This semester, I'm taking a class about Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC). There are videos. I do something like liveblogging while watching them, just into Open Office. Now the results are here.

So here's the video:

Augmentative and AlternativeCommunication (AAC): Evidence-based Principles and Practice.

And here's what I wrote while I watched it:

Video defines AAC as “the use of customized methods and devices to supplement a person's ability to communicate”

[In class we described low tech as limited messages, but pen and paper or board and marker

HI backup systems are important, variety

“Anyone who is unable to speak, or whose speech is difficult to understand.”

[Intermittently this is me, but I actually do sometimes switch over before speech is totally gone, at the point where AAC is more efficient rather than strictly required.]

NO PREREQUISITES

“Sometimes we find ourselves on the floor or under a desk because that's where somebody wants to be” as a way of noting that there are no behavioral prerequisites for AAC use.

HAHAHAHA HIIIIIIII (It's meeeeeee)

(That's actually concerning that I'm the example here)

(Who didn't get access to communication because of doing the thing I do in grad school?)

NO HIERARCHY OF DEVICES OR SKILLS

Use all the methods. Don't eliminate what's working.

(There are a very few people who can read my body language.)

Least dangerous assumption.

8-12 months in assessment is a while. I get why, I just hope stuff is being tried during that time.

What does the individual want to do? Family and such help and guess if the person can't answer but we want to ask the person. Look at daily life.

Information about prior devices gets lost. So do the prior devices.

Vocabulary to actually have a conversation, rather than only “I want X” is kind of needed to have a conversation.

Is that what the more than just requesting was about? (Also a video on that topic.)

Alyssa Reads Critical Studies of the Sexed Brain

This is another one I read for neuroethics. I was considering using this article for my presentation on a neuroethics related topics, but that didn't happen because someone else split off my too-large group and it wasn't too big anymore. We actually wound up talking about a medication used to treat addiction ... that can itself be addictive. Fun times. So, here's some of my thoughts from reading Critical studies of the sexed brain. 

Kraus, C. (2012). Critical studies ofthe sexed brain: A critique of what and for whom?. Neuroethics,5(3), pp. 247-259.doi:10.1007/s12152-011-9107-7

“They suggest that we work and talk across disciplines as if neuroscientists were from Mars and social scientists were from Venus, assigning the latter to the traditional feminine role of assuaging conflict” (247). sigh I am not surprised that some scientists think of social sciences that way.

Brain plasticity+ identity formation in intersex people, brains vs. genitals. That's going to be interesting. By which I mean, I have concerns. I have friends who are intersex. I know people who do intersex activism. And I know intersex people who concluded that intersex and/or nonbinary is their gender identity rather than picking one of the two binary genders. Hope the author isn't assuming a gender identity must be one of man/woman. Heck, mine isn't that and as far as I know, I'm not intersex.

Oi at calling autism a disease. It is a neurodevelopmental disability [or a neurotype, that's a good word and also let's remember what I'm saying when I say disability - the social model of disability is a thing.] Also I know the author found neurodiversity stuff because the article comes up when I search the journal for neurodiversity, what the heck? I don't expect to hear it called a neurotype in anything done by neurotypical(-passing) academics but really? Disease?

Ok, gender in the brain as a result of plasticity, that's going to be interesting – “reflect gendered behavior as learned and incorporated in a social context” is a thing, but please, please don't let this turn into “male socialization” for trans women or “female socialization” for trans men, or either of the above for nonbinary folks. The socialization of “consistently mistaken for X while actually Y” is not the same as the socialization of “X.” Ok, individual differences are a thing. That's good. “Plasticity arguments are extremely interesting as they wage war against both biological and social determinism, reductionism, essentialism, and other -isms.” Phew that's not the socialization argument I was worried about, I don't think.

Does she mean “cishet” by “normal people”? (Cishet=cisgender, heterosexual.) I appreciate the quotation marks around “normal people” but there probably is another word for what she means and using it would be nice.

Now we have one of my rage buttons. All caps time!

OH MY GOD STOP CALLING NEURODIVERSITY AN ASPERGERS THING. THE ANI PEOPLE WERE CLASSIC EVEN IF THEY TALK NOW, AND ALSO DIAGNOSED BEFORE ASPERGERS WAS IN THE DSM. MEL BAGGS IS NONSPEAKING. AMY SEQUENZIA IS NONSPEAKING. I'M CLASSIC EVEN THOUGH I USUALLY TALK. STOP. STOP. SERIOUSLY THE ROOTS ARE OLD ENOUGH THAT ASPERGERS WASN'T A DIAGNOSIS YET WHEN A LOT OF OUR FOLKS WERE DIAGNOSED, WHICH MEANS THEY WEREN'T DIAGNOSED ASPERGERS. THEY ARE NOT ASPERGERS, WHICH IS ALSO NOT A DIAGNOSIS ANYMORE. (maybe was when written?)

