Recent Comments
RSS feed
ADD, Aspergers and the ‘cannot-put-weight-on-foot’ syndrome
February 24, 2010 — xanthippaThis is not a ‘medical theory’ or even an ‘expert hypothesis’, just my own thoughts and ideas. Still, I do suspect that ADD/ADHD and Asperges are both a type of ‘cannot-put-weight-on-foot’ syndrome:
Let us do a ‘thought experiment’…
You come to see your doctor because you can’t put any weight on one of your feet, and you want your doctors to help you. They run their ‘standard tests’ and diagnoses you with ‘cannot-put-weight-on-foot’ (CPWOF) syndrome. You are told that predicting the success of the treatment is difficult, because different approaches work for different people.
Some people are lucky and the CPWOF syndrome goes away on its own – they ‘grow out of it’. For others, there is a variety of treatments they can try, hoping one will work.
They can try icing it – perhaps even using a brace to support it.
They might try hot baths in salty water, perhaps rubbing in some antibiotic ointment.
Some people respond well to pain medication. Or, anti-inflammatory drugs…
Or other ‘stuff’.
Or nothing.
So, let’s try cycling through the treatments!
By now, you may have guessed that the ‘standard tests’ are questionnaires to be filled out by your family, perhaps teachers, for their observations of how you walk. Pages and pages of questions like:
Does he favour his foot: all the time, most of the time, some of the time, a little bit of the time, never. Circle the answer that fits best….
If they want ‘hard metrics’ – you know, ‘scientific data’ – they may ask you to put your foot on a scale and put as much of your weight on it as you can manage. That will give them ‘a hard number’ to work with!
Of course, this diagnosis does not differentiate between the ’causes’ of CPWOF syndrome. The syndrome itself is so fascinating, they want to take a ‘whole-istic’ (chuckle at their own little joke) approach to it and not get bogged down in the details of ’causes’. (Translation: they don’t know and don’t care. They have a ‘name’ for it and a bunch of treatments to try, and that’s enough…)
To make a long story short – whether you cannot put weight on your foot because you sprained your ankle or broke your femur or got a rusty nail stuck in your heel – or, if your foot got eaten by some piranhas that somehow got lost and ended up in your bathtub while you were soaking in it – it does not matter. You have ‘cannot-put-weight-on-foot’ syndrome!
(I also secretly suspect that many immune system diseases and disorders, limbic system illnesses and brain chemistry imbalances are also one form of CPWOF syndrome or another…a ‘label’ hung onto a collection of ‘similar’ symptoms, regardless of their root causes. I also suspect that this interferes with proper analysis of ‘problems’ where one set of root causes can present as a very diverse variety of external symptoms. This then would, I suspect, prevent correct diagnosis and even preclude a search for any effective treatment…)
In other words, I think that diagnosing someone with ‘ADD’ or ‘Aspergers’ is like diagnosing them with a ‘headache’ – and treating all headaches as if they were ‘the same thing’, regardless of whether it is caused by migranes, having been hit in the head by a baseball, a tumour or having over-indulged in alcohol…or any other billion possible causes for a ‘headache’.
So, what is it that this ‘headache’, this CPWOF of Aspergers and ADD/ADHD is? Instead of ‘not being able to put weight on foot’, we have ‘malfunctioning filters’. But, I am getting ahead of myself…
In order to be diagnosed with Aspergers, one has to first be diagnosed with ADD/ADHD. As in, everyone who has Aspergers has ADD/ADHD, but not everyone who has ADD/ADHD has Aspergers. Therefore, it seems reasonable to see if there ‘is’ some ‘common mechanism’ to both conditions which differs from ‘the norm’.
This, then, is my hypothesis:
Both disorders/conditions could be caused by a break-down/partial development/some interference with the same ‘system’ in our brain and which could be described as: fewer ‘filters’, less conscious control over ‘filters’.
The difference is that in ADD/ADHD, only the sensory filters are broken. In Aspergers, these also don’t work, but, there are others that are also broken. And this is what leads to more pervasive disorders, problems, challenges – whatever you want to call them.
What do I mean by ‘sensory filters’?
One simple experiment that just about everyone I know has tried in one form or another is the whole putting one hand into cold water, the other into warm water. At first, we will have strong sensations that one hand is ‘cold’ and the other is ‘hot’. But, as time goes on, this will be less and less – the signal will diminish in strength over time, until we will ‘get used to’ the temperatures. Then, when we take our hands out of the water and touch them to each other, we’ll be amazed at the temperature difference between them when our brain is telling us both are ‘fine’….
That is an example of ‘sensory filters’ at work.
