| Berkeley This Week
Impeachment Banner Fridays at 6:45 to 8 a.m. on the Berkeley Pedestrian bridge between Seabreeze Market and the Berkeley Aquatic Park, ongoing on Fridays until impeachment is realized. www. Impeachbush-cheney.com City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Dr. Fred Nachtwey on “Sleep" Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $14, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 526-2925. “Tales of Western Ornithologists" with Harry Fuller at 7 p.m. at the Live Oak Recreation Center. Sponsored by Golden Gate Auddubon Society. Cost is $10-$15. 843-2222. Oceans Awareness to bring awareness of the problem of plastic in our oceans at 5 p.m. at Lower Sproul Plaza, UC Campus. Sponsored by CALPIRG. Alcohol Free Weekend Can You Do It? Take the sober weekend challenge sponsored by UC Berkeley Health Serives.
YouTube Not Yours Any Longer in Thailand (Editorial)
Press freedom in Thailand continues to deteriorate under the ruling military junta, according to regional observers and media watchdog groups, including the Southeast Asian Press Alliance. The group condemned a government order to close down the political chat room www.pantip.com and called on Thai leaders to respect and preserve the integrity of the Internet as a medium for independent and alternative voices in the Kingdom. But the issue has recently taken on international dimensions after a 44-second video mocking Thailands monarch, the much revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej, appeared on the popular video Web site YouTube. Thailands Minister of Information and Communications Technology Sitthichai Pookaiyaudoom responded by ordering the blocking of YouTube in the country after the company refused to remove the video from its Web site.
Online banking customers deserve better security
New Zealanders have a right to better protection from banks against scamming attacks and should demand better security for online banking, said Mike Heath, General Manager of New Zealand’s online savings and investment service, RaboPlus. “The country’s biggest banks are all encouraging their customers to use online services, however many banks here lag behind in the security they offer to their online banking customers,” said Mr Heath. Overseas, consumer legislation and the growing number of phishing attacks has motivated many European banks to improve their security measures. Interpol has found that countries which have better protected online industries are significantly less likely to be targeted. “Unless banks in New Zealand step up the security they offer their online banking customers, it is possible we will see more and more fraudsters targeting New Zealanders,” said Mr Heath.
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.
Every school, every Thursday / Des Moines west
We had a Middle School Montessori Open House on March 29. We had a lot of parents come who are interested in Montessori Education. The students presented their typical day and their experiences in Montessori.
Downtown
The nine- and 10-year-old group went to Des Moines University Anatomy lab on March 29, as a resource in our study of the heart. We were divided into two groups. The first group went into a lab and was able to listen to the heartbeat of Harvey, the simulator. We were able to listen to a normal heart beat and a heart beat with a murmur. The students all had a stethoscope. Dr. Donald Matz led the presentation. The other group broke up into groups and attended stations with DMU students. The students were able to closely examine various organs, such as a heart, stomach, lung and brains.
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