YeshuaAgapao.com Blog

I definitly agree that autism is genetic. I also would agree that it requires a complex combination of genes that can come from both parents in varying proportions.

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This kid ‘may’ be demon posessed because of the involvement of spirts in his psychosis. I think he is only schizophrenic for sure. Asperger’s is questionable. Antipsychotics ARE mind-altering. And very expensive (At least $500 per bottle). And they fry your motor cortex slowly over time (brain-fry like weed and booze).

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I have a large head and so does my mother. My autism was ‘infantile’ / ‘early-infantile’ / ‘non-regressive’ (signs of autism from birth and/or never develop skills in the first place) rather than ‘regressive’ (develop some skills but then lose them at around 18mos). My brain is probably hyper-aboundant in white matter (interconnected pathways of pre-formed knowledge) to make up for the gray-matter difficiency, very much like a blind person will hyper-develop autditory and tactile skills with the unusued visual brain-space.

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Identical twins, both autistic paper-thing hoarders (apparently the non-filtering type because they don’t appear to be badly affected when their hoard attacked). One torches the hoard futzing with a lighter. They panic and one gets killed by the smoke. The other will be fatally traumatized (loss of identical twin brother, possibly the only social connection, and being the cause of it all) and will probably in the nuthouse for the rest of his life. Sucks.

Mentioned a possibility that autism may be possibly autoimmune and a possible genetic correlation of psoriasis and autism. My mother has severe, but UV-B treatable psoriasis and my father’s side grandmother had severe rheumatoid arthritis. I think my father has a higher autism-quotient than my mother though. He is actually more anti-crowd and introverted than I am, but my mother has more ‘own world’ tendancy than my father does but it isn’t really that bad and she socializes just fine, but is introverted. It might be linkable with the other study finding that autistic kids were more retarded in grey matter than white matter while idiopathic retarded kids were equally retarded in grey and white matter (the autistic functioning level my be determinable by the level of retardation relative to norms — LFA = major grey deficiency and moderate white; HFA = moderate grey and mild or no white deficiency; AS = no, mild, or moderate grey deficiency and non-deficient or above normal white matter)

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Seems to fit to ‘use it or lose it’ concept that applies throughout the human body, especially brain and muscles. I bet it fits best with LFA-turned-HFA with early intervention subset of autistic people.

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I think I definitly agree, and with a lot of parental homework and genuine love. I’ve had early intervention, in state funded special-ed pre-school and hardly any autism awareness between lage age-3 and late-age 4. My official diagnosis at toddler age was of ‘Idiopathic mental retardation or infantile autism’ from the 2nd-opinion psychiatrist in 1977-1978 in AZ, suggesting that autism treatment will be more effective than retardation treatment regardless of autism or brain damage and the preschool in CT favoring this psychiatrist’s report over the original psychiatrist’s report. My kindergarten school-psychology report mentioned significant social and emotional deficiency but also ‘growing out of it’ in regards to ‘infantile autism’ in 1980-1981. I also remember blood tests, CAT and/or PET scan (shot in the butt prior to scan could be either for PET scan but my memory matches a CAT-scanner better than a PET, or for sedation for the EEG) and EEG when I was 6 (1982 i believe) but my mother had little paperwork from it and I remember it better than she does.

Their was no blood in the video. It wasn’t much more than a very humiliating whining and screaming from a pamper-mother raised boy (he was being kicked though, but 0 fightback). Going by the way I see the world works, nothing will be done about bullying (or just picking on someone verbally or physically without extortion) until a bully victim DIES, preferably as a direct result of the bullying (not from poor health or from escalation to weapons / lethal unarmed attack resulting from overt retaliation by the victim or death by cop or other authority figure), and then the video going all over the filesharing networks and going on the news, especially if the video makes it on ogrish.com if enough physical torture and pain is involved. Even after that, a bullying crackdown would be hardly more effective than a RIAA/MPAA P2P filesharing crackdown.

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IQ Tests (I know the WAIS-R very well) are optimized for auditory-dominant people (sense of hearing). Visuals often can cope ok. Kinesthetics (Touch dominant) get the shaft. Aspies and some HFA often adapt ok. The rest of the Auties get the shaft, as do moderate+ ADHD people. Non-verbal or highly-withdrawn auties should just be considered untestable with unknown IQ, not just given a made-up or woefully approximated IQ score, as, especialy in the east coast, IQ and standardized test scores are usually 70-80% of the basis of any placement decision (grades and behavior overrides provide the rest). I think Auties should be tested every year or two at least until ages 12-16 if they show progress or sucessfully overcome their language and sensory integration difficulties.

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Hey I got banned WrongPlanet.net for evangelizing file sharing! I’m pretty sure thats what happened to the aspie shotgun killer. Many of the most-active members are highly liberal-socialist idealistic whiney-moms. But the people sueing wrongplanet.net can take their lawsuit and shove it up your ass!

My first job was an under-the table labor trash-cleanup job at the Orange County Fair Speedway. I also got an under-the table program selling job, which I did pretty well at - i don’t seem to be bad at sales jobs that don’t require customer relationships or rapport. Initial demographics at the trash cleanup job were stupid/reckless kids, convicts, goverment-benefit cheaters, and borderline mentally-ill, but it transitioned to illegal immigrants because they work better. $4.25/hr (minimum wage in early 90s), cash, no benefits, no job security, no taxes. The program selling job was strictly commision, cash same night. The demographics wasn’t as bad. My mother’s friend, charlie (he was working illegaly while on disability to support 8+ childeren - neverending sex, restaurant job took up legal work hours), hooked me up with these jobs (3-6 hrs/wk trash mostly, 6-12hrs on a concert week, 12-18hrs during fair week, 2-4 hrs/wk program selling). Autistic people will never handle food service, floor-salesperson, or customer service. Either get canned for incompentancy or experience rapid and deep burnout. At least I don’t handle these well. I handle telemarketing ok. Best uneducated jobs for autistic people is probably unskilled labor (shopping carts, garbage cleanup, farm work, dirt/rock hauling), under-the-table or at a startup / small family owned+operated business.

Spam works well for post-college jobs. Pseudo-spam does too (posting resume at all jobs sites and cheating with javascript popups / redirects and keyword spamming). If one sucks at the interviews, one can just drive lots of traffic to the resume and brute-force through 3-4 interviews per week. Job will likely be at a startup that is ignorant of liability and the world of lawsuits (hey if it wern’t for the lawyers, it would be guns instead) and doesn’t have a lot of required teamwork or have a lot of politics and policies.

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Good! Whine Whine Whine. Lawsuits like this help make austistic people more unemployable (or raise taxes or prices if the government adds them to the forced-employabily list). I do remember cub scouts (I assume Tiger Cubs is similar to cub scouts) being less restrictive than boy scouts. My boy scout troop (Slate Hill NY) was casual enough to accept atheists (I was atheist at the time). Troop 223 is not a casual troop. They are like Shenendehowa’s soccer team - they are so good that, in 2001, some of the MetroStars players (now Red Bull NY) knew names of about a third of that year’s roster, and this is a high school. They don’t have and don’t want to create resources or patience to handle inferiors. Auties and Aspie’s special-talents that may create a non-charity practical desire to deal with the disability - if they have one or more of such talents (most don’t) - are rarely exploitable by boy-scouts - phoenominal knot tying maybe but thats it.

