That's not very likely. Most organ transplant recipients die of acute or chronic rejection, not the sorts of things that lend people to be being organ donors. Remember that most donations are from traumatic conditions, where the general state of health has not deteriorated before death (think motorcycle accident or being shot by your elected leaders.)
The only excpetion is kidneys, which can be harvested from a healthy living human, but the emphasis is healthy. When you have recieved any organ via transplant, you traded whatever chronic disease you had previously for a new one: organ recipient. It involves a life of immunosuppression, and in many individuals the underlying disease recurs anyway.
If its acute, it may be post surgical, in which case most organs will probably be underperfused and damaged.
Chronic rejection is less well understood but the blood vessels in the transplanted organs rapidly (months to years) lay down a new layer and become occluded, sort of like atheroscleosis in coronary vessels associated with your friendly american diet.
Due to the immunosuppression, many get chronic infections, including fungi (Candida or apergillis), CMV, and others that cause all sorts of havoc and would be lethal in a newly transplanted patient.
In fact, taking the same organ out of a person only happens when it fails and is being replaced - it is never 're-usable'. There are many folks who have outlived several transplanted organs that have each failed via combinations of chronic and acute rejection, and via UNOS organ procurement and allocation rules they get shunted to the top of the list.
I met one patient who was on their fifth kidney. Dont ask where it came from. But they had the others scattered across their abdomen.
Tissue is another matter, but you dont need a live donor for that.
Its on the order of 10,000 bacteria and fungal spores a day for an average city dweller, not to mention the soot, debris, and who-knows-what from the towns next door.
A healthy immune system can handle a tremendous number of bugs in the lungs.
Actually, this type of meat would need to be harvested from cells from a living animal. The prohibition against eating a portion of a living animal, even a kosher one, would tend to argue against this ever being kosher.
If you were to harvest from blood or bone marrow stem cells, you would still be faced with tha prohibition against blood.
That's what we do here in medical school. The lectures are taped (video), and we watch whenever we want, as they are available on a secure website.
In some courses, no physical lectures are offered - all are taped beforehand, rather professionally, with slides, highlights and all, and we can watch them whenever want. It works because here they are trying to cram as much information into us as quickly as possible, regardless of our tuition.
As for teacher contact, this gives us time for small group discussions, journal clubs, etc - we dont ditch the face time.
###
One of my office mates was an interesting fellow. He had a real problem making eye contact with people, loud
noises, or physical contact. I wouldn't call him a guru, exactly, but competent I suppose. It's hard to call someone a guru when they largely remind you of a squirrel. For kicks, a coworker would sneak up behind him and scream AHHHH!! just to watch him go white and literally run out of the room.
###
FYI, That sounds like a classic case of the hypersensitivity that goes along with mild asperger's syndrome. Lack of eye contact is a hallmark as well. At least this guy was able to hold a job...
hey rob, its avatar... cool to see some other towers/AAST people posting on slashdot... and useful info too!, who woulda thought... who knows if you'll ever see this either...
Resolved [00.48], the President is authorized to establish a non-refundable fee of USD $50,000 for the submission of an application to become a sponsor or operator of a registry, which the Board finds is a reasonable estimate of ICANN's costs likely to be associated with receipt and evaluation of such applications, and follow-up.
does anyone not think this is a large fee for applying, enough to prevent a.booyeah or a.wazzup, but do 'free' orginazations have this kind of money to just throw away? this does not include fees that might come later for running a TLD and connecting to the rest of the network...
In travels with samantha, and many of your other musings you sound much like an ordinary grad student or CS/Comp E geek [a good thing, IMHO].
Has starting up your own succesful company and the daily activities associated with running it changed you? Or would you say the changes are more due to someone like eve;->?
[this is a distinct separate question from my other post]
You have done many great things, your photography and coding alone are astounding, but you had it rather lucky - its probably much easier to step up from MIT than it is from many other places...
How could/would/should someone who doesn't have all of these opperotunities teach themselves what they need for our digital age?
