Wales

I arrived on Monday after taking a long drive, going via lake Vyrnwy pretty much my Christmas route and I had a little paddle in the lake for old times sake.

Anyway I got to the site about six pm and struggled to put up the tent. Thing is it is so long since I did it I had forgotten how and I got a bunch of guys in on the act. Eventually I got it sorted enough to withstand a gale the following morning.

So after getting the tent set up it was quite comfy apart from the rain in the night and the wind flapping everything. Well it is cosier than the small tent I had last year and this site is completely different as radios are banned. Last year's site had all sorts but this is strictly for outdoors people. In the evening I went down to Beddgelert to get some beer in, find the shops have some fish and chips. (Kebabs are not local to Wales methinks) and at the closing of the day I was sitting in front of a camp fire enjoying a beer with the mist rolling off the mountains could it get better?

On Tuesday I went into Llanberis, not a bad day, I had a decent breakfast there but decided the mountain railway was too expensive. I have spent enough as it is but it is a long time since I have taken a longer break like this. So later on I did a little mountain scrambling around the milestone buttress of Tryfan. Got quite high, not been anywhere up there since mum was alive. I went up in a vest, running shorts and sandals not exactly mountaineering gear. I was terribly out of breath of course and struggling but I did have a rucksack on my back in case the weather turned nasty with food and warm clothes. Mind you, I passed another couple and they thought they were overdressed.

For the campsite however I needed my wellies . This is the downside of the site as it was very wet and muddy and the rain made things worse. Not that I was bothered about the mud, I can be as dirty as I like here, and can wash everything when I get home.

I also went for a walk that turned out to be more difficult than I thought at Aberglaslyn. I thought it would be a pleasant riverside walk, but turned out to be a bit more than that. Since I had only paid to park for an hour I just walked out half an hour and back.

In the evening I just wandered by the lake at the campsite a bit, and then settled down to beers and my camp fire .

The next day the weather was terrible, completely different, rain in the night and a howling gale, no way I was going up Snowdon in that so I took a long drive instead, ended up at the Sychnant pass in Dwygyfylchi, where I stayed when I was about 7 years old. I climbed a small “mountain” Allt Wen because it was there, nearly got blown off and again terrible out of breath doing it, but in stages stopping regularly I actually got to the top. Seems I was there when I was seven as I have photos. Quite pleased I did it, but got rather wet and was difficult to take pictures in the constant drizzle covering my lens in spray whenever I tried.

So later on I though of going to the beach but it was too cold wet and windy. I drove down the tiniest and most difficult track I have done so far to a remote lake and campsite at Cym Bychan (near Harlech) which I suppose I could stay at one day but maybe it is too remote. Definitely having a 4WD is handy on roads like that even though I met a hairpin bend so steep and tight I could not take it in one turn even though I met a lorry coming the other way! Well at the top they seemed to be widening the road so perhaps this is the last time to experience that track as it is. Every year the roads get straightened and widened a bit more, but there are still some very challenging drives.

My final day turned out to be a bit of a disaster in some ways. The morning started off OK with thr promise of better weather and I went down into Llanberris for breakfast again and bought myself a waterproof jacket from an outdoor shop which had a sale because I was very unhappy with the performance of my existing waterproof the day before as hydrostatic head of 8000mm or not it let water in the sleeves!

Anyway for the day I intended to take the long way round to Snowdon and rather than starting from Pen y Pass but I thought I would walk the back way from Llyn Gwynant to start with to see how it went and then if it was ok and I was not done in I would try Snowdon itself. Well it started out ok, I was dressed properly for it this time, long trousers, walking boots, gaiters and my new waterproof as well as other stuff in the rucksack.

The First mile was ok, although it took me longer than my usual walks because of the climbing. However after that it very nearly turned into a disaster as I lost the track, at some point I was supposed to turn left after I crossed a stream, but the trouble was which stream as I seemed to have crossed several? It all went pear shaped and I regretted the so called sensible option of walking boots as I had to ford a stream and before long it was over the top of my boots, so I had waterlogged boots and there nothing worse than waterlogged waterproof boots cos if the water gets in it stays in. ( I have had to dry them out with a hair dryer since getting home)

Worse was to come as the path was very indistinct. You might have heard stories about people falling into bogs and being sucked down and I never believed it till now thinking it was a literary exaggeration but I took a wrong step and my right leg sank up to my knee and I was literally sucked down and got stuck. There was no solid ground and for a moment it seemed like I could not get my leg out, and I was fearful of what might have happened it I had not been able to pull myself out.

Well wrong route or not, I was never out of sight of the road, but being as I had lost the track had to guess the best way. Trouble was all the ground was similar and so you can imagine I took great care to test it before making every step from then on. Ultimately the main road curves round the area where I was walking and the way out was to climb out of the valley, but it did not get less boggy, and just got steeper and steeper. I was out of breath and just making a few steps at a time before resting, it took me over an hour to cover that part and it was not more than a mile. The worst was that at the top mostly there was a high stone wall keeping the road in and a fence on top of that, I could only see one point where the wall looked lower, and I still had to climb up the wall and over.

In the end I was a good way off where I should have been so had to walk round the road to get to Pen y pass. Well worse to come, I was hot of course and sweating, I had long ago taken off my coat and packed it in my rucksack before I even fell into the bog. However the bite valve from my camel back hydration pack (yes my rucksack is very hi tec) came off and I lost it somewhere on the road, in order to stop leaking water, I had to tie a knot in the tube. That was the last straw, when I got to Pen y pass there was a bus in, and I just caught it straight down to Llanberis, on the bus I changed out of my wet boots and socks, and put my sandals back on. (good job I had packed them just in case) I thought maybe I could get the train up to Snowdon instead because I was not going to walk it in my sandals, or with a leaking hydration pack. So I eventually found a shop to replace the bite valve, (from a platypus not a camelback, but who cares) it cost me 6 GBP which I thought was over the top.

Then to my annoyance I discovered that the train was fully booked all day, and so that was out, so I thought maybe I would go along the lake railway instead for something to do. That too was fully booked so I felt really pissed off. So I managed to repack my rucksack with the wet boots at the bottom and everything else on top and I waited for ages for a bus back to Pen y Pass.

When I got there I figured I did not have time to go up Snowdon before the last bus back to the campsite so I figured I would walk as far as I could get in about half an hour chosing what turned out to be the most arduous track up and wearing my sandals after all. As it turns out my sandals were perfectly suitable, there is a lot of bull talked about wearing the proper walking boots, much good they had done me already I don’t think. Thing is it was a hard climb as you can see from the photos, but was worth it for what I could see even if I only got no more than about two miles up the track but I reckon I could have done it in an hour and a half to two hours if I had not wasted all that time earlier.

So I decided discretion was the better part of valour and walked down to the café as I was really dying for a cup of tea and something hot to eat as it was getting later. What then pissed me off was the time of the next bus, an hour and three quarters away, I figured I could have climbed further if I had known that.

Then the weather broke and it started raining again. However I decided that I was not going to catch the bus and figured I could walk the long way back to the campsite in about an hour. Well it took me an hour and a quarter and I got absolutely soaked, no waterproof is up to the sort of rain that Wales can deliver, blowing at you with the force of a gale. However coming back the long way it was possible to see from above just where I had gone wrong on the way up. It’s funny that you can make out the tracks from way above when you can’t on the ground.

(A note from my return home, apparently the reason I could not find the bite valve for my hydration bladder, was because it had miraculously fallen into my trouser pocket, I found it there when I was unpacking)

Well of course none of that will seem much to most readers but do not forget, to heck with the autism, I am 53 and arthritic.

There are pictures here.

As for you cynics and naysayers, it is my life and I will do with it what I will!

Down time

In another months time, I am going to disappear over the edge of the internet for a couple of weeks, where I will mercifully be out of contact from this mad mad world.

That is because I shall be camping, and either not have electricity to spare to charge a laptop or be out of even the reach of cell phones (what bliss)

Have to say I feel that I am coming to a certain juncture in my life, another of those forks in the road.