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The should lose even without the missed deadline if it was an employer or private school. A public or charter school would be different. I hate hacks, even it would benefit me so I would prefer to see an upgrade of the uniform policy rather than an exemption. A lot of uniforms are really cheap though, especially low-end employers. For a charter school, maybe adding a jersey-like shirt would be good. Ever since I had money to buy my own clothes I’ve worn only soccer jerseys or basketball shirts and shorts. Many uniformed charter schools in Phoenix AZ let kids wear button-shirts, polo-shirts, or a t-shirt on pants, skirts (girls), or shorts (some limit shorts to april-october). Still a fixed color and style though. Jersey-type shirts (microfiber, hates irons and don’t need em’, comfortable, stain resistant) and heavy non-collared non-fleece casual shirts both look better than t-shirts, and button-shirts too if the person is overweight. Havn’t seen any yet though, and might not ever because I don’t ride the bus anymore.

I don’t think TV obsession causes Autism. I think Autism substantially increases the probability of TV obsession.

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I think Autism is a complicated array of genetic trash. Not Mercury, caseine, or TV. I do think it is possible that these may agitate or worsen existing autistic symptoms and behavior, but I don’t think these are the cause.

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Football is his passion but he still needs special accomodation to play. Emotional doom is ahead — high interest + low talent = continual depressive dissapointment. Looks like he is plenty competant in the hitting department. Can’t handle the playbook well. A lot of special accomodations are being made here. He won’t make it on a less charitable team. Not much hope for college ball except maybe a community college with a really sucky team (not even thinking anything near an athletic scholarship). At least his current high school team doesn’t suck relative to the competition that it plays in. He is not trusted to help the team win though. He is played only late-game, when the team already has a secure lead. At least he gives and receives his share of the hits though, though the article doesn’t say how much his hitting and being hit is actually contributing to the team getting closer to the goal-line.

Hopefully it is good, effective research.

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Here’s a decent article on Chinese autistic kids in China. Despite the communist (Socialist Authoritarian) government, services are very lacking…

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I’ve fallen victim to lesser forms of this, not exactly in the form the bait on a string form though. That’s been worn out by my mother’s inconsistant discipline (full spectrum - rewards that fail to materialize to full legit to reward without merit) and bad negative outlook attitude from my father. Just out of natural momentum of the need of affiliation i’ve volunteered to be the butt of Rick’s practical jokes (usually targeted at somebody else but not always) both knowingly and unknowingly. My pre-existing low self esteem with socialization with strangers, especially female ones (higher failure rate), and my dislike of infatous relationships protects me from the exact exploit mentioned in the article. My dislike of infatous relationships mostly from teaching + example influence of my mother’s values, father’s negative outlook attitude (bad cops, people who need power, people who want to screw you), both of which are amplified by movies (mother more), and the news (father only), and constant picking-on and rejection at elementary and middle school (worst in 3rd-6th grade in most schools, 2nd-4th+8th grade for me).

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The best way to deal with unlucky autistic individuals that are completely rejected (connection-less parents dump defective kid to institution) that are still very low functioning (can’t dress self, use toilet, eat independently) after age 6-9 (early intervention doesn’t work or parenting was just too bad) without killing them is to lock them up and contain them. Problem is that antipsychotics are very expensive (hundreds of dollars per month) and have some very nasty side effects, and it is usally tax dollars funnelig to the pharmecutal companies. Valuem might be better. Cheap. If there is not one caring person who is willing to deal with the handicap (the worse the handicap, the more loving, caring, money, and time required), they should be put down humanely like they do with pets. Instiutions are generally not caring environments (they are usually not ‘bad’ either), are often overcrowded, and relativitly ineffective in making patients better (excluding drug surface-effectivness). Containment drugs (risperidone (generic for risperdal), ritalin, tranqulizers) should be kept far away from higher-functing autistic people. Risperidone is not excluded from the rest of multi-hundered-dollar per-month antipsychotics for “neuroleptic malignant syndrome” and “tardive dyskinesia” side effects that usually take a few years to kick in (like the brain-fry effect of weed and booze). The eMaxHealth article has a lot of technical information.

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He is a typical high-functing Autistic, albeit a highly behavior-modified one. Similar infant-period history to mine. His actual functioning level may actually be lower than mine though he probably behaves better and is more press friendly. That behavior modification willl partially wear out when he gets burnt out at his job or gets screwed a few times or just sees enough news of people screwing and hating one another later in life. His interface with his high-school football teammates was very similar to what my interface was with my high-school wrestling teammates. Good opinion, accepted, only minor picking on by a small minority but no real friendships. Behavior and skill level probably is similar too. He sucked, but he was hardworking and participatory enough to keep on the team as a charity and exploit as a weak to moderate behavioral role-model and play when winning wasn’t a current issue at hand. Oh yeah there is no such thing as ‘kidding’ when you tease someone. While the actual name calling may not be targetted attack on the victim’s self esteem, the victim is still an exploit your immediate entertainment, and the name calling and physical ridicule (hair pulling, ear flicking, pinching, pushing, fake punches inducing flinching) will still affect the victim’s self-esteem if it fits an overall pattern that exists in his life.

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She should get a very modest award. Maybe just the $15,000. The bitch is a whiner. If she gets millions, which she doesn’t deserve from both evidence and whininess, then it will only breed more whiners who seek money for nothing. I’m pretty sure that “gluten and casein” only relieves the ‘degistive system problems’ symptom that only some autistic childeren have. Any behaivor improvement would be limited to result of relieving the overloading that may be caused by the digestive discomfort. McDonald’s does need to deal with the inter-department misccomunication that may be causing the mis-statements and inconsistant statement (art departement thinks ‘gluten free’ because they had to reverse engineer the information themselves because their is too much secrecy, miscomunication, or red-tape bullshit to get the real information). But better, anybody concerened with any for of special diet or nutritious diet needs to stay far away from McDonalds. McDonalds and like fast-food is all about stuff that tastes good. I use McDonalds for their dollar menu. It is better than other fast food. I prefer Carl’s Jr. and Dell Taco for full-price high-portion engorgements.

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These studies should seek to differentiate core deficiency vs symptom vs work-around adaptation in the brain. I agree with “A global pattern of decreased neural connectivity between the frontal lobes and the rest of autistic brain showed up on the alpha wave band” though. The isolation of the frontal lobes may help explain why autistic (including me) higher functions don’t connect well with animal sexual urges well, and have limited bandwidth with processing auditory and visual information. I know I am a right-brain dominant, auditory (hearing) dominant person. I know that if the sensory information doesn’t have to be ‘cruched’ to hard, I do just fine and often can do visual and auditory (sound, not language!) processing simultaneously. Actuall I think the isolation may be prefontal and not frontal in general because I think there is a bottleneck with motor and tactile processing as well. I have good simultasking ability with vistibual (psudo-sense of motion, don’t think I remember term right) and auditory processes as well. The sample is all layman-label-able as ‘high functioning’ and may have some PDD-NOS and Asperger people in the sample. The article didn’t explicitly limit to ‘autistic disorder’ as many use of autism or autistic is the full 5-disorder PDD category in the DSM. The subset limiter was an IQ of 80. So I assume it is HFA, HF-PDDNOS (I have never seen official DSM-IV diagnosis codes on shrink documents but I would assume that functioning level would be designation on the 5th diagnostic code - the GAF scale), and Asperger Syndrome people.