More simple examples:
We feel ‘clothing’ as we got dressed – but we are not consciously aware of every bit of clothing touching every bit of our skin at all times while we are wearing the clothes.
We may hear the furnace/air conditioner is on when we enter a room, but, after being in it for a while, we hardly notice its noise in the background…
People often over-apply perfume, because after they have been wearing it for a while, they do not smell it as much and keep re-applying more and more, increasing the ‘dose’ in order to get the same level of sensory input reporting it.
This is how our ‘filters’ ought to function. And, most ‘normal’ or ‘neurotypical’ people have lots of these ‘filters’, in various strengths.
In ADD/ADHD people, it is as if there were way fewer of these ‘filters’. Instead of, say, 100 (from weakest to strongest), we might have 20.
Or 3.
Or just 2: 100% ‘on’ and 100% ‘off’!
(Not all people with ADD/ADHD will have ALL their filters broken. Some individuals may have ‘fewer’ filters in one specific area, others may have fewer ‘across the board’. And, for some, it seems as if the ‘filters’ existed – but were only accessible at some times while totally off-line and unavailable at other times….which would drive their teachers and parents absolutely nuts about ‘inconsistencies in behaviour’! )
So, if the filter were 100% ‘on’, people might be calling your name, the fire alarm might be on, but, since you are reading a book and the rest of your ‘filters’ is ‘100% on’, you honestly do not hear any of it.
The ‘neat’ thing – the one that made me think of this as ‘filters’ rather than anything else – is that you actually DO perceive the sounds physically. It’s just that the brain sticks the information that you perceived the sound into a ‘buffer’ – and leaves it there unless you specifically try to retrieve it. Then it is a toss up as to whether the buffer has been ‘wiped’ or whether you can access the info held in it.
My younger son, for example, would not react to sounds as an infant – sometimes. Not even the ‘flinch’ which babies are supposed to have (say, when we are getting to 8 months of age and so on) when a loud sound happens directly behind them. He had absolutely no reaction. Yet at other times he obviously found even moderate sounds painfully loud…
Now, when he does not respond to what I say – not even aware of me talking to him – and I get his attention, I can ask him ‘what did I say’. He says he doesn’t know. I ask him to’ re-play it’. He does. He can repeat it word per word perfectly.
Only after he repeats it does he comprehend it!
Weird, but true.
My husband has the same thing…..as does my dad.
With Aspergers, these same malfunctions with ‘filters’ – or, perhaps ‘missing filters’ also exist. But, rather than just sensory ones (that drive one to distraction at one point while make them oblivious to their surroundings the next moment), the filters on feelings and emotions and – hormones – are similarly not all there, or broken, or whatever. (And, having problems with ‘both sets’ it is sometimes difficult to tell where the dividing line ‘ought to lie’…)
So, it is easy for Aspies to get ‘overwhelmed’ by emotion and adrenalin, because where a neurotypical (NT) person would feel a gradual rise in these, we don’t. The floodgates are either down – and we ‘appear cold, unfeeling and un-empathetic’ or they are all the way up and we are ‘out of control’. Total meltdown.
Many of us learn to develop various ways of ‘shutting down’ as a self-protection from this overwhelming flood….because this flood is often accompanied with adrenalin flood (we panic from being emotionally overwhelmed, which releases the adrenalin…).
This is bad.
Not only does it shut down our brain functions like, say, thinking, it also leaves us physically ill from the overpowering adrenalin rush. We get clammy and shaky and icky inside and out.
And most Aspies really, really, really do not like this feeling. A lot.
What many people don’t understand is that it is not just ‘negative’ stuff that can trigger this reaction. ‘Positive’ emotions and feelings are just as dangerous to Aspies and their end-result is just as unpleasant and uncomfortable – at times quite painful, physically!
So, as we grow up and try to cope with this world (!), we try to learn how to avoid ’emotionality’, even on a sub-conscious level.
If you know people with ADD/ADHD and/or Aspergers – or if you happen to be one yourself – please, try to see your experiences through the prism of my little hypothesis. Then, whether it ‘makes sense’ or not – or any other observations you might have about this, please, let me know through the comments. Pooling our observations and analysis might, perhaps, help us help each other!
(Cross-posted at Xanthippa on Aspergers)
Listen – and weep…
January 26, 2010 — xanthippaHaiti was hit by a horrible earthquake. This created a tragedy the proportions of which most of us have a hard time wrapping our brains about.
The good part of this is that so many people, all over the world, have done their best to send help to the people of Haiti. Good on each and every one of you!
Still, when bad stuff like this happens, even when other people try to help, there will be snags. These are unfortunate, but – they WILL happen! After all, this place has had so much of its infrastructure destroyed that it is a credit to all those truly ‘trying’ that so much of what needs to be done has been done!