I have no certainty that I shall be elected again onto the NAS council, and if I am not, then it will be an opportunity for me to change my relationship with that organisation, maybe even to get something out of it for myself (I cannot be employed by them whilst I am a trustee)

I also expect to change my relationship with Autscape, which will be occupying my first week under canvas, in that once this year is over I shall revert to being an ordinary member as being something other than the peoples choice of chair has certainly taken it out of me, for diplomat I never claimed to be.

I shall also be glad to be away from the controversies of this hub, which I am also a somewhat reluctant member of.

It has turned nasty beyond all measure, there are predatory vultures out there and no more dare I say.

Anyone who thinks I have ever been anything but an iconoclast should look at my poetry, I don't run with any herd, in either direction and my opinions are definately my own.

If I wanted to play it straight I would be an autism consultant by now, brown nosing my way into the profession by whatever means I could, but fate or personality or whatever, I just don't have the capacity for that!

There is not even anything interesting or new on my Youtube channel at the moment either, just a bunch of old geezers bashing sticks together to the sound of a squeeze box and even that was months ago. (and it was an incredible 29 years ago since I was up for that lark myself)

Nah you read into it all what you like, I am not sure you really have the choice, but whatever, I need some down time, elsewise I am not long for this world.

The First to go

What else can I say but Never Again!

Another one bites the dust

We autists don't like change (at least this one does not)

The announcement of end of my blogging presence here was perhaps a little premature because it still has it's uses.

Yesterday I learnt from the BBC (not Yahoo incidentally) that Geocities is being buried.
This follows on the end of Lycos Europe which recently caused me to lament the ephemeral nature of the web.

Geocities might not be keeping up with Myspace and Facebook and the rest but it was where a lot of us cut our teeth. I would not have learned HTML without that impetus, and I guess this and the other free hosts out there provided us the first opportunities to get our message out to world and start connecting, via web rings (remember them) and cross linking.

Those who do not keep up with the times, who don't recularly update websites and move across platforms will be lost as when the plug is pulled a vast number of links will become dead including the most popular of mine.

Nowadays, however I do not rely upon free webhosting and pay for the space to host my old style website, which is all still there. Nothing is recession proof of course and eventually I may not be able to afford to maintain it, but at least I will be the one who kills it off, not someone else.

Most of the old Geocities sites may have been badly designed and essentially so much rubbish, but you can say the same for Myspace.

I guess nothing is permanent in the web world. Woolworths stood for nearly a hundred years. How much of the web as we know it today will still be here in 10 years time, even the lead applications of today such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and what have you, they rise up like flowers and are cut down. In ten years time blogging might be as much yesterdays application as geocities was. Enjoy it while you can.

Pastures new, or any port in a storm.

I have found a new blogging haven, and no I am not going to link to it from here, as I find it a haven of sanity and sound rational discourse in the face of what have increasingly become Punch and Judy knockabout exchanges on the autism hub.

Yes my new blog does deal with autism, it does deal with science and that by implication would be enough to infuriate the ‘mercurian’ persuasion, whose interpretation of science is somewhat different to my own.

In that new community I find the level of discourse to be far more respectful in general than I find here and it is a welcome escape from the ad hominem attacks and blatant irrationalism which all too often surfaces in the commentaries on our blogs.

I have to say, indeed confess that my own style of commentary both within this community and without has often sunk to that same pantomime level, which is what tends to happen when the quality of what one is responding to almost demands a less than serious rejoinder.

Is it good bye to this particular blog?

Well it may be, then again it may not, as I reserve this blog for the more personal.
Anyway I could go on to say that I have found the exchanges on the autism hub to be more analogous to the late night arguments one might have in a pub after a few beers when ones guard is down compared to the sort of constrained exchanges one might find in a debating society.

So what have I learnt from other bloggers both within and without of the autism hub?

I have learnt that Michelle Dawson considers me the enemy of science because I dare to be critical of the basis for the research her institution is undertaking. That I fear stems from a clash of epistemologies more than anything else as it often seems we are speaking mutually unintelligible languages, mine being inflected (some would say infected) by the dangerous virus of sociology. No matter, I respect Michelle's work both in advocacy (whether she acknowledges the word or not), and in her contribution to demolishing the myths of behaviourism.

Harold Doherty, would seem to think that I am one of the Devil’s minions, a cohort of High Functioning Hells Angels who would ride roughshod over his rights as a parent. What utter nonsence, put away the distorting spectacles Harold. His ally Autism’s Gadfly seems to be confused, on the one hand I am a nobody, a wannabe sniping at the authority figures in the autism world. On the other hand he snipes at me because my relative academic success (albeit thirty years late) is somehow challenging to his self esteem as someone doomed by the curse of autism. You can’t have it both ways.

Others think that because I call myself a king in my own domain, that I am closer to Caligula than Marcus Aurelius. So be it, I sometimes wish I had never used that particular trope as the subtleties of the shift in meaning between Erasmus’ and Wells' use of it go unnoticed. The reality for this one eyed tyrant king is that at this age (to quote from Thomas Hardy) toothlessness is felt less to be a defect than hard gums an acquisition.

As for Foresam, I leave the Be(a)st till last does he even think? Or has he been swigging the mercury himself?

I have really had rather enough of it all which is why I am moving to pastures new, hoping that I can cross the bridge without encountering any Troll resistance, or worse yet to find them chasing after me.

Our ephemeral history

Today I have been occupied in revising the bibliographies in a number of papers I have written, with a view to publication, and have discovered on clicking through a number of the internet links that they no longer exist.

Since ours is a predominantly on line cultural history, that much of our archaeology has been effectively wiped out and is inaccessible now.

Of course key texts like the Institute for the Neurotypical, and Jim Sinclairs writings are still there, but I am no longer able to find Martijn Dekkers paper, which I often cite. (click on his link and see for yourself what I mean)

This is the problem with the internet, in that you can still find out of print books in libraries, but if you try and follow any internet links given in them, likely as not they are no longer there.

I have myself been a victim of this, in that I have recently lost two domain names with the demise of Lycos Europe who hosted them, and that is just a microcosm.

I recall nearly ten years ago now, reading the web sites of Amanda Baggs, Jared Blackburn, Dave Spicer, Frank Klein and others, but where are they now?

Ok I know where Amanda is, but I am referring to the original Aleis in Wonderland site, and there are many more examples.

I myself have tried to keep popular stuff which is frequently referenced stable, in that I have not moved those pages around on my original Geocities site, but anything that was on Lycos has now gone.

Wikipedia is no better. Whilst this is useful it has it's limits. There is so much that is subject to the inumerable "wiki wars" and so much which is little more than plagiarism from out of copyright encyclopedias which by definition is going to be more of historical interest than anything else.

The early history of Neurodiversity and the usage of the word has been effectively wiped out by wiki wars, the current article in wikipedia being inaccurate, uninformative and biased.

It is more than annoyance, because it really hampers the work of someone like me, who cites from the internet a lot.

This is one reason I am now submitting papers to journals, because otherwise in another ten years time, none of it will necessarily still be able to be read. This blog being an example, at some point google could change their terms of reference, and it could be gone in the proverbial puff of smoke ........

Of course the shifting landscape of the internet is not only our concern, it can be very embarrasing too: Home Office in new pornography embarrassment

Under the liquid cosh

I heard this article this morning, and thought that if nobody else blogs about it I shall.

"Hundreds of women sedated in care homes may be at risk of having children with birth defects, the BBC learns."

Now the article goes on to relate research which indicates that "10 ex-residents of a children's home run by the Church of England in Gravesend, Kent, have had children with a birth defect."

Now I am not playing the blame game and pointing the finger at the Church of England, because you can bet that what went on there was widespread across the care industry and that would include any number of charities including one I am associated with.

We can rail against the practices of the Judge Rotenburg centre but this is worse when you consider the outcomes, because it is interfering with the reproductive ability of a generation as surely as if they were sterilised and this is not even autism yet.

I am coming to that, because if the major tranquiliser regime that these young girls were under, in order to control behaviour was that dangerous, just consider the chemical cocktails that some autistic children have to endure, multiple psychotropic medications, often off licence, and that is mainstream before we even come to what the biomedical quacks practice.

Isn't it ironic that in order to "cure" or control one generation they will risk the next?

Is this a real danger to future autistic mothers?

You bet I can think of several people in my own acquaintance who have been on long term neuroleptic medication.