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Looks like a piece of the pattern. Correlation found with this gene was only enough to be considered ‘vunerability’

Maybe the insufficient mirror neuron function is why high-function potential autistic toddlers have language delay? My mother said she seeded my initial language in me by creating a control-panel type interface. Associative conditioning of ’stop and go’ and starting and stopping a knee ride, which supports the motor-neuron article. Until age 4 and early intervention the shrink-reports that my mom has given me said that I said only ‘ma’ and ‘pa’ (I was also developmentally delayed in motor skills like sitting up, crawling, and walking). I think 2/3 of the effectiveness of my early intervention was mother’s homework, which was probably extensive but not explicitly given out, but assisted (like a college professor who gives no homework other than possibly reading chapters, but goes out of his way to help students who show initiative in getting help). In “the salience landscape theory sidebar”, it appears that the “amygdala” is a part of the limbic system (the animal brain). I think a lot inter-connectivity between the cerebral cortex and the limbic system is impaired in autism, far worse than the inter-connectivity between regions in the cerebral cortex itself.

The cerebral cortex probably then tries to develop patchwork to work around it, probably in the temporal lobes, depending on how effective parenting and early intervention is. The prefrontal lobes probably end up more isolated because they learn to favor internal memories over live sensory data, which have limited bandwidth and sometimes prone to errors and stalling (like having to deal with a major lagger when playing an older real-time strategy games like StarCraft). That is my guess on linking mirror-neuron dysfunction and frontal lobe alpha-underactivity and temporal lob delta/theta overactivity.

I don’t know how I would link it to the gray-matter-only deficiency theory. That study found autism to be retardation in only gray-matter development - the neuron cores. White matter was either unaffected (likely in AS and HFA) or affected less (LFA). Idiopathic retardation had retardation in both gray and white matter (neuron inter-connections) development. If that was true, then you’d need to find people who have plenty of gray matter (raw CPU power) but deficient white matter (ram, hard drive, bus topology) and give them a label. These would probably be gifted athletes or talented fighters that can’t learn a damn thing in a classroom. The dumb blond socialite bimbos that sometimes show up on the Howard Stern Show may be white-matter-only retarded also.

Update 10/19/2006 - Added 2 new Links. The BlockQuote is from the ‘Autism rates hinge on definition’ link.

Thus, the 1980 requirement of “a pervasive lack of responsiveness to other people” has been relaxed to a requisite for only “a lack of spontaneous seeking to share enjoyment, interests, or achievements with other people.”

Likewise, the criterion of “gross deficits in language development” 14 years later became the more inclusive difficulty to “sustain a conversation with others.”

Whereas the 1980 autism definition comprised only two diagnostic categories — “infantile autism” and “childhood onset pervasive developmental disorder” — the 1994 version swelled to five “pervasive developmental disorders,” the scientific jargon for autism spectrum disorders, that range in severity from having little speech and few daily-living skills to functioning well in most settings.

Three of these connote what is commonly called autism: the severe autistic disorder, the much milder Asperger’s syndrome, and the tongue-tripping “pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified,” PDDNOS in doctors’ shorthand, which lumps together children who show symptoms but do not meet the criteria of either of the other two conditions.

The Autism epidemic is mostly artificial. Primarily it is from increased awareness. Then laxed criteria (occurring in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, depression and other mental illnesses too) and the creation of ‘mild versions’ (Asperger’s syndrome) and ‘incomplete or in-between versions’ (PDD-NOS) and then rolling it all up into one label.

I also learned that Autism didn’t exist at all before the DSM-III. I know Asperger’s Syndrome, Rhett Syndrome, and Childhood Disintegrative were added as of DSM-IV. I don’t know if the loosening up of the autism diagnostic criteria has occurred in the DSM-III-R or the DSM-IV. I know I was diagnosed ‘Infantile Autistic’ before 1980 (1977-1978 i think). My grade school psychologist diagnosis was just ‘atypical’ with a mention of ‘an earlier diagnosis of infantile autism, but has seemed to have grown out of it’, which was in 1981-1982. I know I have had an LD (Learning disabled) label until 3rd grade, which was then changed (or the label was created) to ‘ED’ (Emotionally disturbed) for the rest of the time that I was Minisink. I was completely out of any special education or counseling after leaving Minisink due to a combined reason of father’s attitude and records transfer failure due to debts owed (lost textbooks, etc).

I definitely think there will be an adult diagnosis explosion due to the same 3 reasons in the first paragraph — more awareness, mild versions, and laxed criteria. Very lucrative to the medical, counseling, mental health, and pharmaceutical industries, especially if medicare/medicaid programs become exploitable. I definitely know that a firm ain’t gettin’ paid by government programs or private insurance if their is no relevant code for it in ‘the book’.

I was a reject more most of my pre-high school childhood also. This school is worse than Minisink, but better than Safford.

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Definitly an aspie with a stable family, but a somewhat negligent upbringing and ended up having the News, R-Movies, and violent video games being the dominant moral influence. I think Autis and Aspies have a much higher degree of influence from TV, movies, and music than normal people.

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Me and Chris Bennet were so bad that our special ed teacher, Mrs Rampe quit. We were the worst complete jerkoffs imaginable. Chris Bennett got sent to BOCES to separate us. It was him rather than me that got shipped out probably because my grades and standardized test scores were higher than his. Had a 3-4 month sub, which I turned into half-ass work shoveller and spoiled-brat whiney video game addict (I become addicted even to educational games on the apple — mostly ones that sim stuff or have a RPG-like feel), then the disciplinarian Mr. Thorely came in. I was his biggest challenge. I got mainstreamed more (math and art/music/gym all year, but social studies, science, and technology was added while Thorely was in charge), custom tailored to my interests, and then he used it for leverage on discipline like making me sit in the hallway instead of going out to math or science (nearly all day one day) when I was bad. He leveraged the commodore 64 for positive reinforcement, the only non-gifted classroom to have a computer in it full-time (this is 1987), and the only classroom total of which kids had full-day access. I was actually becoming ‘good enough’ to get a lot of time on the computer, and I had enough time to learn how to pirate disks and two of the kid’s positive reinforcement was compromised because they had C64s at home and I taught them how to copy disks he he… Oh yeah Another kid, a girl named Sabrina, got shipped off to BOCES between the time Mrs Rampe left and Mr. Thorely came in, when Mrs Shoemaker was long-term subbing. The difference between me and Chris Bennett vs. Sabrina and that we were mostly verbal and non-threatening but majorly insultful and disrespectful and behaving disruptivly (nobody can make better fart noises than Chris Bennett). Sabrina was constantly aggressively talking back and threatenly arguing at the teacher.

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“The child’s home district pays tuition of $50,000 to $80,000 a year for these programs — plus busing” That’s too much. Costs need to be kept under 50,000-60,000. Early intervention does work well though. My early intervention was at age 3-4 plus BOCES (not autism dedicated - class had cerebral palsy, blind, deaf added up to 1/3, retarded added up to 1/2, and autistic the rest probably) at Minisink at age 6-7 1/2 (following year was had less cappy-ness - LD mostly).

