Two Day. Even sparser at gym. Only one weight bouncer – the polite one! – and one educationalist – the demure one! – so good environment. Podcast was a combination of the Guardian Science episode, dealing with Autism Spectrum, and a melange of NPR bits.
The Autism podcast was a mixed bag. It was an interview of some journalist who had written a book about autism. Normally this is a bad thing since journalists are not good sources of accurate information. Since the tenor was primarily social rather than technical, and what technical there was cast all sorts of disillusion on the medicalist community for lack of ethics, the ‘cast wasn’t all bad. I have to admit that the detail spent on considering Autism as natural rather than evil was a mixed bag. On the one hand it means that parents don’t have to hide their autistic children or pack them off to Bedlam, although I have my doubts that many parents will be forthright about such and them geeks and nerds. Somehow I see bogs as trying to hide the shame of deficient children, which is what is wrong with society and the whole autism situation. The cure is preventing them from reproducing, I fear.
There is also some hope that by opening up the situation some assistance for adult Autistics may arise but given the tenor of contemporary politics, especially among Repulsians, I rather more expect death camps. It is all too easy to picture any of the current Repulsian candidates for POTUS nomination announcing that they will solve the Autism problem if elected much as Adolph Hitler solved the Jewish problem.
On a milder level, do you see the Congress doing anything positive for people? I don’t. They seem to want to roll things back to before Magna Carta, at least. And probably re-institute slavery. And I find it hard to consider non-cooperation and thereby non-governance as a virtue.
On a lighter side, I did note that the quality of NPR reportage was deteriorate strongly lately. I was particularly taken by one interview, dealing with infrastructure, where the journalist was obviously not listening nor hearing what the interviewee said. Her questions were so orthogonal it whole thing sounded rather like Faux News.
Simple Country Physicist 