But anyway, whether it is autistic young people in care, or NT's this is a major abuse.

Good science is not good science if it is unethical.

I do not any longer think there is that much of a distinction between good science and bad science.

For sure “crank” science is as much the bane of this generation as it has ever been, in terms of giving unsupportable validity to distasteful concepts, however following on my recent blog about the distortions of science in Nazi Germany I really think that what is equally important to good science, is not it’s accuracy but the spirit in which it is carried out.

Where most autism science fails is at the outset, before even the construction of the experimental paradigm, is in the attitude, because before everything comes the formulation of the hypothesis, that imaginative leap from what is currently known or unknown, toward the question one believes one can answer through the scientific method.

Nobody comes to this without bias. My particular bias, which you could argue gets in the way of objectivity, is my inability to read the serried ranks of journals, without an increasing sense of anger, with regard to the contempt that most of this shows to the humanity of my people.

I cannot but see the FMRI scanner in the same intrusive light as the discredited anthropometrists calliper.

So much of the paper chase is driven not by a desire to know anything useful, but by the pressure to publish, and to publish something new and original, even to the neglect of examining the wider context and grounding for that.

It would be disengenous (Godwins law again) to compare most scientists currently climbing the academic ladder with the racist tainted science of pre WWW2 Germany, however I cannot help wondering, if the metaphorical gloves were taken off, what they might do. The prospects for human veniality are bleak, as the experiments of Zimbardo and Milgram (in themselves dubiously ethical) have shown.

It seems to me, in journal after journal all we see is a number of cliques arguing between themselves, that “I think this and my scans prove it,” never mind someone elses set of scans show something else and “prove” something else.

In terms of good science vs bad science this may well be because of poor experimental design, and bias being multiplied through the analytical tools chosen, just as something that is not there can come out of a photoshopped picture simply through chosing one particular filter algorithm over another.

(Does anyone remember the famous Nessie pictures, where reputable experts in there own fields Edgerton, strobe photography, Rines , Sonar produced evidence that Nessie existed, only to be debunked some years later when one of the pictures turned out to be largely an artefact of the enhancement of a rotting tree stump )

One should beware of simply taking anything for granted just because it has a University seal behind it and has passed peer review, because one needs context, context is everything.

The context with autism, is that everything so far has proceeded from it’s cultural construct. The scientists all come in with a bias, that autism exists, and it is this, that or the other. Nobody has ever reframed any of the questions ab initio.

So is my bias against their ethics any worse than there bias against the dignity of the “subjects” they research and there refusal to countenance that they may be mistaken, especially given the mutually insupportable and contradictory nature of so many of their findings.

Fort Apache the Bronx

"The Bronx is burning." Does anyone else recall that time? Well it seems that Henley Green or at least my part of it is burning.

You may recall my block of flats was hit by two fires in recent times, well now it is the turn of the pub which is just the other side of the green from where I live. What next?

Over the years a number of pubs in this area have been torched, including the Shire Horse and the once notorious Live and Let Live.

Indiana Jones and the lost tribes of Atlantis

The ultimate destination of bad science and crank theories.....

Whilst one can look at notions of the lost Atlantis, Lemuria, Theosophy and even naturism as merely eccentric, and trace there origins in 19th Century Germanic thought down one path to Haight Ashbury and onwards to today's new age exploitations, one can also trace them down the left hand path to death camps of the Nazi's for it is these same philosophies that so engaged Heinrich Himmler that he sent an expedition to Tibet, in search of lost Aryans. (See where Indiana Jones comes in now?)

Contemporary German science was all too keen to lend a hand, as concurrent with this nonsense were the growing disciplines of anthropology informed by the Social Darwinism of the likes of Galton who still have a lot to answer for.

The somewhat less than harmless pursuit of native skulls, and live specimens to be put under the callipers and gypsum casts of the anthropometrists lead inexorably to the experiments carried out in the death camps, by reputable accredited scientists with no regard as to what became of the subjects afterwards (I need not elaborate)

The relevance of this to Autism is very apt. Those whose reaction to disparagement of the autistic way of being is a desire to create Aspergian creation myths should take note, that false notions of our origins just will not do.

On the other side of the equation, the false origin theories of the quack bio med brigade will not do either, where unsustainable theory and the pursuit of personal gain drives the research and nothing else.

Ok by Godwin's law I have already lost the argument, but you cannot argue with the corruption in science, when the pursuit of objectivity is compromised by the political or economic regime, where to keep your job and succeed you have to go along with all the current notions.

This is where autism science is leading when funding is driven by the propagandist machine of the ignorant, just as surely as there were plenty of fellow travellers with populist notions of racial origin to fuel Nazi fanaticism.

And before I am accused of the inevitable bias in this, let me put in a word of discouragement for those extremists supposedly on the same side as me, those "Aspie supremacists" who regale an enthusiastic audience with equally pseudo scientific nonsense claiming our descent as a neurodiverse lost tribe and next step in evolution. To deduce our own existence from the supposed survival of Neandarthals or whatever, is as patently false and harmful as the notions of the descent of the Aryans from a lost Atlantean race of giants.

Those who argue that the truth does not matter, (as some Aspergians do) because everyone has a right to a creation myth of there own very much miss the real history, where the SS under Heinrich Himmler were equally as keen to supplant the Judeo Christian traditions with a Nordic pagan mythology of there own.

If anyone wishes to read more, this is the book I have just finished reading.
"Himmler's Crusade: The Nazi Expedition to Find the Origins of the Aryan Race" The connections between populist crackpot philosophy and the appeal of the Nazi's becomes very clear.

Apart from the events of this book possibly being the inspiration for Indiana Jones, the book tells the other side of those harmless not so new age philosophies as current at the end of the Nineteenth century as they still were at the end of the Twentieth. It will also tell you that all was not sweetness and light in the pre war Tibet of the current Dalai Lama's predecessor either, and that there is more to history than any one side would have you believe.

Thank heaven that not all German science was so corrupt because there were also those such as Dr Creutzfeld who openly refused to co-operate with the Nazi T4 extermination of "mental defectives" not forgetting our very own Dr Asperger either, whose upbeat descriptions of the positive attributes of his patients "disabilities" have to be understood in the context of the times he was working.

I'd rather go to jail than die in a nursing home

Yesterday (30th March) there was a protest in Birmingham. This is just one example of where issues go beyond autism and neurodiversity, and why pan disability solidarity is a good thing.

I am sure many of my detractors will hate this, but here is reality. Incidentally I am the guy in the dark glasses you can see sitting in the doorway in the second video.

In the news again (Artistic Autistics)

I had a photo call today. Now I know exactly what these photographers are up to posing people to get the image they want, which is not altogether real (so at least I had a haircut in anticipation)

My friend Nikola has just completed the video "Artistic Autistics" and it seems that it is newsworthy, we have another photo call coming up Wednesday for another local paper.

It was a bit annoying that they wanted to create the impression in the picture that Nikola was filming me and her boyfriend, when actually in the video it was the other way about, and for a while they had me down as a student of Coventry University (oh the shame of it, it is Birmingham) That is journalism for you.

To be honest a lot of the camera work leaves a lot to be desired, and I am entitled to say that being as I filmed most of it :(

But the conception of the video itself, directed and scripted by Nikola, is something else. I'd put a bit of it up on youtube, but that it is not really up to me to do that, being as this is after all an academic project and Cov Uni might not like that, any more than if I were to put an essay of mine out here before it was marked.

There will be a public showing of it at Cov Uni in May, and I do hope after that, that we can distribute this more widely, especially after "Something about us" got such a good reception when I showed that at Birmingham Uni, after my lecture last week.

We might not have the technical facilities or the money behind us, that autism speaks and such have, but by goodness we are going to blow those stereotypes apart.

This is Autism with the R in it :)

The rule of the gun, what is happening?

I was going to comment about the Alabama killings and the recent real/continuation IRA shootings but something even worse has occurred in Germany a country one does not normally associate with such random shootouts.

Before this I was speculating as to what the difference (if any) there is between the murder of two soldiers and a policeman by Irish Terrorists, the crazed shooting spree of the US "Mall shooter" and the shootings at the Sri Lankan Cricket team in Lahore.

