Autism & Computers

Console games have a place but if you want to lower your childs stress level you may want to turn to a PC. Here you can get more appropriate and much more educational games. Face it, console games are for entertainment.

The computer is a tool not a toy. If your child has any diagnosis in the autism spectrum you will want them to learn to type to communicate. No console has a keyboard they can learn to express themselves with. The earlier they start the better they will be at it. Schools would never use a console as a teaching item.

Many childrens shows have websites and your child will find enjoyment from visiting them with your supervision. My child has Aspergers and loves puzzles. We find many easily printed colouring pages and mazes for off line enjoyment. If the level of frustration gets too high we can switch to something else fairly easy.

Also look for games that offer more open range for them to explore and do small tasks. Not FPS or RPG just they won’t understand them. Things with a fixed story or just idle combat won’t help them or you.

As an aside you should see some of the rollercoasters my kid has designed in Tycoon. Amazing for a 5 year old!

False Dichotomy

Seems I’ve been accused of a fallacy with respect to my view on politics. I must admit that topic is not my forte but the comment I made could be interpreted as a fallacy. I hope to shed some light on another logical fallacy so we can all try to avoid it.

A false dichotomy is when someone tries to reduce an argument of many possibilities down to only two.  This fallacy can also be used to oversimplify a problem of variation to diametrically opposed opposites like black and white.

In my comments I’ve noted there are really only two political parties in the US. The Democrats and the Republican. This gives you only two choices instead of the reality where there are plenty of other parties. In this case they are the two strongest competitors but it is a fallacy to state they are the only choices.

This fallacy is not restricted to just politics so be on the look out. Most famously a false dichotomy is used by creationist in the argument of intelligent design versus Evolution. They say evolution is not possible so life must have been designed. Jumping to that conclusion creates a false dichotomy. There are many other fallacies creationists use as well so there will be more for me to write about.

Chinese Whispers

“But the aim of chinese whispers is to keep the message as close to the original as possible. It’s normally pillocks who deliberately ruin it that creates the distortion.” - meatman

Once upon a time, thousands of years ago there were no printing presses and the majority of the world was completely illiterate. For fun they would tell stories around a fire and if the story was good it would be handed down the generations.

You’ve all played this game at one time. It is called Chinese whispers or telephone. This is where we have a group of people and one has a secret message. Each successive participant secretly whispers to the next a phrase or sentence whispered to them by the preceding participant. Take a passage from the bible and see how distorted the message is after passing thru just 20 people. Now do this through 10 generations for fathers and sons. At the end have a monk transcribe the story in a dark room then translate the text through no less then 3 languages, (Hebrew, Latin, Greek and English).  Pass that book down another 2000 years with revisions and translations and you will find why it is very difficult for a rational person to believe this is doctrine from the designer.

Archaeologists, scientists and religious studies have looked for the subject of this text and have been unable to discover much about the original authors. They have even less evidence about the main characters. So what does this make this book?

The answer, Fiction. That’s right  it’s all completely made up. Just like any story by the Brothers Grimm. Rumpelstiltskin, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Cinderella, and Hansel and Gretel are just as real as the Epistle John, Judas, Je$u$ and g*d.

What’s that you say? You still think it must be true because the book calls itself true? Or does it? We’ve just interpreted it to be true for several reasons. First because our parents taught us it was true. The same way they told us of Santa Claus and The Tooth Fairy.

Secondly, because it is an ancient text. Just because something is ancient doesn’t make it correct. Take witch burning, accupuncture and leeching as examples. Not to mention the inaccuracies of Chinese whispers.

Next, we tend to want to believe it for its moral value. Stories are good at teaching lessons of morality. I agree there are many parts of the text that can be use to teach morals. I also think there are many examples we should NOT use and we should show caution on our interpretation.

Lastly, we tend to want to believe the bible because we want answers. Answers to the deeper questions of life. There are many unknowns and because we are mortal we wish to know our lives have meaning. We want comfort in losing loved ones and lie to ourselves to make it better. Having a Utopia is a great way to recover from a loss.

Now before you call into question my morals and ethics let me assure you they are just fine. In fact I could point out that an argument of that would have no authority. Also note that if you believe the whispers then judgement is reserved for a higher power.

So go ahead. Next time you have a large group of people play Chinese whispers. Let it remind you to think of the possibilities for errors in these messages. Most of all let it open your mind to possibilities.

Naturopath. Good, Bad, Ugly

Ok well I was good at biting my tongue. Mostly because the presenter was a fast talker and there wasn’t enough time for me to totally trash them. Here’s the run down.

Good

- Talk to a MEDICAL DOCTOR before modifying your diet or exercise.

- Eat more Fruits and Vegetables.

