Existence is Wonderful

Comment Policy Reminder (To All You Anons)

2009-07-14T22:22:00.000-07:00

I am glad to create a more accessible blog, and it was learning that some people found the login system inaccessible that compelled me to allow anonymous comments. I am pleased that so far I have not been inundated with spam.

However, I have been receiving comments from (most likely) multiple "anonymouses". And y'all aren't using anything, not even an initial, to distinguish yourselves.

And...while obviously this is not a great moral outrage, it is annoying, and makes it really difficult to keep track of discussions, and it frankly compels me not to respond to any of those comments because I don't have any kind of a "distinguishing reference".

So, I will repeat here a point from this blog's comment policy:

if at all possible, please sign your comments with some sort of distinguishing nickname. Or your initials. Or even initials that aren't actually yours. Or a single letter, like "A" or "J", or heck, even a number. Just something so that I don't end up dealing with five different "anonymouses" commenting on the same post and having to somehow guess who said what. That kind of thing gets incredibly confusing really quickly.

Posting as "anonymous" with no other indicators or initials or anything does not make you a terrible person or anything so please do not presume I am saying that. I am not. I am just saying I find it really confusing when people do that. So I am asking as a matter of courtesy that you distinguish yourself in some way. This does NOT require a blogger login, all it requires is that you put an initial or even a little ASCII doodle or something after your comment in the text of the comment. Thanks.

(Comments disallowed on this post because I don't feel like prompting a big meta-discussion about comment policies!)

I Think I Need This Book!

2009-07-13T20:46:00.001-07:00

Entitled Future Stuff, and written by Malcolm Abrams and Harriet Bernstein, the Amazon page includes the following summary (from a library journal review):

...a consumer's guide to over 250 useful and time- and energy-saving products and services which will affect the way Americans work and play by the year 2000. They are at present on the drawing board, in production, or already being test marketed. Included are not only serious inventions like voice-activated computers and lenses to help the blind see, but also fun stuff like kiss moisturizers and bikinis which will change color with one's mood. The book gives the odds on availability, estimated time of arrival, price, and explains how each invention works.

Normally I wouldn't post about a book before actually obtaining and reading it, but this just sounds utterly hilarious and I couldn't resist calling it out. I mean, the cover has a WALKING TV ON IT. Yes, with legs. Wow. And I can't wait to read the "estimated times of arrival", that sort of thing is always interesting!

EDIT: Oh, and the book was originally published in 1989.

On The Feeding of Quirky Mammals, Part 4

2009-07-12T23:42:00.000-07:00

In this fourth and final installment of this series, I will be discussing matters of obtaining, choosing, and consuming food. That is, I will attempt to explore a possible range of responses to questions like, "How can I get food?", "What food should I get, and how much of it?", and "What options do I have in terms of places to eat when I am not at home (or even when I am?)"

How to Get Food

Obviously this is not a question I (or any other individual person living in a particular area in particular socio-economic circumstances) can answer definitively for everyone else. How you get food is going to depend on many, many variables, from what is available in your local area to your transportation options to whether or not you are getting whatever support you might need (as some individuals may not be able to shop on their own, etc., for a variety of reasons).

I can say, though, that from what I've personally experienced and learned of the experiences of others on the autistic spectrum (in addition to people with other disabilities, from ADHD to mobility issues), the mere existence of grocery stores within a several-mile radius of one's dwelling does not in any way guarantee that one is going to have an easy time getting food. The same goes for income variables -- again, simply having a job or some other means of financial support and hence being able to afford food does not guarantee that one will be able to actually obtain meals on a regular basis.

So, what might stand in the way of someone's getting food (presuming they don't live in a remote mountain hut with no source of income aside from milk from the family goat, which some people assuredly do, but which I personally lack familiarity with the situation of to the point where I don't feel qualified to comment)? Here's a short list:

- Transportation / Location

So, say there's a grocery store two miles from where you live. That isn't too far, but whether you can get there or not (much less on a regular basis) is going to depend on all kinds of things. If you drive yourself, getting there at least probably won't be much of an issue (unless parking is really crappy or something), but for those of us who don't drive, we've either got to:

...get a ride from someone we know,
...have someone who can bring us groceries,
...ride a bicycle or other human-powered vehicle,
...take the bus,
...or walk (or wheel, if one is a wheelchair user).

Needless to say, whether any of these things can be done at any given time is going to depend on a lot. If you're very fit and like walking, you may be able to walk (or bike) -- but not if the only access to the store entails going on a freeway. Moreover, in the walk/bike cases, you are obviously limited only to what you can personally carry (a wagon or bike trailer can help in this regard but still), and if you take the bus even if you could technically tote more than you could if walking, the bus driver and other passengers aren't likely to appreciate your taking up six rows of seats with your bags, etc.

Right now I am both lucky and very spoiled, as I live with someone who drives (and who is also quite the foodie, hence the likelihood of a bare cupboard here is close to nil).

But that was not always the case, and is not the case when I am home alone (e.g., when the one person I live with is away on business, which is infrequent but has occurred).

I have never lived completely alone but in college my and my roommates' schedules frequently didn't entail sit-down meals with all of us together, so there wasn't really an "eating prompt" in place for me for a long time, nor a consistently established means of food procurement. I survived on things like "energy bars" and frozen burritos from the gas station a block away from one of my apartments for a while. Occasionally I trekked down to the Trader Joe's on my bike, shoving as much as I could into a backpack, which generally meant I had better quality edibles for a little bit at least, but that brought its own problems with it -- e.g., the time it was so hot out that my milk spoiled on the way home!

Anyway, the point here is that you may well have trouble just getting to a local food source, and if you need routine like I do in order to do a lot of essential things, not having a consistent means of getting there can lead to serious badness.

I wish I could recommend or explain some general formula for EVERYONE to get access and transportation to groceries, etc., but unfortunately there simply isn't such a formula. About the only things I can really recommend are:

(a) If you have any choice in where you are going to live, try and pick a location within walking / biking / wheeling / skating / etc., distance from a source of groceries, preferably without any busy main roads to cross in between. You probably don't want to live right next to a grocery store or anything, as that would probably be noisy and annoying for other reasons, but if you can find a dwelling fairly close that will at least remove one potential hurdle.

(b) If you cannot find a location to live that meets criterion (a), then try and find something with access to public transit.

(c) If you cannot take public transit for whichever reason, and you don't know of anyone who might be able to periodically give you rides or pick up groceries for you, you may qualify for some sort of ParaTransit (transportation for people with disabilities, available in some areas) service. I have no experience with ParaTransit services, though, so I unfortunately cannot describe this process.

(d) Look around for online grocery delivery services in your local area. I've never used one of these so can't recommend any, but supposedly they exist and some people seem to like them.

Again, I know these are probably fairly "weak" suggestions but the problem is that anyone who doesn't have an established means of transportation for obtaining food is probably up against a lot of in-built accessibility problems. A lot of neighborhoods in many parts of the USA at least are so extremely car-centric that it almost seems as if the planners were not even considering non-drivers (or even disabled people who do drive, in many cases).

- Timing/logistics

This is a tough one, as even if you have a lovely grocery within easy transport or walking distance, your school, job, or other schedules and routines may not provide you with much time and opportunity to actually obtain food.

You may also end up in obnoxious situations like having a bus route that goes by the grocery but never when you are actually free to ride it -- e.g., a lot of bus lines I've noticed actually cut back on service on weekends. Moreover, even if you technically "have time" in the evenings, etc. for grocery shopping, if you've had other things going on that day already you might not consistently have brain left over for dealing with the store!

In any case, your goal is obviously to get food into your dwelling, and obviously that is going to take a certain amount of time every week, month, day, etc. And the first task in that regard is simply finding what opportunities actually exist timing-wise given your schedule, location, and transportation constraints.

It is probably good if you can find something consistent because this will likely be easier to keep to than simply a vague plan to go get stuff when you run out of something.

Though on the other hand, some people might only be able to get together the executive functioning to GO shopping when they've run out of something.

The key is to figure out what sort you are in this regard, and see to what extent you can match that with available resources. And if there's a mis-match, just remember that (and I realize this is much easier said than done) it's okay to seek help.

And of course there is the matter of planning. I am utter crap at coming up with things to have for dinner -- essentially I don't plan those sorts of meals, except very rarely when something occurs to me at random, and often it turns out to be some sort of semi-edible science project when I do (like last weekend's rice noodle/curry/carrot/soybean/ice cube disaster.).

Again, I am lucky enough to live with someone who seems to really like doing food-things (and who I can certainly end up sometimes helping to make pretty awesome tasty things), but if I did not have this lucky break, I would probably be living on lots of frozen Kashi meals and the like. Which wouldn't be a tragedy, but would certainly mean a less varied and probably more expensive diet.

The bottom line is that if you figure out that (for whatever reason) you just aren't going to be able to reliably and consistently create meals for yourself out of discrete ingredients, then you need to be able to get stuff that you (or someone you live with, or who helps you) can put together quickly and easily. And then when you go to the store, you need to make sure and stock up on this kind of thing, so you don't end up having "Ketchup Casserole with Circus Peanuts" or something similarly frightening five nights in a row.

- Sensory/information processing issues

There are some grocery stores I can usually navigate reasonably well -- such as the small Indian market down the street from my apartment. For me, an accessible store is generally (a) not too large (usually this means "less overwhelming"), (b) not crowded, and (c) organized in a way that makes sense to my brain.

For you, the criteria may be different -- e.g., you may be extremely sensitive to fluourescent lights (which really only bother me when they get to that dying-and-flickery stage or when I can hear them buzzing), or you may not be able to stand the smell of a particular thing, or you may only be able to use automatic checkstands, or any number of other things.

But in any case, sensory accessibility is definitely something you may well run into even if you have a conveniently located grocery in your neighborhood. And the first step to figuring out what to do about that is to figure out what is going on! If you are anything like me (which you may not be, but I am figuring I am probably not the only person out there like this), you may not even be able to recognize sensory overload when it is happening, and may not be able to figure out exactly what it is about some places that bothers you for a long time after going there.

When I was little I was apparently...a bit of a challenge to go shopping with because I was forever darting off, trying to find clothing racks to hide under or bookshelves to sit on, or spinny-chairs to spin on, etc.

Moreover, I also developed aversions to certain places that I now recognize to be sensory in nature -- like the one discount store that made my skin crawl due to the music they piped over the speakers and the weird yellowish lighting -- which at the time nobody could explain, least of all me.

And when I got a bit older, I developed habits like trying to wear headphones wherever I went (something that has happily been de-stigmatized immensely by the introduction of the portable MP3 player, yay!), and trailing my parents in the store with my face stuck in a book or magazine the whole way (I would follow by watching their feet). So really sensory issues are nothing new for me -- it's just not been than many years since recognizing them for what they were.

It may not be easy (especially at first) to figure out exactly why some places make you feel like you need to escape now (or, as in the case of the mall I grew up near, makes you start feeling really "out of it" the longer you are in it), but one clue is that if you find yourself avoiding a place, it's possible you may just feel crappy and confused when you're there.

A lot of people I've noticed seem to blame this kind of thing on "social anxiety" or even agoraphobia, and some people may certainly have those things (by themselves or in conjunction with sensory issues). But having been through a lot of frustration due to trying to put into practice the advice of people who said I was "just scared" in certain situations, I have come to really wish I'd known about sensory issues sooner in life.

Since learning to actually correlate certain "weird" or "bad" sensations with things like noise or crowds or certain kinds of lighting, I've learned to do things like make sure I have headphones/earplugs available, try to visit stores at less crowded times of day, and if I must visit a store that makes my brain feel like it's been shoved into a glitter-filled kaliedoscope and shaken (Whole Foods, I am looking at you!), not to go alone.

So, anyway, if you haven't already, you may want to try things like ear plugs or noise cancelling earphones in stores, or sunglasses (if the lighting bothers you), etc. Additionally if you are going to be running errands in places that are going to be overloading regardless, make sure you wear comfortable clothing so that the sensation of a stiff, unpleasant fabric rubbing against you isn't adding to the overall load you have to process.

And also realize that even if you may be able to communicate in a certain way in certain environments, all bets may be off in a store environment, especially if things are busy. Hence, you may want to think about bringing a pad and paper (or even small computer) with you so that you can write things down to show clerks, etc.

What Food to Get

This is definitely another area that is going to vary according to the individual, and I am not even going to attempt to provide a list of specific things everyone should eat on a regular basis. That would be ridiculous considering the different tastes, allergies, and other factors that vary widely between people and affect what each of us can eat at any given time.

However, there are a few very general things that I think can be said pertaining to nutrition, food storage, shelf life, and preparation issues that I figure are worth mentioning here. I've learned these things through a combination of reading (my interest in longevity/biogerontology has compelled me to read about dietary factors a fair bit) and experience so take them for what they're worth.

BIG HUGE DISCLAIMER: I am not a doctor or a dietician, nor do I know your particular individual situation and its constraints, nor am I ignorant of the fact that some people have very little choice indeed in what they have access to in terms of food. However this writing cannot possibly encompass or solve all the problems with the world's food supply, etc., so all this is intended to do is share some

- Not all "convenience food" is evil!

While "convenience food" in general can be more expensive than buying separate ingredients and combining them yourself, if you can afford it at all, it is often (at the very least) cheaper than going to a restaurant. Moreover, if you can't or don't cook consistently, this kind of thing can literally be a lifesaver.

