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2001 Should normal women marry abnormal men? December 2001 - I know whatcher thinkin'. Yer thinkin', "He's just saying that because he's abnormal." Yea, well yer mother listens to Enya. Or maybe not. But if she does, go out and get an armload of Enya's latest, A Day Without Rain. I'm listening to it right now. My favorite is track 11, and I've given away at least a dozen copies.           What's this got to do with abnormal men? Not a heck of a lot, although I've sometimes wondered if Ms. Ni Bhraonain has Asperger Disorder. (I mean that as a compliment. ... Damn, just found out I don't have two of her albums.)           Where was I? Oh, right. As I've written here many times, many of the world's best minds have Asperger Disorder. The fact I have Aspergers wouldn't have anything to do with my saying that, would it? Could be. Be that as it may, fact is both the Microsoft Monopoly and Silicon Valley have a large concentration of people, mostly men, with Aspergers. And it's because of this that the incidence of Aspergers is increasing:           "Autism - and its milder cousin Asperger's syndrome - is surging among the children of Silicon Valley."           Thing is, all those Asperger-types who come for the jobs are marrying one another and having kids with even worse cases of the disorder. Is this a bad thing? If it is, is there anything we can do about it? Why are the highest concentrations in high tech communities, and why now?           "The one thing that almost all researchers in the field agree on is that genetic predisposition plays a crucial role in laying the neurological foundations of autism in most cases."           As is now widely known, people with Aspergers make the best programmers and tend to lead in certain other fields, but we face serious challenges dealing with all you normal folks. In fact, a lot of us think normal people are nuts. But in a nice way.           "Autistic people have a hard time multitasking - particularly when one of the channels is face-to-face communication. Replacing the hubbub of the traditional office with a screen and an email address inserts a controllable interface between a programmer and the chaos of everyday life. Flattened workplace hierarchies are more comfortable for those who find it hard to read social cues. A WYSIWYG world, where respect and rewards are based strictly on merit, is an Asperger's dream."           Consequently, men and, perhaps more significantly, women with Aspergers are flocking to places like Microsoft, where they (gasp!) meet, marry and mate with one another. Good for them, maybe not so good for their kids:           "The chilling possibility is that what's happening now is the first proof that the genes responsible for bestowing certain special gifts on slightly autistic adults - the very abilities that have made them dreamers and architects of our technological future - are capable of bringing a plague down on the best minds of the next generation."           As noted above, having a few Asperger characteristics can bestow significant pro-survival aptitudes:           "For all we know, the first tools on earth might have been developed by a loner sitting at the back of the cave, chipping at thousands of rocks to find the one that made the sharpest spear, while the neurotypicals chattered away in the firelight. Perhaps certain arcane systems of logic, mathematics, music, and stories - particularly remote and fantastic ones - have been passed down from phenotype to phenotype, in parallel with the DNA that helped shape minds which would know exactly what to do with these strange and elegant creations."           But kids with full-blown cases of the disorder - who possess a high concentration of the characteristics - truly are disabled. Left to themselves, most would remain stuck in a world of dancing dust motes, searing bouts with sensory overload and total withdrawal from the larger world. Alone, even as adults, their survival would be problematic at best. Which is why it's not such a good idea for Asperger women and men to breed with one another.           Saying this is hard. Meeting women with Aspergers is a joy. Normal women seem like cardboard cutouts in comparison:           "As more women enter the IT workplace, guys who might never have had a prayer of finding a kindred spirit suddenly discover that she's hacking Perl scripts in the next cubicle."           But given the obvious disservice to the species of breeding with another Aspergers, the wiser course would be for Aspergers to breed with normal people:           According to Dan Geschwind, director of the neurogenetics lab at UCLA, "In the parents, who carry a few of the genes, they're a good thing. In the kids, who carry too many, it's very bad."           But then the question becomes, why would any normal person want to marry and mate with somebody who has Aspergers? Because that's where people like Bill Gates, Al Gore and, perhaps, Enya come from. - Wired. Civil rights for autistic students in Ireland? November 22, 2001 - In Ireland an official report issued by the Task Force on Autism will call for constitutional reform to provide adequate education for children with autism and Asperger's Disorder:           "The report highlights the sometimes shabby treatment of parents of children with special needs."           