Which is just sad when one looks at what the Clintons are doing….
Hillary Clinton owns a bunch of land in Haiti. She has planned to put up some extremely fancy hotels there….
Bill Clinton is in charge of a charity through which much of the US aid to Haiti is being channeled…help, like creating tourist jobs in swanky hotels…. You know – like using the `reconstruction`money to put up them hotels your wife always wanted!
Like I said, listen and weep…. (you might want to skip the first few minutes) as John C. Dvorak & Co. `follow the money’.
ACC is real – just not the way IPCC claims
December 1, 2009 — xanthippaLet’s face it: us pesky humans are constantly changing the climate around us!
From as far back as we know, we have always tried to create pockets of micro-climates where we controlled the water flow and maintained temperatures as close to the 20-22 degrees Celsius optimum as possible! We call these ‘our homes’.
And, we have become very good at creating and maintaining these human-changed pockets of climate!
As I point out to my husband just about every summer, when he suggests that camping might be a fun family activity: it took our ancestors thousands of years to develop running water at just the optimal temperature to fill a ‘soaker-tub’, it took centuries of engineering to be able to control the heating and cooling of our house with the touch of a button, it took decades of scientific research to put little box into our basement so I can connect to the whole world! To voluntarily sleep on the hard ground, separated from the elements by nothing but a thin piece of cloth held up by glorified sticks – that would be disrespectfully turning our backs on our ancestors!
The tent, of course, is also an artificial microclimate: but nowhere as nice as our home. But, ‘indoors’ is not the only climate we are building…
It is a well known phenomenon that the temperature inside a forest is several degrees cooler than in the meadow just beside it: this is a function of the type of vegetation that grows there. Plants use the energy from the air which surrounds them to eat up carbon dioxide and poop out oxygen – this energy ‘in the air’ is indeed what we measure as ‘temperature’.
In a meadow, the plants are usually (plus or minus) ‘knee deep’. In a forest, there are short plants, too – plus they are surrounded by plants which are much taller. And, all the green bits of these plants are eating up the carbon dioxide and cooling the air around them in the process. Since the plants here are ‘stacked up above each other’, and each bit is sucking in energy out of the air, it is not surprising that the forest is cooler than the adjoining meadow because some of the heat from the air is absorbed by the plants (and turned into food) at every layer of the forest.
When we surround our homes with tiny little short lawns, where each blade of grass is chopped into stunted obedience (admission – I think that ‘manicured lawns’ are hideous and unsightly, as well as philosophically offensive), we have replaced the trees and bushes which used to grow there with plants which are nowhere near as good at cooling the air as a forest (or even scrub, or the plants in a marsh) would be. We may not think of it that way, but when we mow our lawns and pull out the thistles, we are altering our climate by propagating plants which are relatively inefficient in cooling the air and reducing the carbon dioxide levels.
The same holds true when we cut down forests and plant crops (OK – I am not referring to Christmas tree farms….I mean grains, and so on). And I am not even talking about the large areas we pave, because we find pavement to be convenient – forests which absorb heat are now replaced by cement or asphalt which absorb the heat and radiate it right back out.
Predictably enough, the temperatures we measure in cities are higher than in the ones we measure in the countryside just outside them. This effect is called ‘urban heat islands’ and is well known to climatologists. (OK- my description is a simplification… these references do a better job.)
Here is a nifty video I came across, which really clearly illustrates this:
This video used the surface temperature data collected by NASA’s GISS – the same data was also available to the IPCC scientists…. If you would indulge me, I would like to point something out: I have not verified that what this kid and his dad have done is accurate. BUT – I could, if I wanted to! Because unlike the IPCC cabal, which swore they would rather delete their ‘source data’ than reveal it – and this data has, mysteriously, been accidentally deleted due to lack of storage memory (!), this kid and his dad have (in preparing a YouTube video) followed the scientific method with much greater integrity than our esteemed IPCC experts. Notice what theboy and his dad did:
- Stated what they wanted to find out, and why (their hypothesis)
- Stated where they took their data from (the NASA GISS site – they showed both the web address and screenshots), so people would be able to get the same data from there and check that they were not making it up, or that they did not make any mistakes.