And there are actually some surprisingly good (and not-too-bad-for-you) options appearing these days -- Trader Joe's has a number of frozen veggie burritos that aren't bad, in addition to various other products in the freezer section, along with some "shelf stable" meal packets that are actually surprisingly good.

- Unless you are a hummingbird, avoid (non-dessert) products where the first or second ingredient is some form of sugar

If your aim is to obtain a food product that is not dessert, and that you want to be able to (for instance) have for breakfast and get sustained energy from throughout the morning (as opposed to a "crash" halfway to lunchtime -- from experience I can definitely say that molasses gingerbread cake is a terrible breakfast choice), you probably want to avoid the toaster pastries, the "granola bars" speckled with colorful M&Ms, and so on.

The problem with these sorts of things is not that they exist at all (without them I am guessing some people might literally starve to death, and I understand that some people have economic and availability constraints that unfortunately mean a "junk subsistence" diet, which is a whole problem unto itself way beyond the scope of this writing), but that they sort of masquerade as being "meals" or "meal replacements" when they are really no more nutritionally loaded than your average candy bar, and potentially less so in some cases.

And when it comes to beverages, most bottled or packaged drinks (at least in the locales I'm familiar with) contain wicked amounts of sugar these days, so don't be seduced by labels proclaiming "fortified with antioxidants!" -- you could still very well be getting something nutritionally equivalent to the powdered fruit punch you drank as a youngster regardless of whatever "grownup" and "healthy-sounding" terms are on the label.

You want to read the actual ingredients list whenever possible, not just the marketing claims, and if you see "sugar", "dextrose", "high fructose corn syrup", "evaporated cane juice", "brown rice syrup", "crystallized fructose", "glucose syrup", or any number of similar terms listed first or second, try looking for an alternative, unless your goal is actually to find a dessert item.

- Trail mix (may be) your friend

Okay, of course if you are allergic to all nuts, dried fruits, grains, and anything else that might conceivably be considered a trail mix ingredient, or if you simply don't like any of that stuff, then trail mix is probably your enemy and not your friend. I realize this item is going to exclude a number of people, and I apologize for that.

But for those of us that can eat mixed-together dried foods of various sorts, the ever-versatile option of trail mix (which I am using here generically as a term to mean, essentially, "dried bits of food mixed together") can be an awesome and convenient way to keep ourselves alive and fed. Seriously, I've lived on trail mix for various periods of my life.

Its advantages for people that might have difficulty with food preparation, shopping, etc., are very similar to the advantages it has for people who are hiking or camping -- which is to say, it is fairly shelf-stable (will survive a lot longer without refrigeration than most "wet" foods), it is portable (can be put in containers of any size and carried without fear of icky leakage, etc.), and can have a very high nutrient density.

(And it can be a good alternative for people who like granola bars but who are having trouble finding anything of that nature that isn't a dessert bar in disguise -- you often have a lot of the same "substrates" in trail mix as in granola bars, but without the sticky, sugary stuff they use to bind it together into the "bar" shape.)

Furthermore, there's also the fact that in addition to the numerous pre-fab mixes available you can make your own mixes based on what you (a) like, and (b) have available, and you (or someone who helps you with meal-related tasks) can make a ton of mix at once and then store it for quite a while in whatever size(s) of containers you want.

You can also make different mixes for different moods and days, and mixes that indulge whatever your individual food-quirks happen to be -- e.g., if you're like me and have a bit of a wasabi obsession, you can put a bunch of nuts and dried vegetables into a bag and shake with some wasabi powder, and have yourself a nice package of supremely spicy tastiness that you can take along with you wherever you go, whether that be the library or your living room or anything in between.

- Know your body and tailor your diet accordingly.

If you have any food allergies, etc., make sure you check labels, and read the whole label. I was eating some rather tasty cereal for a while a few months back, and couldn't figure out for a week why I kept breaking out in itchy hives every day mid-morning. It turned out the cereal contained peach extract, and I am allergic to peaches. I'd missed this the first time reading the label because I'd only checked the first few ingredients to make sure it wasn't ultra high in sugar -- it wasn't, but that didn't mean it was okay for me to eat!

Bear in mind as well that depending on age, gender, overall health, medical conditions, etc., different people may need different amounts and types of food and nutrients. As a small-boned mostly-vegetarian white female I know I need to make sure and get enough iron, B12, calcium, and protein, and that I may need to make extra effort to include enough of these things in my diet. I am not always good at this and my partner often ends up reminding me about protein especially, but I at least try to be aware of factors that could mean I need more or less of something.

And, of course, beware unscrupulous and random advice! Yes, this includes this very article, as I am not a nutritional professional and don't claim to be. If you read something that sounds good and logical, check your facts before doing it, and certainly be very leery of any claims that a particular "technique" or diet applies to everyone!

Any Good Gudelines for Autistic Spectrum Adults in the Workplace?

2009-07-08T23:09:00.000-07:00

Okay, without getting overmuch into detail here (for reasons that any employed blogger should be familiar with), I have become quite curious as of late about actually useful guides (in the form of books, pamphlets, web sites, etc.) that one might be able to show to one's employers regarding autism and workplace communication and other issues.

I have not been able to find anything like this. And I've looked. Most of the literature I've come across is just, well, horrible and likely to cause more problems than it solves.

I do not think any of us on the autistic spectrum need our bosses reading all kinds of stuff about how we need "mentors" to be assigned to us (my last experience with someone trying to "mentor" me ended with them trying to induct me into a cult, so...yeah, not too interested in setting myself up in that kind of relationship these days), among other things.

I am actually thinking of trying to write something, but who knows if that will actually happen -- a lot of this stuff is just really difficult to explain.

But I think something needs to be there because some of the stuff I've seen and experienced is just ridiculous.

One of the things I and probably a lot of other spectrum adults have dealt with (in a variety of contexts) is the problem of either having it assumed we have abilities we don't, or that we don't have abilities that we do, and hence getting all the wrong kinds of "help" offered! I cannot even count the number of times in my life that, upon it becoming obvious that I have difficulty in something, people have reacted as if I either need everything done "for" me, or as if I am "refusing" to do that thing, etc.

In particular (again without getting into too many details) I think it needs to be a lot more understood that when someone has a lot of difficulty in one area, that does not mean that they are incapable of doing anything at all, or that asking for a logical accommodation is some weird coded way of asking for fewer responsibilities or "easier" work.

I don't want "easier" work, I want a way of doing my work that actually makes sense and can be done in a logical order. And I want some way to explain that what might be a "trivial" interruption for someone else is not trivial for me, and that while I can get a lot done when I have the opportunity to focus, it is not going to "train my brain to multi-task" by progressively requiring more and more activity transitions on a day to day basis. And so on. But so far this is not something I have been very successful at, so I would appreciate any tips.

On The Discovery of The Eyeball Conspiracy

2009-07-05T23:21:00.000-07:00

So, it's been nearly two years since I had my eyes checked last. Like about 70 million other Americans, I'm moderately myopic (with a slight astigmatism) and have worn corrective lenses since I was eight years old.

This is not something I consider a big deal...while I severely disliked my glasses as a kid (see below), that may well have been because I had some degree of taste, and objected to my mother's conviction that all little girls needed to wear glasses that were both GIGANTIC and PINK.

Nowadays, I have nifty black rectangular-ish frames that I love:

...and I can see quite well with them. And unlike contact lenses (which I wore for a while between the ages of 16 and 23), wearing them does not require sticking my fingers IN my eyes, and they're a fair sight more difficult to lose on the bathroom floor, which is always a bonus.

Anyway, while I am a very visually-oriented person and am relieved that my lens prescription hasn't changed very much over the past ten years or so, I can't say I've ever really seen my need for corrective lenses as a tragedy. Moreover, it has never really even occurred to me to obsess over why I might be nearsighted...heck, a fair percentage of people in my family are as well, so it's not like this was unprecedented. Overall, the whole thing rates in my mind as Not A Big Deal.

So, you can imagine my surprise at coming across MYOPIA.ORG this evening. I'd been searching for data on how much people's prescriptions tended to change on average at around my age (30), and I have to admit I've not even gone forward with that search since finding this bizarre site, just because I can't figure out whether to be amused or kind of horrified by it yet.

Essentially, this page reads like...well, I have to admit I wondered upon encountering it whether it might be a parody of one of those autism-related conspiracy-theory sites (in which everything from The Government to Cell Towers to Aborted Chicken Fetus Residue to French fries is implicated in autism causation, with an emphasis on What They Don't Want You To Know(TM)). Case in point:

There are many frauds in the world, engineered by greedy, unscrupulous people. Getting shoddy goods, or losing one's money entirely is common. But what about a situation where you lose your money and your most precious gift, your vision, at the same time? And what if this is happening to defenseless children in every country of the world?

Over one third of our children, although born with normal vision, become nearsighted during their school years. Many have vision that has deteriorated to the point where they would be declared legally blind if they did not have the crutch of glasses to turn to. In some highly literate Asian countries, the incidence of acquired myopia has been increasing in recent years to the point where over 90% of college students are nearsighted! The eye doctors claim this is hereditary, even when there is no history of the problem in the family. But, of all our senses, why is it just our vision that so rapidly deteriorates at such an early age? What if one third of our children walked around with hearing aids or crutches? Would that be considered just "inherited"? The excessive amount of reading and other close work that we do in our modern society is the REAL cause of acquired myopia. And the glasses with minus power lenses that are normally prescribed by uncaring doctors make the vision get worse FAST!

Are you concerned about what your children view on the Internet? You should be more concerned about HOW they are viewing it. If they are wearing the glasses normally prescribed for myopia, their vision will deteriorate. If you ignore the information on this site and fail to educate yourself, you are a partner with your eye doctor in creating a visually handicapped child. The expense and nuisance of wearing glasses for a lifetime is the least of the problem. The more myopia you have, the more you are at risk for sight-destroying diseases such as retinal detachment, macular degeneration, glaucoma and cataract!

During the last century, over 160 million human beings were slaughtered in warfare by other human beings. Compassion toward others is hardly a predominant human trait. This same lack of concern for others is also widespread in the business world. We all know how the tobacco industry does everything in its power to make our children into tobacco addicts so that they will become lifelong customers. The misery and death caused by this are of no concern. In a similar way, the eye "care" industry intentionally ignores prevention and makes our children into visual cripples so they will become lifelong customers. That the progression of myopia leads to eye disease and blindness is of no concern to these people. It's all about the money. This is The Biggest Consumer Fraud In History.

Wellllll...I am not even sure where to start here. Seriously, I had no idea this kind of bizarritude existed surrounding myopia of all things. But it gets better...from the same site, I give you, The Anti-Pinhole Conspiracy!

...pinhole glasses are a perfectly harmless device, even if exaggerated claims were being made. Exaggerated claims seem to be the rule in the marketing world. What would create such a massive coordinated attack against a small company selling such a harmless product? Do you smell the presence of the eye doctors and optical companies in the background as we do? Proof is difficult to find, but what other explanation is there? We are certain that if there was a way to make squinting illegal, they would try to do it. Isn't it strange that pinholes are not offered for sale in retail stores, where they could be made available without making any claims at all for them, just like off-the-rack reading glasses? The reason is that any attempt to mass distribute them has been deliberately and massively squashed.

OK. Here we get to the primary agenda of the myopia.org site: the pushing of "pinhole glasses", which are basically what they sound like: eye coverings dotted with many tiny pinholes. I've actually tried glasses like this (and even attempted making my own as a youngster after reading about the effect in a book), and yes, they do "work" in a sense. Impressively so, actually, at least as far as permitting some degree of clear distance-vision without the familiar curved transparent lenses as one finds in standard glasses. You can try it yourself if you want -- just get a piece of stiff paperboard and a pin, poke a bunch of holes in it, and look through. If you are nearsighted, you should see at least some distant objects far more clearly than you do without the pinhole surface.

Fine, I am not disputing that. But pinhole glasses also have limitations -- for one thing, they can reduce brightness significantly, and for another, they can interfere a lot with one's peripheral vision. When I tried my looking-through-holes experiment I found the effect interesting to be sure, but annoying as well, and in general far more limiting to my vision than conventional glasses. Would I try them again? Sure, perhaps, if I wanted a pair of eclectic sunglasses, or perhaps as a spare if I were going camping, but not likely otherwise.

Moreover, the myopia.org site seems to be pushing the rather silly notion that somehow myopia isn't genetic in origin, but (as the quote above indicates) the result of a conspiracy perpetuated by the "eye doctors and optical industry" who have banded together to suppress the "curative" or "preventative" pinhole lenses so they can continue filling their pockets with the money of those of us who have had our vision "destroyed" by all those years of reading and wearing regular glasses (the horror!).

Overall, I would definitely hold up myopia.org as a great example of what pseudoscientific nonsense looks like. While it does actually refer to a phenomenon (the fact that pinhole lenses can make stuff look clearer if you're myopic) that is certainly real enough, it goes into this big load of "Oh Look How We Are So Oppressed Even Though We Are Geniuses Who Know Better Than Actual Scientists!" drama-rama quite seamlessly. Then you've got the conspiracy-mongering. You've got the blaming (see intro paragraph quoted above) in which parents are called "...a partner with [their] eye doctor in creating a visually handicapped child" if they dare to "ignore" the information on their site. And then you have the invocation of the "glasses are ugly" ableist stereotype as a scare tactic:

But, when children have been adequately informed of what is at stake, will they really choose instead the inconvenience of a lifelong dependence on glasses to see and the increased probability of eye disease? Point out a few people with thick glasses and ask your child if it isn't worth a little effort to avoid needing such glasses to see.