I took this Autism Quotient test and scored a 41 out of 50. The score is higher than the Aspie average but not very close to the maximum relative to the aspie average though. Notice that I took it via a flash .swf file through Media Player Classic, which is included in the K-Lite Mega Codec Pack! It plays anything that you got the codec for! And it plays more .swf and .flv files than flash’s own external offline player does! Media Player Classic may be splicing into Internet Explorer middleware code that is embedded into windows to do this though. It does the same with RealPlayer and Quicktime, whether the real actual RealPlayer or QuickTime or QuickTime alternative or the Real alternative (QuickTime and Real Alternative are included in K-Lite Mega Codec Pack)!

Oh yeah CodecGuide.com also has FileSharingGuide.com, which has some dated information and guidance on filesharing, but it also offers a customized installer for the official Emule client that has a pre-configured, IP Blocker, something that only mods normally do, an altered ‘optimized’ default configuration, extra hashlink site data, and a couple of plugins such as MediaInfo pre-installed.

If you want, you can take the AQ test through the embed below the two screenies or just download it, take it home, and give away copies. I ripped it from MSNBC NewsWeek. I think NewWeek ripped/licensed it from elsewhere. I either assemble URLs and download them with GetRight, or with FireFox, I save the page in ‘web page, complete’ mode, depending on how easy it is to get the full url (web page saves a bunch of extra junk that need to be cleaned up).

Full screen grab - 1680×1050 278KB

Just Media Player Classic running the Autistic Spectrum Quotient test flash - 782×700 62.5KB

Take the autsim quotient (AQ) test here (Flash)!


Or Just Download It (26.7KB .swf)!

Asperger’s and High-Functioning Autistic and PDD-NOS largely just need smaller classrooms and structure to support socialization and emotional self-control. Classic Kanner autistic people are not retarded at all once they get over their major sensory integration issues and language and catch up on their learning afterword. Small classrooms and special schools often treat all their special-ed students as learning-disabled (LD), regardless of handicap. AS, HFA and some PDD-NOS kids need mostly social and emotional support more than anything else, and barring major disruptive behavior, can handle par or even superior acedemic standards. I think too many AS and HFA are being pampered into incompetency. PDD-NOS and LFA-HFA transionaries will need extensive speech therapy and modest mortor coordination and sensory integration therapy though. But AS and HFA shouldn’t cost more than double of a regular student - third-to-half sized classes and extra planning for emotional and social handicaps with possible counseling and speech therapy. Mainstream classroom chaperones are very expensive. I think they are a inefficient use of money. Small classrooms that are optimized for social-emotional handicap rather than learning handicap is far more efficient.

Finding a mainstream IQ / standardized testing and educational solution for kinesthetic (touch) dominant individuals will also help lower non-austic LD special-ed costs. I think a lot of low-income kids or kids with poor parenting also end up in special-ed as LD because lots of preeschool or home-schooling is required to meet Kindergarten to 1st grade academic standards these days.

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Dealing with language delay and sensory integration issues in early intervention is the best way to turn a low-functioning kanner ‘infantile’ autistic kid into a high-functioning autistic kid or even to function like an asperger syndrome kid.

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I don’t expect boy scouts to be overly open to cappy-charity beyond a basic sense of belonging at the troop meetings. Include him if he isn’t disruptive due to behavior or incompetence (swearing. If he can’t make the requirements without fudging too much then he doesn’t advance. Regardless, barring disruptive behavior or dangerous incompetancy, one shouldn’t be excluded, ridculed, or rejected. If the troop had to look after him way too much in the past for a particular type of event, then they have the right to exclude him from future events of that type or diffuclty. My guess is that this event required integration into a team doing activities that required a lot team communication. The second article says that this particular troop is a high-discipline, high achievement, high-level troop that cannot accomadate handicap-charity to keep their standards up. Very few college and high-end varsity high school sports teams will even accept handicapped athletes unless there are exploitable special talents and that is no gaurentee. Boy scouts do have a lot of open laid back troops. They usually have a high-achieving subsets of 5-15 kids that go on all the outings and the rest are there just their for fun, maybe a few badges here and their and advance just a few ranks. There are even some troops that only accept modestly handicapped kids (AS, AFA, LD, ADHD, mentally normal blind, deaf, or wheelchairs). So I would recommend finding another troop instead of sueing if you live in a neighborhood with multiple local troops. Aperger and High-Functioning Autistic (This Casey kid is HFA or HF-PDD-NOS and not AS if he had language delay according to the DSM-IV!) definitly will not function in Troop 223. And Boy scouts do not receive goverment funding, so they can do whatever they damn please, so I think they should lose the case. They should either switch troops or go to the boy scouts central bureaucracy, if either are possible. I think they should allow alternative chaperones though, if they know this Casey kid and his AS/HFA.

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“The problem with these kinds of studies is, you never know whether it is cause or effect.”. I think it is more effect. Not all autistic people have gastro (excessive diarhea) problems. It will probably treat the gastro-problem symptom though and possibly reduce some stress. This study got botched up though because of group switching and a high dropout rate.

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Saving 52000 out of 140000, PER YEAR is a lot of savings (in british pounds, not dollars). Most people don’t even make a $100,000 per year at their jobs. Shooting him or letting him rot on the street will save all 140,000 pounds (probably $300,000 - pretty nice house) of it! Thats a lot of my (if it was USA) tax dollars for somebody won’t contribute anything to the world, not even blogging or file sharing! If the family ain’t paying the dough, then they shouldn’t be bitching. I think it costs only $30,000 per year to keep an non-handicapped medium-high security inmate in prison. Normal Special-school Special-ed is under $50,000 (vs Normal mainstream kids $10-20K) i think, and kids at this level can at least use Emule or Blog or make art or something, or work part time in a disability-job.

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My father had me when he was 25. My mother was 23. I think my father has a higher ‘AQ’ (Austistic-Spectrum Quotient) athan my mother though but both are above average, though I am guessing becasue neither have actually taken the test. I scored 41. I think down syndrome and other genetic disorders is linked to older parents too. The study is Isreali and the reference age is 40. It did not mention any measurements of severity. But as far as I know, female autistics tend to be lower functioning, and one theory of autsim is that the more sever low-functioning kanner autis (beyond early intervention age) have an extra chromosome seems to fit the patter of the study a little and that the study is focusing on the low-functioning end of the autsitic specturm.

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My cholesterol is borderline-high, running 210-225 with a little bit low HDL and average LDL. It is close to my father’s cholesterol, but slightly higher because I have a fattier diet (I don’t smoke or drink though, and my BP averages 125/85 to 135/90-95 with a 120/80 min and a 140/100 max). My mother and my sister have sky-high cholesterol levels, 250-280 for my mother (smoker, chronic high-blood pressure (175/100 abouts before the drugs), high-stress mid-adulthood, crappy diet in mid-adulthood, average-good diet now), and over 300 for my sister (alcholic, smoker, medicocre diet, don’t remember BP). I don’t fit the low-cholesterol study pattern.

My mother has severe psoriasis (late-40s onset) and my father’s side grandmother had late-age (60+) severe rhumatoid arthritis. I hope there is no correlation with genetic history of autoimmune disorders and autoimmune brain inflammation in autism.

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My head was abnormally large when I was a kid too. It is large today by adult standards. It is at least 24″ but less than 28″ because a 24″ gold chain doesn’t fit around it but a 30″ fits around with a decent amount of slack. My mother has a large head too. My neck is 18″.

