The Permian Extinction: The Great Dying

When over 90% of all life died.

The whole world is going nuts!

Everything seemingly is spinning out of control

WASHINGTON - Is everything spinning out of control?

Midwestern levees are bursting. Polar bears are adrift. Gas prices are skyrocketing. Home values are abysmal. Air fares, college tuition and health care border on unaffordable. Wars without end rage in Iraq, Afghanistan and against terrorism.

Horatio Alger, twist in your grave.

The can-do, bootstrap approach embedded in the American psyche is under assault. Eroding it is a dour powerlessness that is chipping away at the country's sturdy conviction that destiny can be commanded with sheer courage and perseverance.

The sense of helplessness is even reflected in this year's presidential election. Each contender offers a sense of order — and hope. Republican John McCain promises an experienced hand in a frightening time. Democrat Barack Obama promises bright and shiny change, and his large crowds believe his exhortation, "Yes, we can."

Even so, a battered public seems discouraged by the onslaught of dispiriting things. An Associated Press-Ipsos poll says a barrel-scraping 17 percent of people surveyed believe the country is moving in the right direction. That is the lowest reading since the survey began in 2003.

An ABC News-Washington Post survey put that figure at 14 percent, tying the low in more than three decades of taking soundings on the national mood.

"It is pretty scary," said Charles Truxal, 64, a retired corporate manager in Rochester, Minn. "People are thinking things are going to get better, and they haven't been. And then you go hide in your basement because tornadoes are coming through. If you think about things, you have very little power to make it change."

Recent natural disasters around the world dwarf anything afflicting the U.S. Consider that more than 69,000 people died in the China earthquake, and that 78,000 were killed and 56,000 missing from the Myanmar cyclone.

Americans need do no more than check the weather, look in their wallets or turn on the news for their daily reality check on a world gone haywire.

Floods engulf Midwestern river towns. Is it global warming, the gradual degradation of a planet's weather that man seems powerless to stop or just a freakish late-spring deluge?

It hardly matters to those in the path. Just ask the people of New Orleans who survived Hurricane Katrina. They are living in a city where, 1,000 days after the storm, entire neighborhoods remain abandoned, a national embarrassment that evokes disbelief from visitors.

Food is becoming scarcer and more expensive on a worldwide scale, due to increased consumption in growing countries such as China and India and rising fuel costs. That can-do solution to energy needs — turning corn into fuel — is sapping fields of plenty once devoted to crops that people need to eat. Shortages have sparked riots. In the U.S., rice prices tripled and some stores rationed the staple.

Residents of the nation's capital and its suburbs repeatedly lose power for extended periods as mere thunderstorms rumble through. In California, leaders warn people to use less water in the unrelenting drought.

Want to get away from it all? The weak U.S. dollar makes travel abroad forbiddingly expensive. To add insult to injury, some airlines now charge to check luggage.

Want to escape on the couch? A writers' strike halted favorite TV shows for half a season. The newspaper on the table may soon be a relic of the Internet age. Just as video stores are falling by the wayside as people get their movies online or in the mail.

But there's always sports, right?

The moorings seem to be coming loose here, too.

Baseball stars Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens stand accused of enhancing their heroics with drugs. Basketball referees are suspected of cheating.

Stay tuned for less than pristine tales from the drug-addled Tour de France and who knows what from the Summer Olympics.

It's not the first time Americans have felt a loss of control.

Alger, the dime-novel author whose heroes overcame adversity to gain riches and fame, played to similar anxieties when the U.S. was becoming an industrial society in the late 1800s.

American University historian Allan J. Lichtman notes that the U.S. has endured comparable periods and worse, including the economic stagflation (stagnant growth combined with inflation) and Iran hostage crisis of 1980; the dawn of the Cold War, the Korean War and the hysterical hunts for domestic Communists in the late 1940s and early 1950s; and the Depression of the 1930s.

