions to you for some reason." In essence, House Repubs just guranteeed their own irrelevance to anything that happens the next 8 years. I know that the House Repubs largely tend to comprise the Limbaugh-watching, right-wing fringe of the Republican party, but this particular move takes takes a considerable amount of political tone-deafness. Even if they're expecting the stimulus package to be in effective, it's an incredably risk bet to make that the economy won't look any better when they're up for re-election, even if this stimulus package were to fail to be the prime mover in that regard. | | Monday, January 19th, 2009 | | 11:16 pm |
12 Hours, 45 minutes. And counting. | | Tuesday, January 6th, 2009 | | 9:23 pm |
Normally when I'm feeling particularly misanthropic, House ends up making me feel better. Albeit still misanthropic. However, tonight's episode didn't really cut it. The solution, therefore? More House, on USA. Yay for DirecTV! Current Mood:  didnt I just say misanthroic? | | Monday, December 29th, 2008 | | 9:13 pm |
Another observation:
Now that I'm the proud owner of a(n admittedly sucky) laptop with a (considerably less sucky) wireless card, I can computer *while* watching TV! Whooppie! Current Mood:  accomplished | | Thursday, December 25th, 2008 | | 8:14 pm |
Happy holidays, everyone!
An observation: A bottle of wine + House, MD drinking game + holiday House marathon on USA = mumbly_joe melting out of his seat at 8 PM. Hope everyone else is having a good holiday, as well! Current Mood: tipsy | | Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 | | 11:23 pm |
| | Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 | | 2:05 pm |
Obligatory Prop 8 post
My maternal grandfather is about to turn 80. He and my grandmother met in the early 40's and my mother, their daughter, was born in 1953. My father, approximately 7 years her senior, was born overseas, in recently-liberated Germany, the child of an unknown serviceman and a German woman. At a young age, he was adopted by an army family and brought to the states. So, some of you who know me in real life may have already made the connection, but the rest of you are probably wondering right about now, "What does any of that have to do with Prop 8 passing in California?" Well, here it is: ( Read more... ) Current Mood:  angryCurrent Music: Bittersweet Symphony | | Tuesday, November 4th, 2008 | | 11:24 pm |
Don't get me wrong
I'm very, very, happy about Obama's successful bid for the presidency. But, I'm downright ecstatic about this. | | 9:38 pm |
Election over. We win.
With Ohio, Obama just needs to carry the rest of the Kerry states. NC, VA, NV, NM, and the others are just gravy, assuming he holds the West Coast. Congratulations, President-Elect Obama. ETA: Well, there are still those ballot initiatives and local races. Current Mood:  elated | | 5:52 pm |
Does anyone know how in the hell I can follow a local state senate election? Or do I just have to find an online local paper with the results listed tomorrow morning? | | Wednesday, October 29th, 2008 | | 8:42 pm |
John McCain and "Growing your wealth": Be afraid. Very Afraid
It's almost a shame that it took him this long to stumble upon a good sound byte about the economy with some degree of rhetorical cache, but McCain did. "Obama wants to spread the wealth, but I want to grow our wealth". Only problem is, it's completely and utterly false, and McCain, if elected, will doom our economy for decades. The problem lies with spending policy. Ignoring, for the moment, the fact that deficit spending (at least the sorts of deficit spending where the money ends up still in this country's economy) is exactly the sort of counter-cyclical economic stimulus that you *want* during an economic downturn (Yay, econ 101!), there is one huge problem with McCain's proposed spending freeze: Science. Barack Obama was incisive enough to pick up on this on the fly and bring it up later in the same debate where McCain suggested the spending freeze. During the debate, Obama pointed out that, for all of Sarah Palin's compassion for special needs children, there's very little anyone can do on the federal level if all spending -including research spending- is frozen. Sadly, he didn't point to the bigger picture here. McCain gave no response that night, but the next day, the McCain campaign had an answer: earmarks. Apparently, along with every other pet project that McCain said he could pay with using earmarks, all new science funding would also be funded by eliminating earmarks. Two problems here: 1) It's already been demonstrated that McCain has dramatically overestimated the number and impact on the federal budget of earmarks. At very best, he's applying that over-estimate of earmark spending to these issues, and thus dramatically underbudgeting these things, and at worst, he's thoughtlessly treating the elimination of earmark spending as a panacea for budgetary issues. This means he's either lying about his seriousness to balance the budget, or he's deluded about how to do so. As I said earlier, insofar as I see balancing the budget in the present economic environment as a complete crock anyway, I don't really care. On the other hand, I *do* care insofar as it means McCain is mis-assigning budget priorities and doesn't care that he's doing so. 2) There seems a good chance that he'd be cutting science to fund science. The earmarks that the McCain campaign has turned to to ridicule during the campaign have, alarmingly enough, tended to be things like population biology research, funding for museums and planetaria, and more research. Further, he hasn't so much made the case that these projects _were_ unnecessary and wasteful misrepresent what they were for, and then ridicule those straw men. It certainly seems that McCain would rather accuse our non-DoD-funded scientists of the same inefficiency and corruption as the rest of Washington. McCain'sm running mate, Sarah Palin, isn't really much better. In a recent speech, in the midst of a in which she discusses special needs, she jumps on the earmark talking point, talking about how many of them go to things that aren't in the public good, things like fruit fly research. That's right. Fruit fly research. One of the most crucial genetic models available to researchers, Drosophila, whose study has advanced the field by leaps and bounds, even leading to breakthroughs in the genetics of Autism. These are the "unncessary and wastful" earmarks that we'll be cutting to fund, well, everything for the indefinite future, science included, if McCain/Palin get elected. So, that should be alarming enough, but it still sounds like I overstated my case at the beginning, right? I said McCain's science policy would doom our economy for decades. That was a rather bold statement. Well, I will be honest that my memory of growth economics as a whole from undergrad macroeconomics is a bit hazy at this point, but I do remember that the one understood truth across models was that technological change was the crucial component of economic growth. Without a growth in technology, the array of production possibilities of a society would not change. It certainly is no coincidence that our moments of greatest economic prosperity happened to also be the moments when we were at the forefront of technological advancement. In short, absent a growth in technology, fueled by continued investment in the sciences, in essence -the capital of growth- we would falter and continue lapse behind the rest of the developed world. To refuse to devote serious funding to the continued advancement of science, and to continue to take an unserious and dismissive approach to science funding, will NOT grow our wealth, but rather, diminish it. | | 2:36 pm |
More like Sarah FAIL-in
"And Alaska—we’re set up, unlike other states in the union, where it’s collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs. … It’s to maximize benefits for Alaskans, not an individual company, not some multinational somewhere, but for Alaskans." --Sarah "Totally not a socialist" Palin, on why taxing business's windfall profits and redistributing that money to the middle class is the greatest idea ever. | | Friday, October 24th, 2008 | | 8:50 am |
| | Tuesday, October 21st, 2008 | | 6:31 am |
| | Friday, September 26th, 2008 | | 11:47 pm |
Rage you can believe in
*Please* tell me the rest of America noticed McCain getting visibly angry after Obama mentioned Spain. I mean, come on. I'm the drunk autistic guy, and *I* picked up on that. |
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