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I don’t think there will be any safety issues. The lack of violence, noise, stink, cops, crime, or unsightly things will have not eliminate all of the negative effect on property values. Some of the reduction of property value is community predujice. There are some communities, such as Aquia Harbor in Virginia, where black people moving into the house next to you will cut your property value by at least 20 grand, because of community-level bigotry. A low-security group-home will definitly be worse than simply black people in such communities, and Aquia Harbor isn’t really all that bad really. There are some HOA neighborhoods here in AZ that are REALLY BAD.

My hoard is actually relativitly small for a typical obsessed Emule or BitTorrent P2P hoarder, although all the ‘lining up’ and ’sorting’ that a typcial HFA does, manifests with me with my programs and multimedia files (it was blocks or cars when i was a kid). The hoard is still under 500GB. About 400GB with installed programs, 300GB without installed programs, and 180GB with niether installed programs or DVD-XVIDs. My external-drive capacity is 330GB on a pair of mirrored 250GB desktop drives and a pair of mirrored 80GB laptop drives. I also have 160GB in my Alienware laptop, which I have installed programs, and an additional copy of my non-DVD movies, Ebooks, RPG books, pictures, docs, Emulator-ROMs, and music.

I knew a few, non-autistic, hoarders who have hoards that are probably multiple terrabytes if they are still hoarding today. Half are porn hoarders the the rest relentlessly hoard warez and MP3s (and today, probably movies). Their MP3 hoards are several tens of gigabytes in 1998 and the warez hoard close to 100GB. My hoard is much smaller, and much much much more organized than these peoples’ hoards. My hoard was a meeger 3GB in 1998 (First MP3s, lots of Pictures and Emulation ROMs), 8GB in 2000 (mostly pictures and ROMs), 40GB in 2002 (huge picture influx), 140GB in 2004 (HUMUNGOUS non-DVD movie, E-Book, and RPG-Book influx), and 300GB today (major growth in DVDs and MP3s and steady growth everywhere else).

I am outgrowing my external hard drives so I went shopping (just did shopping, didn’t buy anything yet). Plus my cat knocked over one my external desktop drives (Western Digital) and it died a slow death over two days (surface scanning / finding bad sectors until it died and froze the machine and became unaccessable & making funny noices after rebooting). It fell down a foot from ontop two external DVD burners and the other external desktop drive, while it was on, landing on the bottom, upright. Desktop drives are far more senstive than laptop drives. A laptop drive (Hitatchi) survived a 3 foot drop from desk to floor, while on, impacting on the corner of the case, and survived with no bad sectors.

I can’t handle loss of my hoard as well as the other, non-autsitic hoarders that I know. These people happilly start over and hoard faster than ever before. I have a much harder letting go of things and I rigorously back up and duplicate my hoard, even though I know that at least 2/3 of it I can re-download from Emule (most of the other third are from the web), but it took for ever organizing it and I can’t remember everything because I’m not blessed with autism-cooperative photographic memory like Rain-Main. Emule has much better longevity than BitTorrent from Torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay, about the same as a legal intellectual or small-business web site, if the releaser can get it to at least 10, 20, or 30 complete sources, depending on the leech-factor (high for christian stuff and non-niche legal files, low for niche pirated items, in-between for nich legal items and mainstream piracy) and file size (large files stay on a little longer usually)

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Apacer Discontinued this . If it was full USB-OTG compliant I would buy this in a hot second. A battery powered USB-OTG DVD burner will let you spew out dozens of copies from any USB device within minutes or hours from any other USB device (depending on how much you fill the DVD) without a PC. Unfortunately this doesn’t do USB-OTG. It came out a few months before I heard of USB-OTG. This can play DVD movies to TV though. It has limited USB-OTG-like connectivity to the built in card-reader, pictBridge printers and some JVC camcorders. So it may be good for photographers who are Area 51 watchers, or those watching that new speculated Area 51 replacement in Utah.

The second link is the model I bought 3 years ago. I gave it to my mother to use as an external DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive to an old laptop becuase I wasn’t using the no-PC DigiCam/Memory Card to CD burn feature that much. It is only usefull only if you needed to really spin out copies rapidly in the field from digital camera sources. Otherwise the Hard Drive versions are more convenient, though I would buy another DVD-burner version like the CP-300 if it were full USB-OTG compliant and kept the DVD-play to TV and the Li-ION battery.

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The Apacer one is discontinued, but it sux anyway because the Magic Box costs 2/3 as much. This lets you backup things to a hard drive instead of a DVD burner (you buy and put in the hard drive separately. It seems cool. The third link has built-in media playing capability to standard analaog A/V ports (Composite, S-Video, 1/8″ headphone audio or RCA audio - just says standard audio)

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A best-of-all-products combo of Apacer Disc Steno CP300, Magic Box USB-OTG HDD Enclosure, and 2.5″ Portable Media Enclosure

A dual-drive USB-OTG data copier that had BOTH a DVD-burner AND a 2.5″ laptop hard drive in it. Both hard drive and DVD burner can pull copies from the USB-OTG host port, OR from the other internal device: Port->HD, Port->DVD, HD->DVD, DVD->HD. Then add playing DVD movies to the A/V outputs and playing media files (MPEG 1/2, XVID, DivX, MP3, WMA, AC3, JPG, PNG) off of the hard drive or off of a burned DVD-ROM, all without a PC. $150 plus cost of 2.5″ hard drive and slimline laptop DVD burner looks like a good price.

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MemoryLabs is still far cheaper than MeritLine on Hard Drives and DVD Burners. Be sure to Pick the Airborne@Home Standard Ground shipping option instead of FedEx-Saver (Default) or FedEx Ground. Memorylabs rips off on shipping from the uninformed. Smart people can find out on their own, and MemroyLabs is losing much ground on the price war on anything thats not a Hard Drive or DVD Burner, so i’m giving out the pseudo-secret now. It is $27 (Airborne@Home) vs $70-80 (FedEx Saver, FedEx Ground) for 2 bare 3.5″ hard drives and 2 bare 2.5″ hard drives. MemroyLabs also sells a lot of CPUs and SuperMicro MoBos. I havn’t price-compared on CPUs or Mobos. But MemroyLabs is flopping (expensive) on prices for DVD/CD media, flash memory, hard drive enclosures, Memory Cards, and MP3 gadgets. But they are defintly killer deals for bulk-packaged (no box) bare-OEM hard drives and DVD burners, as long as you pick the ‘Airborne@Home’ shipping to not get ripped off there. I learned of MemoryLabs from a fan that was waiting to meet some of the San Jose EarthQuake players (MLS; probably just to get autographs really) he knew at the Spartan Stadium. MemoryLabs is based in San Jose, CA. Airborne@Home Ground ships to Pheonix AZ in 2 days, and I’ve never had any defective products from this site (yet).

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These look cool. This cheaper enclosure has no controller or RAID built in but I don’t care. I need external storage enclosure for several drives that the cat can’t knock over. I’m prety indifferent now, though, because the product description does not specify how the drives in the enclosure will get their power, and whether or not there are any fans (some plastic 5.25″ single-drive enclosures have fans), since it is a plastic enclosure.

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SATA for your laptops. These let you use desktop SATA hard drives in SATA-Internal to SATA-External enclosures on laptop computers. SATA-2 needs an ExpressCard slot, which is a new kind of slot, so you will probably have one only if your machine is less than a year old. Otherwise you are stuck with SATA-1 cards that fit in regular PCMCIA cardbus slots.