Ew ew ew. This thing is a treasure trove, I tell you -- a treasure trove of ridiculousness!

And on that note, I am going to bed, so long as my "devastating" nearsightedness doesn't result in...exploding eyeballs or something on the way there!

References:

- myopia.org
- Quackwatch on Eye-Related Quackery

Seeking Writer's App for iPod Touch

2009-06-30T19:46:00.000-07:00

Recently I acquired an iPod Touch. I've had a portable dedicated MP3/music player for several years now (an indispensible item when one works in Cubicle Country) and initially couldn't see how the Touch differed from something like that, but after playing a bit with one back in May, I found myself tremendously intrigued.

To make a long story short, I have one now (a second-generation 8 GB model) and I love it. Love love love. I find iTunes to be somewhat obnoxious and I am definitely not one of those who valorizes Apple or thinks they can do no wrong (I've never even owned an Apple desktop or laptop computer; just iPods), but the Touch is definitely a big win for me.

Anyway, though, I've downloaded a number of applications at this point, from the practical to the musically adorable to the inane but strangely compelling.

But there's one thing in particular that I think would be perfect for this platform that I've not as of yet been able to find. I don't know whether it exists and I am just not finding it, or whether maybe nobody has developed anything like it yet -- in any case I figured I might as well send this query out into the Web-aether and see what came back.

What I am looking for is a sort of "writer's assistant" program geared toward people attempting to write fiction (as I have been for...well, a long time). Its main focus would be character development, and given that I carry the iTouch pretty much everywhere with me these days, it would be wonderful to be able to use it in the manner I have in mind.

Now, of course I know that there are many ways in which a person might utilize regular computers, simple notepad applications, or even a plain old paper-and-pen setup to hash out their writing ideas. Moreover, there may well be something like this for some other hand-held computing device (I haven't looked). So it's not like this kind of thing would be a "necessity" app -- it would be more like a convenience, and hopefully for people like me, something that might encourage and enable us to work on character development for our stories on the bus, in waiting rooms, etc.

Somewhat amusingly (or perhaps frighteningly?), the closest thing I've been able to find in the App Store to what I'm looking for is something called Little Black Book, which is, as near as I can tell, a kind of interactive journal geared toward the kind of men who might actually take the Seduce and Destroy infomercial from the film 'Magnolia' seriously. You use it to track and store information on your "romantic conquests", I guess, and (because of course you probably don't want your mom finding this stuff) its data isn't connected to the iPhone's inbuilt contact list.

And...I actually might have been willing to try that app for this character-development thing I have in mind, if not for the fact that the "instant phone-number dial" stuff was so prominent and that it didn't look like it had a flexible enough interface to actually put in all the info I'd want for a character. Obviously my fictional characters aren't going to have phone numbers so it would be an annoying distraction to have the phone number field sitting there all the time, but not other fields that actually might be useful.

So in summary, the Writer's App I Am Seeking would have the following features:

1. Ideally it would permit the user to create entries for each of the characters in a given story which might include a picture (either from an included avatar-maker or from a photo or drawing you import) of how they imagine the character to look.

2. Fields for the character's name and various "stats", such as age, interests, personality traits, etc.

3. A built-in "notepad" page associated with each character where you could practice writing things in the character's "voice" (something I have a terrible time with -- right now every character I attempt to make seems to sound exactly like me, which isn't really a good premise for an interesting story...).

4. An indexing system that consists of a page where different stories you might be working on are listed, and then sub-sections within each story where you can add multiple characters (possibly sorted according to categories like "protagonist", "villain", "supporting character", "sidekick", etc.).

5. Like the "Little Black Book", this app would not import from or export to the device's main contact list. (There are a number of "address book" apps available, but the majority of them seem to be designed to automatically interface with your main contact list, and hence I rejected those I came across as I don't want imaginary people inter-mingling with real people in that way...would be too confusing).

So...if anyone happens to know of anything like what I'm looking for here, please feel free to comment or email if you do have suggestions. Mind you, I am only looking for iPhone/iTouch applications (not interested in either paying for or learning to use any other PDA-like devices at the moment), and not ones you need to "jailbreak" your device in order to get.

Also, if there really and truly is not anything right now that exists like what I am looking for, I would be curious about knowing whether there might be some way to get in touch with an app developer. I don't know any personally (that I know of), and I don't have a Mac to develop on myself (you seem to need one for developing iPhone/iTouch apps), so again, throwing this out into the Internet in case someone might have some input!

(And, for the record, even in the absence of this app I have made some headway on what I hope will be Anne's First Science Fiction Novel -- it's probably going to be a YA book, and it will involve brain implants, scary schoolmasters, antiques, hidden doors, and industrial espionage. I've actually got the plot structure down pretty well, I just really need to do something about these characters and making them individuals...)

On The Feeding of Quirky Mammals, Part 3

2009-06-29T23:29:00.000-07:00

So, say you've managed to figure out that a certain "weird" sensation in your head most likely means you are either hungry, thirsty, or both -- or that (on the less optimistic side of things) you've once again found yourself practically falling over at your desk because somehow nine or more hours have managed to pass since that energy bar you had for breakfast.

At this point, figuring out why whatever unpleasant thing is happening to you is happening is only one part of the equation -- the other is determining how to do something about it.

Three major components may come into play at this point:

- Even if you know you are hungry / thirsty, you may not have the "brain bandwidth" or cognitive energy (or whatever you want to call it) at that point to initiate anything beyond a short, simple set of steps, if that.

- Even if you know you are hungry / thirsty, you may not be able to readily task-switch from whatever else you happen to be doing at the time you realize this.

- Even if you know you are hungry / thirsty, you might be missing some cue or environmental prompt that you generally need in order to actually prepare and/or eat food.

Needless to say, all of these components can factor into one's nutritional-intake challenges, though people will certainly vary in how intensely they experience any one of them, or in whether they ever experience just one or all three or different ones at different times, and so on. But they all essentially deal with the situation described above: that is, the "OK, I'm hungry, now how the heck do I get to food?"

Now, everyone alive probably experiences transition issues to some extent.

But I am mainly gearing this piece toward people who can relate to things like, say

...having a refrigerator full of food but ending up skipping dinner because you are in the living room and the fridge isn't where you can see it,

...or going "WTF, brain?" upon realizing you've managed to read half a book and build up a Lego kit but somehow can't figure out how to make yourself a sandwich, even though you've made sandwiches before and know intellectually what steps are involved.

...or repeatedly going "I'll eat right after I finish [thing]", even when [thing] ends up stretching over a period of many hours, as you know that you risk losing a ton of work and not being able to jump back into the task readily if you take a break.

If you've never experienced anything like this then you might have trouble imagining how anyone could (without it being something as simple as a "willpower issue"). But if you have experienced it you will likely know exactly what I mean when I say that transition issues are not really related to willpower (and can actually be exacerbated by trying to "push" too hard in a particular direction), and that they can exist even when someone is totally intellectually aware of the importance of proper nutrition, and highly motivated to live in a healthy manner.

In other words, I am writing this from the standpoint of someone who has been in the position of having figured out I'm hungry, knowing full well I should eat, knowing that I need a certain amount of water and nutrients to survive and function optimally, and having tremendous motivation -- and yet still not eating well. Clearly if a person is in that situation, the issue is not going to be addressed by reading a book on willpower or studying up on vitamin ratios! But what will it be addressed by?

Well, personally (meaning the usual "this applies to me but may not to you" disclaimer applies) identifying transitions and inertia (in the cognitive sense as opposed to the physics sense) as factors impacting multiple areas of my life has been tremendously helpful in giving me a starting point for dealing at least partly with problems that seemed frustratingly recurrent prior to this realization.

I.e., I've learned that when I am able to minimize the number of transitions I experience during a given time period, I am:

- More effective at doing any individual task
- Better able to make sense of my environment (e.g., less likely to experience cognitive/sensory overload)
- Better able to gauge my actual ability at doing certain things (as I am not burning up all my energy dealing with transitions)
- Better at dealing with unexpected transitions

And so on.

In terms of specific eating-related advice, again I cannot emphasize enough that this will not apply to everyone, but I've found the following useful to keep in mind:

- Prepare meals in advance (and in quantity) when possible

Now this could be you preparing the meals if you have the ability to do so, or it could be someone else (i.e., a carer, personal attendant, or parent), but in any case, if preparation is not something you can do yourself or get help doing on an everyday basis, it can be extremely helpful to (for instance) have all your lunches for the coming week packed and sitting in the fridge by Sunday afternoon.

Quite recently, for a variety of reasons (in particular more transitions than usual...), my own lunch regimen went pretty horribly downhill -- a few weeks ago it had gotten to the point where I was scarcely packing anything at all in the morning and consequently ending up going the whole work day on perhaps a granola bar or two. Yipe! When I realized that was going on, I took it as yet another reminder that it is beyond silly for me to just assume "oh I'll make myself a lunch" every evening the way I was doing.

It is one thing to have intentions, it is quite another to actually be able to follow through with them, and for me, having to deal with choosing, preparing, and packing a lunch every single morning or evening is way too many transitions. So, as of about three weeks ago at the time of my writing this, I've been packing my weekday lunches into small re-usable containers as shown:

...and this is working quite splendidly. Essentially I've eaten the same lunch (raw mixed vegetables, hummus dip, multi-grain pita chips, and an apple) every day for the past three weeks, but as I don't tend to tire of things I like easily, this has been no problem. And I've gotten in a decent amount of midday nutrients since I started doing this again. Eventually I will probably want to rotate in some other victuals, but regardless I will definitely try to keep to the "prepare lunches all at once on the weekend and put them in the fridge" routine.

Anyway, if you are going to try this, you will need to acquire some containers (I use the re-usable plastic ones as shown, but have been considering getting a few bento boxes) for putting the actual foodstuffs in, an insulated lunch bag of some sort if you plan to be taking your lunches anywhere, and of course, food!

Again of course the foods you eat will have to take into consideration what you can tolerate (taste-wise, texture-wise, in light of any food allergies or medical conditions, etc.), so I would not be able to give a definitive list of specific items here, but I can suggest that you acquire things that are going to keep for at least a week in the refrigerator. E.g., fresh raw hardy vegetables like broccoli and carrots, soup, rice with a separate sauce, or anything else you can eat that isn't super perishable or likely to be unappetizing by the fourth or fifth day.

If you don't have regular access to a refrigerator you can look up dehydrated or other highly sturdy items but I don't have a lot of experience in that department aside from the fact that I have actually manage to survive some of the toughest food intervals in my life practically on trail mix alone!

- Keep (healthy, conveniently packaged) food and liquid within reach

If you find that you tend to hang out in one area a lot (e.g., your desk or a particular room), and that one of your main challenges to eating regularly is that this room does not happen to be the kitchen or pantry, then it would logically follow that it makes sense to put food closer to where you usually are.

Not all your food, mind you, but enough (and enough that isn't nutritionally void -- you cannot in fact thrive on Sweet Tarts and Mountain Dew for very long, LAN parties notwithstanding) so that you don't sit there for hours knowing vaguely perhaps that you "should" eat but not having enough sustenance for a gnat in your immediate vicinity. The key is to avoid the vicious circle in which you sort of figure you ought to be eating and then end up not doing so for much, much longer than you might have otherwise because your brain is getting lower and lower on fuel.

E.g., at work I usually keep trail mix or an energy bar within arm's reach of my desk at all times, and at home (though I often need reminders if I am going to be home alone for a bit, which happens infrequently enough such that I don't really have a routine for it), food is usually at least close enough to get rapidly. And I now take a water bottle out with me every day as a matter of habit (though at work I find it's pretty crucial to make sure and take it out of my lunchbox before getting really absorbed in something, lest I forget it exists!).

The diagram below shows a potential "easy-nutritional access layout" (with bonus dish area and wastebasket for clutter-management).

- Watch out for potential nutritional imbalances caused by making a particular thing too available

While most of my own issues have tended toward not eating enough due to task-inertia or brain-stickiness or whatever you want to call it, I've also noted and at times personally experienced the "eat it all because it's there" phenomenon.

Sometimes a particular food (or food-like substance, as certain highly processed items might more properly be called) can be a kind of awesome sensory delight unto itself, leading to your consuming it in quantity even if you aren't very hungry. Other times, it could just be that once you start eating something, you just don't stop until whatever you can see is gone.

Anyway, I have found that in these sorts of situations, I can actually engage in a sort of "intertial hijack" due to being aware that if a package is closed up and in another room, I will likely not deplete its contents rapidly no matter how yummy they are. E.g., I really really really like dark chocolate, and if you put a bag of dark chocolate chips in front of me, I can pretty handily devour the whole thing and not even realize it until my eyeballs start vibrating (from all that caffeine and theobromine!) a while later.

So, knowing this tendency, I now store anything chocolate-chip-like in the kitchen and if I happen to be in there and decide I want some chocolate goodness, I will pour out a small quantity into a bowl, close and seal the bag, and then quickly leave the kitchen, bowl in hand. That way, I get the satisfaction of tasty chocolate but am generally too inertial to go back and get more out of the bag within a given span of time!

- Transition issues and perfectionism can really feed into each other, so it's important to watch this carefully if you tend toward both!

