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Jun. 27th, 2006
A passel of autism-related links....
Jun. 27th, 2006 09:39 pm
Disabilities should not dehumanize young victims
( Read more... )
Autism Movement Seeks Acceptance, Not Cures
( Read more... )
(There's an audio link and a timeline that I didn't copy down here)
Elenbarathi's take on it, because I saw hers first.
( Read more... )
Autism Movement Seeks Acceptance, Not Cures
( Read more... )
(There's an audio link and a timeline that I didn't copy down here)
Elenbarathi's take on it, because I saw hers first.
You know what I hate?
Jun. 27th, 2006 10:21 pmI hate it when people say "I know" when they mean "I believe". It's almost (but not quite) as annoying as "I need" in place of "I want".
Say you know God exists. Well, that's all fine and dandy for you, but what about Joe down the street who knows God doesn't exist? As amusing as it is to watch the two of you duke it out, it won't help me decide which of you is wrong. And, unless God is like some kind of cosmic Schrodinger's cat and both exists and doesn't exist at the same time (which, as an omnipotent being, I suppose isn't beyond his capabilities, but if he's doing that I wish he'd knock it off, it's really very confusing), one of you has to, ultimately, be wrong.
You don't know about God. You believe.
There's a book I found while Googling, about kids who talk late and who then are perfectly fine. And one of the comments on Amazon was that the book is "dangerous". His son talked late, y'see, and his son had speech therapy, and he knows his son improved via speech therapy (and would not have improved otherwise). Because, what, his son has an identical twin, and they did some sort of double blind test with one son getting therapy and the other son not getting therapy, and hey, one son talks and the other doesn't?
Possible, but I'll go out on a limb and say that he doesn't, in fact, *know* anything. He believes his son got better because of the therapy (which seems probable to me), and also believes that his son would not be talking without the therapy (possible, but it seems slightly less probable to me). And he believes that this applies to everyone.
Well, he may well be right about his son, but that doesn't make him right about everyone. And I doubt we'll ever know - while I don't know this is the case, I suspect that any child with delayed speech is automatically pushed by doctors into going into speech therapy, which means we will never know what proprotion of children with delayed speech actually need therapy to begin talking, because they're all getting helped.
(That's not necessarily a bad thing, it just means that we don't know and are forced, instead, to believe.)
Naturally, we can't go too far with this - otherwise we'd never know anything, and we'd go crazy trying to prove that 1+1=2. But for things without any degree of proof, can we *please* go back to using the word "believe"? It's the right thing to do.
I just know it.
Say you know God exists. Well, that's all fine and dandy for you, but what about Joe down the street who knows God doesn't exist? As amusing as it is to watch the two of you duke it out, it won't help me decide which of you is wrong. And, unless God is like some kind of cosmic Schrodinger's cat and both exists and doesn't exist at the same time (which, as an omnipotent being, I suppose isn't beyond his capabilities, but if he's doing that I wish he'd knock it off, it's really very confusing), one of you has to, ultimately, be wrong.
You don't know about God. You believe.
There's a book I found while Googling, about kids who talk late and who then are perfectly fine. And one of the comments on Amazon was that the book is "dangerous". His son talked late, y'see, and his son had speech therapy, and he knows his son improved via speech therapy (and would not have improved otherwise). Because, what, his son has an identical twin, and they did some sort of double blind test with one son getting therapy and the other son not getting therapy, and hey, one son talks and the other doesn't?
Possible, but I'll go out on a limb and say that he doesn't, in fact, *know* anything. He believes his son got better because of the therapy (which seems probable to me), and also believes that his son would not be talking without the therapy (possible, but it seems slightly less probable to me). And he believes that this applies to everyone.
Well, he may well be right about his son, but that doesn't make him right about everyone. And I doubt we'll ever know - while I don't know this is the case, I suspect that any child with delayed speech is automatically pushed by doctors into going into speech therapy, which means we will never know what proprotion of children with delayed speech actually need therapy to begin talking, because they're all getting helped.
(That's not necessarily a bad thing, it just means that we don't know and are forced, instead, to believe.)
Naturally, we can't go too far with this - otherwise we'd never know anything, and we'd go crazy trying to prove that 1+1=2. But for things without any degree of proof, can we *please* go back to using the word "believe"? It's the right thing to do.
I just know it.
We didn't go out Monday (rain and tiredness on all hands) or today (tiredness on all hands AGAIN).
But the weather today was great for summer, nice and cool. (Note - we often get very cool days in summer (even in the middle of muggy periods), and very warm days in winter, despite the general temperatures of the seasons. This makes packing away clothes and blankets a difficult proposition at best.) And I looked around, and I had to get some baking in.
So we made cookies, and we made this molasses oatmeal bread, and we made cornbread, and it was all gooooood. Even the first two batches of cookies, which are slightly burnt on the bottom because I had to adjust the temperature for the previously unknown fact that Jenn's oven runs hot.
I had some of that bread the second I pulled it out of the oven, even though hot bread isn't good for you (I'm told), and... mmmmm.
I need to bake more often. I'm clearly quite good at it.
Oh, and we made applesauce for the baby. With my assistance, she ate around the chunks, because I found it easier to just spoon out what I wanted her to have than to spoon out what I *didn't* want her to have.
She liked it so much, she followed the bowl to Ana's table after I took it away from her, climbed up on the table, and opened her mouth for Ana to feed her.
Tomorrow I shall stop being lazy and start compiling Seth/Christopher Thomas Paul stories and pictures for youse guys. Promise.
But the weather today was great for summer, nice and cool. (Note - we often get very cool days in summer (even in the middle of muggy periods), and very warm days in winter, despite the general temperatures of the seasons. This makes packing away clothes and blankets a difficult proposition at best.) And I looked around, and I had to get some baking in.
So we made cookies, and we made this molasses oatmeal bread, and we made cornbread, and it was all gooooood. Even the first two batches of cookies, which are slightly burnt on the bottom because I had to adjust the temperature for the previously unknown fact that Jenn's oven runs hot.
I had some of that bread the second I pulled it out of the oven, even though hot bread isn't good for you (I'm told), and... mmmmm.
I need to bake more often. I'm clearly quite good at it.
Oh, and we made applesauce for the baby. With my assistance, she ate around the chunks, because I found it easier to just spoon out what I wanted her to have than to spoon out what I *didn't* want her to have.
She liked it so much, she followed the bowl to Ana's table after I took it away from her, climbed up on the table, and opened her mouth for Ana to feed her.
Tomorrow I shall stop being lazy and start compiling Seth/Christopher Thomas Paul stories and pictures for youse guys. Promise.