sometimes i wish i was autistic

[cornfed]

I saw this link posted on another forum. Thought you might enjoy. It's much akin to the autistic guy somebody posted on here a few weeks ago, except that this guy's city is imaginary. Pretty cool.

http://www.channel4.com/fourdocs/film/film-detail.jsp?id=1313#

[balou]

Wow! They are amazing! I just blew an hour watching other films on that site too.

[rickself]

Autism is certainly a unique thing. One of our grandsons, now 3, is mildly autistic. Doctors say he will be pretty much normal as he gets older. I understand what you're saying, cornfed, though I'd never wish autism on anyone. Our daughter has to go through a lot raising Christopher, and asks my wife sometimes, "Why me, mom?" We just tell her, it's because you can cope and give him the love and understanding he needs, other moms would not be able to do that." She smiles cuz she knows we're right.
Good videos, too.

[MisterClips]

The tv show The Ghost Whisperer just did an episode yesterday where the ghost was autistic. If you've seen the show you know that the main character must find out what the ghost needs to be fulfilled so they can move on to the other side. Since the ghost was autistic, communication was difficult. The episode was very well done and very interesting.

[urstwile]

Cornfed, very nice share.

I think we haven't even begun to understand what autism is. My own personal theory is that they're using different and/or possibly more parts of their brains then we are, and this is why communication becomes difficult for them, at least with "normal" people, because it just seems like there's so much going on with them, beyond what we're able to understand.

[Red Kittie Kat]

That is really something ... he has a lot of talent :)

[Broacher]

As our understanding of the autistic spectrum is becoming greater, so are the controversies. I listened this weekend to listener follow-up letters on the CBC Radio science show, "Quirks and Quarks" over the show they ran LAST week called "Rethinking Autism".

Here's how the archive desribes this documentary:

"Now, two autism researchers in Montreal are arguing that maybe autism isn't something that needs to be cured. Maybe it isn't even a mental disorder.

The two researchers make an unlikely team. One is Dr. Laurent Mottron, a psychiatrist and cognitive neuroscientist at the Riviere-des-Prairies Hospital. He has been studying autism for 25 years. The other is Michelle Dawson, who is autistic. Ms. Dawson has never been to university, but is working at the level of someone with a PhD. For the last couple of years, these two have been collaborating on research into autism. They argue that autism should be recognized as a different way of being human, rather than as a disease or series of defects to be eradicated. "

Listen to the podcast at: http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/archives/06-07/oct07.html#4%20%20target=
(it's near the bottom)

If you click back to the lineup of the last weekend show, you can also listen to the flood of protesting calls and letters they got from airing this.

The biggest change in the media is that the word 'autistic' can no longer be so narrowly portrayed as someone with severe mental/social handicaps. I was not trying to be cruel when I questioned that post from last week featuring the young autistic artist dubbed 'the human camera', but it occured to me while watching that, that there was no attempt to clarify that guy's position on the autism scale. In fact, it seemed to be edited in such a way to minimize any possible clues to his actual level of 'normal' functioning.

My suspicion is that the 'human camera' artist is on the very light end of the scale, but by not showing him talking or conversing relatively normally, it takes away from the sensationalism of the story, which plays on the ommon preconception of the autistic condition as being a relatively severe handicap. I think the media is too quick to exploit our narrow understanding of what is quickly becoming a much more common, and complex condition than we originally assumed.

[CamarotaDesign]

Nice find Cornfed. The stuff that some autistic people do is pretty amazing. I have a friend that works with autistic kids, and she has a student who is 12 or 13, and he can do advanced albebra equations with ease, but isnt able to speak. Very amazing.

[PrintDriver]

Nobody should wish to be autistic. Not all those with autism are savants. In fact, relatively few are.

Someday science - and the general public - will hopefully understand autism beyond the Rainman iconography.

[cornfed]

Maybe I should have titled the post "Sometimes I wish I had the talent that some of those with autism possess". I think that's more what I was trying to say. You know, Broacher, I think I do view autism as more of a different way to be human. Maybe that's why I have always found it so intriguing and interesting.

[Drorain]

autism is something that can be aquired at a later age right? isn't there some controversy about levels of mercury in shots that have been linked to people developing autism. If I'm wrong on that, please correct me, but I thought thats what the senate was trying to combat with the bill fighting autism.

It's a sad thing, but their talent, if they are savants, is truly amazing.

[Drorain]

as always, the wiki has some nice info to help educate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism#Causes

[PrintDriver]

Take the Wiki with a grain of salt.
If you want info on autism go here:
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/autism.cfm

[urstwile]

There are two things that always come to mind for me when I read about this type of thing.

The first is an old horror movie, called "Village of the Damned". Yes, because of the xenophobia at the time the movie was filmed, the children with "special" talents were of course, evil. Call it a Cold War metaphor, as so many sci-fi movies from that era were.

The second is Arthur C. Clarke's book "Childhood's End". For those unfamiliar with Clarke, he also wrote the book 2001: A Space Odyssey, on which the Kubrick movie was based.

Both approach the notion of a higher level of brain use, and in both cases, communication problems were evident.

While I'm not saying that this is the case for autistic people, and while there appears to be much study that still needs to be done on people with this characteristic, I still think autism lends itself to a great deal of speculation in terms of whether it's a disability or an asset.

And consider this: it could be that there are less- and more- gifted autistics. If their perceptions are what's different, what's not to say that some are exceptional, but that there's such a thing as an average autistic, whose perceptions don't transcend the norm of our experience, and thus they simply have trouble communicating?

Broacher, I would have loved to hear that radio show. I'd also love to know what Oliver Sacks would make of it all. He's so insightful on so many other topics of this nature.

[Samakimoto Graphics]

Here's an interesting news item on the same.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6037836.stm

[Broacher]

>>Broacher, I would have loved to hear that radio show.<<

I posted that link upthread for the podcast of the show.

[carter the artist]

I'm actually working on a logo for an autism school.

here's more links on info:

www.nyc4a.org <http://www.nyc4a.org>

www.alpinelearninggroup.org <http://www.alpinelearninggroup.org> .

www.autismspeaks.org <http://www.autismspeaks.org>

[urstwile]

>>Broacher, I would have loved to hear that radio show.<<

I posted that link upthread for the podcast of the show.
Oops, sorry, I didn't remember seeing a link when I replied. Thanks, I'll give it a listen.

[Ned]

This is a MySpace Group I have been on for a long time, but forgot about...

http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k236/artistforautism/k3.jpg (http://myspace.com/artistsforautism)

[budafist]

Here's a good game for the autistic person in all of us....

http://www.gamedesign.jp/flash/whitejigsaw/whitejigsaw.html