I know how much it peeves you that MIT is so economically hard to get to [this hits home for me, the EXACT and ONLY reason I am not at MIT now is the price], but not every university can afford hardware for kids to play with. Most elementary schools dont have any hardware or the ability to teach the math, or other skills, that our kids need to get ahead...
Did you have access to an education that helped shape and direct your future? If not, how did you get to do what you did? How would you recommend that others help themselves to where they can be self-supporting and have fun?
thanks
btw, I just got reading travels w/ Samantha for the second time, it was even better than the 1st... not only one of the best sites of '93-'94, but now as well...
I am serious about this - when did you decide to grow it out? Do you feel it has helped shape your life or set you apart?
I have a younger brother who skipped a few months of haircutting and wrote his first compiler at 15. Is it the hair? He is growing it out now, will he be the next champion of programming?
it appears that he was only talking about the BSD kernel being open source, not the extenstions on top of it...
these extensions are what forms the 'consumer' and 'UI' basis of Mac OS X, namely:
Quartz - Postscript based 2d Graphics OpenGL - 3D Aqua - UI Classic, Carbon, Cocoa - the API's...
etc...
but either way, this keynote rocks! The fact that apple is moving the kernel in this direction not as a consolation but because it will benefit everyone, is great to see...
I could be wrong, they could be open sourcing the entire thing, but I somehow don't see apple paying NeXT engineers to write a UI that everyone else can grab and use as they please...
my 2 cents, i see a long and bright future for apple...
I have been waiting for the day when I could thank you for the path you have led us down. Even if this comment does not get moderated up and sent to you, I hope you'll take the time to peruse all of what we've said and see it - because I mean it, and I'm sure that my feelings echo those of hundreds (thousands!) of fellow slashdotters.
What do I thank you for? For innovation, for hard work, for going back to education and doing what you love, for hacking together the coolest hardware when people said you couldn't do it, for putting up and understanding the other Steve when those with less of a backbone would have walked away, for keeping up with the times and the community 20 years later, and giving this interview...
Long live the Great Woz!
[Yes, I have some questions to ask, and I hope you read them too, but when I have this chance I feel it's more important that I, and We, say thanks - come on moderators, let Woz know what we think of him!]
well, this might be some 'hoax', but *someone* at apple posted a patch even though they seem to be off...
this is really standard stuff, there are at least as many misconfigured routers out there (on biggger pipes) than static IP OS9 machines... i doubt the existence of ANY Y2K plot using these machines...
if this is a server, don't go with IDE - you are a business looking for *safety* of the data as well as performance, and should be willing to fork over the extra 20 to 100 percent it takes for scsi...
as for controllers, i say mylex, high-end adapter of your choice, i would beef it up to 128 megs of ram in any case...
as for the drives, go 10,000 RPM, the difference in access times will help you out, and i think that is much more important in your case than trasfer rate... for an ISP, i would only ever buy IBM or Seagate drives, reputable workhorses that they are...
for great cases and setups, i honestly recommend macgurus.com - they specialize in mac stuff, but a scsi tower is a scsi tower, and they will build it with good components at a reasonable price to whatever specs you need... (no, i dont work for them)...
1) These files were NOT on student websites. They were on students' own machines shared via Microsoft Networking.
doesnt matter - there are methods of sharing with microsoft networking across subnets - if i can do it, so can the RIAA
2) Many of the computers found "in violation" had their shares passworded. However, CMU tried to guess passwords when it ran into them. So if they could guess it, they considered it public access.
see above, if i can guess it, so can the hackers and the RIAA... but i believe this is tresspassing, and akin to picking a lot and saying 'it was a crappy lock', which is clearly illegal... CMU went too far here...
3) The uproar is not so much about the school trying to reduce mp3 sharing over their network, but the manner in which they did it.......
Clearly what CMU has done, by going into folders not marked as public and guessing passwords has violated their own Code of Ethics. That has gotten a lot of people pretty upset. They followed the rules but lost access anyway.
agreed... the question is whether the mp3/mp3 account was there for simplicity or so your friends from 7 nearby schools could log in and leech...
