Autism Blog - Brett « Left Brain/Right Brain

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The starting gun

Wednesday, October 10th, 2007

One of my high school philosophy teachers (at a Jesuit high school here in St. Louis) used popular music of the time (70’s and early 80’s) as a tool in classes. I mostly remember using Supertramp (Crime of the Century) and some Pink Floyd (“Welcome to the Machine” was a favorite). No surprise, then, that [...]

Posted in Autism, Neurodiversity, Personal | 27 Comments »

Autism is a trait

Saturday, October 6th, 2007

Driving yesterday evening, I passed a bus stop with a United Way advertisement with the slogan, “Autism is a trait, not a debilitation.” Obviously, when I made my way back online, I tried to find out a bit more about this United Way Campaign. Through Google, I found a link to the campaign on the [...]

Posted in Action Groups, Advocacy, Autism, Neurodiversity | 18 Comments »

What autism is not

Tuesday, September 25th, 2007

As I mentioned in my last post, I am currently reading Steven Pinker’s latest, The Stuff of Thought, an interesting (so far) exploration of the role language plays in human nature. In preparing to make an argument at one point, he starts off by saying the following: To truly understand what something is you must [...]

Posted in Autism | 23 Comments »

Autism and “I”

Friday, September 21st, 2007

Earlier this summer I read Douglas Hofstadter’s new book, I Am a Strange Loop. As Hofstadter mentions early in the book, a more appropriate title would have been “I” is a Strange Loop; the book is about the nature of consciousness, that elusive concept of “I”, and not an autobiographical work as the actual name [...]

Posted in Autism | 3 Comments »