This book, which is supposedly about the ideal of selfless service, can be summed up as, "Hi, my name is Ram Dass and I'm a narcissist."

Compassion in Action: Setting Out on the Path of Service

Crossposted to http://rachelmanija.dreamwidth.org/1041066.html. Comment here or there.

A clear, well-written, informative, easy-reading book for the layperson on the history and current conceptions of autism, and what that means for people with autism. Grinker has an autistic daughter, and includes his own experiences with her to illuminate larger issues. He primarily writes about the US, but has two chapters with snapshots of the situation in South Korea and India.

I particularly liked the lengthy section in which he makes his case that autism is not increasing, but seems to be because we are more aware of it. I don't have time to lay out his detailed explanations of how he came to each of his conclusions, but the reasons for the perceived increase are as follows:

- It is only comparatively recently that autism, like many other mental and developmental disorders, has become understood as a unique phenomena rather than lumped in with every other disorder else as "mad" or "simple" or some such. That is, autism has always existed, but was not called "autism."

- Parents and researchers agitated for more awareness of autism. Once people became aware, they started noticing it more: laypeople recognized kids with autism, and doctors became able to diagnose it. Previously, the same kids would have been labeled mentally retarded or schizophrenic or something other than autistic.

- Due to improved services for autistic kids, pressure arose to diagnose kids with autism rather than with some other diagnosis which entitled them to less or inferior services. Hence, kids who previously would have been labeled mentally retarded are now labeled autistic. (Autism is also less stigmatized than mental retardation.) For the same reason, kids who have less severe problems, who previously would not have been diagnosed at all but would have struggled and been called weird, stupid, or lazy, now tend to get an autism diagnosis so they can get help.

- A misprint in an early edition of the diagnostic manual DSM-IV - "or" instead of "and" - led to many kids qualifying for an autism diagnosis who otherwise wouldn't have gotten it. (Basically, it should have been "must have this symptom AND this symptom," but it was printed as "must have this symptom OR this symptom."

Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism

Crossposted to http://rachelmanija.dreamwidth.org/1040761.html. Comment here or there.

• Fri, 18:56: Romney pretty much blows up the entire rationale for over 30 years of Republican economics: http://t.co/boMBFbFI http://t.co/riUbLBUy
• Fri, 20:44: Things made. Hummus. Brownies currently baking. Broke old faithful coffee grinder, tho. Haz a sad. :-(
• Fri, 21:32: A PG Wodehouse random quote generator: http://t.co/URLqsaqZ
• Fri, 22:56: Signal Boost: Project Save Annabelle http://t.co/bIhym257
• Sat, 06:45: Thunderstorm morning. #imawakenowthankyou
• Sat, 08:48: More storms rolling in. Thunder in the distance. Time for a 2nd cup of coffee.

I lost an earring last night -- it's got a red stone, with nice metal loops going around the edges and a little ball dangling underneath. My mom gave it to me. If you find it can you please put it in lost and found, or email me at charlieanders2@gmail? Thank you!!!

Some memories of last night's opening ceremonies, on the WisCon blog:

http://wisconnews.blogspot.com/2012/05/scenes-from-opening-ceremony.html

Get your news about programming changes, the opening ceremonies, the Tiptree bake sale and auction and more in the second issue of WisCon's at-con newsletter, A Momentary Taste of Wiscon #2, now available as an online download or as a print edition distributed in the 2d floor lobby of the Concourse Hotel.

I've had some scary moments with my two pups, and I'm lucky to have insurance for them. Even so, the bills mount so quickly. But you'll pay anything, because you just want them to be okay again.

Originally posted by harnessphoto at Signal Boost: Project Save Annabelle

The spinning wheel was a success at the Gathering. Many spinners, they go the Wiscon.

So far, I have had an appletini, a nuts and berries (Frangelico and Chambord and cream), a pom-nom (vodka and pomegranate and cranberry), and a sidecar (thank you, Mary Robinette Kowal). And I was able to use the drop spindle during opening ceremonies, so I must be spacing them reasonably well.

I'm now sipping a mimosa from the LJ party. It threatens to be a rather alcoholic weekend.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

You need a 2 liter jug, a pyrex jug, a lemon squeezer, 2 big or 3 small lemons, 2 limes, 1 orange, a tray of ice, 2 oz of sugar, and lots of cold water. Takes 5-10 minutes.

Put the sugar in the pyrex jug. Boil the kettle. When the kettle boils, cover the sugar with boiling water, stir to dissolve. You don't need to make syrup or anything, but you want the sugar dissolved.

Meanwhile, put the tray of ice into the 2 liter jug. Squeeze the lemons, limes and orange in, getting out all the juice and pulp you can and avoiding adding the pips. Pour the dissolved sugar and water in. Top up with cold water. Shake or stir. Drink, with ice. It'll be cold enough. I used to refrigerate it for a while first, but then I had to make some in a hurry and it was just fine.

This is very refreshing and about as isotonic as you can get. I sometimes add mint or basil to the sugar in the boiling water when I have that growing outside. If it's too sweet, use less sugar next time. I figure this has about a teaspoon of sugar per glass.

The other thing you can do, right now while limes are nine for a dollar, is just squeeze half a lime into your glass of water and ice. Kids won't drink this, but it's good.