4. The students affected could reduce the time they lost network access by a few weeks by going to a stupid "education" seminar to hear why copyright infringement is bad, and then write some paper along those lines. I think those that did that get their access back on Nov 14, or something like that.
it shoudn't take so long, these kids were not driving drunk...
5. Computing Services sent out an email to the student body giving their side of the event. You can find the text here.
like some other schools, this email should have been sent out before the event, so that the kids would not have publicly shared the stuff!
i figured you would be better equipped than most to answer this...
do they surf open.gov.ok and ever comment on your work? have you gotten to meet them and talk about this kind of stuff? what about members of parliament? are any of them super-techies? will i run into prince willim or harry on IRC?
ok, this is a question about how your education and mathematical knowledge has helped you code (IMHO) some of the most revolutionary visual software out there...
you often mention the mathematical basis behind how you change your algorithms - rarely have i heard developers mention positive derivatives and 4th degree equations in their sigs...
how much math does the average game programmer know? how much do feel you know? did you take calc II and linear algebra in college and end there, or did you continue up to a math degree? this is a very open question, any general thoughts on the the subject would be enlightening...
ok, a little offtopic from the discussions, but maybe if you read this, it will make a little more sense...
yes, the family of diseases and 'wanting to know' are very much related, this is something i have been saying for several years...
some background - being 'bright' runs in the family... my great-granfather invented the modern cinderblock (someone had to:), although the nazis killed him and stole the patents:( )... my father is one of the top mech-aero quality experts in the nation, with a 3D mind like no other, my mom's father still teaches at the technion university (the israeli MIT) at 84, and my mom is the smartest stats major i know:>... one of my younger brothers is taking graduate math courses as a high-school freshman, and has started coding for competition... a cousin is a chess champ, etc... this is not bragging (i think i'm pretty bright too), just background...
why? because we are all 'different' - we are not very social, but no one has to be... its just that every generation or so, someone gets 'it' - they cannot relate to the outside world... this has always been the person's fault, only with this generation has it been understood to be a disease, possibly genetic in nature... it's now fairly obvious that autism/asperger's runs in the family...
this time, it was my youngest brother... the (supposedly best) doctors were morons and missed the fact that he is legally blind (its very common along with Asperger's and autism)... he was borderline for Autism and Asperger's, but was high-functioning from the start...when he got glasses, and began going to a special school in the area, things began to improve, and he started to act more normal for his age - i do no mean 'playing with tonka trucks' normal - there are certian 'milestones' that every child needs to reach in the development process, such as toilet training, dressing and feeding oneself, etc... for example, he just lied for the first time at age 8 - this is something kids should do at age 5 or so... weirdly enough, my mom called me at college to tell me about - it was that important and exiting to her...
either way, how did it scale with him? he tought himself to speak and read hebrew and english at age 3, his fine motor skills (another common related condition) were so poor that only at age 5 was he able to begin writing... now he types, after having mastered how to uninstall every component on our Win98 box... he reads about 10 books a week (at 3 or 4 grade levels above his age), and has gone through almost every volume of our dead-tree encyclopaedia britannica - and he knows the stuff too... i explain things like atomic structure and weather formations to him, and he ALWAYS wants to listen... like all of us, he has a penchant for learning and understanding the world around us...
and the most important part? he is the nicest kid i have ever known, and i am VERY proud to have him as my brother - he wants everyone around himself to be happy, and does all he can to ensure it... he also realizes that he is 'different' - and it bothers him... one day in a mall, my father saw a 'support autism research' booth, and gave a donation - my brother asked, why, and my dad told him he was autistic, so when he came home that afternoon, he asked us all what it meant - can you imagine telling a 7 year old this? well, he knows a bit about it know, and it helps him to understand how he is different...
well, why do i write?
Please, Please, Please, Don't Glorify It...