"All those periods were followed by much more optimistic periods in which the American people had their confidence restored," he said. "Of course, that doesn't mean it will happen again."

Each period also was followed by a change in the party controlling the White House.

This period has seen intense interest in the presidential primaries, especially the Democrats' five-month duel between Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Records were shattered by voters showing up at polling places, yearning for a voice in who will next guide the country as it confronts the uncontrollable.

Never mind that their views of their current leaders are near rock bottom, reflecting a frustration with Washington's inability to solve anything. President Bush barely gets the approval of three in 10 people, and it's even worse for the Democratic-led Congress.

Why the vulnerability? After all, this is the 21st century, not a more primitive past when little in life was assured. Surely people know how to fix problems now.

Maybe. And maybe this is what the 21st century will be about — a great unraveling of some things long taken for granted.

Hold on, I think this is going to be a bumpy ride...

Interesting philosophy quiz

The Philosophy Quiz created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Sartrean Existentialist You believe that man is condemned to be free and have abandoned any traditional ideas of God. Living authentically is paramount. Sartrean Existentialist 93% Buddhist 90% Epicurean 87% Taoist 87% Kantian 83% Objectivist 63% Hegelian 57% Logical Positivist 57% Thomist 50% Pragmatist 43% Platonist 40% Postmodernist 40% Kierkegaardian Existentialist 30% Calvinist 0%

George Carlin: "God is Bullshit"

Hilarious George Carlin clip on YouTube in which he bashes religion:



God Bless George Carlin! :-)

Bigotry against autistics

An angry rant by a fellow autistic I am in almost complete agreement with...

There is a problem, and my experiance it is the bully factor from parents and teachers made it open season on me for their other children.

They were the ones who equated different with wrong. It self justified them treating me any way that they wanted. I was scapegoated, blamed for everything wrong with their lives. I was the whipping boy to take the punishment for their feelings of low self esteme.

My mothers marriage broke up when I was two, guess who was blamed?

My teachers made a constant issue of a quite child, who made little eye contact, and too much when told, "look at me." The other children could get by sitting quietly in their desks doing their work, I did, made good grades, and was publically corrected daily.

It was never explained what I did that caused me to be sent to the principals office, he did not know. Not only was I sent from class for no reason, I was quite, and did not speak, for everything I said was wrong. and this teacher set out to destroy me. When I took my books and did as I was told, in silence not wanting to be in the same room with her, she crossed the room and slapped me in the back of the head as I was leaving.

After that I was often slapped in the back of the head by students, mosly in groups who then ran away.
My family and school both agreed it was my fault, and I deserved worse.

I was under strong demand to change, but no one ever said from what, to what.

Guess why I am yelling at you an hitting you, and turning the world out to join in?

When I asked for explanations, I got anger, more punishment, for I was nine, and should have known how to change myself to please all people in general.

I went to school, did my work, caused no problems, and lived a life of constant hell at home and at school. When I did make friends I was questioned about it, the other kids who were interested in Science, then the phone calls were made, and places I had been welcome I was met by the mother at the door and told harshly not to come back, and the door slammed in my face.

This from people who had welcomed me, had me in their house, till they were told something was wrong with me and I would most likely kill them all and burn down their house. These events were some of the few times I remember my mother smiling at me.

Whenever I found someone to talk to, their parents were informed. They had mistaken me for a smart child with an interest in Science, till they were told the truth.

After my education was ended at 14, I had the highest grades in reading comprehension, Science, Math, but did not make appropiate eye contact, which displeased some bitch goddesss teachers. I went and ran a pool hall, and made good money, I still shoot a good stick, bought a motorcycle, got a night job as assistant manager of a toy store, never came home till after midnight, and left first thing in the morning, I was only attacked a few times in my sleep with a broom.

When I went to college at 18, my family freaked, I could not do that, I was an uneducatable retard, and my mother demanded to know the names and phone numbers of my teachers, for she would soon set them straight.