I thought is the difference in the motivation or what? One kind of shooting is clearly political (even if misguided by the usual standards of morality) and the other is usually a grudge shooting of some kind.

And then I thought, no there is no difference in the motivation, it is all grudge shooting, a hatred of someone, one has never met, who is either percieved to have done one wrong, or who belongs to a class who has done one wrong. It all stems from hatred and an overfamiliarity with firearms.

It is a wonder sometimes that the petty warfare in this blogosphere does not end up that way given the same motivations of hatred and prejudice I see in some postings.

I am not even immune to it myself, for instance what I personally think about the guy who claims he would rather have his children die of Cancer than live with Autism. God may forgive him but I find it hard to.

Hey WTF? that is the same fanatical thinking that equates in my mind to terrorism. You there fanatic author, would you rather your kids died in a Mall, or a school shootout too?

This is the real madness in this world.

Clumsy definitions of disability

It occurred to me whilst shaving with one of those multi blade disposable razors whether that was ethical at all, given how few shaves one gets out of them, and the amount of steel and plastic they must use up. Granted they use less steel than the contraptions my father used, but still was there an acceptable alternative. (my annoyance was in part, how easily these razors become clogged with bristles as well if one has skipped shaving the day before)

The alternative is of course the aptly named 'cut throat' razor and I cannot imagine how our forefathers managed to 'hack it' with such a dangerous appliance. Now as you might have guessed, I am clumsy, there is no way I could use one of those things safely.

Following my train of thought, I considered. What if steel and plastic were so scarce that the government banned disposable razors (as indeed incandescent light bulbs are being increasingly banned) Someone like myself would probably need a medical exemption to continue using one, and these devices would become rarer, more expensive and available at the chemists by prescription only.

I could then see and epidemic of dyspraxia diagnoses, as every post pubescent boy struggling with a cut throat razor, was taken by his parents for the magic “label” that would allow him to be spared the rigours of continual sticking plaster around his gills.

Safety razors would become as hot a property as an illicit shot of Ritalin.

Now that is not to say that my clumsiness is not of an order that is well below the usual two standard deviations from the norm, that tends to be a rule of thumb dividing line between a disorder and natural variance. Someone always has to come at the far end of any bell curve else it would not be a 'natural distribution' if it had vertical sides.

However we can also look at natural variance in eyesight. One can well argue that ones visual acuity is as much a medical issue, as ones physical co-ordination, indeed sometimes the two are linked. However one does not need the services of a Dr or a formal diagnosis for one, in order to go to an optometrist to get the accommodations one needs. True there are fewer options available once one exceeds a particular dioptre strength (as I found when trying to get prescription swimming goggles, they mostly cater for a range of about one standard deviation from the norm) but nonetheless one does not usually go to the hospital to be fitted with high strength lenses. Glasses are considered a social norm, a fashion item even, and nobody thinks about an underlying epidemic in the increasing numbers of people who wear them, or contact lenses. No instead one looks to changing social patterns as an explanation given the higher literacy rates, and greater demands upon vision that a technological society makes.

Where is all this leading. Well Neuro diversity is something that encompasses “dyspraxia” as well as autism and adhd. It also encompasses dyslexia, that other emergent product of the demand for higher literacy.

Now I was not diagnosed as dyspraxic or dyslexic by a GP or a hospital consultant anymore than I was prescribed glasses by one, I was diagnosed by a dyslexic specialist, outside of the health service.

When it comes to anything on the autistic spectrum, be that PDDNos, Aspergers or Autistic “Disorder” (to use the DSM categories) one requires to go through the medical route, but why?

Psychiatrists are often ill experienced and ill trained to diagnose anything other than a particular set of mood disorders, psychoses and personality 'disorders' and in the strong evidence of something secondary presenting more strongly than the autism they won’t see it.

On the other hand paediatricians are seeing more autism, but again why?

Is it because Autism confers a perceived social advantage in a highly competitive educational arena that parents and paediatricians are getting hip to the autism jive? More so than the psychiatrists amongst whom there is not this pressure to learn about autism as they do not expect to see it much amongst there adult patients?
Is this an example of the rule that can be derived from my razor example?

To put it simply, autism does exist, as a set of neurological differences, as real as those that underlie dyslexia and dyspraxia (which are equally complex conditions when one unravels them) however it exists as a natural distribution and the way it is diagnosed and the numbers are socially defined and shifting over time. Autism has it’s own bell curve and the pressure is now there diagnose those two standard deviations on the far side of the bell curve as well as those on its 'severe'end whilst the majority falls within the middle.

I can hear those parents whose children fall at one end of the bell curve protesting, the epidemic as if all the diagnoses are coming from that end. Well they are not, it is a bell curve and not skewed at the bottom, that diagnostic prevalence toward a low IQ construction of autism is falling away because of those social diagnostic shifts.

I asked a rhetorical question in an earlier blog as to whether I am autistic. Well it seems most people in the know would comfortably diagnose me in there. However that does not make me necessarily less autistic than these straw men arguments put up to justify continuing denial of rights to so called lower functioning autistics. It does mean that so far as my IQ goes I am on the far side of the bell curve (OK I admit it) but that is yet another bell curve, a natural distribution that will cut across practically any 'disability' you care to mention, and the consequences are always going to be more difficult if you have less intellectual capacity to spare, to problem solve for yourself, be that if you have arthritis, or are Deaf. Deafness is the great example again, at one time Deaf people were considered automatically “retarded” because of the importance that psychology put upon language for the formation of concepts and ideas, in those dark days.

Who would deny that an intelligent Deaf person had the right to speak as an advocate for the rights of Deaf People, across the now notorious bell curve? Well you might if you were a hearing parent of a Deaf child, full of the standard societal notions of how important oralism is, and what an imposture sign language is. You see there is nothing unique about Autism so far as it fits within the social constructions and appreciations of Disability at all.

Please note that comments are only open for sensible debate. Fanatics who have no intention of ever changing there position on this, people who denigrate each other in the argument by calling there opponents had better keep fighting your Troll wars somewhere else as I don’t want to insult the readership of this blog by exposing them to the scatological level to which debate has descended elsewhere. So keep it polite please.

Autscape 2009 Call for proposals

We wish to explore these key concepts of autistic being in many different fashions. This can be through formal presentations or workshops, and may be theoretical or practical. Many different types of input are welcome: traditional lectures, creative expression, physical activity, interactive workshops and more.

____ Audience _________________________________________________

Although we welcome non-autistic professionals and family members, the aim of this event is primarily for autistic people, not about us!

Workshops geared towards parents and professionals may be accepted, but must be positive in their support for autistic people and their right to be different.

____ Examples _________________________________________________

For some examples of what has been presented at Autscape in the past, see last year's presentations at:

http://www.autscape.org/archive/2008/presentations

We are also likely to enjoy similar workshops to those that have been presented at Autreat, in the USA. See: http://www.ani.ac/

____ Non-verbal workshops _____________________________________

Although many of the autistic people who are attracted to an event such as Autscape are highly verbal, others may have difficulty with an event so centered around language. However, we want to welcome and fully include all kinds of autistic people, including less 'wordy' ones. We are also seeking workshops which are not primarily focused on the spoken word. (Presenters may still use speech; it is just not the main content of this type of workshop.) Examples: dance, relaxation, music, art, construction of some kind. These workshops are different from casual leisure sessions in that they have more structure, preparation (from the presenter), relevance to autism and the event's theme, and duration.

____ A few notes of caution ___________________________________

* Cures:

Workshops about curing or preventing autism are likely not to go over well at all and are best avoided altogether, unless it is from an advocacy standpoint.

* Problems:

The problems of non-autistics coping with autistic people could inadvertently reinforce negative attitudes.

* Personal Experience:

We all have personal experience of autism. If your presentation is primarily based on your personal experience, think carefully about its relevance here; the story needs to be one which can help attendees to find new understanding of their own situation. Please let us know what you're hoping those present will gain from your presentation.

* Suitability:

Every workshop, no matter who it is targeted towards, should be suitable for autistic people to attend without feeling objectified or put down.