Intersex activist history! I knew about unwanted surgery, gender role training, and folks wanting their own intersex bodies back. I also know someone who was put on unwanted hormones. What are the results of Diamond getting so lauded while speaking in terms of brain sex, though? It's still the language coming from the people who try to enforce the man/woman dichotomy. What are the results of using the "sexed brain" discourse while not necessarily fitting in the binary? 

1 Walker, N. (September 27, 2014). Neurodiversity: Some basic terms and definitions. Neurocosmopolitanism: Nick Walker's notes on neurodiversity, autism, and cognitive liberty. [blog post] Retrieved from http://neurocosmopolitanism.com/neurodiversity-some-basic-terms-definitions/ is a good explanation of the neurodiversity related vocabulary I tend to use when thinking about neuro stuff.

Alyssa Reads Memory Blunting: Ethical Analysis- suffering and authenticity

I read "Memory Blunting: Ethical Analysis" by the President's Council on Bioethics, excerpted from Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness (2003) and appearing in Neuroethics: An Introduction with Readings, edited by Martha J. Farah. I did so because I am taking a neuroethics class and we're supposed to show that we're thinking about neuroethics stuff at least a bit outside class. Also because I'm super-interested in how neuro-stuff (especially neurodivergence but really all things neuro-) is represented in fiction (especially young adult speculative fiction.) I'm pretty much chucking my notes (drawn parallels, expressions of annoyance, and the occasional "OK that's legitimate") on my blog because as important as a lab notebook is, I like notes that are typed and searchable. I started with some connections to Allegiant, then some thoughts on collective effects of blunting trauma, and then cognitive liberty. Now here's suffering and authenticity.

The concerns about what we might do to others minds if it were an issue of what person X does/chooses for person X, not what we are choosing for others. The concern seems to be about changing someone's true self, so suffering and authenticity come in again, just like cognitive liberty. These two seem frequently connected to me. If we recognize that people get to define their own "true selves", we don't get to moralize over which experiences are real and true anymore, which kind of kills the "not their true self" argument. Which is an argument I'm really not a fan of, especially considering which experiences it tends to be applied to.

This quote ... gives me the noble suffering/virtuous suffering sort of feeling, where whatever positive you might (not will, might) drag from the hell you go through means you shouldn't try to avoid that hell or save others from going through it.

Or will he succeed, over time, in 'redeeming' those painful memories by actively integrating them into the narrative of his life. By 'rewriting' memories pharmacologically, we might succeed in easing real suffering at the risk of falsifying our perceptions of the world and undermining our true identity. (90)

The version of a person that went through more bad things isn't automatically more real. The version of a person that's suicidal from trauma isn't automatically more real than the version of a person that takes medication to not be suicidal. Our choices define us, not just what we've been through, and using chemicals to get the parts of our histories we never chose to back the heck off? That's not less real. Suffering isn't the only way to be real. Enough of the noble suffering narrative. Enough.

Now to bring back a quote that I also talked about with cognitive autonomy:

And yet, there may be a great cost to acting compassionately for those who suffer bad memories, if we do so by compromising the truthfulness of how they remember. We risk having them live falsely in order to cope, surviving by whatever means possible. (92)

  (Survival is resistance etc)

And the concerns about what happens if we take out everything difficult? Those take a huge slippery slope argument, and not the kind where we've seen from experience that most people stop early or don't stop at all (destructive obedience is one of those.) Trauma is not the same thing as everything difficult in a person's life. Having to spend a lot of time and effort on reading and writing in order to become a good writer is not the same as witnessing a murder or being mugged or being a victim of abuse. One of these things is a choice: we're not under any obligation to become good writers. The other's aren't choices. They're things that happen to us. How we deal with the results is at least partially a choice. (Not entirely. Especially when, due to technological or social constraints, dulling the pain while working through it isn't an option.) There is plenty of opportunity for hard work and achievement without forcing others to keep horrors in their heads for the sake of ill-defined authenticity.

