I can't, for the life of me

start studying. Instead I'm scouring the internet for all it's worth.

There's this interesting article on wired about chastising our misconstrued perception of autism. It's about this girl named Amanda Baggs who basically communicates autism as something incomprehensible to the "neurotypical" because of the way we define intelligence. They eventually compare it to the plight of homosexuals in the 70's converting from the idea that it's a mental illness, to something normal, acceptable, and very much just another variety of life. She describes autism as being in a "constant conversation with my entire environment", just not in the same language we comprehend.

It's true, every time we think autistic and socially challenged we see some kind of deficiency. Instead of deficiency we could opt for variety, and understand that the tools we use to measure intelligence are created by beings whose perception can only encompass so far.

The video starts off showing her idiosyncrasies and "neurotic" behavior, but eventually she communicates her philosophies through a voice synthesizer, and what's said is kind of a doozie. It makes me think about corporate America and the bullshit language and habits we must accommodate to in order to move forward in life. Must shake hands firmly, must be stoic, must establish eye contact. How natural is all this and how often are anomalies frowned down upon (all the time, my friend just yesterday got kicked out of a program for being too enthusiastic and unprofessional with her boss, wtf) . Of course this observation is a watered down version of full on autism, but hey, normal=majority and that's kind of the shitty bottom line.

http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-03/ff_autism?currentPage=1