- Stated how they selected the sites they used: a pair of readings, one inside a city, one in the countryside nearby
- Stated how they defined ‘city’ (minimum population size) and ‘countryside’ (maximum population size)
- Stated how they ‘controlled’ for geographic variations: the maximum distance separating the ‘city’ and ‘country’ pair, to make sure that they really were located in the same geographic area
- Showed the points they actually used – each and every one of them, along with the selection criteria, was scrolled down the screen, making it possible for everyone to check their work and reproduce it
- Showed their methodology: the dad explained, in detail – and repeating himself to make sure he was clear – exactly what they did with the data once they decided which points to use….again, everyone can follow his steps EXACTLY in order to verify his claims
- Showed intermediate results: the ‘in-between’ stages of the data, the various graphs, are shown and clearly explained what it is they are showing and how they were generated
- Showed final results and explained how they related to (confirmed, in this case) tw thheir hypothesis – in other words, they said this is why/how our results confirm what we said at the beginning
EVERYONE CAN RE-DO THIS TO CHECK IT FOR THEMSELVES!!!
And THAT is what ALL scientists are supposed to do – not just for little videos, but especially for work based on which trillions of dollars are being spent! But, I digress from my original point…
Which was that yes, we humans ARE changing the climate around us. If nothing else, this little amateur video has demonstrated this: but this ‘ACC’ is not caused by carbon dioxide emissions, it is caused by deforestation and urbanization….
Carbon caps will have no effect on it whatsoever!
In science, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
The CRU climatologists have not only failed to provide any proof of their claims (aside from their say-so), they have actively destroyed data so that nobody else can provide a proof, either. Without a proof, why should we believe them – especially when an alternative explanations for the same data, presented transparently and verifiably, is so easily available?
Diaspora and our ‘bronze-age-brains’
September 23, 2009 — xanthippaThere are two common-use meanings for this term: diaspora and Diaspora.
The ‘little d’ diaspora refers to any (more-or-less) peaceful migration or immigration or general re-settlement of a socially cohesive group of people with a well-defined social identity into an already populated area, with no intention of integrating into the host society. The ‘capital D’ diaspora refers to one specific ‘little d’ diaspora: the expulsion of Jews from Jerusalem by the Romans and their resultant scattering around the World.
At this point, I am only focusing on ‘little d’ diaspora.
This ‘diaspora’ is a curious concept: a group of people who share a common ancestry/language/culture/religion – such as a tribe, or a clan, settle in an area already inhabited by ‘different people’. Once there, they do not attempt to gain the land by conquest: they either legally purchase it or, if the population density is low, they simply settle there and eventually claim squatter’s rights. So, there is no war.
The ‘newcomers’ are usually not perceived as hostile, so the people in the ‘host culture’ do not harbour hostility towards them. Or, at least, not particularly so. At the beginning.
But, we, humans, have come to be who we are by following a certain path of social evolution.
Each one of us is, first and foremost, an individual. And, even in the most collectivistic of human societies, there is an acknowledgement (or a lament) that we are, indeed, individuals.
This fact that each of us is an individual does not, in any way, change that we are also very social: we nurture our young and have long learned that pooling our resources can help us survive and succeed. We don’t always agree on how much of our resources ought to be pooled, and how this pooling ought to be accomplished – but that is a different matter.
Different human societies have indeed reached different states of balance (or, imbalance) between the ‘individual’ and ‘society’. This is only to be expected, because humans are such a prolific organism that we thrive – or, at least, survive – in greatly varying regions of the world. These produce very different pressures (stresses) on the different human groups and their social rules that they govern themselves by. Thus, very different attitudes, moral codes and social rules had developed.
Many people I have talked to seem to think that there is some sort of a ‘universal’ set of rules of ‘morality’ that all people subscribe to. I am sorry to disappoint these people: there is no such thing. It is only because most cultures which had, historically, interacted with each other had been ones which were also in physical proximity: thus, both a similar set of environmental pressures and long-term contact (such as trade) between the cultures served to spread ideas, learn of each other’s attitudes – in short, served as a ‘normalizing’ pressure on the development of these cultures. This then gives an ‘appearance’ of ‘universal’ concepts of ‘right and wrong’.
Thus, this ‘universality’ is no more than an appearance. What worked for one group of people in one specific time and place became their set of ‘right and wrong’. Sure, if they learned a rule that seemed to produce better results, they usually found a way of incorporating this new rule into their society. (Often, this was in the form of a new deity – which is why so many monotheistic cultures seem to freeze in their ‘moral’ development… but THAT is a completely different post!)
Isolated cultures are prime examples of just how different ‘right and wrong’ is, depending on the pressures on the society. Most ‘mainland’ cultures prospered if there were more offspring: the more babies born, the more were likely to survive and become productive members of their clan, the better the clan did. So, in most of these cultures, homosexuality (actually, most activities which would divert natural sex-drive away from baby-production) was forbidden and became considered ‘immoral’. I remember my Anthropology prof telling us about an isolated culture on a small South Pacific island, where the overpopulation was the stress which drove the development of the society. On this island, homosexuality was not only permitted, it was considered to be morally superior to heterosexuality! As a matter of fact, heterosexual sex was taboo for over 300 days of the year…
The same is true of ‘murder’ – the concept of ‘killing another human being’ as ‘bad’ or ‘immoral’ is actually not all that common… as I have ranted on before.
