I Understand

I really do. There is nothing in this great big beautiful world cuter than a baby rhino. This one

is being looked after by qualified experts at the zoo in St Louis. Apparently it likes getting its nose scratched with that thing.

I have absolutely no trouble understanding why you wanted to have a baby rhino as a pet. I want a baby rhino as a pet. I want to have it as a pet and squoozle it all of the time and scratch its nose and do whatever else it likes. 

But I know that as the baby rhino grew, things would get... awkward. I know that soon I would not be able to handle the situation. I know that eventually I would have a full-blown disaster on my hands.

I know that it's not always a good idea to do what I want to do.

Maybe you really didn't know all of this before you paid $3000 cash money to some very shady types to get your baby rhino. But as soon as you had it, all sorts of people told you everything I said. Some of them went into much greater detail about all the different kinds of trouble you were getting yourself into. 

But you didn't listen to any of them.  The few people who thought it was great that you had a baby rhino, you chose to listen to them, even though you knew they're the biggest idiots you know.

And look what happened.

Get vaccinated, dummy!

The Big Stupid Elephant in the Room

The Federal Department of Education is investigating states which are prohibiting mask mandates in schools on the grounds that this may be endangering disabled schoolchildren.

I'm glad the Biden administration is doing something. The problem is that anti-mask measures are an attack on all children, and all adults, and science, and sanity, etc. 

We (by "we" I mean the non-stupid majority) have been much too nice about this. 

There's a time and place to be considerate of idiots' feelings. This is not the time and place. When a house is on fire, and a maniac is pouring gasoline on the fire and raving about how this is the correct way to put out fires, we don't stand off to one side and try to reason with the maniac, being careful not to insult him. For some time now, the deadliest enemy in the US, the one killing the most people, is no longer COVID. It's human stupidity. It's yahoos refusing to wear masks or get vaccinated or let their kids wear masks or get vaccinated, and comparing masks and vaccines to Nazism, trying their damnedest to make it impossible for any of us to have any masked, vaccinated place we can go. 

It's idiots. It's morons. It's stupidity.

Since long before COVID appeared, since long before Trump ran for Persidunt, I've maintained that mankind's deadliest enemy is human stupidity. First Trump, and now COVID have made this point increasingly clear.

And yet, we refuse to say it. For fear of hurting stupid people's feelings, we are greatly endangering their lives by coming right out and saying that they are stupid. For the sake of political correctness and misplaced librul over-sensitivity, we are greatly hindering our own efforts to end a plague.

If ever there were a perfect example of the uselessness of political correctness, we are living in it now. And dying for the sake of it.

Things actually could be worse. They have been worse. During the flu epidemic in 1918 and 1919, public officials thought it was a good idea not to let the public know there was an epidemic. We learned from that disaster that it's better to talk openly and publicly about disasters.

We partly learned it. Hopefully we're still learning. We've got a long way to go.

Hollywood Autism: Vice News: "Autism Under the Lens" and The Accountant, Starring Ben Affleck

Last night's episode of "Vice News" on HBO was entitled "Autism: Under the Lens." "Vice News"' Executive Producer (its only Executive Producer, apparently, in an age where it's more and more common for movie and TV credits to have long lists of Executive Producers for every show) is Bill Maher, well-known for advocating anti-vaccination positions. Anti-vaxxers have promoted the thoroughly-discredited notion that vaccines cause autism, as well as the notion, which I certainly hope is in decline or at least being re-examined by a significant amount of people, that autism is, in anti-vaxxer Jenny McCarthy's words, a "horrible disease." (And seriously, what's up with calling all of these shows "Vice" in the first place? "Vice," "Vice News," and a whole "Viceland" network. Surely I can't be the only one who finds the name ridiculous.)

And so I was pleasantly amazed that vaccines were not even mentioned once in the entire episode, and that -- along with some researchers and therapists specializing in autism who referred to autism as a disorder as if there where no debate about that, and who might be inclined to refer to the condition as a "horrible disease" -- significant air time was also given to the point of view sometimes referred to as neurodiversity, which considers us autistic people as not disabled, but just different, as atypical. At least one autistic person on the episode referred to achievements of his as being possible because of his autism and not in spite of it.

Is this evidence that Bill Maher, unlike some of his anti-vax and New Atheist pals, can learn? Maybe not. Maybe all it means is that Bill's position as Executive Producer of "Vice News" does not include him paying any attention to the show. I would like to think that Bill is learning, and becoming more sophisticated on topics on which he has been led astray.

