An open letter to some doctor somewhere. (2012/08/15)
A friend of mine recently spoke to you about a possible diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders, and reports being dismissed on the grounds that without a cure, there’s no benefit to a diagnosis. This reflects a number of severe understandings of the nature of autism-spectrum disorders, the experiences that autistic people have, the kinds of treatments available, the role of medical care in a patient’s life, and more.
[read more...]How to call someone out (2012/08/13)
(Note: Currently still a draft, there may be edits later.)
[read more...]A reminder: Overtime is nearly always stupid. (2012/08/12)
In a discussion about a video game, and why the developers should have been working on code rather than taking a break to do some social/promotional stuff, someone wrote:
[read more...]The Secret World: Way, way, better than some reviewers think (2012/08/10)
Inexplicably, TSW reviews sort of poorly. Wait, that’s not inexplicable; it’s totally explicable, it’s just sad. Many of them aren’t even reviews of the retail; they’re from mid-to-late beta. Others are just plain wrong on basic claims about mechanics. But mostly, I think, reviewers tried to play it as though it were a modern-setting WoW, and got disappointed when it wasn’t.
[read more...]Google+: In theory, they understand names (2012/07/31)
(Hello, hypothetical reviewer. Please read this; follow the link to see why.)
[read more...]YouTube tries to push for real names: Google doesn't get it (2012/07/27)
After the drama over Google+ demanding “real names”, and the claim that they were now accepting pseudonyms (they aren’t, for real people), and after a friend had her G+ account deleted because someone somewhere decided the name wasn’t good enough, I suppose I sort of accepted that Google was constitutionally incapable of comprehending that there could ever be legitimate reasons for people to want any kind of privacy.
[read more...]Liar, liar, pants on fire (2012/07/24)
So, there’s this long story. As always, Snopes has pretty good coverage of the whole issue.
[read more...]We were not near the shooting. (2012/07/20)
There was a shooting in Colorado, but it was not here.
[read more...]Angry is a kind of stupid (2012/06/28)
Look, I’m not disputing that there are times when it is justifiable to be angry. I’m just saying… Angry people are dumb. Consistently. Being angry makes you think less clearly. Anger makes people unwilling to question, and unwilling to consider that they might be wrong; instead, they treat any suggestion that they are mistaken or confused as a personal insult. The angrier you get, the less competent you get.
[read more...]Oh, that's... wow. (2012/06/27)
Some friends have commented on yesterday’s entry about my correspondent who argued that a relationship without a clearly defined male head of household and female non-head is defective. One comment, which I found very interesting, was the observation that analogies and similarities Do Not Work That Way. Even if we grant that a marriage is supposed to reflect the nature of Christ’s relationship to the Church, that doesn’t mean that having a different structure of marriage has any impact on Christ’s relationship to the Church. Good point.
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