As any physician will readily confirm, our brains are not any different from those of our bronze-age ancestors. Sure, when we have better nutrition and vitamins, when we grow up mostly free of diseases, our brains develop into a much fuller potential then they would otherwise. But not all our ancestors were malnurished or ill…. Our brains are have the very same physical characteristics, the same ‘blueprint’, if you will, that the brains of our bronze-age-ancestors did.
What differentiates us from our ancestors is our culture – our learning and our social attitudes. In other words, ‘culture’ is what ‘defines us’ as ‘us’.
As opposed to ‘them’.
And this ‘them’ concept is extremely important to the way our ‘bronze-age blueprint-of-a-brain’: because in our bronze-age past, ‘them’ could never really be trusted! The simple fact that ‘they’ were not ‘us’, but ‘they’ meant that ‘they’ did not have a vested interest in ‘our’ survival.
That is why so many ‘ kings/chieftains’ would marry a daughter of a king/chieftain with whom they had just reached a peace-treaty: the ‘father-king’ would have a vested interest in the survival of his grand-children, just as the ‘bride-groom-king’ has a vested interest in the survival of his own children. This marriage and its ‘blood-bond’ reduces the ‘they’ factor and makes both sides see the other as at least a little bit more part of ‘us’.
Which brings me back to the ‘diaspora’: the very point of a diaspora is that the newcomers do not become part of the ‘us’ which surrounds them. By the very definition of the word ‘diaspora’, these newcomers have a fully formed cultural (which includes religious) identity of their own and are not willing to compromise it in any way – especially through mingling of the blood!
In other words, the newcomers – by their choice – do not become ‘us’ to their neighbours/hosts.
This results in both sides being unable to fully trust each other: blame our ‘bronze-aged brains’!
The ‘frog in hot water’ story…
September 1, 2009 — xanthippaFirst of all, I must say that I do not approve of this sort of experiments. Not at all.
Still, this story is worth learning from:
If someone puts a frog into a pot of very hot water, the frog will jump out of the pot. BUT, if one puts the frog into a pot of cool water, and then heats it up very, very slowly, the frog will not jump out – it will allow itself to be boiled!
Because the temperature is increasing so slowly, there is no ‘trigger’ to signal the danger in the frog…so the frog takes no action to avoid it!
When it comes to our rights and freedoms, we are a lot like these frogs: because our rights are being eroded very, very slowly, we just sit there and allow it to go on and on and on, without lifting a finger to try and preserve the very rights and freedoms which define our society.
Because the process of erosion of our rigthts is so slow and gradual, we lack the ‘trigger’, that one ‘oppression’ which is, on its own, worth standing up and starting to fight!
And that is, in a very real way, true. No single little encroachment on our rights, no new little oppression, is, by itself, so big that it alone would be worthy of a ‘revolt‘. That is why it is so easy to ridicule those who get incensed about it!
But it is the continuous process of steady and unmistakable – and, it seems, unavoidable – usurption of our rights, encroachment on our freedoms, which is going to leave us slaves of The State:
- The State will control what we can spend all of our money on (they will tax just about all our disposable income and only give us ‘tax-rebates’ to buy the products they ‘approve’: an ‘allowance’ which we will only ‘get’ if we spend it ‘the right way’)
- The State will control what medical care is warranted, and when, and who maybenefit from it and who may not (many ‘smokers’ are already being denied medical treatment…just the tip of the iceberg: the justification that ‘we are all paying into Medicare, so we have the right what ‘risks’ to your health you must avoid’ will be used more and more to control people’s private behaviour, threatening to deny medical treatment to those who do not comply) (OK – I worded this badly…I am trying to get across that The State already does, and will do so more and more, use the justification that it is ‘paid into by’ everyone’ – so ‘everyone’ has the responsibily to only use it ‘wisely’ – and since they are administering it, they get to decided what is ‘using it wisely’ ‘ to weild ‘Medicare’ as a means of controlling more and more of our behaviours.)
- The State already controls what we may or may not eat/put into our body – and these laws are becoming more and more intrusive, and will continue this trend
- The State is passing more and more laws which erode private property rights and regulate how we may or may not behave while we are ‘in our private homes’
- The State already controls education
- More and more people are becoming directly or indirectly employed by The State, as The State is increasingly usurping the roles of private businesses: this gives The State even more intrusive control over the populationwhile effectively suppressing dissent (most people are afraid to ‘bite the hand that feeds them’)
- The State is increasingly controlling what we may or may not say – and has even, through its singularly misnamed ‘Human Rights Commissions/Tribunals’ – found a way to punish people for thinking forbidden thoughts!