____ What do we expect from you? ______________________________

* Attendance:

If you submit a proposal, we do expect you to be there! Please be prepared to attend Autscape and give your presentation on the day and time scheduled. If you choose not to attend Autscape for the whole 3 days we will do our best to fit the schedule around your needs.

Travel is the responsibility of each individual presenter. We cannot subsidise travel or off-site expenses for anyone. If your proposal is accepted, we will send you a formal letter of invitation if this will help you to secure your own funding.

* Discussion groups:

Presenters may be expected to run an evening or afternoon discussion group on their topic, for those who would like to explore the issue further. If you may have problems with this, we will try to find a volunteer to help you.

* An article:

We would like an article about your presentation for inclusion in a proceedings booklet to be prepared and printed at a later date. This booklet will be sold to raise funds for Autscape.

* Presentation materials:

Please send copies of any handouts and computer presentations (e.g.

powerpoint) ahead of time. These will be made available for download by Autscape participants and printing for those who require it.

* Archive:

We would like to include your presentation summary, biography and any electronic handouts you provided in our website's archive area.

* Recording:

Please allow us to video or otherwise record your presentation. These records may be made available to others by Autscape. If you submit a proposal we will assume you are happy with these expectations. If you have any questions or objections, please let us know so we can discuss it.

____ What can you expect from us? _____________________________

* Attendance:

Presenters will be accommodated on-site for the day of their presentation including the night before or after. Only one place can be subsidised for each presentation, regardless of the number of presenters. Unfortunately, due to the funding situation we cannot offer free attendance at all of Autscape this year.

* Participation:

Whenever you are not presenting you can enjoy the event, including other workshops and the setting, just as any other participant.

* Involvement:

One thing you can expect by joining us is the opportunity to shape an emerging self-advocacy event and autistic community. There will be opportunities at the event to get involved in the future of Autscape.

* Audience:

A rare opportunity to be heard by a significant number of autistic people. A chance to have some influence and get some feedback from the people who matter most in the field of autism.

____ How to submit your proposal ______________________________

To submit your proposal, please use one of the following:

* online form: http://www.autscape.org/proposals/proposalform

* e-mail: info@autscape.org

* or post to: Autscape, 4 Falcon Street, London, E13 8DE, UK

All proposals must be received by 1 May 2009.

Please include the following information.

1. ABOUT YOU

a. Name

b. Country

c. At least one of:

o e-mail address (preferred)

o phone number

o postal address

d. Experience (A summary of your relevant experience, including

any presentations or other education/advocacy activities

elsewhere, and the nature of your interest in autism and/or in

general disability issues.)

2. INFORMATION FOR THE PROGRAMME

a. Your name or alias (for public use)

b. Biography (50-150 words)

c. Presentation title (1-12 words)

d. Summary (100-200 words)

3. ABOUT YOUR PRESENTATION

a. Type of session (choose one)

o Lecture (audience mostly listens)

o Workshop (audience participates verbally)

o Hands-On (audience participate physically)

o Other (please describe)

b. How does your presentation relate to this year's theme

'Effective Living'?

c. Please describe your presentation or activity for the decision makers.

4. Other comments not addressed above

(end)

More Violence against defenceless Autistics

Yet another story of school/police overreaction is being reported on the autism hub.

I am talking about the 14 year old child tazed unconsicous at school.

I think this bears multi level analysis to determine just what is going wrong.

Firstly I think there is a kind of legal paranoia, passing the buck, where teachers are so scared of adverse litigation if they have any physical contact with a child at all, especially in a violent and heated situation, that whether or not they would be capable of handling the situation they would sooner call the cops and wash their hands.

Secondly there maybe increasing paranoia about becoming a victim of violence, and let us face it teachers do face that threat more than they used to. That paranoia has driven the zero tolerance policies, where anything becomes a call the cops situation.

However there is more to said as the failings are not in any one person or institution.

This is an endemic institutional fear to begin with, driven by sociological issues that can be addressed in much better ways.

Not only do schools need to have clear policies regarding what is acceptable and what is not, they need training to understand developmental psychology at it’s most basic level, never mind jurisprudential questions about responsibility and mens rea.

At the “chalkface” the teacher needs to be trained in non aggressive intervention, in de-escalation techniques, and above all to have a degree of experience, tolerance, and lets face it “theory of mind” and if the cops are going to be called, then they need an equal degree of training and awareness to handle such situations, they need to realise that in such cases it is a child protection issue, not a preserve oneself against bruises at all cost and help the school to save face issue. If the firefighters adopted such an attitude of fear and paranoia over their own safety they would never enter a burning building. Risk is part of the job, and minor injuries are no more than that.

Furthermore don’t anyone come over self righteous and try and tell me that I have no idea of what the cops might be thinking or what they are faced with in potentially violent and dangerous situations, many years ago I was beaten to the ground by a gang of bikers, who turned their pool cues onto me. My crime in their eyes was having a go at them for kicking a defenceless guy on the ground. I had no taser, but I just did what every citizen ought to and suffered the consequences.

And yes I have been the "berserker" on the other side of the equation too, but I have managed not to kill or injure anyone yet. I have merely lived in more fortunate and tolerant times.

What is Autism? and am I Autistic?

Two big questions, and for all the talk of self diagnosis going about on the internet, most of the time in my life I do not see the autism any more than a neurotypical would see their neurotypicality, and for all of my life when I am on my own I am simply me doing what I do unobserved. I don't see the autism in the heat of engagements either because I am too busy figuring out what I am supposed to be doing, and it is only afterwards if I try and analyse it that I see the oddity, that which marks me out as Autistic in the eyes of the trained observer.

Well yesterday I wonder whether I was not annoying the fire brigade with my preoccupation with having locked myself out while they were busy fighting a fire, well I don't know?

Anyway this is why I post this video



(well not entirely the NAS have pestered me)

I leave it without comment except to say that I have certainly been seen to behave in odd ways on public transport, indeed it is noticable that so many of the viral videos from the NAS have also featured public transport, almost to the point of a shot for shot copy of the opening moments of Outside In substituting a red bus for a blue one.

Trains also seem to feature somewhat in my youtube postings "Ten minute roughcut" and "another trailer for Terra Incognita" which incidentally was shown at an NAS international conference to an audience including Temple Grandin

There is a difference between my public transport footage and the NAS produced videos however, although the NAS material is based on interviews and real incidents my footage is live as it happens, there are no actors, it is absolutely real, and of course therein lies the oddity itself for who but an Autist could unselfconsciously walk onto a train or a bus with a camcorder and give a running commentary on what he sees to an unanticipating audience?

Well at least I have never been arrested for it yet.

Amtrak photo contestant arrested by Amtrak police in NYC’s Penn Station

Lightning strikes twice

I was just relaxing in my flat, having not long come home from Birmingham when there was a loud banging on my door. I went to my door and all I saw was someone scuttling off down the stairs, and then I realised, there was another fire in the block of flats, so I just grabbed my laptop, and a few documents from my top drawer, put my coat on and cleared off down the stairs before the smoke started, anxious not to be trapped on the top floor a second time.

Well fortunately the fire brigade came quick enough to ensure there was not the damage that happened in November, which incedentally has not been fully repaired yet, so I have not had to evacuate this time.

Unfortunately I left in such a hurry that I forgot to take my keys. I thought that a friend had a spare set but I spent a fruitless two way taxi ride to discover she had not :(

The Fire Brigade could have broken in for me but they would undoubtedly have done a lot of damage to the door, so I broke in myself using my trusty leatherman juice which fortunately I had in my pocket when I left. (anyone reading, this don't try it as normally the mortice lock is set as well as the latch.)

Hey I reckon I would make a nifty burglar.

Well I made a neat hole in my door so I could reach round and unlatch it, however I have now had to make a rather ugly repair, (and the door has been newly painted too) still it could have been worse.

Why science will never have the answers to Autism

I have a hangover, that's not relevant, but I am awash with ideas, and I feel after commenting in the same fashion on two blogs within the autism hub which deal with different theories of Autism, the one from our old friend and bogey Simon Baron Cohen, the other from the laughably named "Mind Institute", that it is worth repeating on my blog.

Essentially so many theories of Autism are being advanced that they are mutually insupportable.
One might claim that one is right and the other is not, but in doing so one is not really making a scientific choice so much as a personal preference given that the mutually insupportable theories when taken as separate entities all appear in peer reviewed journals and are internally consistent with the notions of scientific investigation and statistical validation.