- Eat less junk food.

- Engage in regular physical exercise.

Bad

- ElectroAcupunture ( you can’t be serious! acupuncture doesn’t work why would sending a current into them make it better?)

- Infrared Sauna (let me get this straight you wanna bomb me with a year of sunlight in an hour?)

- Recommend overdose on multivitamin and Omega 3 that could be dangerous.

- Pollution causes oxidative stress (convenient so they can stay employed and you can come back)

- Arguments from outdated resources, invalid authorities, and quote mining.

Ugly

- Detox and decreasing neurotoxins. (specifically mention to removing Mercury that made me cringe)

- Triple distilled (read watered down) natural sources.

- Natural way to treat the CAUSE of illness yet most of the causes are unknown or genetic.

- References were ALL naturopaths. (Even ones from Harvard)

- Signs/Symptoms of low Omega 3 so generic every person on planet will have them daily.

- Completely messed up the theory of free-radicals

- Holistic approach with wait & see attitude (read you’ll heal over time anyway and we’ll take the credit)

Damn now I wish I had blasted them.

This should be good

My work has hired a naturopath to speak about brain food. I’m not sure on where to start for this. Since it’s a work function I should show some respect but my skeptical and logical mind can’t let these people make money on selling placebo pills.

I’m sure they are generally nice people and maybe even well educated but some have a bad rap. I couldn’t just sit by while they try to sell expensive snake oil to unsuspecting people that might need real cures.

The second I hear they can cure cancer and aids I’ll be jumping up screaming “LIAR!”. Perhaps I’m wrong and they will just attempt to ‘balance my immune system’. Like any water could make a difference to a complex system of hormones, antibodies and chemicals my body has evolved to regulate.

Maybe I’m wrong and they’ll try to detoxify my intestines by selling chemicals to rubberize the lining I grew the last 2 weeks. Sure it would clean out the gunky build up but it would also kill the beneficial bacteria I use to make vitamin D.

Perhaps they will go legit, saying eat walnuts, blueberries and drink orange juice. Then what are they going to do with the rest of the time?

In all likelihood I’ll be either biting my tongue or asked to leave. So why am I going? Oh ya they can cure autism and aspergers (Not). This is going to be fun.

Evidence against

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, in this blog I will be providing evidence against the ignorant premise that vaccines cause autism. As always please feel free to leave a comment or question.

As mentioned previously Dr Asperger himself described autism and Asperger syndrome as predominantly genetic in nature. This was in 1940 after years of study within families with the disorder.

Since then it has been speculated that a mercury additive ‘could’ be suspect in a cause. I propose that Thiomersal is completely innocent in this accusation and should be exhonourated of these ludicrous charges.

Firstly please allow me to point out that this preservative has been removed from use in vaccinations with no effect on the diagnosis rate. What does that mean? Well now that children are no longer exposed to this trace amount they are still being diagnosed with autism.

Secondly the rate of autism cases is similar among children that have not been vaccinated. So this means skipping the needle does not decrease the number of cases. It only exposes innocent children to dangerous disease we should have eradicated from the planet if not for the fear-mongers.

Lastly I’d like to point out the percentage chance of diagnosis is similar to down syndrome. In fact like that genetic disorder once it has been found in a family the chances of further discover is increased. Siblings and children of someone with autism are more likely to have these traits and pass them along.

This is not a genetic certainty as 2 people with autism have a much better chance of a neurotypical child then having the diagnosis handed down the family tree. But they also have a greater chance of the autism showing up then 2 ’so called normal’ parents.

It should also be pointed out that once educated about the removal of this chemical from the vaccine the accusers have moved the goal post to some other chemical. When will we stop listening to these nay sayers and look at the evidence?

Straw man argument

I’ve mentioned this in other blog comment and in other forums so it might be time to flesh this out further.

A straw man argument is when you create a misrepresentation of your opponents position that is easy to tear down or argue against rather then addressing the position actually opposed to your point of view. You build up this scarecrow as an example or analogy since it is undefended then you can then attack that issue easily.

You may not even be aware you did this if the argument is complex and you wish to break it into examples and/or address the components.

Describing a position that superficially resembles the opposing view so it can be refuted. Deliberately overstating the opposing position can be an effective straw man. It is somewhat rhetorical and can convince people with little or no evidence.

An example of this would be in an argument about evolution. A straw man could be created that no one has ever seen speciation or there are gaps in the tree. The argument can now be torn down but not address the main issue.

So next time you get someone to argue with you. Look out for a straw man.

