Putting it all in perspective

The key to all communication is knowing when to shut up. This blog entry illustrates that.

ISOLATION - Norma Desmond

My son needs the label of Asperger’s Syndrome so that people stop using inappropriate ones. There are many gifts that come with this condition. Difficulties arise from an inability of ‘normal’ society to understand or accommodate the way his brain works.
two sides to every story

Want to be a free thinker but still a nice person: Advice from a graveyard

I stopped at the grave of Victorian babies – I counted three dead and the mother taken in childbirth with the last one. Reflecting on that poor woman having to look into the chilly darkness of her children's graves put my modern problems into perspective. I didn't want to be careless with my own children's lives by doing something irrevocable simply because I was angry with my husband. The weight of what the mother had gone through gave me an anchor for the afternoon.

When I noted how many young people buried there had been brought down by cholera, malaria or some other condition we no longer worry about, I decided it's a privilege to live long enough to have problems exacerbated by a long life and marriage. I strolled past the grave of a girl 'who left us in her 13th year'. She was the same age as my daughter at the time. Her sad mother had written: 'The flowers appeareth on the Earth. The flowers fadeth.'

Walking home, I finally decided not to be a modern wimp, but to keep strong and fight for my family's future. I thought my friends in the graveyard approved, for as I walked away, the sun suddenly shone on a tombstone that I'd never seen before: "Whether we wake or sleep," the inscription affirmed, "we live together."

After finding the perfect photo to illustrate this story, I find myself with nothing to say that hasn't been said better in the caption for the photo.

This series is produced for a utata summer project - which aims to tell a story with six photos. My project tells the positives and negatives of having aspergers syndrome mainly to increase awareness of the realities and nit the myths surrounding the autistic spectrum

www.utata.org/show/speaks/dramaqueennorm a/1.php
the first six make up the story but the extras are ones with the same treatment that I still like very much.

I do too. The photo caption links to the set on flickr - please go comment. The quote links to the photo essay on utata - and that sure looks like something I need to pass around too.

As for the post excerpt, from which I was going to weave a post about anti-vaccine activists, perspective and cost-benefit ratios - all that now seems rather crass, and a disservice to both contributions. So, I will leave this as it is, and leave all the implications for each reader as they are, without further comment.

I Am Kathleen Seidel

If you are an aspie, an autie, a blogger or just an informed citizen with a desire to inform the public about an issue you are familiar with against the wishes of some powerful interests, then the SLAPP supoena against Kathleen Seidel and her site, Neurodiversity, might as well have been aimed at you.

Yes, I'm on about this again. And about Zazzle. So it's doubly annoying - but what part of "aspie" was unclear to you?

Therefore, I'm suggesting that all interested parties express their interest. The idea came from discussion at Aspies for Freedom, who suggested we take a hint from the classic movie "Sparticus," declaring "I Am Kathleen Seidel" for reasons parallel to the reasons captured slaves stood up to declare "I Am Sparticus."

How about an I am Spartacus type thing with loads of people buying up domain names I-am-Kathleen-Seidel-1.com, I-am-Kathleen-Seidel-2.com, I-am-Kathleen-Seidel-3.com, I-am-Kathleen-Seidel-4.com, I-am-Kathleen-Seidel-5.com, I-am-Kathleen-Seidel-6.com, etc etc etc etc etc etc?

That's a great idea, well worth doing and I wish I could afford to. If you do it, you don't need to create a whole new blog - just alias the url to your own blog. I use godaddy.com, and it takes just a few minutes to do, and a couple more to go live, typically. Pretty painless.

The precedent of permitting this action against Seidel by a firm that stands to profit greatly should she and other contrary voices be silenced should be every bit as worrying to "pro cure" activists. Consider what happens if this action works.

There are a LOT of deep pockets on all sides here. And while it seems wildly improbable that Merck or Bayer is funding Seidel, it's certain that if it becomes needful to keep people who support their view of the evidence online, they will be forced to do so. And then the bullshit will really pile up, and I suggest that to refer to that as "counterproductive" would be rather an understatement.

This is not about supporting what Kathleen has to say. This is about her right and YOUR right to share an informed, supportable opinion in public without fear of frivolous and abusive litigation aimed at shutting you up. Now, one part of the SLAPP subpoena was to try and get Kathleen to cough up all correspondence to everyone on her blogroll, and any related documentation about her relationship to them. It was literally aimed at everyone who'd ever linked to her and could even be read as aimed at anyone who's IP address showed up in her logs.

So, yes, YOU are Kathleen Seidel. I am Kathleen Seidel. We are all Kathleen Seidel. So put the graphic on your blog, or make your own. Make a t-shirt if you walk about in public (kind of pointless for me to do that, but obviously it's going onto my blog.)

Seriously though, I'm not asking you to buy this. If you do - since for some reason I cannot set a zero profit - I'm going to send the proceeds to Kathleen anyhow, but I ask you to send her five bucks via the donation button in her right sidebar.

Now, we are going to do a little tutorial on how to link to this and use it purely as a blog graphic (with proper credit) even if you are morally opposed to my sort of semi-successful capitalist piggery.

First - observe the deliberate choice of model and shirt color. You see, when people click thru, they have their choice with this particular design - they can link to the "product image" - as shown in this case - or they can link to the design. And with a white t-shirt, it ends up looking like this:

Now, mouse over that. There's no affiliate link there, at all. Why?

Well, it's because Zazzle provides a naked image code for you to use, in case your platform doesn't like embedding the full html link, or what-have you. Go to the product page, and look for "link to this" - it will summon a popup, so you have to permit that, and that popup contains all the link codes.

You can of course download the graphic from that link if you like.