E.g., if you're like this you probably want to avoid using food as an "incentive". You wouldn't tell yourself you needed to finish an assignment before you were allowed to breathe, after all, and food is as essential to animal life as air.

This doesn't mean you want to be eating non-stop or that you should be rushing to the refrigerator whenever the mere idea of food occurs to you -- just that you should never make eating at all contingent on finishing an assignment, writing a paper, etc.

If you tend to be inertial, you are going to have enough of a challenge getting up to eat as it is -- and if you have gotten to the point where the only way you can come close to finishing your work, etc., is by delaying basic biological necessities until you're done with the work, you can probably take that as a warning sign that something is seriously wrong with the way you're scheduled!

- Consider Prompting and Cues

A "cue" in this context might be considered something like: being able to see food or drink, being able to reach food or drink, having someone else in the room, having someone else leave the room, etc. etc. A "prompt" might be someone telling you to eat, a checklist item telling you to eat, etc.

It can be difficult to know what kinds of things cue or prompt you into eating and some people may need assistance in figuring this out, but in any case if you can figure it out it's a good thing to take note of.

E.g., I've determined that I need to be extra-systematic about my eating at work because there's so much about that environment that seems to be not conducive to even remembering food exists (similar for when I'm home alone), but when my partner is around I don't need to be quite so vigilant about either checklists or routines because for some reason even just having him sitting across the room for me makes it more likely for me to recall that I have a tasty snack in the kitchen I could presumably go get.

And I don't entertain visitors often, but whenever someone does come over I find that for some reason a "politeness program" kicks in and I am compelled to offer food to the visitors, meaning I am more likely to actually eat something myself!

In terms of actually using this, mostly it has helped me know when I might need to be more or less vigilant, or what situations might tend to lead to needing more reminders, etc.

- Your Plan (and your life) should be Sustainable!

Now, I am quite interested in sustainability in the sense of using natural and industrial resources wisely and with a view of the long term in mind. However, that isn't the kind of sustainability I am referring to here -- rather, I am referring to the measure of how well one can actually maintain decent eating habits over time.

For me and a lot of others who might be able to relate to the kinds of experiences I've discussed herein, one thing that's taken me ages to learn is that there are some things you just shouldn't compromise on, even if you occasionally can. Eating (and moreover, eating well) is one of those things, and I've definitely found that it's very easy to slip back into bad habits if I try to cram too much (and particularly too many transitions) into my life at once.

For example, that period in college wherein I was supposedly peeing out evidence of musculature in the process of being digested, I had actually managed to completely neglect the notion that food was even a priority. I did not build any time for meals into my own schedule, and hence they became an afterthought at best. And I've done similar things even since graduating and getting a job, and I now consider that I will probably need to "watch" these tendencies in myself indefinitely in order to avoid really serious issues from cropping up.

Frankly it was only actually experiencing various levels of "crashing" and serious unpleasantness that got me to realize that I couldn't sustain the kinds of levels I felt like I "should" be sustaining, based on various cultural expectations I'd absorbed coupled with my own perfectionism.

I actually felt guilty almost constantly for the first few years out of college when I started working because I wasn't going out if my way to try and attend night classes or do other Symbolic Gestures of Career Commitment the way some of my co-workers of similar age were -- but the thing was, I just could not summon the...power or energy or whatever necessary to even begin to set up after-work classes, let alone actually attend them. And it took me a long time to determine that part of the problem with this would be that it would entail way more transitions than I could manage, which would impact everything from sleep to food to cognitive regulation.

Hence, I know first-hand how difficult it can be to challenge the prevailing "only people who work 80 hour weeks are responsible and ambitious" mentality that seems to especially proliferate in certain sectors of the USA. But if at all possible I would recommend that you take stock of your life, your schedule, and the number of transitions...you don't want to have to end up melting down in a manager's office babbling about how you "need to learn to emulate human behavior" or semi-incoherently finding your way back to your desk after nearly falling over in the lab due to a crash in blood sugar.

That kind of thing is preventable, and shouldn't happen very often at all if your life is set up in a sustainable manner -- which for many of us can entail making sure we are not tiring ourselves out so much with transitions that we can't find our way to the refrigerator in the evenings! Remember that there are many, many options for pursuing hobbies, projects, and career development (especially for those of us with Internet access and, heck, library access) and that a lot of the time you might very well be able to find a non-standard path toward even a rather ambitious goal that doesn't mean sacrificing your nutritional consumption or any other aspect of self care.

I prefer to read it as a threat...

2009-06-28T00:01:00.001-07:00

Women are soft and gentle, but they hit things.
Originally uploaded by malcontentdiary

Came across this in a "vintage ads" photo pool, and spent several seconds blinking and sputtering, so figured it was worth a post.

Women are soft and gentle, but they hit things, eh? Wow.

I mean, not that I have a drivers' license myself, but still...

Academic Autistic Spectrum Partnership In Research and Education (AASPIRE) Announces Gateway Project Launch

2009-06-27T10:26:00.000-07:00

A while back I got involved with the nascent AASPIRE Project, which (quoting from the web site):

...brings together the academic community and the autistic community to develop and perform research projects relevant to the needs of autistic adults. Our partnership will adhere to the principles of Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR), whereby researchers and community members serve as equal partners throughout the research process.

Now, of course no research project, online or otherwise, is going to be able to take into account the views of literally everyone in a given demographic. Not all adults on the autistic spectrum even have access to the Internet, and of those that do, not all have either the ability or inclination to use it.

This, however, is true of many populations and the way I see it, so long as any conclusions or hypotheses derived from research keep this in mind, there is still value in gathering the data.

And by making sure to adhere to relevant standards of scientific scrutiny and ethics, which of course includes openness to criticism, peer review, etc., it is my hope that AASPIRE and similar projects may at least have some positive impact on the signal to noise ration in autism research.

The notion that only nonautistic people are qualified to suggest research avenues or comment on study design elements, etc., pertaining to autism research is one in serious need of challenge and actually getting the inputs of at least some persons on the spectrum (and it should go without saying that these persons cannot and do not "speak for" all autistic people) strikes me as a promising avenue for addressing this challenge.

The announcement text appears below in its unmodified form from the AASPIRE administrators (per U.S. IRB requirements)

--- BEGIN ANNOUNCEMENT TEXT ---

Participate in the AASPIRE Gateway Project

You are invited to participate in a continuing online research project called the AASPIRE Gateway Project. This online research project is conducted by the Academic Autistic Spectrum Partnership in Research and Education (AASPIRE, http://aaspireproject.org) in collaboration with Oregon Health & Science University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Portland State University, and the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network.

The AASPIRE Gateway Project is recruiting participants with and without disabilities, and participants on the autism spectrum, for a series of continuing online studies on topics such as health care, Internet use, online sense of community, identity, problem solving, and perspective taking. The goals of the online AASPIRE Gateway Project are

(1) to collect the Gateway Survey data;
(2) to use the Gateway Survey data to invite eligible participants to AASPIRE’s continuing online research studies; and
(3) to use the Gateway Survey data in AASPIRE’s continuing online research studies.

You may participate in the AASPIRE Gateway Project and contribute to continuing AASPIRE research studies if you are at least 18 years old, and you have access to the Internet.

The first step in joining the AASPIRE Gateway Project is completing the online AASPIRE Gateway Survey. The AASPIRE Gateway Survey asks about (a) personal information, such as age, gender, disability, education, and employment status, (b) information about which hand you prefer to use when doing activities such as writing with a pen or pencil, and (c) information about your personal preferences regarding interests, habits, and social interactions. Completing the AASPIRE Gateway Survey will take approximately 20-40 minutes. In return, you may choose to be entered into a drawing for a 1 in 25 chance to win a $25 gift certificate to Amazon.com or to receive 1 extra credit point in your introductory psychology class if you are a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Adults who identify as having a disability and adults who identify as being on the autistic spectrum are especially encouraged to participate in the AASPIRE Gateway Project.

If you're interested in participating in the AASPIRE Gateway Project, or would like to learn more about AASPIRE or the study, here are three ways you can get started:

1) Go to the study’s website at www.aaspire.org/gateway.
2) Send an email to info@aaspireproject.org.
3) Make a telephone call to Christina Nicolaidis, MD, MPH, at (503) 494-9602 or Morton Ann Gernsbacher, PhD, at (608) 262-6989.

OHSU IRB # 3762; UW IRB# SE-2008-0749
Principal Investigators: Christina Nicolaidis, MD, MPH, Oregon Health & Science University
Morton Ann Gernsbacher, PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Katherine McDonald, PhD, Portland State University
Dora Raymaker, Autistic Self-Advocacy Network

--- END ANNOUNCEMENT TEXT ---

And one more comment from me: I would like to make it clear that, to the best of my knowledge, AASPIRE is a research-oriented entity and that participating in the Gateway Project does not in any way, shape, or form constitute an endorsement of any political positions or specific organizations.

I.e., you can be involved in AASPIRE (as I am) and/or participate in research as a member of the world community by taking the Gateway Survey without this implying or signifying that you are a supporter of Oregon Health & Science University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Portland State University, or the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network, or the expressed political/policy opinions of these entities.

(I made specific effort to find out and confirm this recently because "affiliational" stuff confuses the living daylights out of me and I am leery of associating in any official capacity with anything lately due to past experiences. Moreover, I think it is very important for autistic people to be able to engage in self-advocacy without this being "branded" as adherence to any organization, as it would most definitely in my estimation undermine autistic civil rights if all of us always had to be compromising our personal principles in areas unacceptable to us or "signing on" with groups whose policies we might not even fully understand, let alone approve of, in order for our perspectives to be taken seriously.)

On The Feeding of Quirky Mammals, Part 2

2009-06-26T22:44:00.000-07:00

2. "Feeling Hungry" (or not) - Body Awareness and Eating

I.

The phrase "body awareness" is used here not in any strict scientific sense or in any flaky New Agey sense, but rather informally as something along the lines of: the capacity or tendency to specifically notice and identify that one is feeling a particular internal sensation.

Hence, body awareness (as I am using this phrase in this context) is going to be relevant to a person's eating habits, as if you don't "feel hungry" very intensely (or if you just have difficulty in general sorting out what you are feeling), your need for nutritive input is not necessarily going to match up with your sense of wanting food.

And if this is the case, you may find yourself missing meals without necessarily even realizing you've done so until you start feeling really horrible (and possibly not even then, at least not without someone else coming along and reminding you about food).

Needless to say, this isn't exactly an ideal situation. But a lot of its power to wreak havoc, as often seems to be the case with this kind of thing, comes from not realizing what is going on. For people with atypical sensory and information processing, our culture often doesn't provide the means or the language for us to readily figure out what might be causing a particular problem -- which means that we can end up going years before encountering information that actually usefully explains what is going on.

E.g., for ages I just went around implicitly presuming that if something was wrong I would "just know", and that there was no need to do anything extra or different than anyone else around me in order to stay healthy and functioning well. Moreover, I have always been severely emetophobic, which as a child often meant that I would refuse food when I probably needed it most, because I couldn't tell the difference between feeling very hungry and feeling sick.

Later, even in college, when I crashed or felt horrible I would either figure it was a sign of laziness or character flaws -- or in some cases jump to some hypochondriacal conclusion, like in when I was worried I had a brain tumor or something because I kept getting headaches and didn't even consider that I was perhaps dehydrated.

This sort of internal conviction (that I should expect to know when I needed to eat or drink based on bodily signals alone) stubbornly maintained itself even through instance after instance of ending up in vastly unpleasant and even injurious situations because I didn't know what I wasn't aware of until it was too late.

I still tend to not be able to immediately identify and articulate sensations like hunger, thirst, etc., but I have been able to avoid many potential crashes since figuring out what signals I do tend to feel strongly. And one particularly strong signal I tend to feel is what I might describe as "sense of routine".

My brain is very good at mapping certain kinds of patterns, in time as well as in space, and hence I've been able to perform a "partial hack" to utilize this capacity in the service of making sure I eat regularly. E.g., I set up the following "rules" for weekdays:

- I will eat breakfast as soon as I get to work (and since my breakfasts usually consist of an energy bar or something similarly user-friendly, I can actually accomplish that during the first morning e-mail check).

- I will eat lunch at 11:15 AM.

If that sounds too simple to even bother mentioning I apologize, but for me it was not a trivial thing at all to come to understand that by taking advantage of my pattern-detection abilities (through first establishing a particular pattern), I could in effect gain access to a signal that was a lot more reliable than hunger.

Since establishing these rules, I've ended up skipping breakfast or lunch far less frequently (dinner has usually been less of a problem as I've never lived alone and have hence had the "cue" of seeing other people eating and smelling food, etc., to remind me about food in the evenings).

When I have skipped meals more recently it has generally been due to a disruption of the routine (such as an early morning meeting or one that starts at 11:15 and goes until after noon), but as time has gone on I've noticed myself starting to feel a sense of "something missing" if I don't eat lunch simply because I know I haven't gone through the activity of taking food out of my lunchbox, etc.

This brainhack doesn't work perfectly and can be thwarted at times by being really absorbed in something so deeply that the routine-signal gets buried, but it works way better than expecting to feel hungry or thirsty in a timely manner ever did. In short, I've made it so eating meals is part of a pattern I expect to exist during the day, and this has made their absence a bit more conspicuous.

II.