I was going to school in the morning, working 40 hours at my computer job, the punch card era, 1968, and when passing through home being punched in the throut at dinner. It was my fault for trying to be something I could never be.

The local police became involved, and asked the same question my principal had, why were you sent to the office? It seems the police were told I owned a motorcycle, and was doing something. Being police they investigated, and told me I should move.

I did, to New York, and had a great time. Someone told the FBI I was avoiding the draft, and where I was hiding out. The only people who knew my address were my mother, and The US State Department where I worked.

"My Autistic child" often becomes the scapegoat for personal and family problems. Since it is common knowledge we do not have souls or legal rights, and parents will blame the chid if a teacher or anyone else strikes them, they are only defending their point of view, when all of the world's problems are blamed on a nine year old.

What irks me is the continuation into adult years. Parents lose the legal right to torture children at eighteen, but not the need. Everything was done to keep me from becoming an adult.

I have a Federal record for draft evasion. I was arrested, it was pop news back then. They were a bit embarrased when it came out that I was registered, with my draft board, and had never been called for a physical, no draft notice. I still have a record for being arrested for a Federal Felony. That cost me my job with the State Department. I am barred from Federal employment. No major Corporation would hire me.

Once parents start down the path of, it is the childs fault, and the child has to change to justify their actions, it never ends. Existing was my fault, they had a right to make my education, social life, employment life, and relation with the local police and FBI hell, to defend their actions.

To do anything else they would have to admit they were wrong, not a human trait, less so with the guilty. They stuck to, they had to do it because it was my fault.

I have a slightly different Neurology. what I gather from NT's is they think in words, and come up with one answer. I see in whole pictures with a thousand possible outcomes. From that I chose the ones closest to my goal. I am still told I am wrong, but not at The Patent Office.

My own career choices were Government, State Department, or IBM. One phone call blocked both of those lives. It would have made my fifth grade teacher, and others, look bad.

This whole idea of brainwashing children into pretending to enjoy the abuse and insults they recieve is a reverse of what I see, children are made angry and depressed by family and school, their world, and it is not the child's fault.

What you are asking for is, "Yassa massa, I loves the ways you beats me, you, dem teacher goddesses, alls the real chillen, it pleases me to be abused by all of you." It makes me so happy I get happy feet and wants to dance fo yo. I be your tard boy massa.

There is a problem, it is Neurological hard wiring, but not ours.

Children do grow into adults. It is very possible to destroy all of their future. They may age out of Autism, but that Federal record is forever.

I will admit we are not good at some things. We are very good at other things. The things we do not do well are common, where we excel our talents are rare, and in demand.

We have a Neurological differance, not a Behaviorial problem. NT's have behaviorial problems, mental illness, not us, and trying to fit us into a NT mold of defectiveness, then demanding that we apoligise, is not the answer.

If your child can paint with photographic skill, breaking their fingers is the wrong approach. Making them apoligize for having to have their fingers broken is also not wise.

The hard part is no NT can even glimse the mosazic pattern of thought we live in. LabPet describes it well for the video Smelena made. Or in he follow up, for I think the most important point for us, how we see, which LabPet nailed, was edited out by Smelena.

It is like submiting a mathematical answer and proof to someone who only knows a little arithmatic. They can be told, but lack the wiring to understand, and have the preconception that we are wrong, babbling nonsense, and they are trying to make us right, like them.

We are Broadband and digital, they are analog and POTS. Plain Old Telephone Service, one word at a time. They edit everything into text only, without graphics. What we communicate that is outside of their bandwidth is considered deranged thinking.

We start with a question, view all possible answers, and chose goals. They start with a goal, and break, bend, smash, trying to fit us into their view of a mold. I do not fit well through a twisted pair. That is the feed for POTS.

Maybe in this enlightened time it is no longer electro shock, Thorizine, calling the police on adult children, who dare just live and prosper, but the intent is the same, that little retard is going to pay for this, and smile and say thank you.