- …the list goes on and on and on…
And because each tiny little step is so small, we are letting it happen!
We should pay attention to the ‘frog in hot water’ story, before it is too late to ‘jump out of the pot’!
A chat with Lisa MacLeod
July 27, 2009 — xanthippaWhat interesting times we live in!
Tonight, Lisa MacLeod – the newly named Finance critic in Tim Hudak’s shadow cabinet – hosted a meet-and-greet with Tim Hudak.
It was very lovely. Truly.
And while I spent most of my time talking with other attendees – especially with fellow immigrants to Canada – about our negative experiences with official Apartheid Multiculturalism policies (the latest honour dishonour killings made people – and not just us, immigrants – very, very angry), I did get to exchange a word or two with a few of the celebs there.
It’s been a very long day – and my stamina is still very low – so this will have to be a very brief post. Yet, these little bits are well worth mentioning!
Mr. Pierre Poilievre was there and we exchanged a few words about the latest lawfare suit launched by one of ‘The Sock Puppets’ against Ezra Levant. (Aside: Wednesday, July 29th 2009, there will be an online fundraiser for Mr.Levant’s defense fund at Mark Steyn’s online store . He is fighting this battle for all of us! Thanks to BCF and 5’ofF for the tip!)
Then, I had a little chat with Lisa MacLeod, my host. She was, well, to put it mildly, not impressed with what I have written about her in the past. I can’t say I’m surprised, or that I blame her! What can I say – she makes very lousy 1st impressions…which I did mention, unless I am much mistaken…
I must say that her reaction surprised me a little. I was expecting her to be most upset by my criticism of her conduct as a politician…which we went into, very briefly. Yes, the tention in the air was, as they say, palpable.
Still, it was my criticism of her parenting that really, really upset her. I must admit, I was not willing to back down – I write what I see, as I see it; no more, no less and I asked her if what I wrote was incorrect. This seemed to upset Ms. MacLeod: the anger seemed to dissipate and be replaced by a different kind of ‘upset’. That is good: it showed me that beneath the ‘thick-skinned politician’ veneer (which I was so turned off by), there may be a truly genuine person who cares about the important things in life!
At this point, Ms. MacLeod excused herself and went to watch her daughter play at the nearby playstructure.
Now, I am thinking that I may have been too quick to judge her: that I fell for the image she tries to project (not one I would advise projecting) and failed to see the person behind it. If she convinces me I was wrong about her, I’ll write about it.
IF she convinces me!
‘Communion scandal’ improves Harper’s image
July 21, 2009 — xanthippaPerhaps this is obvious to everyone, perhaps it has been written about and I have missed it…
Did the ‘Communion scandal‘ actually improved Prime Minister Harper‘s image? Is that, at least partially, why the polls are saying his popularity is up by 7 points (as per Angus Reid poll, reported on CFRA today)?
Let me explain my reasoning…
Steven Harper is a lot of things: an awesome economist (and, in these turbulent times, most of us prefer to have an economist rather than a lawyer or an academic without any experience outside the College campus.). That is a big plus for Mr. Harper.
But, his political opponents have always successfully exploited the fact that, for ever, Steven Harper will be associated (in the minds of most urban Canadians, especially those in Ontario and Quebec) with the ‘Evangelical’ taint his Reform Party past brings. Rightly or wrongly, the Reform Party could not shake the kind of ‘Sarah Palin-type- thingy’ (please excuse the technical jargon…): right on so many things, but, kind of scary when it comes to ‘faith issues’….
In some places, politicians are ‘expected’ to be ‘religious’: it ‘proves’ to the ‘little people’ that they are ‘humble’ and ‘pious’…. This is still true of ‘US conservatives’ – at least, this is more true of them than any other Western ‘group’.
Why these ought to be good qualities in a political leader, I don’t know!
As a matter of fact, I seriously question whether people who are willing to put religious faith above facts and reason – and, especially above the will of voters – ought to be in any positions of power whatsoever. After all, I would like the laws governing my country to be reasonable – not faith based!
Here, it is important to note that this ‘faith’ could be religious or ideological – it does not make an iota of difference in the practical impact of ‘faith-based’ laws on our society!
Though Canadians are very poor in recognizing ‘ideological faith, we are very sensitive to ‘religious faith’. Therefore, any suggestions that a politician might be so religious as to obey the tenets of his religion over the will of his constituents when drafting laws and policies harms that politician. It makes it very unlikely that he/she would get a majority, because the large urban areas will not take what they perceive as that big a risk.