My one major criticism of the episode was the weight given to the belief that autism is becoming more common. It's true that diagnoses of autism are becoming more common. But I myself feel that this could be entirely explained simply by the fact that diagnosis is getting better and becoming more widespread. The term "autistic" is barely 1 century old. As recently as the 1970's, the vast majority of people, including the majority of physicians, had still never heard of autism, let alone understanding it well or diagnosing it. People in general are still just beginning to learn about autism. So of course the diagnosis of autism is becoming more common. People who believe that autism is becoming more widespread, and that it is a horrible disease, say: Oh no, oh no, it's a plague. People like me, who think that autism is about as common as it has always been, and that what's changing is that we're understanding it better, think that things are getting better. Understanding is key, and it's definitely happening: neurologically-typical people are understanding autistic people better, and we autistic people are understanding the rest of the population better. It's not a plague, it's a healing. That's how I see it.

In any case, this episode of "Vice News," along with other things such as the 2016 Ben Affleck movie The Accountant, whose title character, played by Ben, has been described as "the first autistic superhero," gives me hope that Hollywood in general is getting smarter about autism. (And of course, just like anyone else who is opposed to actual plagues, like plagues of measles and influenza, I hope they're becoming better informed about vaccines too.) I don't know whether the Accountant actually is the first autistic superhero, and The Accountant, although not a bad movie at all, is far from the masterpiece that The Dark Knight is: it copies some of The Dark Knight's style in cinematography and editing and music and the back-and-forth chronology of the plot, without giving you the same level of thrills and chills as the Batman movie. The Accountant does have some very nice moments: the montage at the end with Sean Rowe singing "To Leave Something Behind," for example, should leave you pleasantly verklemmt whether you're autistic or not, I should think, if you've been watching carefully up until then.

Although the superhero stuff in The Accountant is occasionally somewhat silly, the movie is very smart and realistic about autism. It doesn't say that autism will make a child grow up to be a superhero: the superhero part has more to do with Affleck's character having been intensively trained in various martial arts all during his childhood, and then someone close to him having been murdered by the Mafia. But when it comes to the characteristics and behaviors of autistic people, The Accountant does a better job than any other movie or fictional TV show I've seen with the exceptions of Rain Man and Temple Grandin with Claire Danes in the title role. The real-life Temple Grandin was a technical consultant on Rain Man and the Claire Danes film. I haven't been able to find out yet whether she also worked on The Accountant. I didn't see her name in the credits. Maybe, at last, Hollywood can portray autism realistically without Dr Grandin's help.

As far as I know, Ben Affleck has not been on Bill Maher's show "Real Time" since that particularly unpleasant (for Ben) episode in 2014, during which Sam Harris mocked Ben for asserting that Islamophobia exists and is related to racism. That was Ben's 7th appearance on the show, dating back to 2005.

"When You Get the Flu This Winter, You Can Blame Anti-Vaxxers"

Yes, I can. And I do blame them. No matter who they are. If you're one of my favorite performers or politicians, if you're ever so beautiful and/or talented, if you're my best friend, if you're my cousin or uncle, and you're anti-vax, I blame you for a lot of people's deaths. This is nothing to fuck around about. This is nothing to be sugar-coated.



Kent Sepkowitz patiently and angrily describes vaccines and how they work.

I don't see any reason not to be angry at anti-vaxxers. I mean, seriously: if you can't get angry about

PLAGUE,

What can you legitimately get angry about?

How much more cut-and-dried and clear and simple than this can things get? Hell yes I'm angry at you, Bill Maher, Jenny McCarthy, Donald Trump, Erin Brockavich, RFK Jr! Hell yes I blame you for a lot of people's deaths! And, Bill, Erin, Robert: unlike many others, you three don't even have the excuse of being stupid! Shame on you!

Often, Bill Maher Sounds Almost As Intelligent As Ben Affleck

And then there are times like last night's "Real Time," marred by Bill's ant-vax screeds. To be sure, Bill insisted that he's not anti-vax, but just a "vaccine skeptic." Well, those are the same thing. Just as criticizing people's religious beliefs is the same thing as criticizing the people who hold the beliefs..

A moron like Jenny McCarthy or Sam Harris is one thing. But Bill sounds perfectly intelligent most of the time, offering cogent and precise evaluations of morons who deny climate change and vote Republican and think that the Affordable Care Act is a tragedy. But when the topic is Islam or vaccinations, it's as if someone changed the channel to Fox News.