NT will never understand for they cannot see as we see, think as we think, and yet they can be sure we are wrong, and, freely use North Korean brainwashing tactics on children.

The art of brainwashing is first undermine what a person thinks, show them they are wrong, then offer to help them see the truth. This behaviorial modification is Pavlov applied to humans. It could be called "Teaching Stockhome Syndrom."

NT's are not evil, just ordinary people. It is I who have a hard time seeing a differance.

"The road to Hell is paved with good intentions."

Most NT behavior toward us has been discredited. Thorazine and electro convulsive shock were used on people who complained about being locked up without crime, trial, but on the word of their family, who saw they were going to inheret money, so had them locked up, stripped of legal rights, a Mental Patient, and took all the money.

When the courts closed that option, there was nothing medically wrong with us from 1974 to 1994. It just happens to coincide with the computer industry.

Now the unemployed Psych Warfare set is out to make a buck. Brainwashing and torture are banned by the Geneva Convention. Just because George Bush thinks waterboarding is a sport, that is not a green light for some Pop Psyc Professor to use it to cure Autism.

The Medical view of Autism is we know nothing. Real Doctors who use Science.

There are no drugs that benefit Autism.

There is no treatment shown to be effective except common sense and human decency.

We are not NT's with defective brains.

We are not NT's with a Developmental Disorder.

We are not NT's with a Mental Illness.

We are Autistics, shown to have a lot in common on WP, a type of human.

Until torture and brainwashing is renounced, until we are granted the right to be ourselves, I will object.

I object to being considered a hopeless retard and fair game to speak down to by NT's who just want to help.

I object when statments by the Autistic explaining the differance in brain function, thought patterns, are edited out.

We do not have Diplomatic Relations with the NT, they send Missionaries and Colonial Administrators to speak for us Natives.

The differance between Autism Speaks and Tony Attwood is the first ignores adult Autistics, and the second supports Cassandra Syndrome.

There are several million adult Autistics. Niether group wishes to study outcomes, as they are feeding off the children.

Adult Autistics are very vocal about what was done wrong to them, treatments and attitudes that hindered their development, and about the differances in thinking and working that benefit us during the adult years.

These children will become adults, brainwashed if Tony has his way. It will not help them in life, and only offers a short term benefit to parents and teachers who do not want to learn about us other than ways to control us. Heroin would do less long term damage.

I have a core of fairness and justice. without it, what would I be? Brainwashing is a direct attack on ethics, lying is good, lying is my friend. It may seem to fit the child into the NT world, but what of adult outcome?

What should be taught is what you can hear here from adult Autistics. First stop all the, "You poor suffering retard," view. In general we are more intelligent, even if we do flunk the social part of the test. We are good for what we are good for, and no amount of remedial eye contact, hand shaking, back slapping, and talking sports and celebs will aid us in any way, but will hinder our natural development toward being functioning adults in the world.

I do not like people electing themselves to come yell at me to change my ways. I do not need to be made to enjoy them trying to "help" me. I can sell out myself just fine if that is what I want.

Several million of us adults are getting by just fine. NT's are a pain, but we learn to cope. NT's also think NT's are a pain, so none of your lip.

We thank you for all of your effort in telling us we are wrong, and it is our fault. Now it is time to move on. Millions of us are having everything put at risk because a few untrained non-medical types have discovered us as children.

Atacking the Autistic Community is not being helpful. Trying programs developed for Depressed NT's, things read in some Woman's Magazine, Korean Brainwashing, or what you learned about Dog Training, is not being helpful.

It may make you feel better, "Do something, even if it is wrong," but it does not help our cause. You are making things worse, just another brick in the wall.

We are normal humans with a slight hardwired differance. We are not insane or criminal. In fact we run very honest, plain speaking, and just because we cannot understand the social value of football, or Paris Hilton's boobs, does not make us lesser beings.

We process information in batches. Words, pictures, colors, smells, sounds, all at once, so quit yelling. We do not get the "right answer", there is not "a" right answer, there are hundreds and thousands.