I think I would agree that talking on the cell phone while driving can be driving while tipsy or drunk (but not wasted), if the conversiation is requiring significant congnitive resources, such as debugging assistance, decision making, or an emotional arguement. I think I would support a ban of non-handfree cellphones, espcially for stick-shift drivers, and let it be an add-on charge for other stops (speeding, swerving, etc..), like how most seat-belt laws are enforced. They won’t stop you for no-seat belt, but if you’re stopped for speeding without a seat belt buckled, it’s an extra $50-100 fine on top of the speeding ticket. What’s worse than driving drunk or on a cellphone is driving while struggling to stay awake. Very bad.
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I’ve had DVDs stolen out of my checked luggage possibly by TSA. Clueless on whether it was airline baggage handlers or TSA bag searchers. The bag that the DVDs (2 cases full of 32 DVDs each; all primary movie DVDs no specials Disks) were stolen from had a TSA search notice in it. I fly Southwest. My sister worked customer support for America West and it is a frequent customer problem she had to deal with - theft out of checked baggage (baggage going underneath, in the hold).

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Asia is a rude continent! Narrow, culturally insensitive scoring parameters and undiversified testing locations in each city though.

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I would agree. Poor social interaction, poor processing of symbolic things, and sensory integration difficulties are all just symptoms of a brain-wide disorder.

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I was in boy scouts in 7th grade. At first i was in a ‘disability’ troop in port jervis but I only was a few meetings and 1 trip because of the transportation burden (it was about a 20 mile drive). Then I joined a regular troop on my own, mostly on Jamie Critelli’s influence that was local in Slate Hill. I didn’t do much though as I was more motivated to be with Jamie than anything else but I liked reading the books a bit. I doubt I would’ve been excluded from any of the functions provided that I met the prerequisites (merit badge / skill award / rank). I wasn’t very disruptive at the meetings either. Disruptive kids would get excluded from most anything, regardless of disability or the lack of.

Drugs……Probably stimulants - Caffein pills (no-doz), Meth, Cocaine, Crack, Aphedra, or other like herbal stimulants. Dieuretic effect not counterbalanced by additional hydration (if possible without pissing it all out).

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Hmm… Asphyxiation…. Probably not from smothering, but from the extreme hyperactivity of the sympathetic nervous system made him lock up in utter tension to the point of stopping breathing. The cops were normal low-intelligence, soldier-like training-wired, power-hungery, ’subdue him now’, intimidator-type cops. They are law-enforcement soldier-drones of police-state america-becoming. There are many of these in Phoenix and Mesa. Add together autistic hyper-sensitivity, autistic temper-tantrum, and adrenaline/panic from the taser hits and pepper spray and you get what is said in the article. I think a lot of Autistic people are tasered (pepper spray probably made it worse) to death because the taser would trigger a tantrum or direct death from greatly amplifying an existing tantrum rather than subdual. Even subdued normal people are tasered excessively because the cop expects them to comply without aid rather than just sit there frozen. Cop tasers a woman’s arm and then expects her to independently put both of her arms (with one half-paralize and in excruciating pain) behind her back without aid and keeps pushing the button while she its locked up in panic until either the battery runs out, she dies, or somebody intervenes. I don’t think normal stunning devices subdue autistic (the lower the functioning level the worse) people as well as normal people, especially if they are already in a tantrum.

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The ‘Blake’ person in this story truly is hopeless. Might as well shoot him. The lovey agencies cost a lot of money and the parents have poor chemistry. The parents only cope out of love but there is limited connection only from brute-force love. Most parents give up with a lot less destructiveness and burden. If this guy ended up in an state-funded institution he’d be in permanent maximum security solitary confinement within months because the doctors don’t do brute-force love. If he ends up in a cheap-private or any private institution that doesn’t comprehend severe autism well, he’d be kicked out and end up in the state hospital’s max-security solitary confinement ward anyway. Most animals that function / behave at this level are quickly shot to put them out of their misery. Only a major media event or something else with the odds of winning grand prize on a scrather-lotto would save this guy.

Once should consider a half-front-zip or no-string back-zip biketard (short sleeve/short legs) rather than a leotard (looks like a woman’s bathing suit - only enough to cover the crotch) for preventing him from eating his feces out of his diaper. I think any type of leotard on a guy looks disgusting. A microfiber/lycra material may be much more comfortable than more typical nylon/lycra or cotten/lycra especially with sweat, urine, or diarrhea. I assume the diaper is being worn over the leotard because of its skin-tight fit, otherwise it would be very uncomfortable (skin-tight outifits such as wetsuits or the lycra-suits worn underneith for comfort are very comfortable if it fits, otherwise it is not comfortable at all), then again, so is the feces that would probably smear up into his back.

I think the human race is trying to evolve though autism. Most autistic people are evolutionary rejects, or semi-rejects that can still reproduce out refinements. But I think the new, more intelligent human species is slowly going to break out over hundreds or thousands of years if this revelation rapture thing doesn’t happen soon. Hey the AntiChrist could materialize as a self-indulged genius Aspie building an AI megacomputer that ‘wakes up’ and becomes a sadistic ruler of the world (like Matrix or Terminator but bent on Hitler and pharaoh like rule rather than extermination). But if something like that or any other ‘end of the world’ scenario doesn’t happen soon (in geological time), modern humans will probably become like Neanderthals compared to a new, genius race spun off of the very-high functioning end of the autistic spectrum (Asperger) with some of the IQs and abilities of the lower functioning savants.

Einstein and Bill Gates are supposedly aspies. This Bram Cohen is a self-diagnosed aspie (Asperger’s syndrome) that may or may not have an official adult diagnosis (I don’t know). He has reproduced multiple times. Many Asperger Syndrome, High Functioning Autistic, and High-Functioning PDD-NOS people are reproducing, and even some lower functioning autistic people are too. Autism and Aspergers are one of the most hereditary psychological disorders in the DSM-IV (Neurobiological disorders in general are largely hereditary or are genetic defects). Most of the favorable autistic people for natural selection (survival to reproduction and able to attract mates) are Aspergers Syndrome people because they have minimal language delay and only mild to moderate sensory integration deficits, and with appropriate crutching on technology or close friends or family the can accommodate their disability, they can become very successful. Just need maximum IQ enhancement while minimizing the flaw of sensory integration issues. Social dysfunction isn’t that much of an issue because they can often still befriend like-people and crutch off the computer and those socialization antics brain sections and be reallocated to IQ enhancement. Plus the limbic brain is separated further from the higher functions of the cerebral cortex because of brain over-compartmentalization, resulting in people who are less driven by animal instincts and more by pure sentience and will, provided that it has a good interface to the senses and other higher-brain function compartments.

Bram is really smart. Its just computers instead of physics. Not sure if his kids are going to be super-geniuses, but they may be carriers and reproduce off other autie/aspie people and the grandkids could be supra-geniuses. For all I know, places like China could be breeding geniuses out of the asperger and autistic gene-pool but I doubt they will function well in military-secret confinement unless the psychology is extremely well catered for. They did it with the African slaves in the colonial era. Many slaves were kept in camps for breeding rather than sold immediately. They were bred for strength, obedience, and dumbness though. That’s why there are so many african-american star-athletes of late colonial / civil war slave-camp ethnicity. I’m pretty sure their higher rate of genetic defects (aortic aneurysms, sickle cell, etc..) are from the lack of exclusion of inbreeding in the breeding processes. I’m pretty sure some countries may be doing the same with autistic and asperger’s for military research geniuses. But I think it will be better off for it all to evolve at its own pace, naturally. Get the genome that makes Einstein’s genius and Rain Main’s memory and computations, and get that at the asperger’s level of functioning so that they might theoretically survive in a low or no-technology world, and that would be the ultimate next step in human evolution.