This is not something YOU want to have... it is a disease, it is debilitating, and it is not fun... for those who have it seriously, like my brother, can you imagine what its like to be missing part of your humanity? now, he is no less of a human, but the perils of society unfortunately define him as so... there is a specific ability which we all assume in each other which is just GONE... something on the empathic level, the ability to relate to others on a level other than biology...
also, autism has some weird features - it is surprisingly common (many folks have met/seen autistic people and now known), it affects ALL races and geographic locations equally, and boys about twice as often as girls... Doug Flutie and Sylvester Stallone have autistic children, as do teachers, homeless folks, politicians, and anyone...
it's not gonna make you code better, its not gonna make you smarter, it just correlates, to varying degrees... often have I felt like I cannot relate to folks, and since i have seen the formal definitions of autism, i have been able to see much more how i have it to a certian degree...for example, Autists are very sensetive, just in general - i have seen this in myself as well... i can take 1/2 as much medication to work just as effectivly, i have to wear sunglasses outside so i dont get headaches, etc... it has helped my life very much to realize how i am...
so why do i think it is related? its very hard for me to say, i have been struggling with it for years...
is it a gift? that i am intelligent, yes... that my brother's inteligence has been hampered, no... that his ability to understand other people has been compromised, it's an infinite loss...
but, not all is forsaken... in his school, he has learned to better understand us, to speak well, to have patience, to eat and go to the bathroom, and to learn what it is to be a person growing up... and now he is getting back to the mainstream, to be with some non-classified kids...
he might never live on his own, or hold a normal job, but i know the possibilites of what he can do in our world are great - he hungers for knowing, and i am proud to have him as my brother...
here i must that the teachers and workers, and most of all, my mom and dad, for making sure he gets the best chance of getting living a good life...
all i can think of 'this' is that my brother was given a gift... one that does not make up for what he had taken away...
Slashdot Mirror
I am curious as well - what do they run for the end customer as compared to a 'natural'?
That's not very likely. Most organ transplant recipients die of acute or chronic rejection, not the sorts of things that lend people to be being organ donors. Remember that most donations are from traumatic conditions, where the general state of health has not deteriorated before death (think motorcycle accident or being shot by your elected leaders.)
The only excpetion is kidneys, which can be harvested from a healthy living human, but the emphasis is healthy. When you have recieved any organ via transplant, you traded whatever chronic disease you had previously for a new one: organ recipient. It involves a life of immunosuppression, and in many individuals the underlying disease recurs anyway.
If its acute, it may be post surgical, in which case most organs will probably be underperfused and damaged.
Chronic rejection is less well understood but the blood vessels in the transplanted organs rapidly (months to years) lay down a new layer and become occluded, sort of like atheroscleosis in coronary vessels associated with your friendly american diet.
Due to the immunosuppression, many get chronic infections, including fungi (Candida or apergillis), CMV, and others that cause all sorts of havoc and would be lethal in a newly transplanted patient.
In fact, taking the same organ out of a person only happens when it fails and is being replaced - it is never 're-usable'.
There are many folks who have outlived several transplanted organs that have each failed via combinations of chronic and acute rejection, and via UNOS organ procurement and allocation rules they get shunted to the top of the list.
I met one patient who was on their fifth kidney. Dont ask where it came from. But they had the others scattered across their abdomen.
Tissue is another matter, but you dont need a live donor for that.
I noticed and was about to post the same thing... I love those Technion graduates!
"Blue" cheese and some others have mold (fungi) to add color/flavor - thats why they put them in cellars or caves
Its on the order of 10,000 bacteria and fungal spores a day for an average city dweller, not to mention the soot, debris, and who-knows-what from the towns next door.
A healthy immune system can handle a tremendous number of bugs in the lungs.
Actually, this type of meat would need to be harvested from cells from a living animal. The prohibition against eating a portion of a living animal, even a kosher one, would tend to argue against this ever being kosher.
If you were to harvest from blood or bone marrow stem cells, you would still be faced with tha prohibition against blood.
It would need to be explicity clarified...
That's what we do here in medical school. The lectures are taped (video), and we watch whenever we want, as they are available on a secure website.
In some courses, no physical lectures are offered - all are taped beforehand, rather professionally, with slides, highlights and all, and we can watch them whenever want. It works because here they are trying to cram as much information into us as quickly as possible, regardless of our tuition.
As for teacher contact, this gives us time for small group discussions, journal clubs, etc - we dont ditch the face time.
Expensive?