For a people who deal only in words, NT's are not very good at word usage. They also seem to have hearing problems, they only hear what they want to.

If they would make the effort to learn the langauge, so they could say what they mean, if they will accept written statments that must be dealt with sentence and paragraph at a time, no cheating allowed. If they can confine their statments to Reason, Science, and a record they will have to sign, date, and stick to, it may be possible to open Diplomatic Relations.

Before this can happen they must reconize that we are human, and have just as much right to be us, as they have to be them. We have lived through all of their tortures and never changed.

We should share the same goal of us becoming functioning adults. A first step would be renouncing torturing the children with Psychobabble. Until you acknowledge that we are not defective, insane, and at fault, there will be little room for progress.

I have had two basic relationships in life, those who saw me as defective, may they burn in Hell for all Eturnity, and those who saw me as having superior skills, and were glad to have someone around who could keep their computers running.

The first group gave me hell, the second money. I have never met anyone who did both.

Whenever the relationship starts with you are wrong, now here is an emotional thermometer, I know what group I am dealing with.

We will have Diplomatic Relations, recognition of our right to exist, or remain enemies.

Read Attwood's new book, "Getting rich off Autism."

He is a Professor turned Talk Show Pop Psych Celeb.

He has no Medical or Scientific credibility. He is a Con Man.

Amen, brother...

Meditation as psychotherapy

I have recently taken up Buddhist meditation since I have heard that is supposed to help control anxiety and I found a fascinating YouTube video featuring a lecture about the brain science of Buddhist meditation and it's use as a therapy for anxiety disorders and clinical depression. The basic form of meditation for this involves what is called Anapanasati, or mindfulness of breathing (MoB) meditation. MoB involves letting your awareness being absorbed by your breathing. You will inevitably become distracted by your thoughts, lose focus, and start. When you realize that your mind has wandered away from focusing on your breath make a generalized and simple one word mental label about what you were thinking about, like "remembering," "fantasizing," or "planning" and then return your awareness you your breath. An important thing is to make no positive, negitive, or neutral judgments about being distracted and about the thoughts you were distracted by, just acknowledge the fact and return to your breath.

Atheist Spirituality

Nope that is not a typo in the title of this blog post, nor is it an oxymoron. It is typical to assume that being "spiritual" means one believes in supernatural forces and deities; I consider such assumptions to be utter nonsense. It is nonsense that stems from what I think is a baseless dualistic distinction between "spirit" and "mere matter" that permeates Western thought. This dualistic assumption, which is so much a part of Western thought that it goes unquestioned by very educated people and even by many of my fellow atheists, in my opinion leads to the physical world, in all it's wonderfulness and beauty, to be belittled and dismissed as "mere matter." This dualistic belittling of the physical world is obvious in the word "mundane," which comes from a Latin word meaning "The World," is used to refer to something "ordinary." This dismissal of the physical world as being "mere matter" is a source of a lot of the rhetoric New Age supernaturalists and the theologians of the great religions use to attack what they label "scientism," "scientific fundamentalism," "soulless materialism," "mechanistic reductionism," and other loaded terms for philosophical naturalism, which is the philosophical concept that the physical world is all that exists and that there are no supernatural realms and entities.

Many claim that they "know" God and/or supernatural realms because of their own personal experiences of so-called "mystical" states. Not that I think these states don't exist, I have experienced them myself, the sense of awe, wonder, bliss, union, the whole thing. I just don't believe that these states are the result of supernatural things nor are they visions of the divine. I consider these "mystical" states to simply be altered states of consciousness, purely physical processes in the brain. Even though these states are "merely" effects of the brain that, in my opinion, doesn't mean they are not important, nor does it mean that these states are "mere delusions." These altered states of consciousness temporarily free our minds from the prison that is language-based brain processes that give us a sense of self and thus bring us into an ego-less mental state that allows us to see that we are parts of existance, we are not separate from it; we are parts of the Universe observing Itself, one could say. A good example of this is the case of a brain researcher who had a series of mystical experiences during a stroke. People only think that these wonderful and enlightening experiences are supernatural only because they are conditioned by their own religion beliefs to see them that way.