So iTunes just cued up Mystic Lipstick (Celtic Tenors cover), a folk song written in 1989 by Jimmy McCarthy. (McCarthy wrote a number of Christy Moore's folk hits.) And it seems strangely appropriate, because I've just finished watching an episode from the fourth series of Waking the Dead that featured Irish nationalism and British politics, and I have been having thinky thoughts about Romanticism rolling around in my head since I got back from Greece.

Greece has been terribly romanticised in its turn, of course. Leaving aside its mythological status as the Cradle of European Civilisation (a construct of the European Renaissance), the 18th century saw it constructed as a Romantic destination on the Grand Tour (et in Arcadia ego), a construct which bore little relationship to reality. The 19th century and the Greek war of independence saw the construction of a (self-built, internally contradictory) national mythology, and its growth as an Interesting Place for international Classically-interested archaeologists... well, let's just say that from a certain point of view the likes of Schliemann on the mainland and Evans in Crete contributed to the erection of Whole New Interesting Mythologies.

And now the stories northern Europe tells about Greece have to do with laziness and profligacy, and you know what? No more true than ROMANCE. Fuck off, ECB in Frankfurt. Look at some context.

Ireland did not, of course, see itself lionised and mythologised during the European Renaissance - quite the opposite, since the 16th century saw it viewed as a land of barbarians ripe for colonisation and the 17th century witnessed the repurposing of martyr and atrocity stories from the Thirty Years War to give voice to the anxieties and stife arising from the Rebellion of 1642 and the English Civil War - but the 18th century saw the beginnings of an interest in Irish antiquarianism and the start of a "national" impetus towards myth-making and - as the 19th century began - lionising the Catholic Emancipation movement in messianic and nationalistic terms. Nationalism and tenants' rights are the two major themes of Ireland's politics in the 19th century, and though the lack of a Home Rule victory until the 20th century prevented the canonisation of an officially-sanctioned nationalist mythology until much later, the pantheon contains numerous unofficial and contradictory saints. Complicating matters for Ireland is that its Protestant and Anglo heritage is much less easy to disavow than the Turkish heritage of Greece. If it is to be disavowed, it must be done in subtle terms, acknowledging Exceptional Anglo-Irishmen, casting the others as West Brits, betrayers of nationalism and the Historical Imperative of Irish Nationhood.

Then you have the Romantic Irish movement at the end of the 19th century, existing alongside Gaelic revivalism and the growing European antiquarian interest not only in "Celtic" cultures, but in magic and mysticism. No overview of Irish Romanticism is complete without an understanding of how the likes of Yeats and the rest of the Celtic Twilight literati partook of an international intellectual/literary atmosphere that included members of the Theosophical Society and the Order of the Golden Dawn. (And if anyone can point me to a solid and readable academic study that discusses this, I'd be grateful - I used to have a handful of references, but that was when I was still in school.) Lady Gregory was connected with figures from this milieu, and Yeats himself was a member of the Order of the Golden Dawn. A misty mysticism pervades much of Yeats' writing. He positioned himself as a "national poet" of the new Ireland, even after independence, and as many of the other literary figures who entered the national pantheon (Pearse, for example) not only died in the Rising or in the War of Independence/Civil War years, but had a vested interest in portraying their relationship to Irish Nationhood in mystical, quasi-religious, at times messianic terms (it is easier to get people to die if you position dying as a salvific act), misty mysticism pervades Irish literature of the late 19th and early 20th century.

It is an obscurantist haze layered over a complicated reality. What makes it worse is that misty mysticism - or at least its salvific/messianic nationalist offshoots - remain common currency in certain puddles of political rhetoric, and enjoyed a much wider currency than they do now within my own lifetime. (See Northern Ireland, pre-Peace Process.)

And both the misty mysticism and the complicated historical reality inform present national politics. But because our national myths (our dialectics, even!) rely all too much on the Romantic Mirage (and its obverse, the Lazy Irish Savage: hello, ECB! Our financial woes are actually mostly your fault, since you helped provide the credit - and then mandated the socialisation of debt - that got us to this point!), it is nearly impossible to even construct an argument about history today without engaging the Mirage. (The Mirage is politically useful, in that it elides discussion of class and the historical benefits conferred thereby: many of the present prominent political figures of the Republic have several generations of political connections, and those that do not generally come from publican or professional backgrounds.)

It's impossible to ignore it, you know. It just sits there, even if you never mention it, pulling the conversation askew with all the gravity of a soul-sucking black hole.

I say this, because I am contemplating opening Kevin Hearne's Tricked, which based on previous track record, will be an entertaining pseudo-Celtic mixed mythological romp set somewhere in the continental United States. While at the same time I am still reading Ian McDonald's King of Morning, Queen of Day - which at least in its first part, juxtaposes the weird and Romantic with the utterly mundane and is the better book for it. The more painful: but McDonald understands that the layers of the rotten onion (the Matryoska dolls of Irish mythology, each one stranger than the next) have a kind of recursive complexity impossible to reduce to linear clarity. The only possible shape is the spiral. Not the line, not the circle, but a twisted helix bending around an indefinable centre.

My analogy runs away from me. Still.

*rambles along, ramblingly*

This entry was originally posted at http://hawkwing-lb.dreamwidth.org/479383.html. There are comments there. Comment where you like.