I have approached this topic before when I quoted from Dermot Bowler's book.

http://laurentius-rex.blogspot.com/2008/08/citical-thinking-is-not-bad-thing.html

And if one wants to follow such ideas further one gets into the difficult territory of Wittgenstein, Quine and others as this critique of scientific method has a good grounding in philosophy (from whence science springs anyway).

Well to turn aside and get back to the main track, I will soon find myself teaching a module on a course constructed by my supervisor which investigates the position of autism in society. This is part of the Uni's BA in Childhood Culture and Education. Although this course is intended for undergraduates who do not have much of a background in Autism, it would be just as relevant to the likes of Simon Baron Cohen, Jenny McCarthy, David Kirby, and all the other popular pundits of autism who all mutually fail to understand just what they are really on about, who think they know all about autism when they only ever see the aspect they are dealing with directly.

And so for the third time today I will quote myself again: -

There is no single gene/cause for the categories "Artist" or "Scientist" each condition is contingent upon multiple factors because they are a human category not a natural one, in essence the reason why a single gene or cause will not be found is because "Autism" is also a human category, and as such is not "watertight" it leaks all over the place because that which is called autism is the confluence of many rivers and depending where you stand in the lake you might feel the influence and currents of any one of them more than another.

Therefore those who pin the argument for autistic's rights on the outcome of a science which can describe us in a positive way are on a hiding to nothing as the remedies are societal and to hope for a scientific justification is to bend science according to ones will, which of course is what all scientists and philosophers do anyway.

Autism finds itself wholly within the social model of disability for an explanation of how it is studied, valued, devalued or otherwise debated.

Urbi et Orbi

Do I have a new years message for the world as one year slips by into the next?

No not really, I have not the energy for it.

I leave the old year somewhat embittered by my experiences of it, what could have been a year of hope, but seeing what has happened to the economy, never mind the prospects for world peace, seems like one I will not wish to repeat.

I have had all the fight and the stuffing knocked out of me, all I can do is rant on like an ageing King Lear.

I have survived Christmas, but am not yet ready to fully engage with the new year and take up my usual responsibilities, both to myself and others. I am continuing to take a break.

My visit to South Wales was good fun, but the weather has not really been too good for seeing much else in the world.

I have my insurance cheque at least and need to use the car one last time to carry some goodies home from the new branch of IKEA, which has settled in the centre of Coventry as one 140 foot tall blot on the landscape, where once was a co-operative store where I used to shop when I lived oppositte to it in a housing co-operative. The words co-op mean nothing nowadays, but co-operatives were once seen, like credit unions as useful social institutions for the working classes to better themselves and gain some toe hold on economic equality. I still have my one pound share in the local Co-op, whose cider I must say is of excellent quality but that is a diversion (albeit a pleasant one)

Perhaps all that is left to me now is to subside into a life of drinking as much as I can whilst I can still afford it, and shaking off the demands of life, I don't know because I am not yet ready to assume them again.

So much to do and so little time to do it as ever, and what time there is, is wasted as it is pointless doing anything when your heart is not in it.

Well my heart is still into photography so here are my recent pictures, the weather has not been kind and one makes the best one can.

http://www.larry-arnold.info/photography/Scenery/endofyear.htm

The picture accompanying this blog is local, from the Warwickshire/Oxfordshire border near Edge Hill showing the heavy frost and dullness that is the weather currently.

Happy New year

If such a thing is indeed possible in this world of crisis succeeding crisis :(

Maybe someone out there will have a better new year. For my part I am glad that the big Christmas disruption is over, it takes some time however to get back into a routine, and indeed to address many of those issues that have not gone away in the meantime.

So What!

I intend to have one last fling while I have a hire car, one journey into Wales is not enough, I am going back, but this time to the South before the year is out. Be warned, there will be photographs.

Merry Christmas

Here is my Christmas Card. (I am not very good at posting them out IRL) and below is a video cobbled together out of something else which probably is closer to the mood I am in. It's the winter, it's normal for me to be feeling down.

I have journey ahead of me, and when I return, I will look at life again in the new year and try and sort out what can be sorted, and as for the rest, well it is Terra Incognita .......

"Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again."

AE Housman.

Not a happy bunny tonight.

Well you would think having to abandon my home because of a fire was bad enough.

Well it is not the worst that could happen, no indeed, something worse has happened.

I was getting over it, ready to move back in next week, but I have just received a very disconcerting email.

Trivial for some, but not to me, because my research and hope of making something of myself academically has been the main thing that has been sustaining me through this current bad patch.

Well not any more because Research Autism has turned down my funding application, and frankly I do not see how I can continue without any funding at all.

I guess I ought not to say what I think of them at this current time, anger is never a good basis for a sensible post, but I will have a score to settle, that is for certain, how I go about it with common sense is another matter.

Well I do obsess a little about the significance of dates and numbers, and this is coming up to the tenth anniversary of my most determined desire to kill myself.

I wish I had, because all that the intervening ten years has held out to me is an empty promise.

Terra Incognita, the unknown land, that far country from whose bourne no traveller returns. Well the bourne beckons, and December 25th will be decision day, at least I am staying that long in this world, but really, I am not sure I want to be here next year, because I don't think I am going anywhere but a life of poverty and underachievment.

Did I survive for this? who knows what is written, but running up the down escalator is my progress, not otherwise.

Good job I am not drunk isn't it, but I still do have things to complete never mind how I feel tonight, and perhaps it is that determination that is the only thing that will keep me going.


Gawd, what a whinger, shoot me now eh :)

Big trouble in little Coventry

If you follow the link you will see why.

Having limited internet access is what really sucks right now.

Well I am comfortable enough in B & B for now and I have recovered the things that are important to me.

All will be well in the long term, but in the short term, it is difficult for me to maintain my various responsibilities, however it is important to me not to pass my misfortunes on to any one else and let them down with regard to stuff I had arranged to do with them.

Talk about fifteen minutes of fame, our block was headline news taking up two pages in the local paper yesterday.

http://tinyurl.com/5ukmzk

More to follow when my situation is back to normal, sorry no video of the fire, safety comes first, but I hope to post a video diary or something on youtube :)

I have never looked smarter BTW, had to buy new clothes cos I only had what I stood up in, which smelt like a barbecued kipper.

Anyway my flat is relatively undamaged as I was furthest away from the seat of the fire, but if the fire brigade had not attended so promptly it might have been a different story.

The sh*t comes from dealing with all the bureaucracy you have to go through just to keep any kind of roof over your head.

I am through the worst of it now and have been able to go back and recover some essential items from my flat including my flute, documentation (which you don't even exist without these days) and my precious video hard discs which I was working on when the fire broke out and had to abandon.

Coventry Market the Musical

Nothing to do with autism or me even, but this is where I live, and this town has a history.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/check/coventry/realmedia/market_musical?size=16x9&bgc=C0C0C0&bbram=1

http://tinyurl.com/5rsra2

The building is of course threatened with demolition, never mind it's historical significance, It was designed by Frederick Gibberd and is actually the prototype for Liverpool Catholic Cathedral, in terms of a circular structure with a lantern.

There is something unique about a circular market and I know of no other like it.

My 53rd Year to Heaven

Not in the best frame of mind, the video speaks for itself.

The title reference is to Dylan Thomas, who like me was a Scorpio, born on the 27th of October just a days difference in our dates.

Teaching Poetry to frogs.

Yesterday in what I suppose must be a moment of madness, I submitted my DVD “Whichever way” to an assessment clinic at a local Institute of Videographers exhibition.

I was there to check out all the new equipment which I cannot afford, though fortunately I will be getting some editing equipment out of my Disabled Students Allowance as it is essential for my studies.

Anyway I told them from the beginning that it would be “different”

“Doesn’t matter, we have seen all sorts” the guy said.

However it was apparent right from the outset that it was to them jaw droppingly different, being as they are used to wedding videos, narrative stuff and that sort of thing.

Firstly they criticised it for being too wordy …. Well it is a lecture after all, but when I got to the end, the part where it is pure visual, they said they said it could benefit from a voice over, you can’t win, I took the voice over out on the advice of an artist who said I did not need it, the pictures said it all.

