Ignorance Loves Company

American citizens want immigration reform in exactly the opposite way that American politicians do. The politicians are being dishonest about their motives, about the dangers, about the benefits, and about what they are really hearing from their constituents.

I'm a couple of blocks outside of Representative Tancredo's district, but you can bet your sweet bippy that if he runs for senate he will have my vote. The NRA was successful a couple of elections back when it made gun control the singular deciding issue for political races. Their success in that election and their demonstrated post-election successes as they relate to gun rights shows how effective such a strategy can be. I hope that Numbers USA or one of the similar lobbying groups will take a lesson from the NRA's book and will help make the '06 and '08 elections about immigration. It's what the voters want.

Jonathan 3/29/2006 09:11:00 AM

 
AQ Test

There's a tendency - the name of which always escapes me - for medical students to begin to believe that they have some rare disease or syndrome as they study about all of the many and varied strange diseases that they may one day have to treat. Long lists of varied and vague symptoms lead some to become convinced that they have some bizarre ailment that statistically has virtually 0% chance of being true. I've always figured that my self-perceived autistic tendencies were the result of that same tendency.

As an undergraduate I studied psychology with an emphasis on childhood developmental disabilities. The two areas that I delved most deeply into were type I diabetes and autism. Autism is a fascinating impairment that is hard to define and diagnose, difficult to treat, and bizzare to experience. It is generally characterized by an inability to think outside of one's self. The range of physical and emotional development for austistics can be from a level requiring complete dependency on others to very high functioning, nearly normal seeming adults.

Wired today has an AQ Test that they introduce by reporting that, "Psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen and his colleagues at Cambridge's Autism Research Centre have created the Autism-Spectrum Quotient, or AQ, as a measure of the extent of autistic traits in adults. In the first major trial using the test, the average score in the control group was 16.4. Eighty percent of those diagnosed with autism or a related disorder scored 32 or higher."

The test will take you about 5 or 10 minutes. Leave your score below. The test to me seems that it may also be a measure of introversion. Though one might argue that autism is not much different than introversion run amok. In any case, I scored a 35. I am reminded that, "The test is not a means for making a diagnosis, however, and many who score above 32 and even meet the diagnostic criteria for mild autism or Asperger's report no difficulty functioning in their everyday lives."

Not sure I would say no difficulty, but still, I get by.

Jonathan 3/29/2006 08:11:00 AM

 
The Strokes

Here's a picture from last Sunday's show at the Fillmore.



It was a good show.

Jonathan 3/26/2006 02:28:00 AM

 
Memories

Associate_Memory = Things_I_Jumped_Off_Of



Jonathan 3/22/2006 12:15:00 AM

 
What Is Important?

I believe that is the greatest question.

Leave your pithy replies below.

Jonathan 3/22/2006 12:09:00 AM

 
Brunch 03/05/06



Jonathan 3/21/2006 11:51:00 PM

 
Briefly

Someone told me today at work that I wasn't allowed further vacations because I returned dull and droll (uhh, not an exact quote). I agreed that I might have left soemthing behind in Hawaii.

On top of that, there's gmail. Gmail is Google's awesome, free email solution. Among many, many other tricks, Gmail allows instant messaging through a browser login through a xxx.gooogle.com domain login. My point here is that no corporate firewall is blocking google.com, probably not even at Yahoo! My further points here are that I know two of you with gmail accounts and that you account for the vast majority of my readership, and now, we chat like Oprah throughout the day just 'cause we can, and that leaves me no reason to blog other than my ongoing, personal challenge of writing ever longer, (arguably) gramatically-correct sentences.

Jonathan 3/21/2006 11:29:00 PM

 
Things I Did Today

Sailed on a catamaran. Swam in the ocean. Saw spinner dolphins dance in the air. Saw whales dance in the distance. Heard whales singing. Saw the western-most town in the US. Saw the sets for bunches of movies. Saw one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. Swam in a jungle mountain stream. Jumped off a waterfall. Swung and jumped off a rope swing. Ate good sushi.

Beautiful. Amazing. What a day!

Jonathan 3/08/2006 01:13:00 AM