Neurodiversity and social change
Bill Wallauer is a videographer, a colleague of Jane Goodall. Click here to read Bill’s observations of chimpanzees behaving in ways that are fascinating to consider. Bill observes males displaying at waterfalls and in thunderstorms as individuals and groups transition into the sexual-display mode of communication. Jane Goodall wrote a famous passage describing these events. “All at once Evered charged forward, leapt up to seize one of the hanging vines, and swung out over the stream in the spray-drenched wind. A moment later Freud joined him. The two leapt from one liana to the next, swinging into space, until it seemed the slender stems must snap or be torn from their lofty moorings. Frodo charged along the edge of the stream, hurling rock after rock now ahead, now to the side, his coat glistening with spray. For ten minutes the three performed their wild displays while Fifi and her younger offspring watched from one of the tall fig trees by the stream...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 03/10/10 | No Comments | Read More
Mashup: Time, Death, and Ballastexistenz
There have been two significant deaths to me recently. My grandfather died just before Christmas. And Judi Chamberlin … died this weekend. And yet again I am coming up against my instinctive re...[Read More]
Mark Stairwalt on 01/29/10 | 2 Comments | Read More
[caption id="attachment_1240" align="alignleft" width="315" caption="Homo Habilus, two million years ago"][/caption] The other day, on "Cat in a Dog's World", Sarah takes to task the originator of ...[Read More]
Clay on 01/27/10 | 6 Comments | Read More
The Native American tribes of the Northern Plains, forced onto reservations and near starving in 1890, were drawn in large numbers to a new religion called the Ghost Dance. Led by the shaman Wovoka, t...[Read More]
Guest on 01/25/10 | No Comments | Read More
Autism and the Hacker Manifesto
Late last year I posted an entry which included a quick list of people and ideas my wife and I found heartening or helpful back before we fell out of active involvement with autism as a topic of publi...[Read More]
Mark Stairwalt on 01/22/10 | 2 Comments | Read More
Autism, Mysticism, and the Natural Self
There is a common phrase that “there is a fine line between genius and insanity.” I think that line is just the lines imposed by the extreme sensitivity of unorthodox people. Specifically, I a...[Read More]
Social Media and Environmental Integration
I saw this piece appear in March: Too Much Facebook could cause Autism in Children. A doctor in the UK suggested that social networking applications were encouraging dissociation, making it mo...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 01/19/10 | No Comments | Read More
Consider that those female children with low estrogen levels as they cross over into their teens may find themselves experiencing delayed puberty. This may manifest delayed testosterone surges pruni...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 01/18/10 | 3 Comments | Read More
“Good manners applied without regard for differences are in fact bad manners.” Those words, wherever it was I found them maybe two decades ago, struck me as so apt, so applicable to what I had l...[Read More]
Mark Stairwalt on 01/15/10 | 1 Comment | Read More
Ouroboros, Autism and Future Past
I’m starting to consider that the highly ritualized environment of aboriginal matrifocal societies, along with the ways children are raised and what they are fed, are preventing the further left...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 01/14/10 | No Comments | Read More
Like most people I know, I had a somewhat odd childhood. I started talking when I was three. I remember spending a lot of time confused by adult communication. Speech therapy accompanied my ...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 01/13/10 | No Comments | Read More
Before the housing bubble burst, my husband and I were among those who built a house in an expensive subdivision, on the theory that it was just as good an investment as the stock market and—yay!—...[Read More]
Gwen McKay on 01/11/10 | No Comments | Read More
An Autistic Ethos: It’s All About Respect
I have been privy to conversation among sexually active librarians in which catalogers, above all other sub-specialties of librarianship, were identified—with good humor but still in earnest—as be...[Read More]
Mark Stairwalt on 01/8/10 | No Comments | Read More
Neurodiversity, Primary Process and Theory of Mind
Imagine that ten years from now autism and Asperger’s are still on the rise. It is discovered that aboriginal matrifocal societies often exhibit what Gregory Bateson described as primary proce...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 01/7/10 | No Comments | Read More
Bouncing around Pub Med looking for patterns connecting handedness, ethnicity, disease, conditions characterized by maturational delay such as autism and social structure, it seems pretty clear that m...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 01/5/10 | No Comments | Read More
The idea that autism is humankind's oldest and largest secret society is one I've suggested on this site more than once; here I'd like to explicitly make the case for that idea. Members of secret soc...[Read More]
Mark Stairwalt on 01/1/10 | 1 Comment | Read More
Left Brain / Right Brain Neurodiversity.com Ballastexistenz Asperger Square 8 Aspie Rhetor Whose Planet Is It Anyway? Action for Autism Autism Science Foundation Aspie Family Prism*Song Natural Variation Cat in a Dog’s World Aspitude! Comet’s Corner NTs Are Weird Existence is Wonderful Incorrect Pleasures Neurodiversity – The Book