I just intalled a Linksys device (link not handy) that is a WAN router w/ Nat, cost $50...
largest portion of the cost is probably the switched 100 megabit ports, they jack up the price as you go from 4 to 8 to 20...
In fact, I can use another to create another private network and resell the bandwidth!
###
One of my office mates was an interesting fellow. He had a real problem making eye contact with people, loud
noises, or physical contact. I wouldn't call him a guru, exactly, but competent I suppose. It's hard to call someone a guru when they largely remind you of a squirrel. For kicks, a coworker would sneak up behind him and scream AHHHH!! just to watch him go white and literally run out of the room.
###
FYI, That sounds like a classic case of the hypersensitivity that goes along with mild asperger's syndrome. Lack of eye contact is a hallmark as well. At least this guy was able to hold a job...
hey rob, its avatar... cool to see some other towers/AAST people posting on slashdot... and useful info too!, who woulda thought... who knows if you'll ever see this either...
- avatar - (noy)
from the ICANN website:
.booyeah or a .wazzup, but do 'free' orginazations have this kind of money to just throw away? this does not include fees that might come later for running a TLD and connecting to the rest of the network...
Resolved [00.48], the President is authorized to establish a non-refundable fee of USD
$50,000 for the submission of an application to become a sponsor or operator of a registry,
which the Board finds is a reasonable estimate of ICANN's costs likely to be associated with
receipt and evaluation of such applications, and follow-up.
does anyone not think this is a large fee for applying, enough to prevent a
agreed
mod this up, he should get the prize...
thank you, scientology?
thank you slashdot crew for listening to us! - noy -
In travels with samantha, and many of your other musings you sound much like an ordinary grad student or CS/Comp E geek [a good thing, IMHO].
;->?
Has starting up your own succesful company and the daily activities associated with running it changed you? Or would you say the changes are more due to someone like eve
[this is a distinct separate question from my other post]
You have done many great things, your photography and coding alone are astounding, but you had it rather lucky - its probably much easier to step up from MIT than it is from many other places...
How could/would/should someone who doesn't have all of these opperotunities teach themselves what they need for our digital age?
I know how much it peeves you that MIT is so economically hard to get to [this hits home for me, the EXACT and ONLY reason I am not at MIT now is the price], but not every university can afford hardware for kids to play with. Most elementary schools dont have any hardware or the ability to teach the math, or other skills, that our kids need to get ahead...
Did you have access to an education that helped shape and direct your future? If not, how did you get to do what you did? How would you recommend that others help themselves to where they can be self-supporting and have fun?
thanks
btw, I just got reading travels w/ Samantha for the second time, it was even better than the 1st... not only one of the best sites of '93-'94, but now as well...
Is the hair the secret to your power?
I am serious about this - when did you decide to grow it out? Do you feel it has helped shape your life or set you apart?
I have a younger brother who skipped a few months of haircutting and wrote his first compiler at 15. Is it the hair? He is growing it out now, will he be the next champion of programming?
Thank you and good day.
it appears that he was only talking about the BSD kernel being open source, not the extenstions on top of it...
these extensions are what forms the 'consumer' and 'UI' basis of Mac OS X, namely:
Quartz - Postscript based 2d Graphics
OpenGL - 3D
Aqua - UI
Classic, Carbon, Cocoa - the API's...
etc...
but either way, this keynote rocks! The fact that apple is moving the kernel in this direction not as a consolation but because it will benefit everyone, is great to see...
I could be wrong, they could be open sourcing the entire thing, but I somehow don't see apple paying NeXT engineers to write a UI that everyone else can grab and use as they please...
my 2 cents, i see a long and bright future for apple...
and they haven't even announced the new hardware!
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I have been waiting for the day when I could thank you for the path you have led us down. Even if this comment does not get moderated up and sent to you, I hope you'll take the time to peruse all of what we've said and see it - because I mean it, and I'm sure that my feelings echo those of hundreds (thousands!) of fellow slashdotters.
What do I thank you for? For innovation, for hard work, for going back to education and doing what you love, for hacking together the coolest hardware when people said you couldn't do it, for putting up and understanding the other Steve when those with less of a backbone would have walked away, for keeping up with the times and the community 20 years later, and giving this interview...
