Neurodiversity

Publicist: Must Be Willing to Out Prominent Autistics

Author Michael Lewis, as interviewed recently on NPR’s Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me: Alright, ah, the first, first investor to make a bet that this whole subprime mortgage bond experiment was a disa...[Read More]

Mark Stairwalt on 03/31/10 | 2 Comments | Read More

Accompanying the Metaphor

The idea of evolution is often confused with Darwin’s theory of natural selection. This is in no small part because science representatives of evolutionary biology, such as Richard Dawkins, ...[Read More]

Andrew Lehman on 03/29/10 | 1 Comment | Read More

Virgil Caine’s Autism

Last November while weighing in on the proposed changes to the DSM which will drop Asperger’s Syndrome as a diagnostic category, I quoted George Carlin’s take on Catholicism’s Limbo as a way to ...[Read More]

Mark Stairwalt on 03/26/10 | 2 Comments | Read More

A Tale of Two Rivers

The following is an informal continuation of Laurence Arnold's musings on autism as geography, featured recently in this space under the title Rainbows End. I suppose I ought to comment on the curr...[Read More]

Guest on 03/25/10 | No Comments | Read More

I Am ——— . . . Who Are You?

I am told I am "sick," that I am "disabled," that I am "abnormal" and that a cure is being searched for for my "condition" and others who suffer from it. So I ponder and back I trace to when I coul...[Read More]

Guest on 03/24/10 | No Comments | Read More

Autism and Evolution

That I might have featured Asperger’s when I was young never crossed my mind until this year.  I’d been studying autism for 12 years.  Working for 12 years with the thesis that testosteron...[Read More]

Andrew Lehman on 03/22/10 | 2 Comments | Read More

Rainbows End (a landscape model of autism)

I am not a scientist; indeed like Moliere's Monsieur Jourdain I only recently discovered that I have been a Whorfian [1] relativist all my life.  I am in a sense a consumer of numerous scientific and...[Read More]

Guest on 03/22/10 | No Comments | Read More

Quiet Desperation and the Larger Picture

[caption id="attachment_1584" align="alignleft" width="315" caption="Walden Pond"][/caption] It’s an odd business, blogging for a constituency that’s not only unaware that you exist and are wri...[Read More]

Mark Stairwalt on 03/19/10 | 4 Comments | Read More

Melting Down an Autism Stereotype

[caption id="attachment_1580" align="alignleft" width="315" caption="Three Mile Island nuclear plant"][/caption] By now, I expect we've all seen plenty of articles, books, and other media depicting...[Read More]

Guest on 03/18/10 | 2 Comments | Read More

Language, Rhetoric, and Expression: There’s Power There

Language is a peculiar thing.  It can be twisted, turned, spinned, mangled, mutilated.  Connotation and denotation are explicitly different things, and we rarely stick to the denotative meaning (and...[Read More]

KWombles on 03/17/10 | 2 Comments | Read More

Who ARE You, Really?

Mark Stairwalt, one of the editors over at Shift Journal wrote an article (about me, or a previous post of mine), and brought up something I've been meaning to write about.  He writes: Coincidentall...[Read More]

Clay on 03/15/10 | 4 Comments | Read More

… It’s Hard to Remember Your Original Objective Was to Drain the Swamp

(continued from When You're Up to Your A** in Alligators) With that in mind then, how to make full and best use of a site like Shift Journal? Actually a tiny, excellent example happened just thi...[Read More]

Mark Stairwalt on 03/12/10 | 4 Comments | Read More

When You’re Up to Your A** in Alligators …

One thing I’ve kept an eye on over the six months since Shift Journal launched has been, “What can we be doing here that isn’t already being done well elsewhere?” Last weekend KWombles and I e...[Read More]

Mark Stairwalt on 03/12/10 | 2 Comments | Read More

Performance

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 displ...[Read More]

Andrew Lehman on 03/10/10 | 1 Comment | Read More

Theory of Mind and Self

I’d been studying Asperger’s and autism in connection to human evolution for maybe ten years before it dawned on me, after reading Michael Fitzgerald’s Autism and Creativity, that Asperge...[Read More]

Andrew Lehman on 03/8/10 | 4 Comments | Read More

++ungood

Sometimes I ask for feedback on pieces I’ve written before I post them, and sometimes I’m lucky enough to get a reply that’s in itself more compelling than what I’d intended to post in the fir...[Read More]

Mark Stairwalt on 03/5/10 | 2 Comments | Read More

Diversity and Inclusion: How Society Fails Us All, How We Fail Ourselves

Leave aside for the moment your immediate foray into divisions, into the ideas of a neurodiversity movement. Leave aside for a moment the split into camps of curing and not curing, the false dichotomi...[Read More]

KWombles on 03/3/10 | 3 Comments | Read More

The Perils of Normalization

How far would you be willing to go for a more attractive and socially pleasing look?  Would you choose to sacrifice part of your cognitive functioning, leaving your brain less able to process verba...[Read More]

Gwen McKay on 03/1/10 | No Comments | Read More