Then they criticised me for holding the same shots too long. Now hold on a minute, I have seen Tony Atwood’s videos, there is one camera angle throughout, not uncommon in a lot of straight to camera material that still exists in the genre. If I had stuck to the conventions of the action movie and never held a shot for more than 5 seconds the whole piece would look crazy. It is a lecture for goodness sakes, aimed at a reasonably literate audience, not action junkies with the attention span of a goldfish.

Then they did not understand some of the cut away shots that were there. Well I said, you are not supposed to understand them, it is a video about autism, some of the cutaways are meant to invoke a state of cognitive dissonance.

They criticised my delivery, reading from a sheet, well that was a deliberate Trope, that is to say, I deliberately made no attempt to engage the potential audience in vicarious eye contact, this is about autism after all.

Worse than that they suggested I ought to have got in a professional voice over artist.

Well again I said, what would be the point of that, I am autistic, there would be no authenticity you would lose all the voice inflections, and prosody of an autistic presenter, it might as well be someone else’s documentary if I did that.

They said that I could have cut out a lot of what I said, dumbed down.

Well again the point is to deliver a complex idea, a mini thesis as it were.

They obviously have not seen a great many educational videos, which would make mine look considerably more sophisticated by comparison.

I give up, NT’s want to see what NT’s want to see, they don’t care about the lyrics of a song so long as they can whistle the tune, they are not looking for depth and sincerity.

Maybe it achieved something, as I took the autism out to somewhere it was not expected.

It is interesting by contrast that many autistic people, whose opinions I have sought are seeing something else in the video, they are picking up the message of the graphics, and cut-aways and not remembering the text.

I can’t win but this in a way was a useful experiment, an adjunct to my research in fact, so far as it demonstrates anecdotally at least that there are differences in the way in which autistic people decode and understand video, what they are attending too.

Well I know that the video deals with a very difficult subject and one that is not popular, a subject I have been dealing with since before Stuart Murray wrote his book I might add, he will have seen the video first. “Outside In” which deals with a more conventional perspective easily outsells it. I can’t force NT’s to listen to the message I want to give them, and so often it has to be sugar coated and wrapped up in what they want to hear before you tell them it ain’t necessarily so.

You can bring a horse to water but you can’t make him drink, and I think sometimes trying to explain the rich beauty that can be seen in autism and that comes from autism, is the equivalent of trying to teach poetry to frogs.

If you are interested in a more general overview of the kind of videos I make you can visit my YouTube channel, it seems that the most popular is me playing the flute, maybe I really should pick it up and play it during my presentations after all.

Getting along swimmingly

Today I achieved something, that might not mean a lot to many people and for the world of me I cannot relate to Autism, but for the first time in my life after a year of learning I felt able to enter the deep end of a swimming pool and to swim 25 metres to to the end of the pool and then to swim back again toward the deep end completing the second length of 25 metres.

Now a year ago at the same time as I began my swimming lessons I embarked upon my doctorate and this weekend will be addressing an international conference and giving a way better performance than the token autie, Mr Stephen Shore I am sure. (at least I acknowledge that it is performance and I will entertain as much as I enlighten I hope)

However that is less of an achievement to me than my achievement in the swimming pool today.

All that I have done of course is to have achieved the basic standard that any 11 year old is expected to achieve and forty years late at that.

Well if anyone who attended Finham Junior school is reading this, A couple of years ago I met a former schoolmate who remembered me as the boy who never learned to swim.

How anyone learned to swim is actaully beyond me. For years parents raised money for what seemed to be a magnificent project to build a school pool. However by the time they achieved their aims the pool was nothing more than an open tank between the playground and car park.

We boys did not even have the privilege of a changing room, because the architects only built one, and that was reserved for the girls, we had to change in a corridor, and every week march barefoot in whatever weather across the tarmac playground to this open tank.

If that was not bad enough I was put off swimming for life by a teacher whose reaction to my reluctance to duck my head under the water was to hold it under.

Never mind that no-one ever appreciated the other difficulties I had with swimming namely a dyspraxic lack of co-ordination.

Well in my next school at least we had the luxury of going to the simply huge "olympic pool" in town, but by that time the damage had been done, and increasingly nobody bothered with the slow learner so I was sidelined, and gave up swimming as soon as I was able to.

What a loss that was as it is now something I really enjoy.

An Asperger encounter

I have just come back from a disability studies conference where I was presenting.
I decided to stay an extra day in the accommodation so I would not be so tired, to catch the train tomorrow, and since there was no meal or anything provided I decided to use the kitchen, to make myself a pot noodle, to stave off my hunger for the evening.

There were a couple of other delegates who were staying overnight too, and they were asking the usual questions, what was my research about, where did I come from etc.

Anyway there was guy who was staying there, by the name of Volker Schönwiese from Innsbruck University who said he came from Austria. So naturally I asked him if he had heard of Hans Asperger. Not only had he heard of him, he had been sent to his clinic as a 10 year old child

He was a wheelchair user, and when he was younger his family wanted him integrated into the mainstream school, but the authorities were resisting it, so he was sent to Dr Asperger for a consultation. Apparently Dr Asperger did all sorts of tests including an IQ test, and wrote up a report saying that children with Polyarthritis were extraordinarily gifted and he should be given all the facilities he needed to go to a mainstream school.

It was a white lie of course because there was no scientific evidence to support that notion, but it illustrates something of the character of the man back then, that he would write something like that into an official report to ensure that a disabled child got the same schooling as everyone else, and not the second rate schooling he might have got if he were sent away to a special school.

He said that Dr Asperger was a pleasant and very kind man. Sometimes it is a small world, and now I have met someone who met with Hans Asperger.

I have included a link to a pdf of Professor Schönwiese's presentation which may be of interest to people in the wider disability world.

http://bidok.uibk.ac.at/download/handout_san_francisco.pdf

One on't cross beams gone out askew on't treadle

I expect there will be trouble at'mill by the time some folks have read and digested this post ..

One of my abilities is the ability to think in pictures though images is probably a better way to talk about it, as there is nothing particularly flat or two dimensional about this. I believe this allows me to easily create analogies and to be able to approach problems from different directions, that would never occur to someone who has to construct everything in words. Which part of the neurodiverse territories this comes from does not matter for the argument here. I want to give you a little example illustrating the fallacy of trying to find a medical cure for complex neurodevelopmental differences.

I don't suppose many of you have seen either a Stevengraph, or know the workings of Jacquard loom. A Stevengraph was an elaborate silk picture, woven on a Jacquard loom which uses punched card to determine how the threads are all woven together. To see one in action as I have at Coventry's museum in the past is quite amazing.

Anyway if we were to consider the Stevengraph as the brain, we could see that the punched cards are perhaps the DNA, and the mechanical maintenance of the machine, that keeps it oiled, the parts fitting together properly, and feeds in the different coloured silk could be seen as the epigenetic or environmental factors that also have to gel to create the flawless finished product.

Now imagine one of these wonderful artefacts gone awry, perhaps with rivers of red silk running through it, or sections of the picture missing. How can you fix it? If you unpick all the silk that ought not to be there, or attempt to patch in what was missing, you will not get the original intended picture back, it won't have the same structure, it won't be the same at all. And to try and go back one stage further and discover just where it went wrong, if it is in the punched cards for instance, to discover which particular extra holes, and which missing ones caused it all to go awry would be a nightmare.

Well a Stevengraph elaborate though it is, is a lot less complex than the brain. You can no more expect to unpick dyslexia, or autism, and get the whole picture back, than you can unpick the silk. There is no easy magic pill. You can't just oil the cranks and get it to run right, it's more than that.

That is why I do not believe in easy medical answers and quick fixes. The medic is akin to the mechanic, trying to keep the machine running, not the designer who punched all those holes.

The past is a foreign country, conceptualising childhood.

I often wonder on reading the parents blogs on the autism hub, if back in the fifties, before I was five, in an alternative universe where they might have been internet savvy and had the means to disseminate there joys, frustrations and perceptions of that puzzle that was the infant Larry - what would have appeared as a representation of my life?

How would they have conceptualised me photographically and textually within their limited knowledge then and what would I make of it reading it all back today?