Long live the Great Woz!
[Yes, I have some questions to ask, and I hope you read them too, but when I have this chance I feel it's more important that I, and We, say thanks - come on moderators, let Woz know what we think of him!]
well, this might be some 'hoax', but *someone* at apple posted a patch even though they seem to be off...
this is really standard stuff, there are at least as many misconfigured routers out there (on biggger pipes) than static IP OS9 machines... i doubt the existence of ANY Y2K plot using these machines...
anyway, the patch is at:
ftp://ftphqx.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/
if this is a server, don't go with IDE - you are a business looking for *safety* of the data as well as performance, and should be willing to fork over the extra 20 to 100 percent it takes for scsi...
as for controllers, i say mylex, high-end adapter of your choice, i would beef it up to 128 megs of ram in any case...
as for the drives, go 10,000 RPM, the difference in access times will help you out, and i think that is much more important in your case than trasfer rate... for an ISP, i would only ever buy IBM or Seagate drives, reputable workhorses that they are...
for great cases and setups, i honestly recommend macgurus.com - they specialize in mac stuff, but a scsi tower is a scsi tower, and they will build it with good components at a reasonable price to whatever specs you need... (no, i dont work for them)...
1) These files were NOT on student websites. They were on students' own machines shared via Microsoft Networking.
......
doesnt matter - there are methods of sharing with microsoft networking across subnets - if i can do it, so can the RIAA
2) Many of the computers found "in violation" had their shares passworded. However, CMU tried to guess passwords when it ran into them. So if they could guess it, they considered it public access.
see above, if i can guess it, so can the hackers and the RIAA... but i believe this is tresspassing, and akin to picking a lot and saying 'it was a crappy lock', which is clearly illegal... CMU went too far here...
3) The uproar is not so much about the school trying to reduce mp3 sharing over their network, but the manner in which they did it.
Clearly what CMU has done, by going into folders not marked as public
and guessing passwords has violated their own Code of Ethics. That has gotten a lot of people pretty upset. They followed the rules but lost access anyway.
agreed... the question is whether the mp3/mp3 account was there for simplicity or so your friends from 7 nearby schools could log in and leech...
4. The students affected could reduce the time they lost network access by a few weeks by going to a stupid "education" seminar to hear why copyright infringement is
bad, and then write some paper along those lines. I think those that did that get their access back on Nov 14, or something like that.
it shoudn't take so long, these kids were not driving drunk...
5. Computing Services sent out an email to the student body giving their side of the event. You can find the text here.
like some other schools, this email should have been sent out before the event, so that the kids would not have publicly shared the stuff!
i figured you would be better equipped than most to answer this...
do they surf open.gov.ok and ever comment on your work? have you gotten to meet them and talk about this kind of stuff? what about members of parliament? are any of them super-techies? will i run into prince willim or harry on IRC?
ok, this is a question about how your education and mathematical knowledge has helped you code (IMHO) some of the most revolutionary visual software out there...
you often mention the mathematical basis behind how you change your algorithms - rarely have i heard developers mention positive derivatives and 4th degree equations in their sigs...
how much math does the average game programmer know? how much do feel you know? did you take calc II and linear algebra in college and end there, or did you continue up to a math degree? this is a very open question, any general thoughts on the the subject would be enlightening...
heh, there is one simple reason 1/2 of those bible code books are no good: THE LANGUAGE!
the torah was given to the hebrews in hebrew!
listing letters and playing with them in english is NOTHING... it has no relation to what was given, and is therefore random...
now, if the analysis were done in hebrew...
ok, a little offtopic from the discussions, but maybe if you read this, it will make a little more sense...