Another thing that has helped me is the plain old external reminder. That wonderful invention, the mighty checklist (lately my ~~tricorder~~ iPod Touch has been serving this purpose handily with several of its to-do programs) is a lovely "signal booster" for the routine-orientedness that I've described herein. Knowing that something should be happening is one thing, but having that thing written down tends to make me even more likely to actually do it.

Of course then there is the matter of actually remembering to write stuff down, but since discovering writing a checklist tends to almost instantly settle my brain down when I am beginning to feel overloaded, I've been able to maintain the habit with a reasonable degree of success.

And then there is the truly external reminder of the sort that you may not get to access unless you are lucky enough to have certain kinds of people in your life -- and that is the one which comes from someone who you either live with or know reasonably well who knows you well enough to offer you periodic sustenance-related reminders.

(My partner is excellent at this -- he started doing it initially after noticing how grumpy I was after work some days and thinking to ask me if I'd eaten lunch, and for quite a while now he's been doing things like having me try drinking water or having a snack if I feel nonspecifically "weird" or seem to be acting in an agitated or spacey manner.)

But still, while I am very grateful for this I also know that you can't just go out and "get" help like this. There is a major problem right now with lots of people probably not being able to get even as "simple" a service as the regular food reminder because either they are considered "too high functioning" to qualify for it or because they don't know where to start in the administrative maze.

I wouldn't know where to start there either so I can't really advise in that regard -- but I can say that it probably wouldn't hurt to maybe try asking a roommate, a sibling, or some other person who you have at least some amount of regular contact with to perhaps say "hey, did you eat?" once in a while.

Summary

So, in summary, if you have body awareness issues around eating for whatever reason, if you haven't already you may want to try:

(a) Identifying some signal other than hunger or thirst that you are actually likely to notice more readily

(b) Using self-initiated reminders (checklists, post-it notes, electronic organizers, etc.)

(c) If possible, making sure someone who you have at least semi-regular contact with you knows you might sometimes need reminders about food or drink.

On The Feeding of Quirky Mammals, Part 1

2009-06-23T21:23:00.000-07:00

One of the things that has long been a challenge for me is eating -- that is, eating both properly and regularly.

Between extreme sensitivity to certain textures (which makes me rather picky), inconsistent body awareness (which makes it difficult to tell when I am hungry), difficulty transitioning between activities, and proneness to sensory overload, there are frequently multiple obstacles between me and a good solid meal.

Growing up of course my parents made sure I was fed (though not always without a fight from me...), but when I reached the age when people are expected to manage that sort of thing on their own, it did not even occur to me to make food a priority, and most of the "eating habits" I developed were, in a word, bad.

To give you an idea of what I mean by "bad", at one point in college I was in a biology lab where we were performing chemical analyses of our urine. Gross, I know, but definitely a bit of a wake-up call for me in that the teacher informed me (upon viewing my results) that I appeared to be "digesting muscle" or something along those lines, and asked me whether I had been eating lately.

I thought about this, and with a start I realized I'd only eaten a small packet of peanut butter crackers that day, and probably the previous few days as well. With all my schoolwork, etc., it simply did not cross my mind that I actually needed food (or water, for that matter)...and since I don't tend to physically "feel" things like hunger and thirst until I am hungry or dehydrated enough to feel really awful, I had been essentially "subsisting" on a diet decidedly lacking in nutritional content.

That was perhaps my first "wake-up call" to the fact that maybe food actually mattered, but it still took me several more years to really internalize that, and has taken more still to figure out what to do about it.

And now, seeing as these days I usually manage to obtain sufficient nutrients and maintain adequate hydration, I thought I would write out some of the things I've discovered to be helpful. I'm not perfect at this stuff, but I've gotten a lot better at it over the past few years, and the subject of nutrition ties very closely into interests in both longevity and disability issues, particularly for those of us on the autistic spectrum who often need to acquire adaptive and self-help skills in atypical ways.

Posts will be presented in series format -- this is the first of what will probably be four or five consecutive entries.

1. Food-Related Sensory Issues

I.

For as long as I can recall I've been a "picky eater". Many of my childhood mealtime memories are, shall we say, less than pleasant -- even though I know I was not kept at the table for "hours", it certainly felt that way when I was attempting to choke down a plateful of something literally gag-inducing.

The majority of things I can't stand are what I would call "texture offenders" -- e.g., most meats (especially anything with fat or gristle), macaroni and cheese from a box (a.k.a., "bowl of slimy entrails"), mayonnaise, and creamed corn (which my brain classes in the same category as "dog vomit"). I didn't like these things as a kid and I don't like them now, and pretty much anything with a slimy texture (or that is stretchy or gelatinous or that somehow seems "pre-chewed") goes on my "avoid" list.

Given this, it's no wonder that my worst period of nutritionally-void eating definitely included a component of "hey, nobody is making me eat horrible slimy things, so I can have whatever I want!" That is, on those occasions on which it actually occurred to me to eat something, I would tend to go for things like, oh, pop-tarts, candy corn, cookies, and chocolate bars. On a "good" day this would be intermingled with some trail mix or a cup of sodium-rich instant ramen.

Looking back, it is very easy to see why I ended up "crashing" (in the "sudden fatigue, shakes, and nausea" sense) every so often during college especially -- I was eating too little overall and way too much sugar when I did eat, and consequently giving myself hypoglycemia-like attacks.

Anyway, it has taken me a while, but I have actually discovered since those dark days of dietary disaster that there are lots of real, healthy foods I genuinely like!

E.g., I have a considerable fondness for raw vegetables, which have the added benefit of not even needing any preparation besides perhaps washing. I also like most cooked vegetables (except okra -- too mucusy), salad greens (including the bitter ones), tofu, veggie burgers, mushrooms, nuts, and beans. Frankly at this point I can't even stand a lot of highly processed things anymore -- they are too sweet, too salty, and just plain too boring for them to even be tempting.

Finding "real food" that I not only tolerate but enjoy has mostly been a matter of experimenting. Once I finally internalized the fact that eating wasn't exactly optional, I became a bit more motivated than before to try different sorts of things.

Sometimes this took the form of starting with something I knew I liked and looking for things that had some property in common with it (such as spiciness -- I'd liked hot sauce on all kinds of things since childhood, but didn't discover curry until I was in my twenties, and upon trying it wondered where it had been all my life!).

Other times, it took the form of trying something that I had rejected as a youngster not for any reason related to taste or texture, but just because I'd thought it was "weird" for some reason (e.g., mushrooms, which I was terrified of for a while for no good reason, but now like in a lot of things).

And other times still it took the form of thinking back to something I hadn't really liked and figuring out that the reason I'd not liked it might have been related to preparation or variety rather than to the food itself (and that there was no reason, for instance, I had to even bother cooking a vegetable if I liked it better raw! It took me years to figure out that I didn't have to be at a picnic to have carrot sticks, etc.).

(It has also helped, of course, that my partner Matt (born and raised in California, Land Of Fresh Year-Round Produce) is an utterly amazing cook who spoils me with his culinary creativity...I've had more different kinds of food since moving out to California from Connecticut in 1996 than I knew existed previously.)

In other words, regardless of what your sensory sensitivities happen to be (and many people have them, not just autistic people), the sheer variety of food out there probably has something you can eat and enjoy and that won't pickle your pancreas or accost your arteries.

II.

Of course depending on where you live it is going to be more difficult to get certain things than others.

And some people have food allergies and other conditions to deal with that can make healthy eating even more of a challenge (e.g., people with Crohn's Disease can have trouble digesting vegetable matter, people with mobility impairments may be limited as to what they can prepare, etc.).

Moreover, there are serious disparities in food availability across geographic and income lines, as well as people that literally gag on everything that isn't Cheez-Whiz and goldfish crackers. The last thing I want to do is write anything that gives the impression I think this stuff is easy, much less for everyone, or that I don't recognize the privilege of my own position (e.g., as someone who currently lives in an apartment with a communal lemon tree in bac that produces fruit year-round).

In other words, I am not presuming everyone has access to, or can even eat, a diet high in fresh veggies and such. Mainly I am just trying to point out that there is a lot more food out there than is obvious, and that even picky eaters might find themselves surprised to find that they actually like some healthy things if they experiment a bit with different ingredients, processing variations, stores, sources, etc.

Furthermore, I also want to write this to emphasize the importance of acknowledging sensory sensitivities in looking to improve your (or someone else's) nutritional intake. While yes, some people (especially young children) are "neophobic" eaters who come to like things they initially balked at trying, sensory sensitivities can be persistent and permanent throughout a person's lifetime, and should not be taken to automatically indicate the person is "rebelling" or "attention seeking" by refusing to eat a particular thing.

I have heard of some cases where people have an overly strong gag reflex due to poor tone in swallowing muscles, etc., and certainly if something like this is occurring then the proper medical professionals should be consulted, but sometimes you're dealing with a simple matter of individual variation in sensory tolerance.

And in any case of texture sensitivity or general pickiness, it is important to work toward finding nutritious things a person can tolerate, so that they don't end up gravitating toward seriously unhealthy items due to not knowing anything else is available.

Still Alive...

2009-06-14T21:16:00.000-07:00

Not sure who is reading these days but just wanted to post briefly to say that yes I am still alive and so is this blog. I have just been very busy lately, both with Day Job and with preparation for an upcoming move. Yes, I am going to be moving sometime this summer and while I am looking forward to being somewhere somewhat larger and where I can have cats(!!!), preparation for such a thing is pretty exhausting! My partner Matt and I are finally going to be moving from the 560 sq. foot apartment we've lived in for the past six years into a house about twice that size.

So that ought to be interesting, but it will probably mean sporadic posting for a while!

On Standards

2009-05-29T21:22:00.000-07:00

One reason I am perhaps a bit quieter on this blog lately than I used to be is because frankly I've reassessed my standards.

I like writing about interesting and (what I consider to be) important things, but I have also become very aware that even the most well-meaning and innocent attempts to share one's interests and opinions publicly can end up adding to the "noise" component of the signal-to-noise ratio on any topic.

Obviously I am not going to demand that either I or anyone else first achieves "perfect" knowledge before writing anything about anything.

(The only people I've seen actually demanding that are people who tend to be enthusiastic about various forms of pseudoscience and superstition. Actual scientists (at least if they're doing actual science), and reasonably scientifically literate laypersons, on the other hand, generally seem to understand that opening up one's ideas to criticism is part of the picture when putting said ideas out in public.)

But: nevertheless, the fact that asking for perfect knowledge of anyone who wishes to communicate about anything is ridiculous does not mean that standards don't matter or that it isn't irresponsible to not check one's own standards frequently. The bottom line is that these days, when I want to write about something weighty or (per my own standards) important, and I have the slightest inkling that there might be actual, factual data pertaining to that thing, I at least make an effort to find and understand the primary sources.

Now, I freely acknowledge that I am not always good about listing citations. And I do not think there is no place for "informal" blogging. I am not suggesting that we ought to all be totally stodgy, never silly, and never say anything without reference to a research paper -- that might help improve accuracy in certain topics, but it would also possibly effectively crowd out people who just might have something worthwhile to say despite not having standard or expected credentials, style, etc.

But when it comes to certain topics I guess I've just come to see it as important to avoid letting either enthusiasm or concern wreak havoc on standards.

For example: If someone tells you something you're writing about is "fringe science", don't take that as an insult -- lots of things start out on the fringes, and certainly it doesn't help your case to insist that science lower its standards to admit your pet idea rather than you going off and trying to actually get your idea tested.

(This is a litmus test I always invoke now when coming across a new claim about longevity medicine -- I am a lot more likely to take seriously efforts that are looking to submit their ideas for testing in stringent conditions than "efforts" whose primary energy expenditure seems devoted to going on about how they "have a secret your doctor doesn't want you to know!")

And if someone tells you that your well-intentioned efforts might actually be having the opposite effect to what your intentions claim, you might want to try and see if you can see what they are talking about.

(This is especially important for people (and groups) who have achieved some level of influence, and it can be very weird sometimes for people accustomed to having little to no influence to suddenly find themselves in the position of having it.

I know I was totally baffled and slightly disturbed when several people e-mailed me after seeing my two minute BBC interview on the Visions of the Future special asking me what I thought about the future of human life -- that definitely gave me a sampling of how even having been on television for a tiny speck of time and portrayed in an even remotely positive light makes people more likely to think you have some kind of "expertise" even when you might be making as wild speculations as anyone else could.)

In short, all humans need to be careful of letting confirmation/deconfirmation bias undermine their goals in trying to transmit accurate information, particularly when the subjects they claim to care about (and the public discussion thereof) has the potential to impact so many who may presently have very little power.

So, when I write these days, it is taking me longer (that is, when I am not making obvious personal speculations that make no claims of being super-sciencey or posting photos or robot-themed artwork or metablogging like this). This does not mean my interest has dropped off in anything -- it means I've realized I really do not want to be part of the noise problem, whether the subject be biogerontology or autism research or anything similarly weighty. I know I won't be perfect at this but I am willing to try harder at least.

Plug and Play Humans: Is Your Cell Phone Getting Under Your Skin?

2009-05-17T21:41:00.000-07:00

One common futurist trope I've run across more times than I can count is the idea that the current trend of ever-decreasing-in-size cellular phones will inevitably lead to people routinely electing to have the minuscule offspring of today's phones implanted in their heads.

Now, believe me, I am all for improving human-machine interfacing. One of my own pieces of "fantasy hardware" consists of a kind of heads-up display that would permit the projection of some sort of informational overlay across my field of vision, possibly via a pair of eyeglasses and...