Alyssa Reads Memory Blunting: Ethical Analysis- cognitive liberty

 I read "Memory Blunting: Ethical Analysis" by the President's Council on Bioethics, excerpted from Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness (2003) and appearing in Neuroethics: An Introduction with Readings, edited by Martha J. Farah. I did so because I am taking a neuroethics class and we're supposed to show that we're thinking about neuroethics stuff at least a bit outside class. Also because I'm super-interested in how neuro-stuff (especially neurodivergence but really all things neuro-) is represented in fiction (especially young adult speculative fiction.) I'm pretty much chucking my notes (drawn parallels, expressions of annoyance, and the occasional "OK that's legitimate") on my blog because as important as a lab notebook is, I like notes that are typed and searchable. I started with some connections to Allegiant, then some thoughts on collective effects of blunting trauma. Now here's cognitive liberty.

The concerns about what we might do to others minds if it were an issue of what person X does/chooses for person X, not what we are choosing for others. Cognitive liberty. We don't seem to have a coherent definition of the self, and autonomy is complicated, but there is definitely a thing where a person either is or is not making the decisions about interventions taken (or not taken) on their own minds. Also on how folks define their own "true selves." What about who you are is important to you? Not what's important to me about who you are. Of course, that would stop us from moralizing over what experiences other people have are real and true vs. somehow fake. Changing one's own cognition by one's own choice isn't as acceptable as I think it should be. 

And yet, there may be a great cost to acting compassionately for those who suffer bad memories, if we do so by compromising the truthfulness of how they remember. We risk having them live falsely in order to cope, surviving by whatever means possible. (92)

Again, we do to them. Not, we offer them the option. Do we think we know better than them what's right for them? That way lies all sorts of abuse "for their own good." And ... do we really think everyone would choose to dull the pain of a memory or to forget it (remember also that those two things are not the same.) Because I don't think that. I think lots of people would, but not everyone. Despite (because of?) my arguments about cognitive autonomy leaning towards letting people choose to blunt the trauma,  I want the right to remember in my relatively unchanged way. It's just that the arguments run towards why everyone needs to be doing it that way, and I don't believe everyone needs to be remembering that way. I think enough people would choose to remember that we'd get whatever collective benefits the memory would provide, even if we let people choose to dull their pain. Not that I think the supposed benefits are nearly as strong as seems to be argued. Intentional ignorance is already a thing.

Alyssa Reads Memory Blunting: Ethical Analysis- collective effects

I read "Memory Blunting: Ethical Analysis" by the President's Council on Bioethics, excerpted from Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness (2003) and appearing in Neuroethics: An Introduction with Readings, edited by Martha J. Farah. I did so because I am taking a neuroethics class and we're supposed to show that we're thinking about neuroethics stuff at least a bit outside class. Also because I'm super-interested in how neuro-stuff (especially neurodivergence but really all things neuro-) is represented in fiction (especially young adult speculative fiction.) I'm pretty much chucking my notes (drawn parallels, expressions of annoyance, and the occasional "OK that's legitimate") on my blog because as important as a lab notebook is, I like notes that are typed and searchable. I started with some connections to Allegiant. Now here's thoughts about the collective effects of forgetting, as worried about by the authors (and as I tend to think we deal with even without dulling memories pharmacologically.)

I have a concern about this supposed legal argument against using beta blockers or similar medications to reduce the emotional impact or trauma from publicly important events. (The given example was a terrorist attack. I can ... kind of tell this was written not too long after 9/11.)  The idea is that it's important to have some witnesses remember the event accurately. There's a problem: I remember from my introductory neurobiology class that when a memory is super emotional, we feel quite certain of our recollection ... but that we can still be completely wrong in our memory of what happened. Ask people where they were on 9/11, or when the space shuttle exploded, and some will tell you they were listening to or watching other events that didn't happen on those days. Sometimes didn't even happen that time of year. But we are confidently wrong! So as useful as accurate recollection would be for legal purposes, maintaining the traumatic impact on the witnesses doesn't make accurate recall happen anyways. Also, eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable to begin with. This is a bad argument because the thing we're claiming to want to preserve already doesn't exist.

On that note, I wish the authors had said something more about the social and personal effects of blunting our collective traumas. I'm not entirely convinced that leg of the argument is going to hold either. After all, I'm a Jewish (and Queer, and Disabled) descendant of Holocaust survivors, and I know how we're never supposed to forget. I'd be a lot more inclined to buy into the value of collectively remembering and the consequences of forgetting if we'd stopped having genocide or deciding that certain religions are inherently more dangerous or lesser. But we didn't. These things all still happen. The things we're claiming to want to prevent already happen with our supposed preventative in place, and that means I don't trust the argument.

