So – the ‘Hidden Horde’ – the term that anti-vaccinationists like to smirk about as evidence of an autism epidemic. The logic goes like this: if there’s no autism epidemic then where are all the [insert age here] year old autistic adults? I’ve heard people asking for evidence of 75 year old autistics (conveniently forgetting that the average mortality age in the US and UK is around 70), 50 year olds – even 30 year olds.
Never mind that there’s been plenty of evidence for adult autistics. Thats not convenient for the anti-vaccinationist agenda so it gets ignored.
Anyway, todays Sunday Herald carries another story about adult autistics in Scotland called ‘Revealed: ‘invisible’ adults living with autism’.
According to the National Autistic Society (NAS) Scotland report, due to be launched this week, 52% of adults have not had an assessment of their needs since the age of 18…..It is estimated that more than 35,000 adults in Scotland have the condition, but campaigners said they were “invisible” to local authorities, who are failing to record the number of people with autism in their area.
The population of Scotland is 5,062,011. The latest prevalence estimates for the UK are 1 in 100. This means that 50,620 people are autistic. If 35,000 adults in Scotland are autistic then 69% of autistic people in Scotland are adults.
Hidden horde aye?
Left Brain Right Brain 
Also curious to note is how our “mercury-induced brain damage” does NOT prevent us from realizing, as we mature, just how dangerous it is to allow ourselves to be slapped with a psychiatric label, or to allow that label to be arbitrarily trotted out for official, medical, or even statistical purposes.
Nice formula: 1) treat people like crap, so that 2) they won’t stand up to be counted, and thus, 3) you can claim that they don’t exist, so no grievance need be heard … and you can go right on treating them like crap.
Conveeeenient, huh? :-p
For a minute there I thought I had missed “Speak like a pirate day” again.
Is this Scotspeak something that most folks in the UK are able to do with little effort, the way US people can speak Valley or Ghetto, etc., or does it require practice? 🙂
Well, my family are old Celtic from the West Coast of Scotland so I have an advantage.
Having said that, ‘ken’ is an Edinburgh/Fife thing really. You can count on lots of Scots reading this and thinking I’m a stupid sassenach.
Kev said
“my family are old Celtic”
Do you know when the term “Celt” or “Celtic” was first used to describe Scots, Welsh, Irish, Brittany(ish) people etc? And who first used the term to describe the above?
Off topic but quite interesting
“kennen” is German for “know”
Century – yeah, I just read ‘Face of Britiain’ – there’s a great (free) tool here you can use to trace the passage of your ancestors:
http://www.nationaltrustnames.org.uk/Surnames.aspx
‘Känna’ is a general ‘scandinavisk’ work for ‘know’, and – given the histories of Scandinavia and Scotland and the north of England – it’s likely that the word ‘ken’ in Scots is derived from that; but ‘kennen’ itself is very likely the origin of the scandinavisk word, anyway.
Bara min två ores värden….
Tolkien used the word ‘ken’ in his writing in a noun form that seemed to mean ‘comprehension’.
Scottish slang.
Kassiane, the article is in the 20 Dec-2007 issue of Neuron. I tried to post the title from the journal, but there was a conflict in the allowed fonts.
Here is an article form the light source where the structure was determined
http://www-ssrl.slac.stanford.edu/research/highlights_archive/neuroligin_hires.html
You can get the full citation there
Sorry wrong blog entry. Well I suppose Kassieanne will be reading this one was well.
/grin I descend from O’Conchobhair, sooo all the curebies and toxbies can kiss mah grits!
I would have liked to be called the Golden Horde, but I understand that name was taken.