Just Another Blog |
||
Contact Info Email Me MySpace: Profile & Pics AIM, YIM, MSN: icanblog ICQ: 160644326 Links Hyena Vince American in Taiwan Drudge Fark Digg Popular Past Posts Omni Financial Omni Financial Sucks American Income Life September 11th Absinthe Sapisvr.exe |
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
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. 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. Sunday, March 26, 2006
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
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. Wednesday, March 08, 2006
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! |
Some parts true. Many made-up.
Songs don't stay posted long.
All photos are manipulated.
Denver Archives February 2002 March 2002 April 2002 May 2002 June 2002 July 2002 August 2002 September 2002 October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 February 2004 March 2004 April 2004 May 2004 June 2004 July 2004 August 2004 September 2004 October 2004 November 2004 December 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 February 2007 March 2007 Home |