The murder witness example actually does concern me. "Yes, I was there. But it wasn't so terrible." (91). We don't want murder to be thought of as not so terrible. I know we don't want that because sometimes it is already considered not so terrible. See also: "mercy" killings of disabled people by the folks who are supposed to take care of them. It already just depends on the choice of victim, and that's terrifying. I don't want the idea of murder as not so terrible spreading any further than it has. I want it gone. I want all the murders being recognized as being as bad as they are.

I also have issues with the juxtaposition (and sometimes what seems like conflation) of giving a victim relief and medicating away (or relieving, I suppose I should use the same language for each) the guilt of perpetrators. Those are not morally equivalent. Victims and attackers or abusers are not the same. When we're talking about a mutual conflict, as in the case of war (the most talked about cause of PTSD, but far from the only one), there may not be a clear aggressor or victim. There also may be. It depends on what's going on, really (and remember how often the military is painted as the only way out for people in poverty, at the same time we remember the atrocities soldiers often commit.) Still, when we're talking about accidents and survivors of terrorist attacks, there's clear innocents. (Not "perfect victims" in the sense that they never did anything else even slightly wrong, but innocent in the sense that they didn't choose what happened to cause the trauma.)

Alyssa reads: Ethical Analysis of Neuroimaging in Alzheimers Disease

I read “Ethical Analysis of Neuroimaging in Alzheimer’s Disease.” J. Illes, A.Rosen, M. Greicius, and E. Racine. NIH Public Access manuscript, eventually in Ann N Y Acad Sci2007 February under the title "Prospects for Prediction: Ethics Analysis of Neuroimaging in Alzheimer's Disease." My page numbers come from the NIH version, when I quote stuff.

Anyone else bothered by the consistent framing where we demonstrate the significance of disability related research by citing a significant/increasing “public health burden” and the money spent on care? Anyone? (Fellow citizens, that is your money too.)

Now we're going to focus on ethical issues around imaging/detection. (Which, I note, remain ethical issues surrounding imaging/detection whether or not you talk about public health burden and money!!!)

The “Roles for current imaging capabilities” section seems to take it as a given that identifying risk factors (for this thing we really can't treat that well) in order to predict who's going to get Alzheimer’s before they get it is important. I would have expected that to be one of the ethical issues to discuss: do we identify folks who are going to develop Alzheimer’s even though there's not really a way to change this? (And that's at the 100% certainty level, which, to be clear, is not current reality. We can't predict who will/won't experience this. We can't predict what cognitive changes a person will (or won't) experience as they age with anywhere near that level of certainty.)

(Yes, I think with something that would fall under the neurodiversity paradigm. Also cognitive liberty or freedom – people being in charge of their own minds while also valuing diversity on a societal level! I'm still inclined to treat neurological things that will eventually kill you as things I would like us to know how to change or prevent, because death. And Alzheimer’s will eventually kill you. Cognitive freedom also goes with “people can choose what to do with their own minds” and “not dying of dementia” is a common preference, let us science so people can make that choice.)

Ah, yes, good, stigma is getting addressed.

• Predictive imaging may expand the pool of disease to people who are much younger, and therefore expand the pool that is stigmatized.
• Both earlier prediction and stigma have the potential to reduce quality of life, including autonomy and the privilege to drive, and other daily functions.
• There may be medical discrimination against people at risk, for example, with respect to eligibility for organ transplantation. (4)

My preference is for not stigma at all. Expanding the stigmatized pool is not doing this. Neither is reducing it. Both of those are justmoving the line of acceptable minds around. Nope. (Still don't like shoving people unwittingly or unwillingly into a stigmatized population.)

It's important to point out the quality of life issues where being in a stigmatized group, all on its own, causes problems. Because it does.

 

Organ transplant discrimination is a thing. I might not be able to get an organ (autism, people get rejected for that all the time, sometimes even when there's a family member willing to donate who isn't offering this for anyone else re: kidney or liver.) 

 

I think we need to work on the stigma in addition to working with the reality that it currently exists.

I appreciate that “Scan everyone who wants a scan” is one of the considered options. It gets the shortest discussion (probably because “do for person X what person X wants” isn't that complicated) and the issues brought up there are common to the other groups as well. (Who should have access to the results of testing is not only a question when the test was done without medical indication. It might have different answers depending on the level of medical indication for the test. I'm very much inclined towards “The person who had the test decides who even knows the test took place, and similarly who gets results.” It's hard to coerce test results out of someone if you don't know there's anything to coerce. The tricky thing is to make sure employers can't coerce the test itself.) Unequal access remains an issue, but let's not pretend it's a non-issue for any of the other options.

I'm betting the impact of results on personal liberty and similar closely resemble the impacts of other known cognitive disabilities. Just a hunch.

