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Evil Psychologists

Last year the Psychologist and Baptist minister George Rekers who is famous for anti-homosexuality pseudo-science was discovered to be hiring gay escorts from Rentboy.com. Lots of LULZ there.

But the story didn’t end there. It turns out that George Rekers did some research on a child who ended up committing suicide as an adult, and […]

Autism Awareness and the Free Software Community

It’s Autism Awareness Month

April is Autism Awareness month, there are lots of articles about Autism, most of them are at best misleading if not wrong.

The most common error seems to be describing non-verbal Autistic children and then claiming that Autistic people comprise about 1% of the population. The number of non-verbal Autistic children […]

Is Asperger Syndrome a Good Thing?

A meme that keeps going around is that Asperger Syndrome (AS) is somehow universally good. The DSM doesn’t list things that are beneficial, so any diagnostic criteria has to be for something that has some serious down-sides – even if there are positive aspects to it. Of course on the Internet the debate won’t just […]

Autism, Food, etc

James Purser wrote “Stop Using Autism to Push Your Own Brand of Lunacy” about the organisations that use Autism for their own political agenda [1]. He references the ongoing vaccine issue (which didn’t even stop when Andrew Wakefield was proven to have engaged in fraudulent research) and a campaign of PETA.

PETA’s Claims

PETA claims […]

Conferences and People on the Autism Spectrum

There have been some recent discussions about issues related to the treatment of women at Free Software conferences, I’ve written posts about Aspie Social Skills and Free Software [1] and Empathy, Autism, and Geeks [2] about this. But of course discussion continued on how Aspies supposedly cause problems that no-one seems to be noticing.

Lisa […]

Empathy, Autism, and Geeks

LWN has a recent article titled “The dark side of open source conferences” which concerns sexual assault at conferences [1].

There are a significant number of comments with attempts to derail the discussion in ways that can really only be interpreted as attacks on Autistic people. The claims seem to be that the problem is […]

Aspie Social Skills and the Free Software Community

LWN has an article by Valerie Aurora titled “The dark side of open source conferences” [1] which is about sexual harassment and sexual assault at Free Software conferences. Apparently some conferences create such a bad environment that some people won’t attend, it’s a well researched article that everyone in the community should read.

The Autism […]

Communication Shutdown and Autism

The AEIOU Foundation

The AEIOU Foundation [1] is a support and advocacy organisation for people on the Autism Spectrum, note that they clearly say Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) on their About page, some of what they write would be less wrong if it was claimed to apply to only non-verbal Autistics or people claimed to […]

Noise Canceling Headphones and People Talking

The Problem

I was asked for advice on buying headphones to protect students who have medical conditions that make them sensitive to noise, such headphones would have to allow them to hear human voices.

Due to the significant differences in hearing issues (including physical damage and sensory issues) it seems unlikely that getting identical headphones […]

Autism vs Asperger Syndrome

Diagnostic Changes for Autism Spectrum Disorders

Currently Asperger Syndrome (AS) is one of a group of conditions that are grouped into the category Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD).

The American Psychiatric Association plans to merge “Asperger’s Disorder” into “Autism Spectrum Disorder” [1] in version 5 of their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). Apparently a primary reason […]