Articles relating to Autism Spectrum Disorders, particularly HFA and Asperger’s Syndrome.
In the two years since I discovered that my condition had a name, I’ve learned a lot about autism. This article, from the blog that originally drew my attention to it, has a very good summary of it — and indirectly points out that, despite the challenges that it creates, a little autism can be …
Continue reading ‘“An Autistic Mind Opens Mine (Can It Open Yours?)”’ »
The LA Times recently published a four-part investigation of autism. It’s pretty good, it has more information on it than I’ve been able to find in my own research elsewhere. I’m not a scientist, and I’m operating solely on my own experience and what I’ve read of others, but it seems to me that autism …
Continue reading ‘“Autism boom: an epidemic of disease or of discovery?”’ »
This is a little worrisome. As Schneier says at the bottom, “I worry about people being judged by these criteria. Psychopaths make up about 1% of the population, so even a small false-positive rate can be a significant problem.” On a complete tangent, the statistic that 1% of the population counts as psychopathic is disturbing. …
Continue reading ‘“Detecting Psychopaths by their Speech Patterns”’ »
As mentioned previously here, autistic people tend to interpret things as black and white, all-true or all-false, no shades of gray allowed. That’s almost certainly why many of us are drawn to working with computers, because computers “think” the same way. Nice to see someone recognizing that as a strength and putting it to good …
Continue reading ‘“Autism Traits Prove Valuable for Software Testing”’ »
Vitamin D, produced in human skin when it’s bombarded by the ultraviolet rays of the sun, may be the most powerful anticancer agent ever known, and lack of it during a mother’s pregnancy and breastfeeding (and keeping babies shielded from ultraviolet sunlight) could be the cause of most autism: Many researchers now fear that the …
Continue reading ‘“Tanning Can Cause Cancer, but Not Tanning Could Cause a Lot Worse”’ »
As I mentioned a few days ago, in my younger years I had problems understanding what was going on in other people’s heads — apparently a problem common to people like me. It seems that it’s a good thing that I’ve always read a lot of fiction, that trait is probably responsible for the majority …
Continue reading ‘“How Reading Fiction Can Improve Your Social Skills”’ »
(In part 1, I talked about discovering a few weeks ago that there’s a name for the differences between myself and others, High-Functioning Autism, referred to as HFA from here on. This part focuses on my reactions to that discovery.) I’m still trying to make sense of my life in light of this new information. …
When I was in my late twenties, I ran across a checklist for depression. I was shocked to discover that I had nearly every symptom listed on it, and had for more than twenty years. I got treatment for it and discovered that life was nowhere near as difficult, painful, and pointless as it had …
I never knew how the vaccination/autism link first started. It seemed to be ridiculous: a plausible idea that was tested and found lacking, but that a few very loud voices insisted on believing anyway. So I was interested to hear about The Facts in the Case of Dr. Andrew Wakefield, a short comic-strip-panel-style treatise which …