OH MY GOD. NO. “the greater predictive power combined with the growing number of people with AD might be the brick that breaks the back of the current health care system. (6)” NO. YOU DO NOT PUT THE BLAME FOR OUR MESSED UP SYSTEM EVENTUALLY BREAKING ON SICK OR DISABLED PEOPLE. NO. NO. NO. YOU. DO. NOT. DO. THIS. Go yell at insurance companies and congresspeople instead. NO. I hate you when you do this nonsense with autism and I hate you when you do it with AD and just generally hate it when you do this with the people who get screwed over by the current system that really, really wants everyone to be abled and to get briefly and treatably sick in ways that follow the textbook. And you know, this idea that we're a burden on some system always, always gets used to justify measures that reduce our personal liberties. When you write things like this, you are part of the stigma problem. Stop it.

(Try instead “The current health care system is designed for XYZ and not ABC. Given ABC, changes are needed.”)

The incidental findings question. Yes, protocols being decided on for these before the imaging. (Ulysses contract connection?)

“Much remains to be learned about functional anomalities.” (8). Well. Yes. We only seem to study this stuff when there's a perceived deficit. If it's worked for the person their whole life, why would we have noticed anything? [Hi, Galton the eugenicist deciding not totake issue with the lack of a minds eye because it seemed most commonin “men of science.” We're biased as heck about what unusual things we decide are problems and what unusual things we decide to study like the people who have them are objects.]

"Blind imagination" neuroscience press release

For anyone new to the aphantasia discussions: It's a fancy word for not visualizing, or as I've tended to describe it, not having a mind's eye. I don't picture characters or scenes when I read books, for example.

As a rhetoric person and disability studies person, I looked at how we talk about aphantasia, in three parts. (Part one, part two, part three). As a neuroscience student, I wrote about one of the articles (Zeman et al, 2010, the case study) in terms of significance. And yes, some of the results are things I could totally have told you myself. Like the fact that "mental imagery" tests such as rotation (check if two block structures with angles are the same or not) can be done in ways other than rotating an image of the object. I know that because I don't view such images in my head and I'm good at the task. Testing everything is how science works, and trying to figure out what someone is doing rather than just what they aren't doing is still handy. So here it is!

A research team in the UK has shown the potential for dissociation between the experience of visual imagery and performance in tasks typically associated with visual imagery and visual memory in a case study. The patient, a 65 year old retired surveyor referred to as MX, reported the sudden loss of his ability to visualize. However, he retained the ability to complete tasks typically associated with visual imagery and visual memory, including mental rotation tasks.

The authors did a series of tests both on MX and on a group of controls of similar age, IQ, and professional backgrounds. These tests included assessments of general intelligence, memory, executive function, visual perception, subjective vividness of visual imagery, and imagery abilities. MX scored significantly lower than controls on subjective assessments of visual imagery. However, his scores in the other tests were not significantly different from that of controls. In the fMRI experiments, MX showed similar areas of activation to the control participants while viewing images. However, MX showed significantly different activation patterns when asked to generate faces. Rather than activating the posterior visual network, MX showed prefrontal activation in areas associated with many executive tasks.

Further behavioral testing was conducted to test if MX was using alternative cognitive strategies. The researchers gave MX variants of Brook's matrix and verbal tasks, along with mental rotation tasks. Here, MX's performance differed from typical patterns. While typical controls consistently perform better on the spatial Brooks task than on the verbal one, MX performed better on the verbal task. When asked to perform the typically visuo-spatial version of the task with verbal or visuo-spatial interference, MX showed no significant difference in performance between no distractor and visuo-spatial interference. However, his performance was significantly lower with the verbal distractor, again in reverse of the typical performance pattern. On mental rotation tasks, MX showed no impairment in correct performance. However, he consistently required more time than controls and showed a different relationship between angle of rotation and time required from the controls.

Both the behavioral and fMRI testing indicate the use of alternative cognitive strategies in order to perform tasks typically associated with visual imagery. On most tasks, these alternative strategies yield similar levels of accuracy to controls with typical visual imagery abilities. The case of MX provides insight into alternative ways of completing typically visual tasks. His performance indicates that mental imagery is not essential to tasks typically associated with it, making it less clear that mental imagery is the subject of mental imagery tests. It also indicates that reliance on the mind's eye in decision-making as suggested by Kosslyn is not universal. In addition, this case study may provide insight into the cognitive functioning of a small but significant subset of the population who report no mental imagery. Surveys dating back to 1880¹ show a group that report never having experienced mental imagery, alongside documentation of prior cases where imagery is lost. Further study could determine if similar strategies are used by this population, and what cognitive differences, if any, this is associated with.²

1  Galton, Francis. "I.—Statistics of mental imagery." Mind 19 (1880): 301-318.

Also relevant is: Faw, Bill. "Conflicting intuitions may be based on differing abilities: Evidence from mental imaging research." Journal of Consciousness Studies 16.4 (2009): 45-68.