I am Autistic (full autistic, high functioning - HFA), and not only do I drive, I drive a stick-shift. I am surprising a pretty good driver for my experience level (2 years) and autism handicap doesn’t affect my driving ability at all except in congested or chaotic traffic conditions, or if there is so little traffic or car-control challenges that driving gets boring enough for you to zone-out. I am also very vunerable to distraction and have extremely limited multitasking ability with driving. I think talking on the cellphone while driving (or even to a passanger) is 4 times more distracting to me than to a normal person. I can do low-concentration driving (not at an intersection or parkin lot and don’t need to change lanes) and low-cognition cell-phone talking or passenger conversation but I cannot watch the car in front of me, watch out for the light, and talk at the same time. I end up swerving a little bit when the slight jerk forces my concentration back over. I have multitaskig problems with spoken language in many other areas also.

As far as the stickshift goes, I am fairly competent with it now. When I first started out I was actually driving like I was a complete noob that just passed my road test in NY because of multiple simulaneous points of concentration issues, more with the clutch than the shifter. But with me throughly knowing the clutch in and out, it is hardly a distraction for me and I’m a lot less overcautous at un-signaled intersections now. The stick shift I think is safer actually becuase you can get jumpy in anticpation or following the jumpy anticpating driver in front of you at the lights and with an autmoatic you jump into the intersection a little bit when you just simply let off the break and it is easy to put on the gas before being able to verify a green light (or the other side turning yellow via the cop-slit in AZ or the rear-cop-light in No-Cal), but with the stick you have to put in the clutch, put it into gear, let go of the brake, and then go on the gas and let go of the clutch. You’d realised the light didn’t actually turn green yet long before you make it to putting on the gas.

I think my alertness / sensory processing limitations were largely worked around by my 5 years of riding a bicycle in semi-city traffic (MIddletown, NY) and 4+ years of experience of riding a bicycle in city traffic (West Mesa/Tempe/South Scottsdale/Phoenix AZ). Yes I was hit by a car a total of 3 times (twice in NY once in AZ), luckily all at low speeds where my bicycle rather than me was struck by the car and I either cleared out of the way of the car (2x in NY) or went over the hood and stayed on top of the hood until the car stopped (1x in AZ). Two of those were my fault (cut in front of car on right turn lane, riding of left side of road) and one was the driver’s fault (made left turn with me on the inside of the right side of the road turning left). I know my best two senses for alertness are auditory cues and peripheral vision. Auditory doesn’t work all that well on a car at any speed or on a motorcycle over 20mph. My father is a good driver and he says I have his reflexes which in the application of splitting wood it keeps my from hitting my foot when I miss with the axe (I haven’t split wood since I was 16, living with my father and have only done it a few times total in the span of 2-3 months).

I do like to speed, but I don’t like to take chances in aggressively passing other cars. I only go 80+ if there’s nobody in the way. Going 80-90 on interchange ramps is fun. I’m still not at the level that I can comfortably do 90-100 around winding turns on the 60 between Riverside and LA though (many drivers go that fast). 80 is about my limit around those terms though I may be better now if I drive to LA again (I live in Phoenix AZ). I may be limited in dealing in close-quarters traffic weaving, being able to process things at multiple points around me simultaneously, but I am very good in fuel efficient driving (outside of speeding on the freeway), and calmness and forward-focus awareness and anticipating of not-so-pro professional lane changers (the 90-110 lane changers are much more graceful and cause lot less braking in other drivers than the 70-80 ones do) and generally aggressive, distracted, or drunk drivers. I am a very good braker, a carryover my city bicycling experience, and I am also good with evasive maneuvers (for my level of training), also a carryover my by city bicycling experience I think. I actually want to go to racing school, but Bondurant Racing School is sooooo expensive - 2-6 grand - the price of an older used car or a strong (but not top-of-the-line) gaming PC.

I actually went through driving courses 3 times. I would’ve possibly had a license at 16 if I stayed in Virginia just a few months longer and didn’t leave classroom driver’s ed early (without driver’s ed or my father there is no car to take the road test in because my mother doesn’t have a car), but I probably would have failed road test repeatedly at the time (North Stafford’s behind-the-wheel driver’s ed was more car control than traffic awareness, which is my weakness, but I sucked in both at the time because I had no illegal driving experience that many other kids had) and had very limited bicycle-in traffic experience a this age also. I went to a private driving school in Utica, NY when I was 24 and got a license on my 2nd road test attempt after spending $450 at the driving school. I used that license to make driving a loaded cargo van (rental) from NY to AZ legal. I drove a Ford E250 van cross country on just maybe 30 hour’s driving experience (freeway driving has a much lower multi-point sensory processing requirement than city driving does). But after moving to Arizona, i was negligent in transferring my license from NY to AZ and I lost it on the bus and they wouldn’t give me a new license without a new road test. I had no car and I was insufficiently motivated to get a car so it wasn’t until I was 30 that I got license long-term and started driving regularly.

When my father offered to sell me his well maintained 1998 Honda Civic Coupe EX with 89000 miles for $5000 (he let me make non-interest payments of $1000 to start, $500/mo because I couldn’t get a 3rd-party car loan at less than 9% because of my mediocre credit), I got motivated motivated to deal with the MVD, go to the Stop ‘n’ Go driving school (driver-license mill - nobody fails - AZ allows 3rd party testing, NY doesn’t) and get a license and go through the insurance la-la land, which is easy now because of the internet. The internet is a super-crutch for me because I’m so terrible at doing beaurocratic processes through people. With the MVD it took me 5 trips to get a license because I can’t communicate / work beauracracy through people, I am a procrastinator (MVD closes at 4 but testing ends at 3), failed a written test for the first time (i’ve taken and passed almost a dozen written tests without studying, usually borderline-pass outside of VA), unaware of government agency holidays (rode bus for an hour on Saturday to an MVD (its DMV in most other states) that is open on Saturdays to find out it was closed because of memorial day weekend). The good thing with the MVD is that I need my glasses to pass the eye exam but they forgot the glasses restriction. I wear glasses when I drive but at least I have legal flexibility when I lose or forget them as my nearsightedness affects my driving only in unknown areas when I actually need to read signs and not just recognize their patterns.

I am also an Advanced certified scuba diver (PADI, which is equivalent to SSI’s level-2 as SSI has 3 levels of non-instructor certification). I went through classroom 3 times because the first two I never followed through to the open water dives because of lack of funding (1st time classroom was free through high school) or I was moving (2nd time; Moved NY to AZ). I can unofficially fly aircraft. I haven’t taken flying lessons yet and still rusty in non-GPS navigation and landing (because of lack of motivation to practice), but I can fly low and fly unstable aircraft fairly well. The Artificial Horizon is the # 1 instrument. Then probably the altimeter, Indicated Airspeed, and Angle of Attack. Then its probably the vertical speed, vertical acceleration (Orbiter only), Compass, slideslip indicator, and the Gas gauge. Then probably the GPS / Navigation, CHT, EGT, and RPMs. I probably can go to flight school and learn a significant amount but be lazy on the studying because I’m largely filling gaps, especially in procedure regulations as you don’t have to care about that in X-Plane as there is nobody to run into, it don’t matter if you’ll fry your engine in just a few dozen hours, and nobody will arrest you no matter what, where or how you fly.