Maybe I’m not Neurotypical

In a new study that adds credit to the genetic contributions to autism, Scientist have found that parents of children with autism process faces differently.  Apparently the parents draw more nonverbal clues from the mouth then from they eyes to determine emotion.

http://uncnews.unc.edu/news/health-and-medicine/unc-caltech-research-finds-further-evidence-for-genetic-contribution-to-autism.html

I would have liked to see a larger sample size in the study as 42 isn’t a very large number to go on. Now I’m going to have to watch myself to see where I’m getting my nonverbal clues from. 

I do like the reference that the ‘genetic link was noted in the 1940s in the earliest descriptions of autism’.

Autism isn’t stupid.

Some Parents and researchers are:

http://my.earthlink.net/article/nat?guid=20080708/4872e640_3421_13345200807081427591896

OMG I can’ belive this! They want to POISON 60 poor children. Seven years ago they removed Mercury from vaccinations and some paranoid delusional undereducated parents haven’t figured out it made NO difference to the autism rate. Even worse they convinced the govenment to put some money into dangerous research.

The Chelation therapy proposed basically strips the metals out of their little bodies including the iron in thier blood. I don’t know about you but a low white blood cell count doesn’t sound healthy to me. Besides we already know by studies in adults this doesn’t work unless the metals are very high. Oh and did I forget to mention one child is already dead as a direct link to this therapy?

Thiomersal (technical name for the mercury used in vaccines) has a half life of a couple weeks so there won’t be any traces of it in the bloodstream. So again why are we placating these crackpots while they gamble with innocent lives? Once it was publicly known that the Mercury was removed they started blaming some other additive. This moving goal post will always put vaccines on the diffensive.

Most scientists call this dangerous, unethical, voodoo, anecdotal and wasteful of time and money. So why are the politicians letting these ignorant parents torture thier children? So they can get a little ‘x’ on a ballot.

Chemotherapy is also a type of poison that can make anyone sick but we actually know it works in cancer treatment. IF you had a high level of mercury poisoning that didn’t kill you and you had Chelation then the BEST outcome would be the removal of the metal. The therapy CANNOT repair the damaged neurons so it is NOT possible to CURE autism this way.

So in conclusion. Vaccines are good. Autism isn’t stupid. Ignorance Kills. Stop Jenny McCarthy.

Marvels of technology

So here I am typing on a mobile handheld more powerful then my first computer 20 years ago and thinking. “We sure do take advantage of our technology and how many actually stop to understand how it works?” Again I’ll be generalizing but if you need more leave a comment for further topics.

Really as I press a key it connects a switch that sends off an electrical signal to tiny piece of sand. Ok its a very sophisticated silicon chip but in essence that alone is prolly deeper then some have gone. I know my mother would never get that far.

The processor then does some magic in storing the keystroke in a buffer and echos the typed character out to the screen. Did I forget to mention the character isn’t actually stored as we see it? The switch is an electric signal of on and off the computer sees as zeros and ones. This set of numbers represents the character from the ascii table my computers happens to have set as its code page. This gets really deep if you dig into unicode but in not going there today.

Instead I was thinking of texting on mobiles and the message magically appears on a friends mobile. This process is just as forgotten as the unicode table is for my mother.

So what happens when I hit send? Well really the whole thing started off when you turned your phone on. The first thing the radio does is send a signal out on all the bands it knows of. The phone announces “Here I am!” And hopefully a cell tower picks it up and passes the message to a base station.

The station then says “I hears you and these are all the cell towers around you. Send me your info”
The cell sends its identification and this is verified thru the network with the carrier that you get the bill from.

Now let’s actually send a sentence of data. If its short it will actually fit in one data packet. The packet is an envelop with the address of the destination and source. It has error checking added in and away it goes.

Now for longer stuff like this post it will be broken up into many many packets and each one will be enumerated (given a number). They race through the network and do not have to follow the same path. One packer goes from cell tower 1 to base station 1 to switch 1 to data line 1 to router 1 to any number of routers to a destination. There are almost endless paths and we could add in microwave towers, optical switches, satellites and all kinds of crazy stuff.

Since we are transmitting through the air a lot can happen. We can bounce signal’s off walls, off clouds, cars, trains, airplanes and even dust. Packets get corrupted on the way and the computers need to know how to reassemble the information. That’s where the enumeration and error checking comes in. It is best I’d the error can be corrected and you’d be surprised at some of the routines that can be used to do this. Usually the destination will ask to retransmit at least one packet and that one piece gets sent

Other radio signals also get in the way. We actually share the same bandwidth with tens of thousands of people every second. The carrier will set up several channels in the band and they are time division up to send and receive at certain intervals. At any time you could be switching channels slowing down or speeding up your signal to be synchronized in the air.

Now since we are mobile add in the complexity of moving between cell towers and adding different paths. Doppler effects and general relativity adjustments for satellite communications it is a wonder anything gets communicated at all.