| Your Views: Earlier views on the US shooting
A doctor was quoted as saying that the injured had no less than 3-4 bullet wounds each. Multiply that by 60-odd dead and wounded and that's an awful lot of bullets. The right to bear arms is controversial enough - but the right to bear arms that hold so much ammunition? Or enable such quick reloading? How can that possibly be justified? B Spence
Firstly it is disgraceful that the American media were quick to label the accused as being a Korean National, been that he has been in the USA for 15 odd years, pointing the finger just shows how arrogant you are and does less to quell anti American sentiment. Secondly to own a gun should be a privilege to only those whom specifically need them for their workplace, and or for sport in which case for sporting shooters should have their guns locked up in gun clubs, hunters clubs and should also undergo a annual registration/licence fee to determine if the gun user is fit to use that appropriate weapon.
High Functioning Autism: Do you know what it feels like to be ...
If we continue to simply say that this kid is just a monster, we will be enabling other "monster" kids to commit future heinous acts of violence. This is why we, and the media, and the politicians, can not turn away. This is why we have to look at Cho Seung-Hui, read his manifesto, look at his video and study his sad history of being bullied, and of having untreated illnesses. There is so much that we need to learn from this unfathomable insanity. It is safe to say that we have behaved horribly with regard to mental illness and developmental disorders in this country. I draw a lesson from the horrific slaughter at Virginia Tech. There were so many extreme warning signals - a cry for help - from this tormented young man for so many years. What I am about to write will cause much hate mail from the Autistic Community.
Eye on UCSD: UCSD Crafts Center
By Vanessa Peng
Staff Writer
April 23, 2007 — A secret is hidden among the trees near the Student Center. Students often walk past it, sometimes a few times a week, without ever realizing its existence. Even with its ideal location - adjacent to the Grove Caffe and situated across from the Student Center study lounge - the Crafts Center remains relatively unknown to the student body.
"Most of the time I see non-UCSD students in the craft classes," said Starr Sinton, a teaching assistant at the jewelry studio. "An awful lot of UCSD students say that they have never heard of the UCSD Crafts Center, but people from [outside of the UCSD community] know about the Crafts Center."
The Crafts Center offers a wide variety of classes that are all taught in an art studio environment.
READINGS, ETC.
ALOUD, Mark Taper Auditorium at Central Library, corner of Fifth and Flower streets, downtown L.A., (213) 228-7025. Aloudla.org. Tue at 7. Bruce Hainley, Jeremy Sigler, Frances Stark. Poets read from recent works. MAK Center for Art and Architecture at The Schindler House, 835 N Kings Rd, West Hollywood, (323) 651-1510. Makcenter.org. Sun at 3. Basil Hoffman. Author discusses and signs Acting and How to Be Good at It. Borders Books and Music, 1501 Vine St, Hollywood, (323) 463-8519. Thur: Call for time. Anselm Hollo, Simon Pettet. Poets present recent work. Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, 681 Venice Bl, Venice, (310) 822-3006. Beyondbaroque.org. Sat at 7:30. How to Start a Non-Profit Corporation. California Lawyers for the Arts host workshop about organizing non-profit entities.
The Future Is For Everyone (Or At Least, It Should Be)
The article about siblings seems to indicate mainly that siblings of autistics can have autistic traits (or perhaps even be autistic themselves), which of course makes sense when you consider that autism has a strong genetic component. The characterization of this phenomenon as autism being "bad for siblings" is more than a bit misleading—it's not as if, somehow, the autistic sibling hadn't been born, the children being studied would not have exhibited the same social and communication patterns. If someone is going to be autistic, or perhaps broader autistic phenotype, they're going to be that way regardless of whether they have siblings or not.What struck me about the article on siblings, though, was the manner in which the siblings' performance was described: "Younger siblings of children with autism spectrum disorders demonstrated weaker performance in non-verbal problem-solving, directing attention, understanding words, understanding phrases, gesture use and social-communicative interactions with parents, and had increased autism symptoms, relative to control siblings," The reason that description struck me was because in all that verbiage, there was absolutely no questioning of the underlying assumptions in place. These assumptions are common in autism-related literature but very few people even notice them—to me, they're like the proverbial "elephant in the room". And just what are these assumptions? Well, first of all, the tests being used to evaluate the performance of the siblings of autistics (many of whom were probably autistic themselves) were probably not written with autistic cognition in mind. Second of all, I'm almost certain that the tests being used in this context probably assumed quite a bit about the childrens' level of understanding based on the compliance of these children. To make an analogy, watch any cat navigate around a house and you'll definitely get the sense that you're dealing with a creature with a highly developed understanding of physics, but tell the cat to fetch your slippers and you'll probably not get much in the way of a response. This isn't to say that all autistics are good at physics and bad at following instructions—but rather, that it doesn't really make sense to assume an autistic person must be able to perform well on tests normed to a typical population in order to be happy or successful. I somehow doubt that cats wake up every morning lamenting that they're not dogs—but who knows, they might if their human companions constantly punished them for not acting like dogs or doing things that dogs tend to do.Whenever I read articles on autism so utterly dripping with unquestioned assumptions, I can't help but think back to elementary school, when quite a lot about me was considered to be "problematic" or worrisome, even the aspects of myself that I really liked. If you'd asked my fifth-grade classmates about me then, they'd most certainly have said that there was definitely something very wrong with me, that I didn't relate normally, and even that they felt sorry for me. In sixth grade a few girls came up to me and told me that they were being mean to me "for my own benefit", since in high school, "everyone was going to hate me anyway". I remember people wondering if I was sad or depressed because I often preferred to read or draw rather than engage in group activities—in fact, the main thing that made me tend toward sadness at times was the perception that whatever I liked to do was some kind of symptom or problem. I even once got in trouble for being really interested in a particular subject—the teacher assumed that my interest was a sign of being "too lazy to learn about anything else". I'm not saying all this to invoke a pity party—that's the last thing I would want, especially considering one of the things that always infuriated me while growing up was the "we feel sorry for you for being you!" bit I used to run into at school. Rather, I'm just trying to make the point that kids like the ones I grew up with have also grown up. Some of them might even be in professions now where they're evaluating kids.
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