:), although the nazis killed him and stole the patents :( )... my father is one of the top mech-aero quality experts in the nation, with a 3D mind like no other, my mom's father still teaches at the technion university (the israeli MIT) at 84, and my mom is the smartest stats major i know :>... one of my younger brothers is taking graduate math courses as a high-school freshman, and has started coding for competition... a cousin is a chess champ, etc... this is not bragging (i think i'm pretty bright too), just background...
yes, the family of diseases and 'wanting to know' are very much related, this is something i have been saying for several years...
some background - being 'bright' runs in the family... my great-granfather invented the modern cinderblock (someone had to
why? because we are all 'different' - we are not very social, but no one has to be... its just that every generation or so, someone gets 'it' - they cannot relate to the outside world... this has always been the person's fault, only with this generation has it been understood to be a disease, possibly genetic in nature... it's now fairly obvious that autism/asperger's runs in the family...
this time, it was my youngest brother... the (supposedly best) doctors were morons and missed the fact that he is legally blind (its very common along with Asperger's and autism)... he was borderline for Autism and Asperger's, but was high-functioning from the start...when he got glasses, and began going to a special school in the area, things began to improve, and he started to act more normal for his age - i do no mean 'playing with tonka trucks' normal - there are certian 'milestones' that every child needs to reach in the development process, such as toilet training, dressing and feeding oneself, etc... for example, he just lied for the first time at age 8 - this is something kids should do at age 5 or so... weirdly enough, my mom called me at college to tell me about - it was that important and exiting to her...
either way, how did it scale with him? he tought himself to speak and read hebrew and english at age 3, his fine motor skills (another common related condition) were so poor that only at age 5 was he able to begin writing... now he types, after having mastered how to uninstall every component on our Win98 box... he reads about 10 books a week (at 3 or 4 grade levels above his age), and has gone through almost every volume of our dead-tree encyclopaedia britannica - and he knows the stuff too... i explain things like atomic structure and weather formations to him, and he ALWAYS wants to listen... like all of us, he has a penchant for learning and understanding the world around us...
and the most important part? he is the nicest kid i have ever known, and i am VERY proud to have him as my brother - he wants everyone around himself to be happy, and does all he can to ensure it... he also realizes that he is 'different' - and it bothers him... one day in a mall, my father saw a 'support autism research' booth, and gave a donation - my brother asked, why, and my dad told him he was autistic, so when he came home that afternoon, he asked us all what it meant - can you imagine telling a 7 year old this? well, he knows a bit about it know, and it helps him to understand how he is different...
well, why do i write?
Please, Please, Please, Don't Glorify It...
This is not something YOU want to have... it is a disease, it is debilitating, and it is not fun... for those who have it seriously, like my brother, can you imagine what its like to be missing part of your humanity? now, he is no less of a human, but the perils of society unfortunately define him as so... there is a specific ability which we all assume in each other which is just GONE... something on the empathic level, the ability to relate to others on a level other than biology...
also, autism has some weird features - it is surprisingly common (many folks have met/seen autistic people and now known), it affects ALL races and geographic locations equally, and boys about twice as often as girls... Doug Flutie and Sylvester Stallone have autistic children, as do teachers, homeless folks, politicians, and anyone...
it's not gonna make you code better, its not gonna make you smarter, it just correlates, to varying degrees... often have I felt like I cannot relate to folks, and since i have seen the formal definitions of autism, i have been able to see much more how i have it to a certian degree...for example, Autists are very sensetive, just in general - i have seen this in myself as well... i can take 1/2 as much medication to work just as effectivly, i have to wear sunglasses outside so i dont get headaches, etc... it has helped my life very much to realize how i am...
so why do i think it is related? its very hard for me to say, i have been struggling with it for years...
is it a gift? that i am intelligent, yes... that my brother's inteligence has been hampered, no... that his ability to understand other people has been compromised, it's an infinite loss...
but, not all is forsaken... in his school, he has learned to better understand us, to speak well, to have patience, to eat and go to the bathroom, and to learn what it is to be a person growing up... and now he is getting back to the mainstream, to be with some non-classified kids...
he might never live on his own, or hold a normal job, but i know the possibilites of what he can do in our world are great - he hungers for knowing, and i am proud to have him as my brother...
here i must that the teachers and workers, and most of all, my mom and dad, for making sure he gets the best chance of getting living a good life...
all i can think of 'this' is that my brother was given a gift... one that does not make up for what he had taken away...