2 Spoiler alert! This happened to some extent in Zeman, Adam, Michaela Dewar, and Sergio Della Sala. "Lives without imagery–Congenital aphantasia." Cortex 3 (2015). This case study got written up in Discover, then some people who have never had subjective mental imagery [like me!]  contacted the authors. Then people saw the follow up, some of whom also contacted the authors. The 2015 letter was actually the first one I found, followed by the two commentaries on it. [They wonder if there may be a connection with faceblindness, or prosopagnosia, which I also have. My brain. It is multiply interesting.]

Appreciate my writing? Support me on Patreon!

No Boundary Thinking Seminar Reflection 1

This semester, I'm took a seminar on no-boundary thinking. Which sounds like a fancy word for what I often try to do as a vaguely disability studies like person: focusing on defining an issue and addressing it from any methods that work and not worrying about (often not knowing) what fields those definitions or methods come from. (To my professor from the seminar: Congratulations, you found my blog.)

So here's my first reflection post. Bracketed things were not in the original reflection that I turned in, and have been added since.

[So, at the start, we need to know what no-boundary thinking is. It's kind of what it sounds like: we're going to ignore the lines between disciplines as much as possible.] Huang et. al. (2013) discusses no-boundary thinking as thinking where problems are defined without being limited to a single discipline or group of disciplines, while the knowledge used to define and solve the problem can come from a variety of disciplines. Dr. Brian Dewsbury mentions that no-boundary thinking doesn't necessarily mean bringing more people on to a team just to have them – just because a given discipline has some bearing on a problem, that does not mean we must have a person who specializes in the discipline on the core team. If we did, teams could become overly large and difficult to coordinate, because many disciplines will have information that relates to any given problem. Stakeholders are brought up, and a fellow student says she is reminded of participatory research.

There are connections here: in participatory research, the idea is that affected communities 1) deserve a voice in discussions of problems that affect them, and 2) have useful information related to solving those problems. However, there is a risk of having people just to have them in participatory research – depending on when community members are included the research process, they may have little input in defining research questions, may be left out of data analysis and interpretation, and may generally find themselves used as a sign of community input rather than an actual source of expertise or information. [As opposed to how we should be defining and leading this thing. If anyone's job is "source of expertise for getting the thing done but not really deciding what needs to be done" it should be the outside academics studying the community.]

This problem in participatory research resembles a similar problem in interdisciplinary research, where the input from any given discipline is limited to where the people running the project think that discipline belongs, rather than appearing everywhere it could be helpful throughout the project time line. In both cases, the problem is with boundaries, whether between identities (academic, policy maker, or community member) or between disciplines. The problem is also with the assumption that people fit into exactly one of these boxes – a scholar on fisheries whose family depends on fishing does not fit into precisely one position. When I do research related to disability, I don't either. [I'm Disabled. I'm Autistic. I'm also legitimately a Disability Studies scholar, and I'm starting to be a researcher in assistive technology.] In both participatory and interdisciplinary research, the no boundary idea that we should be defining and approaching problems in ways that are “not limited by disciplines, traditions, vocabularies, or even technologies” (Huang et. al. 2013, p. 2) would be helpful.

Work Cited

Huang, X., Bruce, B., Buchan, A., Congdon, C. B., Cramer, C. L., Jennings, S. F., ... & Moore, J. H. (2013). No-boundary thinking inbioinformatics research. BioData mining, 6(1), 1.

Like my writing? Support me on Patreon!

Multicultural Psychology Post on Health (care) Disparities

This was a discussion board post for my Multicultural Psychology class. The topic was culture and health, and the chapter focused pretty heavily on health disparities and health care disparities. We're supposed to write at least 600 words and cite at least 5 research sources outside the textbook per discussion, though I usually (as here) will be making at least one of those citations in my responses to other students. (So, uh, professor? If you do a plagiarism check, yes I am the math TA in your class. Congratulations on finding my blog.)