Bill points out that the overwhelming majority of scientists agree that climate change is happening, is caused by human activity and is big, big trouble for life on Earth, and that there is a clear fix: green energy, wind, solar, plug-in electric cars and so forth. The thing is, the very same scientists also overwhelmingly agree that vaccines have nothing whatsoever to do with autism, or kidney disease, or any of the other things the anti-vaz nuts link it to, and that not vaccinating children risks re-creating the very same plagues which vaccines eradicated a century ago. So it's quite surreal to hear Maher spouting unscientific bullshit to support his "vaccine skepticism," and concluding, "[...]and it's not like global warming, cause that's real!" and chillingly, last night Bill's audience cheered him for that, instead of booing him as any well-informed crowd would have been expected to do.

It's not just backwoods rednecks who have an anti-vax problem in the US: prosperous, liberal Hollywood has that problem too. Does Hollywood's anti-vax bullshit have something to do with Scientology, and with charlatans preying on movie stars and peddling holistic treatments and magic crystals and pyramids and other such garbage? How could it not have everything to do with those things?



(Some of you may be old enough to remember when Ben Affleck and Matt Damon suddenly became huge stars on the strength of Good Will Hunting, which they wrote and in which they starred, Damon playing a genius and Affleck a sympathetic but not particularly intelligent schlub. Maybe you remember the rumours following Damon and Affleck's spectacular Oscar win for the screenplay, rumours to the effect that Affleck, like his character in the movie, was not particularly bright, and that he owed his Oscar mainly to his good friend Damon's generosity in sharing the writing credit with him. In light of the screenplays Affleck has written since then, and the movies he's directed, those rumours now seem kind of dumb. Not that I see any reason to suspect that the rumours got it exactly backward and that Damon is dumb.)



I really hate to say it, but I see no reason to suspect that Maher is going to brighten up any time soon, either about vaccines or about Islam. I can only plead with his fans -- I'm a fan too -- to think for themselves when listening to Maher, and realize that sometimes he knows what he's talking about, and sometimes he doesn't have a clue, and that when he sounds like he's on Fox News, it doesn't mean that Fox News is sometimes right about something.

Asperger's Syndrome

I was diagnosed with Asperger's in 2007. That's not very long ago. It's not as if I've been studying Asperger's or autism for decades, as have many other people. I don't consider myself an expert on Asperger's just because I have it. I certainly don't wish to present myself as some highly-qualified spokesperson for people on the autistic spectrum. But since I learned that I have it, it's been on my mind a lot.

Some people, myself included, think that Asperger's is autism, and that the difference between those of us who are diagnosed as Aspergers, and those who more traditionally would be called autistic, is a matter of degree in some symptoms, some of the differences in behavior between us and the neurologically typical (NT for short). So when I say I'm an Asperger, in my opinion, I'm saying I'm autistic. But again, I'm no expert. I'm trying to keep an open mind about all of this.

As I understand it, the best current research says that autistics and Aspergers differ from NT's in the structure and chemical processes of our brains. Most people seem to think that this difference constitutes a disorder, a malfunction.

Maybe so. But what bothers me about this view, by all appearances very much still the majority view, is that it seems not to account for the fact that many Aspegers and autistic people have very unusual talents and abilities. The most famous autistic person is a fictional character, the tittle character in the movie Rain Man. But the character is based on a real person, Kim Peek, and aw crap, as I learned just this minute surfing around looking for some info him, apparently Kim Peek may not actually be autistic!

You know, I feel like I'm opening so many cans of worms with this post...

Okay, forget Kim Peek, forget Rain Man. I gather that many Aspergers and autistics have unusual abilities, up to and including savant-level mathematical abilities comparable to those of the fictional Raymond-Rain Man. If a certain condition brings with it not just difficulties but also extraordinary abilities, is it accurate to call it a disability? Is it really inherently a problem? or a good thing, which only looks like a problem because it's misunderstood? Maybe more of us than is currently realized have unusual abilities, and maybe these abilities would be recognized more often if people looked for them more often. As opposed to treating us as if we had a disease. (Let alone a disease caused by vaccination, as Jenny McCarthy and other celebrities maintain, in a depressing popular attempt to set medical science back a century or two.)

It is said that Einstein and James Joyce may have been autistic, that Wittgenstein may have had Asperger's. If it's possible that those three, and some others of us, have unique talents wholly or in part because we have autism or Asperger's -- if that's the case, is it appropriate to want to cure us of our condition?

I wish merely to raise the question. I don't claim to have the answer.