27 May 2007 at 19:52 (ADD/ADHD, Arthritis, Coping strategies, Hyperacussis, Hypermobility, Insects & Arachnids, Migraine, Proprioception, Tinnitus, TMJ (Temporomandibular Joint Disorder), Tourette's / tics)
Here’s one of those quandaries: Which is worse, accidenting one’s self frequently, or not responding well to anæsthetic?
It’s not that I react badly to local/topical anæsthetic, just that I don’t react to it much at all. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Which is not unusual because I’m often unsure of where I am in space.
Being chronically uncoördinated is technically known Read the rest of this entry »
22 May 2007 at 23:59 (Insects & Arachnids)
This week’s popular nectar source is the Husker’s Red beardtongue, being visited by carpenter bees and red admiral butterflies. PIX and scientific nomenclature here.
20 May 2007 at 22:51 (Coping strategies, Prosopagnosia, Work / Employment)
While at work last month, I thought for a second that I was having double vision.
Then I realised that the silhouettes were not identical, and that the background was not duplicated. So, no double vision. Our school custodian did appear to have a Doppelgänger. I was seeing two slightly overweight, middle-aged white men, both of whom had the same short haircut, chin-beard & mustache. I think they both wear glasses, too. They’re about the same height, and neither has a very distinctive stride or voice. And of course, they both wear the same school custodian uniform.
Oy vey; I’ve worked there for over a year and never realised that we had two male custodians! This is one of those crushing faceblind moments, Read the rest of this entry »
18 May 2007 at 2:08 (Abuse, Autism/Asperger's, College/University, Communication, Counseling, Eye contact, Humor/ Fun Stuff, Mathematics And Statistics, Non-verbal communication, Work / Employment)
The best definition of “poetry” I’ve ever encountered is, “Poetry is life condensed”. In a similar way, cartoons condense a slice of life into just a few panels.
All four of these reflect different aspects of dealing with the social world, from blocking off unwanted interaction to the absurdity of Read the rest of this entry »
15 May 2007 at 4:30 (Advocacy, Autism/Asperger's, Deaf / Hard of Hearing, Epidemiology)
A registry is a listing organizing information. People create registries of all sorts of things, from animal pedigrees to copyrights and domain names. We register for happy things, like our gift preferences with shops when getting married, or anticipating the birth or adoption of a child.
Medically, people register to receive organ donations. Companies may register recipients of prostheses in case there needs to be follow-up care. To prevent or manage epidemics, registries of affected individuals may be kept to monitor disease containment, treatments, and mortality.
People also register pets to help ensure their return. We also register things, generally for licensing and taxation purposes, as some of these can be dangerous items:
Automobiles
Motorcycles / Motorbikes
Aircraft
Boats
Guns
Televisions (dangerous item: yes or no?)
Many landmark events in our lives require moving datasets from one office to another. College students make a number of trips to their uni’s registrar to manage the appropriate transcript transfers. College students with disabilities may choose to register with the uni’s access office if they are to receive accommodations. (Naturally, doing this requires even more paperwork.) Part of getting one’s diploma means that you are now a Papierkrieg veteran (German: “paper war” i.e. bureaucracy).
Once graduated, people in some licensed occupations may be registered to help ensure that agencies can successfully maintain optimum staffing, and people will be able to secure jobs as needed.
To receive various legally sanctioned benefits, people also register major personal events with various local or national government agencies, to acquire the necessary Very Important Pieces of Paper — after all, nothing officially exists without documentation! All but the last two of these are events that people are generally glad to mark in their lives, aside from the bureaucratic hassles associated with such:
Birth (someone else’s)
Marriage / Civil Union
Divorce / Annullment
Travel passport
Work visa
Business partnership
Military service
Death (someone else’s)
Speaking of death, on the darker end of things, groups of humans have been registered for others to monitor who these people were, and where they were. The rationales for these kinds of registration were that the categories of people were a concern to the authorities because of who or what they were. They didn’t have to be proven dangerous, they just might be because they were different. Read the rest of this entry »
14 May 2007 at 1:42 (Insects & Arachnids)
Beautiful Butterflies, Bees, Bugs, etc
I’ll add new pictures now and then.