Chapter 8 discussed culture and health. Part of the chapter is on health (care) disparities. Health disparities are the different rates of being healthy or sick (or having specific conditions) between groups, while health care disparities are the differences in treatment and in access to treatment (Mio, Barker, & Tumambing 2012). These two disparities can not be reasonably separated, as receiving poor care (or no care) can lead people to try to deal with health problems on their own and mistrust doctors, which in turn rather definitively leads to not accessing health care. I know that past healthcare experiences have influenced my decisions to (not) seek care for illness or injury. After I had a doctor explain that my injury (which I had already said was a month prior) could not be a broken foot because for a broken foot to appear as it did on the MRI, the injury would need to be about a month old, my trust definitely decreased. It was, in fact, a broken foot. I suspect he couldn't believe a person would be able to walk on a broken foot for a month. Another doctor taking my inability to assign a number to my pain to mean I wasn't in pain decreased my trust further. The only pain scale I've ever found that I could comprehend is based on behavioral cues, and since I'm fairly sure walking on a broken foot isn't supposed to be 2/10 on any pain scale, I can't exactly use that scale at the doctor's office. There are many who believe that autistic people have a reduced sensitivity to pain or don't feel pain as well, which really doesn't help when I'm trying to seek treatment for issues where pain is a symptom. Fitting that particular stereotype only makes getting medical treatment harder (Allely 2013), and I expect the experience is similar for other groups who are often assumed to feel less pain.

Mio et. al. give multiple examples of people of color receiving care later or receiving less treatment than white people in the chapter, both in personal stories and in statistics (2012). Racism has historically played a role in treatment, and knowledge of this racism plays a role in the decision to seek care or not (Bhopal 1998). Similar forces are in play for people living in poverty, who may choose to delay care due to an inability to pay for it or wait until they are in need of the emergency room because the ER (theoretically) can not turn them away entirely. Interestingly, decreased utilization of healthcare by those of lower socioeconomic status holds even when they have health insurance (Fiscella, Franks, Gold, & Clancy 2000).

In terms of the choice to attempt access to health care or not to make the attempt, historical and current racism play a significant role for many people of color. Medical and scientific racism, such as that which was partially involved in eugenics and in experiments like the Tuskegee syphilis study, led to continuing mistrust of the medical system. In addition, research on health care disparities has often framed the problem as lying within cultural choices of the marginalized group, which does little to create trust (Bhopal 1998).

In connection to these issues, I look back at the concept of imposed etics: “imposition of an outsider's worldview on a different culture” (Mio, Barker, & Tumambing 2012, p. 64). There really are differences in (attempted and successful) health care utilization between marginalized groups and privileged groups. However, in assuming this is because marginalized people culturally don't care about their health or don't believe that modern medicine can be effective at what it claims it can do, researchers are imposing their worldview and ideas of what reasons for action make sense on members of other cultures who have other worldviews! I know that as an Autistic person, I absolutely care about my health, including my mental health. I also totally believe the analysis suggesting that autistic people who are referred to interventions earlier and who received applied behavioral analysis are more likely to achieve the “optimal outcome” of losing their diagnosis (Orinstein et. al. 2014). I just don't care. No amount of evidence that an intervention can “help” me achieve a goal I don't have and rather explicitly reject is going to convince me to pursue that intervention, because it isn't evidence that the intervention can help me reach goals I do have. In fact, the imposed etic where outsiders presume my ideal outcome for mental health care is to stop being autistic, or at least act less autistic, contributes to my reluctance to pursue any mental health care. Even therapy meant for issues comparatively unrelated to autism gets sidetracked by this assumption, and also by assumptions about what it means to be mentally healthy that may not apply given that my natural cognitive styles are, by definition, not standard.

References

Allely, C. S. (2013). Pain sensitivity and observer perception of pain in individuals with autistic spectrum disorder. The Scientific World Journal, 2013(2013), 1-20.

Bhopal, R. (1998). Spectre of racism in health and health care: lessons from history and the United States. British Medical Journal, 316(7149), 1970-1973.

Fiscella, K., Franks, P., Gold, M. R., & Clancy, C. M. (2000). Inequality in quality: addressing socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic disparities in health care. Jama, 283(19), 2579-2584.

Mio, J. S., Barker, L. A., & Tumambing, J. S. (2012). Multicultural psychology: Understanding Our Diverse Communities (3rd ed.) New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Orinstein, A. J., Helt, M., Troyb, E., Tyson, K. E., Barton, M. L., Eigsti, I. M., ... & Fein, D. A. (2014). Intervention for optimal outcome in children and adolescents with a history of autism. Journal of developmental and behavioral pediatrics: JDBP, 35(4), 247-256.

