Stumbled Upon Autistic Planet

Got to bed early last night and woke up at 6:30 am. First stop: computer. Do you know about stumbleupon.com? It's a tool for discovering and sharing websites. A dangerous tool for me, my friends. In the olden days, my mother would send me newspaper clippings and to be quite honest, I appreciated her thinking about me but I didn't find them all that useful. It appears I have inherited that gene from her because I can't stop myself from sending "fascinating" links to my grown kids. It's so easy now. No need to find an envelope and stamp. Just hit that send button. Whoosh.

What I did Not send this morning: the video of the polar bear playing with the sled dogs in the snow. It is very cute. I researched the story behind it ... even checked it out on snopes.com. Which led me to a site containing a wealth of interviews which will keep me occupied until the end of my time, whenever that happens to be. It's an NPR program called Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippett. There are now more than 200 podcasts sitting in my ITunes. One I listened to today was an interview with a couple who has an autistic son. It's a topic I have researched extensively, having a close family member who has been diagnosed. This gave me a whole new perspective. The metaphors this couple shared were so enlightening. I plan to pick up a copy of the mother's (Jennifer Elder) book, Autistic Planet. The father, Paul Collins wrote Not Even Wrong. He is an historian and he says he understands his son's behavior because he himself can be hyper-focused when he is researching in dusty archives and it's as if his ears turn off. In fact, he says there are studies that show that people who are in the sciences are much more likely to exhibit autistic traits. When he gave a talk at Microsoft, he noticed many in the audience were looking at their laptops and someone explained to him that they were watching him on the Webcast even though he was speaking live twenty feet from them. That was just their preferred way of listening. (By contrast, studies show that people who study English are more prone to manic-depressive disorders.)

From listening to this interview, I also learned that Simon, the cousin of Sacha Baron-Cohen (think Borat), is a leading expert on autism. Baron-Cohen proposes that the cause of autism at a biological level may be hyper-masculinization. This hypothesis posits that certain features of autism (‘obsessions’ and repetitive behaviour, previously regarded as ‘purposeless’) as being highly purposive, intelligent (hyper-systemizing), and a sign of a different way of thinking. He wrote a popular book on the topic of sex differences and its relationship to autism (The Essential Difference, 2003).

So I admit I sent an article about Baron-Cohen the scientist to my son because he and I share a love of Baron-Cohen the comedian. I'm sure he'll enjoy it. (Thanks, Mom, for all those clippings.)