[waves hands, sprinkles pixie dust]

...a system of sensors to detect the state of various bodily systems, in addition to providing navigational and other sorts of useful data.

The nearest imagining I've ever seen of this occurs in the science fiction novel This Alien Shore, by C.S. Friedman.

In that book, characters have internal computers called "wellseekers" that adjust their heart rate, blood pressure, and other variables so as to avoid unnecessary health-damaging effects due to stress and whatnot, in addition to providing reminders about the need to consume food or drink.

Additionally, they can put on headsets that interface with their internal "brainware" and this allows them to navigate the Outernet, which is the book's answer to our Internet, extended to interplanetary scale.

But fantasies aside, I am definitely not holding my breath waiting for "implantable cell phones", and frankly I don't see that idea as being one likely to grab much of a foothold in mainstream culture anytime soon.

I don't doubt that such a thing may become technologically feasible in the next few decades (perhaps dialing would be activated by tongue movements or something along those lines), but my guess would be that anyone who isn't a rather geeky body-modification enthusiast already would shy away from having to get surgery in order to access the latest and greatest phone technology.

Not that there's anything wrong with being a geeky body-modification enthusiast or anything, of course, it's just that that descriptor doesn't seem to apply to the majority of what would be the cell-phone market segment.

Plus, I really have to wonder what the heck people will do if their internal phone breaks or goes obsolete -- are they going to be willing to get more surgery every time they feel like upgrading? I would imagine probably not.

It's 2009 as of this writing and infection remains a risk of implanted medical devices; it's a different thing to accept such a risk when it's your life at stake than when you are simply considering doing something for aesthetic*, social, or curiosity's sake.

Honestly one thing that sometimes gets to me about certain realms of futurist discussion is the way bodies are so often reduced to the abstract, as if surgery is (or will soon be, even though there's no evidence of this) tantamount to snapping Lego blocks painlessly and easily in and out of a structure.

Heck, even relatively "trivial"-seeming operations like getting a small magnet embedded in one's finger entail certain physical realities. Journalist Quinn Norton is one of the few to have actually participated in this experiment; she writes in Wired magazine that:

The initial cut did hurt, but not unbearably. He sliced open my finger with a standard scalpel, inserted a tool to make a gap for the magnet, and tried to insert the magnet in one nonstop motion. The insertion didn't work, and he widened the cut and tried again. This time it worked, and he closed the cut with a single suture. The suture was the most painful step -- an indicator that the cold "anesthetic" had worn off. The process took less than 10 minutes. My finger was slightly swollen and sported a blue, knotted plastic thread.

Now, that doesn't sound totally horrible or anything, but there's still finger-slicing action, sutures, the whole bit. Later on Ms. Norton also ran into infection issues which led to more fun gouging from the family doctor in an attempt to remove the thing; then the implant disintegrated in her finger (though in an interesting twist, the bits of the magnet re-formed and she became able once again to pick up other magnets a few months later).

So while Norton's description of the sensation of having the implant when it was actually working as intended is seriously cool and tempting-sounding:

I would circle my finger with a strong magnet and feel the one in my finger spin. In time, bits of my laptop became familiar as tingles and buzzes. Every so often I would pass near something and get an unexpected vibration. Live phone pairs on the sides of houses sometimes startled me.

...clearly this sort of thing, let alone a vastly more complex and probably larger device, isn't about to take the mass market by storm anytime soon.

Again, I have no problem with people choosing to implant whatever the heck they want into their bodies, whether it be magnets or metal spikes or whatnot, but I would hardly figure implanted cell phones can be presumed inevitable based on current conditions and trends.

One of the reasons cell phones are becoming so ubiquitous is the very fact that the devices are getting so cheap to make, replace, and transfer. Putting surgery into the equation would almost certainly entail a totally different market model and one that would not permit the level of growth that has been observed so far.

*Yes, a lot of people these days are getting plastic surgery, but it would be quite a stretch to presume that anyone willing to use a cell phone today would also be willing to get plastic surgery.

Comment Policy

2009-05-14T19:17:00.000-07:00

As of 5/14/2009:

- Being logged into blogger is not required to comment on Existence is Wonderful. I have made this change for accessibility reasons -- I want people who want to participate here to be able to with a minimum of barriers.

- "Anonymous" comments are therefore allowed.

- However, if at all possible, please sign your comments with some sort of distinguishing nickname. Or your initials. Or even initials that aren't actually yours. Or a single letter, like "A" or "J", or heck, even a number. Just something so that I don't end up dealing with five different "anonymouses" commenting on the same post and having to somehow guess who said what. That kind of thing gets incredibly confusing really quickly.

- Spam will of course be deleted as soon as I see it. I am not interested in your \/14gr4 or your c14l15 or your 100000 free pix, or in your Mega Colon Cleanse Super Herbal X Formula.

- I particularly despise the kind of spam where someone writes a brief, generic comment along the lines of "Hi! Interesting blog! This is the first time I am reading this blog! Thanks!" and then follows with a spammy URL. Fake nicey-nice marketing = fail.

- Trolling will be deleted.

(And if you're worried about whether or not your comment is going to be taken as "trolling", it almost certainly isn't.)

- It is okay to go on tangents, quote at length, and go off-topic if that strikes your fancy. I'm not picky about that sort of thing and I've been known to go on a tangent or three myself.

- Lengthy circular arguments between individuals who obviously aren't going to be understanding each other anytime this century will not be hosted here. Spirited discussion is fine, 300+ posts in which the participants are insulting each other's mothers is not.

- I am going to try unmoderated commenting first. If I get inundated with spam or any other unfunny funny business, I will start holding comments in a moderation queue.

=]

Out of Context, but Still Apt

2009-05-03T23:15:00.000-07:00

...I begin indeed to fear that I have undertaken an impossibility, undertaken to tell what I cannot tell because no speech at my command will fit the forms in my mind.

Already I have set down statements I would gladly change did I know how to substitute a truer utterance; but as often as I try to fit the reality with nearer words, I find myself in danger of losing the things themselves, and feel like one in process of awaking from a dream, with the thing that seemed familiar gradually yet swiftly changing through a succession of forms until its very nature is no longer recognisable.

- From Lilith, by George MacDonald.

The quote above? I am taking it way out of context here in lifting it from a Victorian dark fantasy novel that obviously had nothing to do with blogging or any of the usual stuff I write about here (well, when I'm not explicitly writing about fiction).

But it's a great quote and I wanted to put it here because, while again I am applying it way outside the author's use of it, it very well articulates what using language is always like for me.

There's a reason I don't tend to actively engage with lengthy flamewars and why I don't always answer when people ask me a barrage of questions...there's just so much that seems to elude language, even as language facilitates so much in some contexts.

Anyway I just wanted to leave this here so I could perhaps refer back to it later, and/or point others back to it whenever it might seem I am not addressing something that ought to be addressed, or not commenting on some news story that seems like I'd be interested in it.

It's not that I don't have any thoughts in those situations, it's that often it takes me a long time to figure out how to say what I actually mean, and sometimes when I finally do manage to express what I actually mean, it might not even be through the sort of spontaneous, original sequence of words that people seem to expect (but by, say, drawing or quoting or referring to a song or object).

Robot And Kitten Are Friends (New T-Shirt Design)

2009-05-02T20:19:00.000-07:00

As a child I always liked it when restaurants had paper placemats one could draw on. Drawing, in addition to being fun, is also a really useful way of regulating input from my surroundings.

Anyway, though, last weekend, on a short jaunt out of town to attend a wedding, I ended up in a restaurant for breakfast on Sunday. I don't recall whether they actually had paper placemats there, but it did not matter because I'd thought to bring along a small pad of art paper in the army-surplus shoulder bag I usually carry around (as it is of a nice size to contain my nifty netbook computer, camera, wallet, etc.).

So, while I was waiting for my food I drew the following (or rather, a sketched version of it; this version has been colored and edited in GIMP graphics software):

[Click image to view larger]

It is a longstanding personal philosophy of mine that when it comes to drawing, you really can't go wrong with robots or kittens. But lo and behold, here we have a robot and a kitten! I had to work for a while getting the kitten just right (she kept looking like a wolf cub to me until I fixed the nose/muzzle to be properly feline) but overall I am reasonably pleased with the result.

Click here to see (and order, if you are so inclined) the shirt on Zazzle.com.

(As always, I am not doing this to try and make any actual money -- I just figure that perhaps a few Existence is Wonderful readers might share my delight in all things robot and kitten!)

Quick Link: The Brain Science Podcast

2009-04-29T23:01:00.000-07:00

I recently discovered The Brain Science Podcast and have been going through the archives on my iPod. Quite an intriguing mix of shows/topics/guests. Fairly layperson-accessible without being dumb or fluffy. Host Dr. Ginger Campbell is very pleasantly down to earth for the most part, and doesn't come across as smarmy.

A few of the episodes (e.g. this one where the guest sounds a little overconfident about his favored technique) I've listened to so far have had a tinge of overblown self-promotion to them, and some of the topics are a bit on the "pop science" side, but other than that I've been pretty darn impressed, both by the overall quality of the topics discussed and the overall no-frills approach of the show.

I've listened to some podcasts ostensibly related to brains and cognition and such that are just...well, let's just say that they seem to have ZERO standards for who they interview.

And while I'm all for engaging with "fringe" viewpoints (let me tell you, all those insomniac adolescent nights of listening to Coast to Coast AM were great for practicing critical thinking!), ye gads, there's only so much "and today we have an interview with Lady Rainbow Moonflower Cleopatra who is a neo-shamanistic dreamwork holistic crystal therapist who discovered through the power of Dynamic Positive Imaging that she is actually the quantum reincarnation of Pikachu!" I can take.

Too much of that sort of thing and my brain starts to feel like I've eaten nothing but candy corn and Pop-Tarts for the past week. Whereas a steady diet of information and discussion from people who, you know, actually care about finding out stuff about actual reality is much more satisfying.

In any case, key things I've appreciated about the Brain Science Podcast include: an emphasis on embodiment as being a critical aspect of cognition (very refreshing!), interviews with people doing actual research (like one scientist who has spent 35 years just studying one aspect of the lobster brain!), and a reasonably straightforward format.

"But Why Would You Want To Label Yourself Like That?"

2009-04-20T23:58:00.000-07:00

It was one of those moments in which I knew I had to choose between either disclosing (and accepting whatever consequences that entailed) or letting a communication breakdown degrade into something potentially much worse.

Given that I'd been down the ugly road of mounting mutual misconceptions numerous times, with no good ever coming of it, I went for disclosure on that occasion.

The result was...interesting. Not wonderful, not totally horrible, but not particularly good either. And definitely symptomatic of the tremendous amount of ignorance that persists regarding autistic persons, particularly when we happen to no longer be children.

My guess is that autistic persons find ourselves in this situation frequently, whether it be at work, at school, or in any other context entailing non-superficial interaction with others. Sometimes it's a matter of us being faced with the question of whether to disclose for ourselves; other times it's a matter of a parent or partner or someone else who is with us having to make that decision.

But in any case, it is definitely not an easy situation to navigate. And in fact, sometimes our experiences with disclosure can be so awful that we're left back where we were before we even had the information and insight necessary to even attempt disclosure in the first place.

One thing that would help make disclosure more of a useful exercise than an exercise in frustration would be for people to make fewer assumptions about what it means for someone to disclose something like autism. In these situations, the logical thing to do would be to avoid making assumptions and perhaps try to learn a little more about the person you are dealing with -- but unfortunately this is not the most common default response.

When I made the aforementioned disclosure, the response I initially got was something along the lines of, "Oh, why do you want to put a label on yourself?" This was followed by a series of attempts at "reassuring" me of my abilities in various areas (which baffled me as I never once claimed to have no abilities).

And...whatever the intention of these "reassurances", their effect and ultimate implication was anything but reassuring.

Put simply, their effect was dismissive and their implication was that the other person already knew everything he needed to know about me in order to make his judgment -- that judgment being, of course, that I just needed to try harder to do something in the standard way. Even though for that particular task, the standard way was totally inaccessible to me.

And it wasn't as if I hadn't completed the task per its requirements -- I had in fact done this, and I'd done it thoroughly.

So, what was the problem?

Well, essentially the problem had to do with the fact that writing and speech are two different things. My assignment had been, "Provide information about X to Person Y, and copy Person Q when you send the information". I'd done this via e-mail and Person Y had not complained.

Person Q, on the other hand, decided that he wanted a verbal summary of what I'd written. He did not seem to be able to grok that providing him with a verbal summary would require me to find some way to quickly make the material I'd written about accessible to my "speech circuits". And so when I balked at giving him a verbal summary (and he did not seem to even like my suggestion that I come and read him what I'd written verbatim), he got very exasperated. As far as I could tell, he thought I was just being lazy or stubborn or otherwise unreasonable.

So, we're back at the beginning now: at that point, my choice was either to let Person Q go on figuring I was some sort of bizarre prima-donna, or tell him the truth, which was that what he was asking of me literally wouldn't accomplish anything useful.

Very often I can write about something long before I can talk about it aloud; much of the stuff I say aloud (especially if I sound "articulate" in doing so) is stuff I've written about. I've got gigantic text files on my home computer that nobody ever sees, which I just use for processing thoughts into words.

