November 2009
8 posts
4 tags
Show us less than half of what you got, ladies!
Woman #1: “…And then Ronald said, ‘You aren’t going out in that. I believe I see at least forty-eight percent of your skin in that dress! They’ll think you’re some kind of trollop! Change at once!’”
Woman #2: “So you put on that instead?”
Woman #1: “It still shows off a good 30 percent of me.”
Woman #2: “Tell it to...
5 tags
The Coming of Neurodiversity (Part II in a series)
This whole project, and maybe even the motivation behind my coming to Petri Town in the first place, was in service of a question: If there is a cure for Fragile X, who would it turn The Boy into?
Questions of identity and the “I” are pretty salty ones, and whereas it was once the province of men in togas and the French, now the self can be subjected to neurological study — and...
1 tag
3 tags
Fragile X marks the spot. (Part I in a series)
It occurs to me that I’ve never actually told The Boy’s story, and therefore a story of my family, from the molecular level.
That story begins at the far end of the human genome, at the 23rd pair of chromosomes, where X, as always, marks the spot.
Fragile X — it’s the most common heritable form of mental retardation and the most common known cause of autism. If...
A short rant before a week-long series.
I think this thing, this whole Fragile X/autism/society/vaccines/conspiracy thing, is now getting out of control. Maybe the debate has long since escalated to outright conflict, but I fear there will come a time when someone will shoot someone on the other ideological side, and then this debate — about vaccines, about autism, about what causes this thing that affects so many people —...
8 tags
Et tu, Islam?
The Garden of Eden is getting pretty crowded. With creationism on the rise in Islamic countries, evolution better quick produce its own ancient texts to get people believing in science’s story of the rise of life on Earth.
And science better get a good editor, too. Because look at how the big difference between Christian creationism and Islamic creationism reveals the power of word choice....
I don't test well.
I kind of like tests. Especially ones that ask weird questions. Like the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, a standard personality test for the sane and slightly-less-so. Amongst its True/False gems are statements such as these:
I have diarrhea once a month or more.
My hands and feet are usually warm enough.
I would like to be a singer.
Evil spirits possess me at times.
At times I...
1 tag
“As soon as one begins to divide things up,
there are names;
Once there are...”
– Tao Te Ching, Chapter 76