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Thorium Powered Car, Drive 100 yrs on 8 grams of fuel!
November 15, 2013 — xanthippaThere is no such thing as a ‘free lunch’!
Now, don’t get me wrong – Thorium is awesome. Just that if something sounds too good to be true, you should get your BS detector out. As Bill Nye The Science Guy (who recently had a cameo on The Big Bang Theory) says: extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof!
John Stossel – The School Revolution (with Ron Paul)
November 14, 2013 — xanthippaI had seriously considered home schooling my kids, but was advised against it on the grounds that as an Aspie parent of Aspie kids, I would not be able to teach them the social skills they needed to get along with the mundanes neurotypicals.
This was, indeed, true – to a degree.
‘School’ did not give my kids ‘education’ as the educators would have perceived it. Every day, I would tell my kids that even though they are not learning new ‘material’ in school, and that while ‘learning new material’ is the goal for most kids going to school, they, as Aspies, were in a slightly different category. Obviously, the material would not be new to them, nor difficult to master: their one and only goal in going to school was to learn how to ‘present’ their knowledge, how to PROVE to the mundanes muggles neurotypicals that they indeed have mastered that knowledge.
So, that is why my kids were not home-schooled.
Well, when I say they were not home-schooled, I do mean they attended actual official schools – from Montessori (I really, really do not recommend this for Aspies) to highly structured, incredibly expensive private schools, to public schools. They still learned most things at home long before they encountered them in school because I firmly believe that many concepts cannot be fully assimilated and become ‘natural’ unless they are taught at a much, much younger age that at which they are introduced in any formal schooling setting.
The best results we have found were actually in the ‘gifted’ program in the public schools.
Having an Aspie kid go to a Montessori school means he will learn everything about his narrow field of interest, but his horizons will not have been broadened.
Having an Aspie kid go to the most expensive private school meant that he was bullied by really rich people’s kids – so rich and influential (from politicians to the Russian mob) that the school was afraid to tell the parents their kids were being bullies. Sure, the classrooms were small – but that only meant that there were fewer kids willing/able to stand up to the bullies in defense of the Aspie. And, it meant a much more intimidated faculty…
Having an Aspie kid go to public schools means that they can see there are kids with much greater learning challenges than their own and makes them protective of their teachers. From other, less disciplined kids.
Actually, the ‘gifted program’ in the public schools has been the best, most accepting, environment for my kids. The kids who were not in the ‘gifted program’ in grade-school would not dare to bully the ‘gifties’ because they knew these were going to be their future bosses. As a matter of fact, girls from the non-gifted classes saw it as a status symbol to be seen with a boy from the gifted class…and it worked for the gifted girls, too. So, there was a lot of tolerance to accept the ‘differentness’ of the smart students by everyone else in the school and this worked to let my kids learn and grow to their best potential.
Sure, most new material was learned at home, years before it was introduced in the school. It was the social aspect, the ability to present their work in a way that neurotypicals would accept and to interact with other neurotypicals on the school playground that was the important lesson my kids went to school for.
But, had they been born with these neurotypical abilities, had I and my sons been more comfortable interacting with neurotypicals, I suspect I would not have wasted their time with the academically slow and questionable public schooling.
Aspergers, Signs and What ‘Things Actually Mean’
November 5, 2013 — xanthippaIt is a source of deep frustration for me that so often, signs are interpreted wrongly by the neurotypicals – who read meanings into them that simply are not there! And, they get indignant when others, with better knowledge of either grammar or logic (or both), act in accordance with what the sign actually says instead of what they erroneously infer it says.
Let me give you an example: outside of one of the parking lots at my son’s high school, there is a sign:
STAFF ONLY
PLEASE
In one way, this sign is pretty clear: it is a request that only staff members enter the area.
It is not a statement of a rule, nor an order, because it includes the word ‘PLEASE’ – this clearly indicates that this is a request, something that is being asked of me…and therefore within my power to either grant or reject.
Right?!?!?
Yet, when I drove into the parking lot not with the intent to park there, but simply to drop my son off at the door closest to his locker, two different school employees told him off for my perceived transgression.
Outrageous!!!
The sign never stated that non-staff members are forbidden from even entering, not just parking in the area.
Of course, I am presuming that there ought to be a comma after ‘only’ and before ‘please’. As is, the sign is a sentence fragment which indicates that the staff is in the process of pleasing some exclusive element, but does not define whom the staff are in the process of pleasing, why, or how one can get on the list of those to be pleased by the staff….much less imply any rules about the area in question!
Now, if one were to interpret the sign as meaning ‘only staff members are allowed in the area’, why are students permitted to walk there? And, for that matter, if only staff are permitted there, why would the staff members presume that their vehicles are allowed there as well? It certainly does not state that vehicles owned by staff members are permitted to be driven/parked there.
Really, think about it: it says ‘staff’ – not ‘staff and their vehicles and students who are walking but not getting out of vehicles”.
I am not being silly here – this is something of a serious issue for us, Aspies.
We take a sign – or an instruction – at its literal meaning.
We do not see any ‘implied’ other meaning – yet, we are the ones who get yelled at or laughed at if we truly follow what the sign actually says. That only ads insult to injury…
Let me give you another example, from a math test:
“Write the 3 forms of a quadratic relation that you have learned in this course this far…”
It seems obvious that if you have learned any or all of these 3 forms of quadratic relations before you started this class, they are not eligible to be put down for the answer here. In other words, if you are good at math and already knew them, the only accurate and correct answer is to leave this blank or say ‘none’!
The corollary is that if you are still ignorant of these forms because you are bad at Math and have learned nothing in this class, your answer of leaving this blank or saying ‘nothing’ is also 100% correct: the question does not ask what was taught, or what material was covered, but what you had actually learned. If you had learned nothing, then your answer of ‘nothing’ would indeed be factually correct and deserving of full marks!
Yet, if you, as a student, try to point this out to a teacher, you will not be commended for your accurate interpretation of the question. You will be singled out, put down and even perhaps punished for some trumped up ‘disrespect’ charge…
To an Aspie, this is very, very confusing.
I know – I’ve been there…
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 