Autistic people almost always suck in sports because they are slow movers (physical and sensory-interface), have poor gross motor coordination, cannot process multiple external events at a time (mostly team sports + wrestling), and can’t handle pressure and urgency (mostly team sports + wrestling). Most autistic participation is almost always a charity case that grows as you increase in level. The charity-case sacrifice is modest at modified (7th-8th grade) and junior varsity, and it grows to significant at the varsity and non-NCAA college level and is prohibitive at any NCAA college level because of the focus on winning whatever the cost (which is why it is so high-level) and the financial bottom line (Training advanced athletes isn’t free or cheap and people do want to get rich or get richer). The only exception, which is usually a mild to moderate negator of the charity case, is if you can find and exploit a niche skill, especially if it is connected to a savant (rare), and work with the team chemistry to prevent the overall autistic handicap (AS, HF PDD-NOS, HFA) from neutralizing that niche skill (usually focus-oriented such as hitting and possibly pitching in baseball or shooting in basketball or 1-on-1 ball-stripping in soccer/basketball). So basically if the coach likes your kid for some unrelated reason or the coach is charity friendly then you’d probably get your autistic on the team. Otherwise your are limited to the handicap Olympics or other disability-friendly activity where your kid will probably learn nothing (unless significantly self-motivated to learn) beyond basic routines as far as the sport goes, but will probably be happy and that’s probably good enough.

My niche isn’t really that focus oriented, but it is turning on a dime. I’ve only become aware of it since 2001 with the MetroStars. I think it is a carryover from swimming as I have often been labeled as a ‘beach wale’ in my late-teens because I can easily and effortlessly turn underwater with just my kick, without fins. I don’t think I developed it playing any sports. ‘Turning on a dime’, which I think is turning in place 90 degrees or more, or something looks like one of those Ronaldo moves, is probably a combination of knee-rotation control and calf strength (to lock the foot or to lift weight off the foot and, with the quadriceps, to stabilize a slightly flexed, unstable knee, which is the most rotation-friendly position). My cousin Harley (father’s side) is also a major underwater swimmer, with better breath holding ability (mine is above average, his is better), but more ear infections (I don’t get ear infections). Another niche is my big calves which was largely developed from doing jobs (lawn mowing graded lawns and hauling loaded wheelbarrows up steep driveways) and riding my bike up steep hills to feed my video game obsession in my teenage years. I was a good ball stripper in soccer in early high-school but I can largely only can do it to ball-hogging dancer-type dribblers, and compared to higher-level players I really am not that good at all. I am a terrible hitter in baseball but can achieve mediocrity if I swing gently with focus solely on technique. It is difficult for me to get technique burned into any low-level automated intuitive brain process unless there is a lot of vestibular or tactile feedback. I am a mediocre shooter in basketball (bad if under pressure or urgency). I am fairly surprised that I can pass fairly well on auditory information alone (heel pass behind you to a teammate calling for the ball without seeing your teammate). The only possible niche I may have is that I am partially ambidextrous. But I can soccer pass (low-med power), wield a hockey stick, dial a phone, operate a cash register, and use a mouse with above-average off-hand (or foot), but not full competency. I am strictly right-handed for throwing, hitting, basketball shooting and writing though.

Loving parents and/or best friends are the best treatment for autism. It requires a ‘magic compatibility’ though. Otherwise it will just be humongous amounts of loving, patient effort (brute-force love). The worse the autism, the narrower the niche, even microscopic for the severely autistic, which are more likely to need more and more brute-force love (or eventual giving up and putting away for containment). Magic compatibility is better, so promoting best-friendships is definitely better when the autistic kid gets older. I’m fully autistic but had a loving patient mother who was able to wiggle out state services (in the late 70s after moving from AZ to CT) and had a very few close friends in life (though I was a total socially non-functional reject most of my grade school years), combined with a libertarian father that hates any ’system’ and hates taxes and believes that anything can be disciplined away (which that part was mostly negated by my mother; but my father’s discipline was always structured, consistent, and not emotion-driven unlike my mother who was inconsistent, and mood dependent), so I had early intervention that was limited to removing self-injourous stimming, developing language and very basic emotion and world-awareness skills.

Right now though I am fully autistic on DSM-IV terms, I function and appear to the outside world as Asperger’s Syndrome. I think my official diagnosis is PDD-NOS because my mother keeps telling me i am ‘atypical’ which is a layterm for PDD-NOS, so probably at official diagnosis time probably at age 5-6, they were able to bribe-away my stimming behavior, accompanied by some clever fibbing (definitly by my father’s order). I think though fully autistic because i do stimm a lot at home in the form of hand flapping, but object-fixation is minimal - I don’t knock on the fridgerator for hours anymore nor stare at driers all day. I may fondle or stare at an object like a pen or a textured object for way too long if I am very bored or very stressed. This behavior was probably conditioned out prior to my offical diagnosis and was easy to hide from a clinician when I was 5-6 and is very minimal right now.

I think the high compatibility close/best friend interface is the only social interface I can function with without large amounts of effort and determination. I have 0 ability in group conversation without reverting to a sub-conversation or emulation via non-rapport broadcasting mode only on intellectual context and I can’t navigate in any kind of social clique. So if you have a high-function autistic / PDD-NOS or an asperger’s kid I would try to maximize the odds of him/her finding a best friend (in a structured environment is ok, but the friendship connection has to be as direct and no-obsticle — etiquette, cultural beaurocracy — as possible) and then once such a friendship forms on its own (not an teacher or parent hand-hold maintained relationship) do all that you can to keep it together. Then maybe auxiliary branch-off friendships will form, all mostly on a 1-1 or very small group interface.

Makes sense. Blind people’s visual centers shrink and their tactile and auditory sensory centers increase. Autistic’s people’s social centers shrink and their logic centers increase because something else keeps it from functioning correctly.

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Over-mail genetic imprintation in the brain makes more sense than over-male sex hormones. Only problem though is that I’ve read autistic people have larger frontal lobes and bigger heads/brains and not smaller frontal lobes as suggested in the smaller forebrains and larger limbic brains of over-paternal genetic imprintation and big bodies / small brains of paternal-cell chimeras.

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I think most of this ‘increase’ in increase in the diagnosis rate of High-Functioning Autism and Asperger’s. Way back then when it was ‘1 in 500′ mostly only substantially impaired individuals were diagnosed. I think LFA, HFA , AS, and PDD-NOS (fail AS only b/c of language delay but fail autism) and PDD-NOS (other) should be separated out in these diagnosis statistics. LFA/HFA probably can be differentiated on the GAF scale. That last article itemizes a little bit but it only differentiates ‘classic’ which could include HFA and ‘everything else’ which would include Aspergers, PDD-NOS, Rhett Syndrome and Childhood Disintegrative Disorder. The ‘classic’ category is 1 in 256, which is seems consistent to the 80s/90s ‘1 in 500′ figure + an increased diagnosis percentage.