Put simply, my spoken communication -- at least my spoken coherent communication -- sometimes greatly lags what I can do in writing at any given time. And trying to force speech when it isn't ready to come out never leads to anything good -- at best it leads to rambling associative tangents, and at worst (and I have plenty of experience with "at worst") it leads to full-on crying meltdowns, and exits that look a lot more dramatic than I'd like them to, considering by the point that happens I'm generally wishing very much to be invisible.

And...the only thing I've ever, ever found to work in permitting me to use speech communicatively, especially in cases when it really matters that the information I'm meant to convey is accurate, is a combination of writing and time. Which of course means that if someone wants something out of me fast, they're better off just letting me type it.

This isn't 100% true for all autistic people, all the time. But it's true for me, and it was true for me before I'd even heard of autism, let alone been diagnosed on the spectrum. All diagnosis did was put things into context. And that contextualization can be a useful and valuable tool -- so long as it isn't dismissed as merely a matter of my "using a label to limit myself" or something similarly disparaging.

Mind you, I don't think Person Q meant any harm. More likely, he was genuinely baffled by the fact that someone he knew could do this and that thing just fine was "refusing" to do something else which to him seemed totally trivial. And I'm also sure he meant well when he tried to (as he saw it) "encourage [me] to step out of [my] comfort zone". But regardless of what he meant, his comments didn't help me, nor did they get the task accomplished the way he would have preferred.

Now, I know disclosure doesn't have to go badly.

I was in another situation, another time, wherein again I found myself having to either disclose or experience Serious Badness. And that time, the person's response was more along the lines of, "Oh, wow, thanks for telling me, that makes [Anne's seemingly strange reactions to 'mundane' thing] a lot less confusing."

Later I found out that this person actually had an autistic child, and so at the very least she had some experience with the territory. There definitely seems to be a correlation between information (and a willingness to learn and accept new information) and how well someone reacts to a disclosure.

And...all that said, this isn't all just about disclosure.

Disclosure is only an example of a particular issue that can come up for autistic people, regardless of whether we choose to use the word "autism" specifically, or refer generically to "disability", or even just describe our particular individual quirks and processing differences in more precise terms.

What issue is this?

Well, essentially it is the idea that by refusing to acknowledge something (whether in the form of a "label" or even just a description), you can somehow make it go away.

(Side note: I tried for years to avoid acknowledging anything "different" about my configuration; this simply and utterly did not work, and many things in my life consistently went wrong and undone until I got over myself and acknowledged certain things were true.)

This is closely related to (and often goes along with) the idea that anyone who attempts to describe a non-standard configuration or processing feature they happen to have is either Just Trying To Be Special And Different, or Just Trying To Be Lazy And Make Excuses, or some variation on those themes.

(This is not to say that autistic people are categorically immune to excuse-making -- we definitely aren't -- but it is inappropriate and patronizing to just assume someone is making an excuse because they are trying to explain something about themselves indicating an atypical configuration.)

Whether this is because behaviorism had too much influence on common thought a few decades ago, or whether people just find difference terribly inconvenient to work into their worldview, it's hard to say, but regardless, I can think of few things more confounding than the insistence made by some that only two types of people -- typical and "broken" -- exist.

This forces people to either try their best to act in typical ways even when doing so is unhealthy (and often ultimately unsustainable), or to accept a self-concept that often entails a tremendous amount of woe-is-me thinking regarding their configuration.

In truth, this is a false dichotomy.

In truth, there ought to be a general acknowledgment that everyone benefits when educational, social, occupational, and other opportunities are made more flexible and inclusive.

But in order for that acknowledgment to proliferate, individual people need to work toward checking their knee-jerk assumptions upon encountering atypical configurations and the people who live with them all the time regardless of whether or not they are named.

On Consequences vs. Intentions

2009-04-13T18:55:00.000-07:00

A bit of language-communication-deconstruction inspired by various recent mailing-list and comment thread goings-on, in which I've personally said little but observed a fair amount. And if you think you personally inspired this post you are almost certainly wrong, as I wrote it only after observing a lot of different conversations in a lot of different places, to the point where I believe I've detected a pattern but couldn't extrapolate out who exactly said what when and where even if I wanted to.

I've noticed that misunderstandings abound whenever you have one (or more) people focusing on consequences in their statements, and one or more other people focusing on intentions in their statements.

Very often, it seems that when Person 1 points out the potential (or actual) consequences of something, they are interpreted as telling Person 2 what their intentions and thoughts are.

And then subsequent exchanges consist of Person 1 expressing great confusion at why Person 2 is so upset, and Person 2 getting more and more upset as they perceive Person 1 to be ignoring their feelings.

Sometimes this even leads to Person 2 actually going back and trying to tell Person 1 what their intentions are (or at least, telling them a lot of things that look like that), because they feel like that's what was done to them in the first place.

And...when I see this sort of thing going on, I honestly have no clue whether it's even possible to participate usefully in the discussion (which is one reason I don't participate much in long, heated discussion threads).

If I say:

"Look, Person 2, Person 1 didn't mean to accuse you of X, he was just trying to point out the consequences of what you wrote",

...is Person 2 going to find that helpful, or are they going to think I am "teaming up" with Person 1 and claiming their (Person 2's) feelings don't matter?

And if I say:

"Look, Person 1, when you used this sort of language to point out the consequences of Person 2's statement, they took it as a personal accusation of bad faith, despite any disclaimers you might have applied, because they are accustomed to only seeing language like that used when an actual accusation of bad faith is taking place",

...is Person 1 going to appreciate that, or just figure it's a matter of people reading too much of the wrong things into what they're saying?

I probably have a slight personal bias toward Person 1 (as in, I tend to be a consequence-pointer-outer myself, and have been misunderstood many times because of this, and I tend to find people who themselves make a practice of pointing out consequences easier to read) but I try not to translate that bias into anything that stops me from seeing why people might be reacting the way they are to a statement.

In other words, I don't think there's any basis for saying either Person 1 or Person 2 is "always in the right" in any universally generalizable sense (and of course there's the fact that the Person 1 and Person 2 roles can "switch" multiple times in a conversation, depending on the direction it takes).

But I do think it can be said that when you think someone is accusing you of being a bad person, or of doing something bad on purpose, it would probably be a good idea to look more carefully at what they're saying before responding. They might just be trying to tell you that what you're doing could lead (or has lead in the past) to particular negative consequences.

And, conversely, I think it's a good idea to (if you are a consequence-pointer-outer) understand that some people are really sensitive to wording and phrasing, and will literally not understand what you mean if you don't explicitly point out that you are trying to discuss potential/actual consequences, rather than Make The Other Person Feel Bad. (And I am not saying that people ought to be "babied", just that some might not have yet grasped that there's even a difference between talking about intentions and talking about consequences.)

What Each Of Us Notices: April Edition

2009-04-12T22:05:00.000-07:00

Pictures from today. Not feeling wordy at the moment.

Toby (found as a tiny, runny-nosed kitten last year in my SO's parents' yard) is now about 11 months old, beautiful, healthy, and very much her own person!

Layers and symmetry in three dimensions.

Colors and chaos in iron oxide.

Wood, metal shapes, and light.

Cryonics, Redux

2009-04-05T23:50:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everyone who commented on my recent post on cryonics. Interesting discussion all around, and I've definitely been able to clarify my views on the subject a bit subsequently. I think it's good for people to be able to discuss this kind of thing outside the context of "echo chambers" where everyone already agrees, and also outside the context of either wildly speculative futurism or outright dismissal.

(I actually find a fair bit of discussion, even on subjects I'm really interested in, somewhat inaccessible due to copious use of widgets, so I am glad there is at least some non-widgety conversation to be had (or at least people who can deal with non-widgetiness on my end).)

So I'm going to attempt to explain my views as they (albeit by no means immovably) stand now, and hopefully this explanation makes sense.

Certainly, people have made some pretty wild claims about cryonics, and there's been a lot of over-hyping of its potential, and it's a subject around which one must be extremely careful (that is, presuming one wants to avoid falling into crackpot wishful-thinking traps).

However: if you can manage to scrape away enough of the subcultural detritus and personality artifacts that have glommed onto cryonics over the years, what you're left with is:

(a) an experiment in tissue preservation,

(b) the idea that future technology may someday be able to repair injury and illness not addressable by today's medicine, and

(c) a view of death as a process rather than a discrete event.

None of these things seem to me particularly irrational or farfetched in and of themselves.

Of course in reality you can't actually ignore the cultural connotations and fringe entanglements of something like cryonics. These things must be acknowledged and addressed if one wants to actually have a clear view of the subject, and that's part of what I am trying to do here.

E.g., I think the notion of cryonics has been harmed by assertions that it's a means to (even potentially) "buy immortality". Immortality, after all, is incoherent -- nobody knows how long they or anyone else is going to live, and it might end up being a pretty long time, but it sure as heck isn't going to be forever, any more than having a job gives you a shot at making Infinity Zillion Dollars.

(It's not that I'm pessimistic, it's that some things that work on paper turn to dust when you try and force-fit them into the real world, and I'm pretty darn sure "immortality" is one of these things, as it essentially requires that biological entities be transmuted into perpetual-motion machines.)

But when it comes to item (a) above, which amounts to the question of "might it be possible to vitrify and later de-vitrify (and reanimate) a mammal?", there you at least have something concrete you can test. Such an experiment would be perfectly at home in the realm of cryobiology (though cryonics and cryobiology are not one and the same). So as far as "intriguing fringe ideas" go, cryonics actually comes out ahead in my book, for the mere fact of actually having a significant testable component.

The issue I think most people (and I do count myself in this category here) have difficulty with when considering cryonics as a concept relates to its built-in speculative component, (b): that of the notion of eventually repairing presently-fatal pathology with as-yet-nonexistent technology.

It requires a certain sort of mindset to take the idea of future reparative technologies (not to mention a future culture where reanimating cryonics patients is considered a good and proper thing to do) seriously enough to actually consider signing up for cryonics a worthwhile act. And to the extent that this mindset is entangled with things even more marginal than cryonics (and note that by "marginal" I don't mean "unpopular with the intellectual elite/cultural mainstream" but rather "removed from concrete reality by greater than two or so degrees"), you can count me among its critics.

However, I see a significant difference between the "just dip the person in liquid nitrogen, and maybe someday the nanobots will be able to put him back together" scenario, and the "vitrify the person so as to minimize cellular damage and maybe someday we'll be able to devitrify her and take care of that pesky tumor" scenario. Clearly some scenarios associated with cryonics (and perhaps the majority up until fairly recently) have been ridiculous. But I don't think they're all ridiculous. The details matter.

As for (c), viewing death as a (potentially interruptible) process rather than an event, this is not unique to cryonics by any means. Wikipedia has this to say regarding death (emphasis mine):

The chief concern of medical science has been to postpone and avert death. Death in this context is now seen as less an event than a process: conditions once considered indicative of death are now reversible. Where in the process a dividing line is drawn between life and death depends on factors beyond the presence or absence of vital signs. In general, clinical death is neither necessary nor sufficient for a determination of legal death. A patient with working heart and lungs determined to be brain dead can be pronounced legally dead without clinical death occurring.

So, in other words, "death" in real life is not the cartoon image of a person's ghost or soul abruptly and forever leaving the body; it's more complicated than that, and the process is more drawn out, and has even changed definitions multiple times throughout history. Hence the idea that if death is in fact a process, if we can find some way to halt the process before critical brain structures are destroyed forever, there might be some chance of bringing the person back.

A Tentative and Cautious Enthusiasm

In light of the above, "a tentative and cautious enthusiasm" pretty well describes what I have for cryonics these days. I have always been fascinated by the liminal spaces in human experience, and cryonics is one all about such spaces, aiming as it does to act in that fuzzy twilight between life and death as we know them.

As noted in my prior post on this subject, I suspect that the biggest breakthroughs in suspension per se will probably occur as techniques like therapeutic hypothermia advance. After all, there is a solid basis for supposing that extremely low temperatures can protect the brain and permit recovery even after a person has been clinically dead and in circulatory arrest for quite a while; there are multiple documented accounts of this.

But, having done some more reading lately, I've learned that there have been some promising developments as a result of the efforts of people motivated to improve cryonic suspension techniques specifically. Most significantly, rabbit kidneys have actually been successfully vitrified, de-vitrified, and found to be functioning following this process. Of course this isn't proof positive that the same thing will be accomplished for the brain, but it's not a bad start.

Now, about whether trying to enable interrupted lives to continue in the future is ethically coherent: I would say, sure it is.

I have long believed that nobody ever suddenly becomes worthless as a function of being sufficiently aged, disabled, etc. I think people in comas are worthy of life. I think people who need ventilators and feeding tubes for decades on end are worthy of life. I think heart patients in a state of therapeutic hypothermia are worthy of life. I don't think there's anything noble about "pulling the plug" on someone or requesting that it be pulled on you. And so on.

Because of my convictions here, I feel it would be hypocritical and just plain unethical to sit here and assert that some people just need to give up and rot under a tree somewhere, because the world has already given them enough, or something. And I don't need to believe in perpetual-motion incoherence in order to assert that I think humans ought to be pursuing more and better ways to protect and preserve wanted lives, and that to the extent cryonics (or anything related to it) could help in this regard, I am all for it.

Language, Cognition, and the Theory of Smoothie

2009-03-31T19:15:00.000-07:00

I came across a post entitled Intentional Action and Asperger Syndrome (via Psychology Today) a few months ago. Psychology Today seems to deal extensively in "fluff", and this article didn't exactly do much to negate that impression in my mind, but it nonetheless sent me down a line of thought I figured was worth relating here.