I do not know the half of it even. I know the pictures at least but the text is lost, and even so what would it say about me today, about what I am and what I became. It would have been at best an incomplete story.

I can write my own story now, though my past has to be written partly by reference to my parents memories (such as I remember their memories) as you can see in autobiography, but what did I "write" back then before I could read or write and how did I negotiate my existence and self in the myriad of situations I was placed in? How much would have been true and how much construction?

Who knows and we never do, I certainly do not. It is unfortunate that my parents are dead now so this debate cannot be had at an adult level with them, but my wasn't I cute ....

Critical thinking is not a bad thing

I talked a little about criticism in my last blog, and was indeed critical of a certain genre of writing about autism.

I intend to turn aside from the sociological rumblings around autism and back to what seems to be everyone's favourite topic in the blogosphere, which is the science of autism.

I will be presenting a paper very soon, which is rather critical of that science, and I expect the that those devotees who see everything in science as either black or white will be muttering to themselves "There goes would be Dr Larry again, with his sour grapes, knocking everything down but not putting anything in it's place" I had similar comments on my school reports when I refused to take the standard theories of the day at face value simply because they came with the authority of the teacher.

Well for once I shall defer a little to authority, to a more experienced researcher than myself who has doubtless read more papers than I know existed.

Incidentally it is an article of his that gave me a lot of pause for thought when writing my recent paper.

His name is Dermot Bowler, and he has not long ago had a book called:

"Autistic Spectrum Disorders, Psychological Theory and Research"

Published by Wiley in 2007

Now whilst his literary style would not gain him an A* pass in todays A level exams, I should be the last person to hold that against him :)

There are a number of chapters there where he reviews the current theories and the studies out without interposing his own position too much.

I would just like to quote a couple of pertinent passages from the final chapter of the book where he talks about the somewhat erratic nature of all the research so far:

"Failure to replicate findings can be explained in a number of ways. Either the phenomenon does not exist and the initial, positive finding was a random event. Or perhaps there were differences in the samples used; one study may have tested higher-functioning or older individuals while another used those with lower IQ. Many studies have small sample sizes and as a consequence have insufficient statistical power to reveal between group differences. Procedural differences may also yield different outcomes......"

There speaks someone who has read many studies critically in the way they should be read, and he even includes his own work in that summary.

Further on he says at the very end of the book:

"The speculations in the last paragraph bring us back to the question of what it must be like to be autistic (See Frith and Happe 1999). Ultimately, the psychology of ASD must provide an answer to this question. But it must also provide an explanation. Readers who have made it this far (as well as those who have skipped straight to here) may be expecting such descriptions and explanations as well as a punchy take-home message. Without wishing to be unkind to colleagues in the field (or perhaps wishing to be unkind to those who often misinterpret their ideas), the message is probably that we are sometimes too quick to generate quick snappy messages and that we are often too uncritical of the work we ourselves do. Autism spectrum disorder is now known to be a set of conditions that should not be reduced to a simple dichotomy of presence and absence. When present the conditions are multidimensional and complex, and although they share the common characteristics of social impairment and repetitive behaviours (at least from the perspective of a typically developed person) they often exhibit additional features that are not necessarily defining features of the spectrum. Such complexity requires a more subtle explanation than a simple reduction to an absent theory of mind, a failure of affective appreciation, diminished sense of self of fragmented perception. The complexity of ASD requires us to take a more distanced view and to go beyond simply trying to find new ways of describing the fact that people with ASD are autistic Science is about the reduction of complexity to simpler sets of entities and processes that interact in ways that are controlled descriptions of the behavioural manifestations of ASD. The challenge that faces us now is to step outside our own narrow conception of the issue and to work out how they fit together and why."

It is very pertinent for me to be considering that too, at a time when I am currently trying to attract funding to my own research in the hope that I will in turn not replicate the faults of all too many small scale studies.

Off to autscape, musings on our "tribe"

Had to be careful not to recycle an older title, but I am back to the subject of autism again for this blog.

For the last two years Autscape has either been preceded by or followed by an operation, this year I have far more to worry about on my return :)

Not that being part of the organising committee for Autscape this year has been the proverbial bed of roses either. How previous participants (as against new ones for whom it won’t matter) will adapt to the change of venue, I don’t know. It remains to be seen.

The trouble is nothing is without criticism, and this blog is not the place to rehash all of the various concerns about the venue, and about the ethos of Autscape, whether it should be outward or inward looking, been there done that and got the T shirt as they say. Suffice it to say I sometimes find myself in the middle, defending against unfair criticisms, but adding a few of my own. Nothing is ever perfect and we should always be striving for what is most important is that there are enough people willing to continue with it in whatever form the future dictates.

The theme is Inertia and Action, and sometimes I feel I am too much stuck in the former, I know that when I get back I have to spring into action again and finish off all those half finished presentations I am due to make in September notwithstanding trying to wrestle up some money to continue my research, without which these presentations might suddenly lose their context.

Where the big money in Autism is, is certainly not where I am at anyway, educational approaches to autism get overlooked, and the new black is going to be cultural studies, where yet another strand of non autistic academics find rich picking studying all those funny autistic "tribes".

I ought to have welcomed Stuart Murray's book on the representation of autism, but I do not, because well researched though it may be, it is part of a wider economic/social process of marginalisation which I have fought even to get a toehold in academia myself. Every book that is written about us by someone else is one less book written from within.

Why don’t I write a book myself, I hear the protest back, well it has to do with the fact that the likes of Stuart Murray, and Roy Grinker and dare I say it Kristina Chew (whose blog I nonetheless enjoy), have effectively colonised the genre wherein I would write.

I mean no disrespect to these academic writers but I do say to them that they ought to carry a bit more social awareness of what they are doing in the process, how it is part of the delegitimisation of the authentic voice, pushing us back to the familiar territory of writing self help manuals and autobiographies, instead of engaging the vital material of autism and where we fit in the contemporary world itself.

The world on wheels

As followers of this blog might know, I recently had to give up my land rover, not by choice but by financial necessity. Well I can at least say I feel I have done something for the environment even if I would not have done it otherwise.

I see the news and it distresses me, story after story about melting glaciers, extinction of corals, and I am not distanced from that because I can see close at home the waste that contributes to it.

Gordon Brown was right that we waste too much food. I remember growing up before supermarkets when there were few brands and less packaging, I can't say I grew up malnourished or deprived because of that, any more than I was deprived because my dad did not own or drive a car.

Today I watched once again the world on wheels, so many cars and wondered where they were all going, and why, and just how this might look on a global scale. To be honest I was on a bus at the time, travelling across the city to a swimming pool so in a small way I am still part of that great daily trek that seems to put all other transcontinental treks into insignificance because of it's banality.

We can't help the way things are, because everything is organised around such treks and we can't avoid them, though at least I am using public transport and my bicycle more.

We are past the point of no return and with the coming recession we will all feel the negative side of our past exuberances there is no escaping it, and it is better to give up some things voluntarily in the interest of posterity than to have it forced upon us by inevitability.

I have turned off my hot water, I can't afford it, but at least I still have water, and that is going to be something that millions do not have, it already is. So much we take for granted is predicated upon continuing power supplies, the recent floods in Gloucestershire demonstrated how much we take for granted and how reliant we are on electricity for everything.

Back in the 1970's I recall the three day week and the winter of discontent, with regular power outages, but the shops still opened and did business, even the supermarkets, with tilley lamps and generators, but it could not happen now in this day of the swipe card, where even a disruption to the telephone lines means no sale.

Well in another couple of weeks I am off too Autscape, I am hiring a car to get me there, so whatever the price of petrol I am going to have to pay it and join the world on wheels again.

I might be getting away to autistic space, but that space will still depend upon electricity and piped water.

When I am done with Autscape however I will be done with that. I am going camping, roughing it, a simple tent, and no more water than I can carry, my bike will come in handy then.

My land rover was perfectly equipped for survival, solar panels the whole lot, trouble is it still needed an MOT and there you see it had to go because it would have failed. Unless you have land to keep one on, you have to keep it roadworthy and taxed. Doesn't seem fair, there was a time when my family were considering buying a piece of woodland somewhere, oh that we had.