Mystics often describe the sense of unity and mystery experienced during altered states of consciousness as "The Absolute," "The One," The All," etc. and label this as "union with God." My problem with this is that this use of the term "God" stretches the term so much that it makes the term useless. Pantheistic theologies that conceive of the Cosmos and God as the same thing fall into the same problem. Such notions are very far removed from the concept of God as a supernatural man in the sky that performs miracles and punishes the wicked that most people believe in. The average person's notion of God is essentially only slightly removed from primitive superstition, the theologians' conceptualizations are irrelevant abstractions. Existence is wonderful in itself, using the term "God" to describe the wonder, awe, beauty, and mystery of existence and being is merely the use of an anthropomorphic and anthropocentric superstition based on a false dualistic world view. The physical world is not "mere" matter, it is The Absolute, The One, The All, The Ultimate Reality we are all a part of, and that, in my opinion, is far more beautiful and wonderful then any supernatural belief.

Thoughts of an autistic person

Ever since I was a little kid I knew I was "different." I had trouble with social interaction, I was extremely shy at some times and at other times I would go on and on and on and would be hogging the whole conversation. I had intense, almost obsessive interests in scientific topics that I wanted to tell people all about but nobody was interested. It seemed as if everyone except me had a special intuitive "social sense" of what and what no to do around people. little sounds, like the tapping of a pencil on a desk, that didn't bother anyone else drove me nuts and made it difficult for me to concentrate. Too much background noise caused my brain to scramble what other people are saying. Trying to multi-task was pure torture and overwhelmed me, resulting in temper tantrums or me shutting down into a crying, rocking nervous wreck. When I tried to explain my problems I was accused of making up excuses to be lazy or that it was "all in my head" (as if brain issues were something that could be willed away with bootstraps and that nice mythical notion of Free Will). It wasn't until I was 16 that I finally got an answer. I was told that I had Asperger's Syndrome, a high-functioning form of autism. Turns out I wasn't lazy or making up excuses, my brain just worked differently.

Us autistics think and perceive the world differently then NTs (neurotypicals, or non-autistics). I am very sensitive to sound and touch. I often cannot see things even if they are right in front of me unless they are pointed out. My brain has trouble processing speech I heard (one time at work a co-working asked me to get something out of a gray bin, and I was confused because it sounded like a single word, "graben") When told I need to get something, like a frying pan, saying "get a pan" would confuse me; I need to be told explicitly "get a large frying pan." Multi-tasking is nearly impossible for me, I need to do things step by step and there can't be changes to the to-do list while I'm doing my job, otherwise I have what us autistics call a "meltdown," we basically stop functioning and then curl up into a ball or become explosively angry. I am pretty much blind to the little unwritten social rules most people understand intuitively, and thus I often come across as insensitive, blunt, and tactless. I am a very compassionate person, but I have great problems with empathy, that is, I have great trouble seeing things from another person's point of view, which causes me to come across as self-centered even though I'm not. My thinking consists mostly of mental images, music, and quotes and phrases I've heard playing in my head. Very little of my thinking consists of the inner monologue that supposedly makes of the thoughts of most people.

Despite my problems, I also have wonderful gifts. I have an incredible memory that is extremely vivid and detailed. My knowledge of facts is encyclopedic. I can visualize things in my head extremely well, as if I had 3D virtual reality simulator in my head. I judge people based on merit, not rank; if a supervisor is wrong I will tell that person so. I am blind to prejudices and social constructs built around gender and race, my mind literally cannot engage in racism and sexism.

I am not a disease, I am not "brain damaged," I am not "broken," I am not a tragedy, I am not a puzzle piece. I am a person and I deserve to be accepted as who I am by society, not be shunned and pitied.