And, more and more Canadians are aware of just how many religious leaders abuse their power. This is not specific to any one faith – one could easily find examples of abuse from just about every religious sect. Rather, more and more people suspect that the fault lies in allowing any man or woman to exercise power over another, using spirituality as the ultimate weapon: obey, submit, behave this way and believe this dogma – or you will suffer eternal torture…
That is why most organized religions in Canada are loosing members: dogmatization of spirituality is becoming more and more unacceptable to urbanized, mainstream Canadians! And that includes Canadians of all political bends…
When the Roman Catholic Church said that priests ought to deny ‘Communion’ to any politician who does not vote to ban abortion, there was a serious backlash against the Roman Catholic Church. This was widely understood to be ‘spiritual blackmail’ of the politician: threatening him/her with eternal damnation of his’her soul UNLESS he/she placed the Papist dogma above the will of their constituents!
The ‘little ‘l’ liberal’ Canadians are loath of any erosion in the ‘secularity’ of our laws: they will never support a politician whom they suspect of having a religious agenda!
Perhaps not surprisingly, there are more and more ‘non-religious’ ‘little ‘c’ conservatives. People who do support many core conservative values, but who are very uncomfortable with the ‘religious’ component of today’s Conservative movement. Very, very, very uncomfortable!
Just remember John Tory!
Steven Harper – with all his good and bad points – had a problem shaking the ‘religious’ image of the old Reform Party. And his political opponents exploited it very, very skilfully.
Now, to this ‘Communion scandal’:
Some Roman Catholic Cleric attacked Steven Harper for his conduct during a Catholic funeral mass which Steven Harper attended. It would appear that the priest walked up to the people sitting in on the benches in the church. Steven Harper offered him a hand for a handshake – that is what politicians do, they shake hands as a symbol of greeting or acceptance or a number of other things.
The priest, instead of shaking the offered hand, stuck a communion wafer in it.
Now, the PM was ‘damned if he did/damned if he did not’ do just about anything.
Had he rejected the wafer and tried to give it back to the priest, he would be committing a grave offense: he would be ‘rejecting Jesus himself’!
Had he tried to minimize damage by pocketing the damned thing and giving it back to the priest later, he would create horrible offense: one does not ‘stick Jesus in a pocket’!
And, had he committed ritual cannibalism and eaten the ‘literal flesh of Christ’ – as Roman Catholics believe they are doing when they consume a Communion Wafer – he would be giving great offense because non-Roman Catholic Christians are not allowed the salvation which eating the flesh of a dead guy is supposed to bring, according to the RC dogma.
The PM took the latest option. And, was immediately attacked for not being a fine young cannibal! A bunch of RC clerics attacked him, for ‘offending their faith’ – while not saying a peep about the latest child sex-abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church became public that day!
Steven Harper’s political opponents – seeing an opening to attack – made the most of the story. The one about the PM accepting a communion wafer – not the one about more RC priest pedophiles. They ‘shouted it from the rooftops’! They got it into all kinds of papers, so no Canadian could remain unaware that Steven Harper is insensitive to religion!
Wait a minute!
Steven Harper was trying to shake the ‘he’s too easily influenced by religion’ image – especially among the urban folk. And now, his opponents are announcing to everyone that Steven Harper is not religious enough???
What an effective way to allay those fears of people who liked him, but worried he might be a religious freak! He’s just a normal guy, after all!
No wonder that Steven Harper’s popularity went up!
Islamic Stars
July 16, 2009 — xanthippaThis is one of the most beautiful patterns I have ever seen: mousing over it and seeing how the pattern changes has kept me occupied for hours!
(Hence, no other post… but it is worth it!)
DANG!!!
Despite trying, I cannot seem to be able to embed this into my blog!!! Disappointing!!!
OK – here is the next best thing: the link. And, please notice that you can go to other images, too! Just follow the icon on the bottom right and click left or right. Some of the other images are also WAY better than any TV show!
Hours of entertainment!
Cross posted at ‘Xanthippa on Aspergers’
‘THE’ question about Michael Jackson: was he a castrato?
July 12, 2009 — xanthippaI hardly ever follow ‘pop culture’: as in, what the latest celebrities are doing, and so on. Heck, I don’t even know who the latest celebrities are!
But it has been just about impossible to escape the recent ‘Michael Jackson’ media frenzy. I must say, I was rather baffled by the amount of publicity this guy’s death and funeral/memorial generated.
Even usually sane talk-shows waded into these waters.
And people were calling in!!! Ratings went up!!! Curious…
SOOOOO much was being said… And no matter where I tuned in, I could not escape some MJ coverage.