Anyway, the article begins thusly:

How do we think about the intentional nature of actions? And how do people with an impaired mindreading capacity think about it?

Consider the following probes:

The Free-Cup Case

Joe was feeling quite dehydrated, so he stopped by the local smoothie shop to buy the largest sized drink available. Before ordering, the cashier told him that if he bought a Mega-Sized Smoothie he would get it in a special commemorative cup. Joe replied, ‘I don't care about a commemorative cup, I just want the biggest smoothie you have.' Sure enough, Joe received the Mega-Sized Smoothie in a commemorative cup. Did Joe intentionally obtain the commemorative cup?

The Extra-Dollar Case

Joe was feeling quite dehydrated, so he stopped by the local smoothie shop to buy the largest sized drink available. Before ordering, the cashier told him that the Mega-Sized Smoothies were now one dollar more than they used to be. Joe replied, ‘I don't care if I have to pay one dollar more, I just want the biggest smoothie you have.' Sure enough, Joe received the Mega-Sized Smoothie and paid one dollar more for it. Did Joe intentionally pay one dollar more?

Curious, I mentally recorded my responses to both scenarios before checking to see what a given response set actually supposedly meant.

(Try it yourself if you like - scroll down when you've decided on your responses)

After presenting the scenarios, the article continues:

You surely think that paying an extra dollar was intentional, while getting the commemorative cup was not. So do most people (Machery, 2008).

Now that surprised me. Not only because of the presumption of what the reader "surely" thinks, but because, well, I didn't actually think paying the dollar was intentional, while getting the cup was not.

As I read the descriptions of both scenarios, it seemed clear to me that Joe's intention in either case was to acquire the largest available smoothie.

Hence, I answered "No" both to the question of whether he intentionally obtained the commemerative cup, and to the question of whether he intentionally paid an extra dollar.

And...apparently, according to the authors, this is actually the predicted "autistic" response:

But Tiziana Zalla and I have found that if you had Asperger Syndrome, a mild form of autism, your judgments would be very different: You would judge that paying an extra-dollar was not intentional, just like getting the commemorative cup (Zalla and Machery ms).

Leaving aside diagnostic category nitpicking for the moment, and noting that I don't think a person's responses to the smoothie scenarios are definitively diagnostic of anything, the above quoted statement does apply in my case, and apparently applied for a significant percentage of autistic study participants.

That said, I am really having a hard time seeing how "mindreading" has anything to do with how a person processes the scenario. I strongly suspect that this is more a matter of how a person processes language. It makes sense that in a language-based task, you're going to get trends in how autistic and nonautistic people respond, but very rarely do I see this being examined -- it's a lot more common to see people hypothesizing about "Theory of Mind deficits" and whatnot in response to findings such as this.

When I read the scenarios, I mapped them both something like this:

- Joe wants A.
- In order to get A, Joe must accept B.
- Joe really wants A, so he accepts B.

As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter what "B" is -- in either case, it's a condition Joe must accept in order to get the thing he wants. Hence, while Joe is going to end up with B (whether it be a fancy cup or a wallet one dollar lighter), it cannot be said that he went to the smoothie counter intending to get a fancy cup or pay an extra dollar. He went there to get the biggest smoothie they had, and that's what he got.

Now, if you asked instead, "Was Joe responsible for the act of acquiring the commemorative cup or spending the extra dollar?", I would say "Yes" -- for both cases.

While (as I stated above), I don't see Joe as having intended to accept the extra condition, it was still his "fault" that he ended up with the special cup / paid an extra dollar.

He could have, after all, decided the cup was really ugly to the point where he chose a different drink entirely in order to avoid it. He could have decided he didn't want to pay an extra dollar after all, and compromised with a smaller smoothie (or again, a different drink).

So in both cases, he was responsible for what he actually ended up with, as he knew the parameters of the situation going in, and chose accordingly. But that does not mean, by my assessment, that he intended to acquire the cup or spend the dollar; those were just "side effects".

This is where I think the language stuff is probably coming into play. I am guessing that many people are probably equating "Joe intentionally acquired B" with "Joe was responsible for acquiring B", whereas I make a distinction between those two assertions. Not a moral distinction, mind you, but a linguistic/conceptual one. But (at least based on many of the comments attached to the article), it seems that if someone doesn't make such a distinction, they may in turn judge "passive" actions (Joe accepts the commemorative cup) as distinct from "active" actions (Joe hands over an extra dollar).

And...none of this seems to have any bearing whatsoever on whether someone is "seeing things from Joe's point of view". For one thing, we don't know hardly anything about Joe, except for the fact that he wants a large smoothie, and wants it badly. For another thing, he's a fictional character in a story problem, not a three-dimensional human being or animal (and, yes, contrary to stereotypes, I do like fiction and can relate to some fictional characters -- but they have to be fleshed out somewhat better than Joe).

So, again, there's definitely some language weirdness going on in the presumptions about this problem. The only thing I see as passingly relevant to "theory of mind" seems to be the inherent presumption that people will, in the absence of knowing much of anything about Joe aside from his smoothie hankering, project their own default mental maps onto him and determine his intentions on that basis.

I was surprised to learn, for instance, that some people who read the problem saw the receipt of the commemorative cup as a "bonus" of some kind, and that this figured into there intentionality assessment. Personally when I saw the phrase "commemorative cup" I pictured some annoying gaudy thing I probably wouldn't want, and so if I were going to project anything onto Joe, it would be my own irritation with florid promotional items. But I didn't do that, because, well, I'm not Joe.

Additionally, the first time I read through the problem (before reading any interpretations or responses from other people) I had a distinct impression of Joe's "intentions" as being the intention he had when he entered the store to buy the large smoothie. The other variables that came up were simply irrelevant; the fact that there were now one or more conditions attached to the acquisition of the large smoothie didn't change the reason Joe had entered the store in the first place. So I guess I attached some kind of temporality to Joe's intentions, in addition to interpreting the language used in the problem the way I've described.

I'm very curious to know how other folks interpret scenarios like this. Again, I do NOT take this very seriously, least of all as a diagnostic instrument -- but I do think the discussions surrounding this sort of thing are quite illuminating when it comes to the assumptions that tend to get made about autistic cognition, language use, and human cognition in general.

EDIT: This post (which is actually linked at the bottom of the "Intentional Action and Asperger Syndrome" article) seems to concur with the assertion that language interpretation issues are probably a primary factor in how people respond to questions like those in the smoothie problem.

My Blogging Limits

2009-03-30T21:36:00.000-07:00

My blogging limitations -- that is, the parameters I apply in order to decide what is suitable and appropriate for public writing -- are based on a few basic rules I've set for myself, and on some fuzzier guidelines I've learned through experience (both mine and others').

Different people are going to have different notions of what is and isn't okay to blog about, and I don't intend this to be a set of regulations I'm going to judge other people by, but since the subject came up recently elsewhere I figured I would add my take on things to the discussion in the form of a post.

So, here are my personal blogging guidelines, for whatever it's worth:

1.) Work

Any writing about work must be in fairly generic terms (e.g., "I am an electromagnetic engineer at an aerospace company", rather than, "I am an electromagnetic engineer in the [X] department of [company name]"), and of course I will not ever post any proprietary information about any work projects online.

Additionally I do not name any individual people I work with at any given time (it's okay to say "a manager" or "a co-worker", but not "my boss, Mary Smith" or "my co-worker, Fred Jones") or give out too many identifying details about people I work with.

This rule came about due to my happening upon a lot of news articles a few years back about people getting fired for blogging about their jobs; I figured that was something I wanted to avoid and could pretty easily avoid just by declaring a moratorium on specifics.

(I'm more liberal about writing about past jobs, but even then I usually avoid naming names unless there's already some public document associating me with a particular person at a company; e.g., there's stuff online from when I was an intern at NASA that mentions the names of my boss then and probably some co-workers, but that stuff was all posted as part of a project where everyone involved had agreed to participate.)

2.) Other People

Any writing about other people¹ must be:

(a) factually correct to the best of my knowledge and memory, and,

(b) in sufficiently generic terms so as not to permit easy identification of individuals, or

(c) based on material that is already public, or

(d) done with permission (unless about a sufficiently non-sensitive subject)

As for what counts as a "sensitive subject", I determine that based on experience and reading. E.g., at present it is my perception that most people would prefer not to have their family members or others who know them describing their flatulence levels, medication regimens, or Scooby Doo underwear online.

Furthermore I'm leery of speculating about people's motivations (without a whole lot of good evidence), or offering a tidy interpretation of a situation that is probably anything but tidy. I need a lot of evidence before I determine that someone doesn't merit the benefit of the doubt anymore.

On the other hand, I think it's fine to write about something someone has done and what the consequences of that action were (or may be in the future). This is not the same thing as questioning someone's intentions, and shouldn't be taken as a "personal attack".

3.) Self

As with writing about others, writing about self must first and foremost be factually correct to the best of my knowledge and memory. I have actually been known to do things like...root through old files (the paper kind) and photo albums, just to make sure I'm remembering what I think I am.

Secondarily, (and this is relatively new for me), I make somewhat of an effort to avoid egregious over-sharing. I was born totally unselfconscious and had to be taught repeatedly not to, say, walk around with my dress somewhere up near my head as a kid.

In junior high I got very defensive and suspicious for a while as a result of being bullied, but it was years and years after that (and I am talking "not until my 20s") that it occurred to me that I did not HAVE to tell people whatever they asked all the time, especially if I didn't know them very well. So I run a brain-algorithm now when blogging that urges me to think before I write.

I still write about plenty of things that I'm guessing some people would consider embarrassing, and I think it's important to do this in some cases as some of the things I can help shed light on are things that I don't think people ought to be stigmatized for in the first place -- but I feel like I at least have a right to privacy now, and I think that's a good thing.

1 - By "other people" I'm referring primarily to family members, others I've known offline growing up, and people I know online but have had a reasonable amount of private (e-mail, etc.) communication with.

I'm also referring secondarily to people I don't know at all but who I might read about in an article or book, but since the only way I'm generally going to learn anything about those people is via information that's already somehow public, the challenge there becomes less one of deciding what bears revealing, and more one of what bears repeating.

A Few Cool Quandaries

2009-03-23T23:47:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been perseverating a bit on one of my longtime nerd-interests, cryonics. My first exposure to the idea of chilling and storing bodies for potential later revival happened, as is usually the case, via science fiction. I'd previously been interested in "time machine" sci-fi but "suspended animation" sci-fi had even more of an appeal for me as it entailed not only a sort of travel into the future, but all kinds of weird medical theory and instrumentation. Which was right up my alley, so to speak.

I'm not personally signed up for cryonics in the real world, but somewhere in the back of my mind I've sort of been planning on signing up since high school, or whenever it was I actually learned that real companies did that kind of thing. Recently the discussion came up in real-world terms, though, and I found myself wondering: would I really go through with signing up? Do I think others should sign up? What about my family and loved ones -- is this something I'd recommend to them? And if so, on what basis?

I definitely don't put much stock in it actually working. I suspect that any major medical breakthroughs having to do with arrested metabolism and low-temperature maintenance will probably come from ongoing developments in therapeutic hypothermia and related techniques already in "mainstream", if not widespread, use. But that doesn't mean I don't think it's neat.

However, I've recently found out just how "weird" and even "crackpottish" the idea of cryonics seems to Most People. I actually always saw it as one of the less weird things a person might conceivably find intriguing. But apparently that isn't the case.

I've thought hard about this realization and I've determined that I am not actually worried, in the slightest, about being seen as strange or wacky.

What I am worried about is actually being wackily detached from reality. I've always been determined to face the actual truth no matter how it might make me feel. So I've been trying to figure out if being intrigued by cryonics and considering it every bit as reasonable a choice as, say, having one's ashes shot into space or donating one's body to a medical lab means anything bad about my capacity to evaluate claims or accurately assess reality.

I definitely don't think that the first people suspended will likely be revivable, or that anyone who was dead for two days (give or take) prior to suspension likely has enough brain left to be future-salvageable, but based on my admittedly amateur level of biology-knowledge, it seems at least conceivable that someone suspended right at the point of clinical death, and suspended well, could have a chance of being revived similar to the chances of someone found at the bottom of an icy lake. Is there something I'm missing here science-wise?

Mind you I am not talking about "scanning" brains and "downloading" them into Shiny Robot Bodies -- that's way far off in speculative-land beyond what I think anyone alive today can reasonably do anything but fantasize about. But just...chilling a very-recently-clinically-deceased body, keeping it for a while, then waking it up someday? That just doesn't ping my weird-o-meter very strongly.

And...I guess I'm wondering whether it should. Again, I'm not worried about my "image" here, I'm worried about making sure I don't end up believing anything stupid just because it sounds really cool.

I plan on keeping on reading more about the biology of life, death, and everything in between, so perhaps I'll eventually come to a higher confidence level either way, but still, I'm curious about any particular (non-"futurist", preferably) resources people might want to recommend.

By the same token, I'm wondering if thinking cryonics is conceptually ethically okay (that is, I don't think it's unethical or immoral for a person to choose to sign up for cryonic suspension) means anything awful about my character. Again, this isn't about what I'm worried about being perceived as, but what I'm worried about actually possibly being. I don't want to be a "narcissist" or a pathologically selfish person -- but does being interested in cryonics make me one?