My blog is connected to Google Analytics, which lets me see all sorts of stats on who visits this blog. I like to look at “keywords” people use that lead to my blog. One term gave me a pause recently — On February 13, 2011 someone from Florida stumbled upon my blog after googling “explaining [...]
Explaining Autism in 5 Minutes
I’ve just recently finished a graduate level communications class for which we had to present two 5-minute presentations. My first talk was about differences between the U.S. culture and other cultures in “smiling rates” and the understanding of when smiling is appropriate. I’ve decided to make my second speech about autism. The big stumbling block [...]
Following the Web from "organic foods" to "hyperbilirubinemia"
What does it tell you about eating “conventionally grown” foods if your own health insurance plan includes in its newsletter a short article about eating “organic”? Harvard Pilgrim’s Winter 2009 mini-magazine includes a brief feature titled “Eating Organic on a Budget.” (see page 11) Now, if you read the “fine” print (the paragraph titled “A [...]
Antibiotics and increase in symptoms
My son got strep last week and is on antibiotics until the end of the week. Interestingly, I don’t know if it’s because of the antibiotics, lack of exercise and fresh air (it’s either snowing or too cold to go outside), boredom, or what, but we’ve seen some increase in symptoms recently — much more [...]
Connection between levels of fetal testosterone and autistic traits
I wanted to title this post “Would you want to know if your child might be autistic?” but after reading in the Guardian Prof. Simon Baron-Cohen’s response article titled “Our research was not about prenatal screening for autism,” I have decided to give my post a different, more neutral title, and closer to the title [...]
Engineers, Hips, and Autism
The headline “Men who don’t find curvy women attractive ‘could father children with autism‘” sounds just too weird to pass up. I found it through Google alert on a rather curious blog “What Sorts of People.” The entry does not comment on the title, just refers people to an article in the Daily Mail Reporter, [...]
Change.gov is closed, whitehouse.gov is up(dated)
I slightly panicked when I went to change.gov today and saw only a plain-looking box referring everyone to whitehouse.gov. I was afraid all the links I created to change.gov in my previous posts were broken. (“Citizen’s Briefing Book at change.gov” from January 13, 2009, and “Citizen’s Briefing Book update” from January 20, 2009) But I [...]
NTs or the Neurotypical
In her comment to my post “Why are white lies considered ‘politeness’?â€, Debra mentions “the NT world.†Responding to her comment, I wrote in the post scriptum “I doubt that anyone visiting my site would not know what NT, mentioned by Debra, means — but just in case — NT is short for ‘neurotypical’ or, [...]
Biomedical Treatments for Autism
Saturday, November 1, and Sunday, November 2, 2008 there will be a conference in Weston, Massachusetts titled “Successful Inclusion in School & Community†organized by Autism Conferences of America. It looks interesting and I would like to see “Learning Social Skills Through Play: Life’s Most Important Skill Made Fun!†by Rick Clemens, MA, and would [...]
No Autistics Allowed? (the story of Alex Barton)
Everyone has already heard this unbelievable story – a teacher in a kindergarten classroom “led†her pupils “to vote […] out of class†a five-year-old being evaluated for Asperger Syndrome. The first coverage of this story (or one of the first) appeared on TCPalm.com (May 23, 2008 “St. Lucie teacher has students vote on whether [...]