Ironically, the learning methods which work best for children with Asperger's also work best for normal children, but this is often overlooked because normal children are better able to cope with poor teaching practices. - Irish Times. Thomas Sowell - Dumb, dumber, genius? September 2, 2001 - A lot of kids who get labeled as retarded are actually brilliant.           "(T)here are a number of disabilities that are more common among people of high intellect than in the general population."           Several geniuses, for example, were slow to learn how to talk. One theory is that sometimes brain development is lop-sided, with "one region of the brain having above normal development and taking resources that leave some other region or regions with less than the usual resources for performing other functions."           How many geniuses are being diagnosed with some malady, such as Attention Deficit Disorder, and being drugged or in some other way having their intellect destroyed by our education system? For more information, see: The Einstein syndrome, by Thomas Sowell - Washington Times. Better methods lead to increased detection: June 29, 2001 - More children with autism are being diagnosed thanks to improvements in diagnostic practices. According to the most recent study in Britain, "17 babies out of every 10,000 are born with" autism, and "46 children in every 10,000" are born with some other disorder, such as Asperger syndrome. - Independent. A mecury preservative in vaccines has been linked to autism: May 27, 2001 - Thiomersal, a preservative containing mercury that is used as a preservative in many vaccines, may be responsible for many cases of autism. According to Boyd Haley, professor of Chemistry at the University of Kentucky. "is extremely toxic. The preliminary data is convincing and does indicate that vaccines are the most likely suspect for causing autism." - Sunday Times. Sean Nelson - Portrait of the Autist: May 3, 2001 - Henry Corra's and Grahame Weinbren's documentary demonstrates that, contrary to popular myth, autistics are not "uniformly aloof and unemotional." As Mark Ramoser notes, "autism causes a kind of sensory overload that carries with it a lack of sensitivity to the unspoken cues and codes that define conventional human interaction." The life of an autistic is a process of learning how to edit sensory input. "An autistic is, or can be, so close to 'normal,' that the proximity, not the distance, is what breaks your heart." - The Stranger. More evidence autism an abnormality in brain circuits: April 18, 2001 - Geraldine Dawson, director of the UW Autism Center, has found autistic children demonstrate problems with face recognition very early on, supporting work done by Judith Bluestone, founder of the H.A.N.D.L.E. Institute. - Seattle Times. Mental illness central to our humanity? April 1, 2001 - Schizophrenia and related mental illnesses are the direct result of those genetic changes which made us human. "We became human because some of us became mad. And some of us became mad because of small changes in the biochemistry of fat inside our skulls." The brain is about 60% fat, and the nerve connections are "rich in unsaturated fats. ... Small changes in fat biochemistry can greatly im-prove connectivity and flexibility, giving the creativity seen in the non-psychotic members of schizophrenic families, but tipping over into bizarre psychotic reactions when things go too far." - Sunday Times. Minette Marrin welcomes the Government's proposals for people with learning difficulties: March 31, 2001 - The British government has recently concluded a one-size-fits-all approach isn't working. "Recent extensive research commissioned by the Department of Health - Mr Hutton again - found that no one model of care was best for adults with learning disabilities. ... An adult with learning disabilities can now look for the good life in different directions, not just one." - Daily Telegraph. Learning to Read a Smile: March 12, 2001 - "People with Asperger's syndrome, a neurological disorder, are often brilliant but lack basic social skills. One treatment is to learn 'scripts' for interaction." - LA Times. For young people, there's also the H.A.N.D.L.E. Institute. Disabled swinger sues sex club: When they told her not to come back, she filed suit, February - Herald Sun. On the Trail of Autism, We're Getting Warmer, January - Washington Post. 2000 'Belligerent' Worker Is Covered by ADA, Says Federal Court: A worker who suffers from major depression that makes her belligerent and hypersensitive to criticism has a right under the Americans with Disabilities Act to a reasonable accommodation from her supervisors, December 2000 - Law.com. Autism & Asperger Syndrome, August 2000 - Newsweek. Is Tourette's Syndrome easily cured?, June 2000 - H.A.N.D.L.E. Institute. Does Al Gore "suffer" from Asperger syndrome?, March 2000 - This link will take you to an article at the MSNBC site....whoops! The link died. Basically, it offered a description of V.P. Gore's behaviors in school during his childhood and youth which closely match the typical profile of someone with Asperger syndrome. 1999 Seeing Yourself and Others Through New Eyes, September 1999 - An Introductory Seminar about the HANDLE approach Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: A new perspective, June 1999 - This link will take you to an article by Judith Bluestone at the H.A.N.D.L.E. website.