13 May 2007 at 15:31 (Advocacy, Attribution Errors, Autism/Asperger's, DSM, Inclusiveness, Insects & Arachnids, Paradigms, Rants)
“Great truths are sometimes so enveloping and exist in such plain view as to be invisible.” ~Edward O. Wilson
I went to study Entomology, and four years later found that I had discovered far more about my own species than I had about insects and other arthropods. What I learned about humans was enlightening, and often very disquieting.
Frequently, if you can’t see something, it’s because it seems normal and appropriate. Alienating and Othering so permeates the many facets of culture as to be invisible.
Take for example writings about people, either individuals or groups. These can be works of fiction, clinical accounts, self-help or parenting or therapy books, historical or sociological analyses, in fact, any sort of book whatsoever that refers to people with differences. (I was going to say “differences from the norm” but we also find this in books about women, and surely half the population has to be considered a “norm” from a sociological if not a statistical perspective.)
Frequently such accounts use the omniscient writing perspective, which makes it very easy to Read the rest of this entry »
12 May 2007 at 17:46 (Behaviour management, Special Education, Teaching/Tutoring)
Some of our students with behavioural issues are masters of agitating peers, being defiant, and avoiding work. They have a wide and well-practiced arsenal of tactics for weaseling out of responsibility: the Nomothetic Fallacy, denial, distraction, “forgetting”, dismissal of the importance of what they did, wanting a “fresh start”, trivializing events or redefining the significance of their actions, hollow apologies, feigning victimhood, or personal attacks.
Three different events (all with the same student) provide a number of examples. What’s notable here are several things. Read the rest of this entry »
3 May 2007 at 3:18 (ADD/ADHD, Advocacy, Teaching/Tutoring)
The first time I tried to advocate for myself, it did not go as I’d hoped. I won’t say that it was a complete failure, because the good news was that I still observed some important things. The bad news was that gaining that data made me feel like I had even more problems than before I’d started.
And so it goes. Or, went.
Here’s what happened. I’m nine, maybe just turned ten years old, and I’m in my fourth year of primary school. This would in a few months prove to be the beginning of a long scholastic slide downhill grade-wise, due to the fact that remembering to take home the homework, do the homework, and return the homework would prove to be a skill that was seemingly beyond my capabilities (for reasons no one could fathom; it was assumed that I was just being lazy or stupid, if not both). But that’s later, because at the time of our story, Read the rest of this entry »
2 May 2007 at 4:56 (Abuse, Advocacy, Auditory Processing Disorder, Inclusiveness, Insects & Arachnids, Work / Employment)
This post marks Blogging Against Disablism Day. (Yes, I’m late getting this post up. It got postponed after finishing audio-recording the last chapter of a textbook this morning before going to jobs #1 and #2, and after getting groceries, and after making dinner, and after unloading moving boxes, and after more-or-less-sitting and watching an episode of House with the family. I’m so lazy.)
(photo description: close-up shot of a fluffy, golden honeybee sitting calmly on a person’s hand)
The honeybees are in danger.
I don’t care; I hate bugs!
Too few people with disabilities complete their education or are fully employed.
That’s not my problem; I don’t know any of Those People.
Curiously, these two things are more related than you might imagine, at least on the social level. Read the rest of this entry »
2 May 2007 at 3:46 (Rants, Tinnitus, TMJ (Temporomandibular Joint Disorder), Tourette's / tics)
This is the fourth day in a row I’ve awoken without a cracking TMJ headache, thanks to getting a new bite-block to replace the other one lost. Sure my joints ache a little and my ears ring more often than not, but I’m not spending hours a day in borderline dizzying-nauseus pain, whee! Curiously, although more stress means more ticcing, less pain doesn’t necessarily mean less ticcing. Less pain does means sleeping better, which is a nice sort of positive feedback loop.
Rights advocate for the disabled & others. Scientist against quackery. An "Insect Psychologist" puzzling how we can improve the environment for insects & humans.
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