There's a catch, of course. You must have registered with Zazzle to be an affiliate in order to get these codes. (Absent me handing them out, to be sure.) Ideally, you will set up your own store. But there are serious advantages to this - not the least of which being that it allows you to create a blog graphic as good as this with licensed type fonts in less then twenty minutes, on the fly. If it's a compelling design, you might just sell a few. My "No whining" graphic does quite well, but that is beside the point here. What you are setting up is a graphic that is keyworded and categorized to link to an issue. It will start appearing in Google Image searches, and if you use it in a post - that graphic will refer to your post, not to the Google-discounted sales page. I'm not sure if that's true if you use MY product image, so I would actually suggest that you take the time to set up a Zazzle store of your own. I find it incredibly handy as a way of combining graphics and text quickly, without having to be on any particular computer.

And if I don't happen to have time to do that, I just have to do a quick search to have my choice of images. For instance - keyword "Diversity" results in a ton of images, all neatly set up for me to use. I always use the full html, and then try to remember to kick the text link down to the bottom of the post as a credit line. It's only fair, remember you are getting the use of some dazzlingly expert images (see diversity.) And if you are looking for horrible counterexamples - well, you can show the "other side" without linking to 'em, because of the "image only" code capability.

It would be great if Kathleen Siedel was an equally broad category. And don't forget SLAPP and "Clifford Shoemaker"

Credit: Illustrations above: I am Kathleen Seidel - Onsie by webcarve

And here's another:

Credit: I am Kathleen Siedel T-Shirt by graphictruth

Let's be REALLY Aware of Autism

clipped from autisticconjectureoftheday.blogspot.com Child Abuse as Therapy For those of you "In the Know" discrete trials, or the Lovaas Method, is the only "approved and proven" method of achieving "progress" with autistic individuals. Approved by the state for funding, that is. And proven because, by the very mechanistic nature of the process, data is easily collected, plotted, and crunched. The following article, 40 years old, hails the arrival of this therapy in typical 60s style - science is God, and man can overcome anything that nature gives us. And how, you might ask, do we overcome? With electric shock, yelling, and physical violence. Of course. A quick click on the above title will take you to the site with not only this article, but the disturbing pictures that accompany it. The rage and venom portrayed in the faces of the "therapists" speaks for itself.

This article, written in 2005, includes graphic images that speak of the roots and underlying assumptions of Applied Behavior Analysis. And yes, at one "snakepit school," autistics are still being shocked for being... autistic.

The Autistic Agenda in Second Life

The Autistic Agenda in Second Life Autistics and Aspies stake out their turf in Second Life. Resources, meeting places, cultural and educatonal areas - and a plan to take over the world! Ok, just Porcupine. For now. Visit James (150, 46, 126)

Pissing on Puzzle Pieces - It's Autism Awareness Time again.

It's April, and that time of year that rubs our noses in all the patronizing, clueless "concern" tends to drive me bugfuck. Some - even most - is well-meaning, but it's driven and influenced by those who view everyone on the spectrum as a "plague victim" who is unsuited for life.

Ah, the "the love that dare not speak it's name" has become loquacious indeed, but the Normalcy Police have not given up on creating fear and loathing of difference.

In this, I reference Autism Hub's "Don't Speak for Me" petition campaign, which is in turn a response to Autisim Speak's odius 2006 anti-autistic propaganda film, "Autism Every Day."

This film was alleged to depict the realities of autism, described by the film's Producer Lauren Thierry as:

"At this point we need to be showing the world what the vast reality truly is. [Lauren says]…that reality includes images of kids not sleeping through the night, banging their heads against the wall or running into traffic – not images of kids setting basketball records or passionately playing the violin."

It later transpired that the film had been 'set up' and that Thierry had purposefully attempted to display the worst possible view to the world:

"Thierry told her subjects not to do their hair, vacuum or bring in the therapists. She showed up with her crew at their homes sight unseen and kept the cameras rolling as a mom literally wrestled with her son to get him to brush his teeth, as a 9-year-old had a public meltdown, as a 5-year-old had his diaper changed. And, as moms revealed dark and uncomfortable truths about living with autism. The result is a window into an exhausting world of interminable work."

The film itself contained a segment where one of the mothers interviewed said that:

"I remember that was a scary moment for me when I realized I had sat in the car for about 15 minutes and actually contemplated putting Jody in the car and driving off the George Washington Bridge. That would be preferable to having to put her in one of these schools."

The mother in question made this statement whilst her autistic daughter was in the room with her. She further added that the only reason she didn't kill her autistic child and herself was the thought of her non-disabled daughter.

Producer Thierry called this section 'gutsy and courageous' and added that:

"If most mothers of autistic children…look hard enough within themselves they will find that they have played out a similar scenario in their minds. If this is not your reality, then God bless you."

The above makes me want to chew nails and spit bullets. But instead, I decided to put my autistic savant nature to work, perseverated a while, and came up with this graphic. It is copyleft, you may grab it and use it as you wish, so long as the copyleft remains intact and the graphic itself is not altered. (You can embed it in a larger graphic, for instance.)

From Autism Awaren...

This year, I'm hoping that the combination of skill, beauty and frankness will help to change a few minds. So stay tuned, as they say - I'm uploading several versions, both to Zazzle, and to the Picassa folder this comes from. What I am encouraging people to do is to use these images to fund-raise. More on that in a separate post.

You see, I simply cannot afford to support all the wonderful sites that do battle with the forces of curebie hatred every day. I personally admire their courage, but I have enough difficulty dealing with ordinary Republicans. Oh, and yes, there is (or at least once was) a linkage between Cure Autism Now and Free Republic. It's kind of the same mindset.

Think on that, then consider the odds in trying reason with them. What you have to do is to apply reason to those they are trying to stampede to their advantage.