These are the things I heard people say about Michael Jacksom. I don’t know how true they are… But, they were said by many different people, and seem to be ‘accepted’ as ‘general background’, and even a simple search of the internet will get lots of hits about these claims:
- Michael Jackson had the mind of a 12-year-old boy – he never really grew up mentally. This is something I did not hear before – and the trigger for my ‘chain of reasoning’.
- Michael Jackson hated his father. His father, Joseph Jackson, was mentally and physically abusive of him (actually, he admitted abusing of all of his children).
- Michael Jackson was so afraid of his father, that he would vomit upon seeing him (that is what he said in the famous Oprah Winfrey interview). Just how horrible was the thing Joseph did to Michael, to evoke a response this extreme?
- Some people have even gone so far as to suggest that Michael Jackson’s many plastic surgeries were a direct response to his father’s abuse as well as an attempt to be as different from his father as possible.
- Joseph Jackson was (and still is) obsessed with becoming a ‘part’ of the music business: he did not balk at using fear, intimidation and physical violence to force his children to practice and to perform…. When he lost control over Michael Jackson and his career, he still found ways to exploit his son’s fame for his own profit (behind Michael’s back) – and has really been cashing is since his famous son’s death. He’s even voiced ideas about getting Michael Jackson’s kids on-stage, now that Michael is dead…
Add to this:
- Michael Jackson had build himself a residence that was part amusement park – and called it ‘Neverland Ranch‘. It was named for the place where Peter Pan lived: a place where boys who cannot grow up live…
- He also had a series of inappropriate relationships with boys – about 12-year old ones, to be precise. While some people think these relationships were Platonic (in the true sense of the word: sex between males), others claim them to have been platonic (as the word is currently popularly used: an asexual relationship). Either way, it is not ‘normal’ for an adult male to ‘best relate’ to pre-teen boys and to actively seek friendships with them in the manner Michael Jackson did.
- Michael Jackson’s children are not biologically his. They were conceived through artificial insemination, using sperm from a donor. (OK, there were times he claimed otherwise – but this has since been shown to be false.)
- During a ‘normal’ man’s life, his body changes proportions. Of course, there are individual variations: these changes are more noticeable in some men than in others. Still, most men – once they hit puberty – exhibit some physical changes, and not just in their genitals. The chin (can’t tell with MJ’s surgeries…), the hands, the Adam’s apple, the chest/shoulders, and so on. Still, Michael Jackson’s body retained the proportions of a pre-teen boy, including the flexibility needed for his famous dancing style.
- If you listen (or, are forced to listen) to Michael Jackson’s singing, his voice does NOT sound like the voice of a grown man. It is unusually high…
Do you see where this is leading? Is THE QUESTION ‘jumping out’ at you? I find it unavoidable!
Was Michael Jackson a castrato?
Did his father (the man who did not shrink from violence to force his children to perform, and who, for his whole life, has been obsessed with being ‘in the music business’) think his young son’s voice was too precious to loose to puberty?
Did Joseph Jackson arrange to have Michael ‘altered’, so his voice would never change?!?!?
Have a listen to the only known recording of a true castrato voice here. You can just about hear the same voice belting out: “Billy Jean is not my lover…”
So, what do we know about the castrati ad their lives? (Castrati are different from eunuchs, who are castrated after the onset of puberty.)
- There are colourful tales of the ‘castrati of the past’ and their various sexual ‘quirks’…
- Typically, castrati have long, slim limbs and retain unusually high levels of flexibility….
- And, of course, there is that legendary castrato voice: it is not the voice of a child – it does undergo some changes. Still, it does not sound like the voice of a grown man, nor that of a woman, but is said to have the best qualities of all three, enchanting audiences with its universal appeal.
And what does science have to say about this?
- At the onset of puberty (10-12 years of age, for most boys), the release of testosterone into their bodies actually causes a physical re-arrangement of the brain. (There is a similar effect on female brains, due to the release of estrogen.)
- Anyone who reads ‘Frontiers in Neuroendocrinology’ will certainly recall Volume 26, No. 3-4, which includes: ‘Pubertal hormones organize the adolescent brain and behavior’:
“… Converging lines of evidence indicate that adolescence may be a sensitive period for [testosterone/estrogen] steroid-dependent brain organization and that variation in the timing of interactions between the hormones of puberty and the adolescent brain leads to individual differences in adult behavior and risk of sex-biased psychopathologies.” (The emphasis and [insert] were added by me.)
Peter Pan, after whom Michael Jackson named his ‘dream home’, lived in a place where young boys could not grow up – even if they wanted to. They had to leave ‘Neverland’ in order to grow up… but, perhaps, Michael Jackson did not have the choice to leave – perhaps he was stuck there, for ever.
I ask again: is it possible that Michael Jackson was a castrato?
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 