对文化的看法

对中国文化（对莫一种文化）人们可以持各种态度。人们可以支持一种文化，也可以否定一种文化。在中间，更平衡的态度是承认每一种文化都有肯定方面及否定方面。承认两方面都存在才能对持务实及有效的态度。因此，我自己认为中国的各种文化（中国有56个民族，肯定不能说中国只有一种文化）跟别的文化一样有好处和坏处。

中国文化的好处的一方面由于56不同民族带来的丰富性。每一个民族有自己的风格，中国文化在即方面成为愿意接受多样性的大杂烩，即宗教。中国的5千年历史也对中国文化产生正面影响，把文化丰富化。中国有茶文化，艺术文化，文字文化等方面的特有中国文化，为了尊重中国人的历史及身份也要尊重文化的这些方面。在这些带来好处的文化方面，最好注重持务实的态度：尊重文化和历史的好处，也要尊重事实和人们的选择权。根据文化及历史选择和根据自己的需求选择都行，只要不给别人伤害就可以了。

而有时候文化遇到问题：文化里的思路会给一群人伤害。在这样的情况下，注重持有效的态度：先要解决文化带来的伤害。中国历史包括带来伤害的文化，即缠足文化。因为缠足给女人伤害，所以现代中国取消了裹脚，父债子还。而缠足文化只是重男轻女社会的一部分，把这样行为取消不等于把重男轻女文化取消（成语里为什么说父亲和儿子，不是母亲和女儿？）。这种（不是中国特有的）文化还对女人带来伤害，还在对社会产生负面影响，需要公众注意解决这个文化问题。

莫一种文化都包括优点和缺点。在解决中国（魔一种）文化缺点中，千万不要把所有的文化扔掉。文化是身份的核心，要把核心做的更好而不要把核心扔掉。

Some Chinese stuff because yeah...

Have some stuff from Chinese.

First thing is a short essay about "So, culture changes with time and it can totally survive in the midst of some parts changing. This has actually been happening since forever." My examples were Ancient Greeks getting pissy about writing making it so people can read stories instead of having to listen to them but wait storytelling didn't actually die, USA people getting pissy about how newspapers mean you can read on the train instead of talking to people but hey people actually do sometimes talk to each other on trains, and modern Chinese young folks using the internet to send new years money to their friends as a thing that's happening in addition to the traditional way. 

有人说如果传统文化有改变，传统就不存在。不可否认的是，如果有改变，找跟以前完全一样的就会变难。但是，文化从旧一直在改变。（人们也一直在抱怨文化的降落。）拿古代的希腊来看：他们开始写字以前，人们都必须记住故事，不能读。他们开始写字后，很多专家抱怨，说人们都会忘记怎么讲故事，会忘记自己的文化。事实上，很多人开始读故事，也有很多人继续听别人讲故事。他们的文化在改变中还存在了。在拿报纸的例子来看。报纸变流行以前，人们在火车上都看窗户外的风景或者跟别人说话。报纸开始流行的时候，很多人抱怨：“人们都看报纸，停止跟别人说话！”事实上，在火车上看报纸的人不是从前说话的人，而是看风景的人。在火车文化在改变中存在了。最后，拿红包的例子来看。从前，人们送真正的红色的包，里面有钱。现在，父母送给孩子送的还是具体的包，而还有成年人送电子红包给朋友。文化改变了，而主要内容（父母送红包给孩子）存在。文化在改变中存在了。如果我们只看改变的部分，我们会以为文化就没了，而社会一直在改变，科技一直在进步，文化一直跟着社会和科技变化。如果我们说一点改变让我们的传统就没了，就是说谁都已经没有什么文化。

The second thing is me attempting to explain some confusion I was having with an assignment.

现在我要介绍一下我在什么方面糊涂了。（写的比较乱是因为思路也乱。如果我自己不糊涂，能写的清楚，就不需要帮助！）

周三是社会调查。（OK了，我知道是做跟社会调查由关系的。。。而根本是什么？-现在知道了，而知道真的是给我感知矛盾的答案不是解决矛盾。只告诉我“这一点不是解决矛盾的一点。”）这是因为：周三没有单班课，单班课的老师可以陪我们去问，所以去问的天不可能是星期三。而星期三是“社会调查”的天。矛盾。（感知矛盾是个问题。）

社会调查具体内容。背景调查：信息是从课的内容来的吗？就不算是调查。要搜索吗？不一定算是调查，而这样做过。为什么搜索已经写过的题目？是要在路上问别人？:( 如果这样的话，就面临下面的问题。我有三个不同的方式来明白这部分，三个方式都包括问题。

B。，C。部分明白了，就要记住这些问题，然后。。。去问别人。等一下，我应该在路上开始跟很多不认识的人开始谈自己介绍的题目，方式是开始问问题？！成绩的50%靠这个能力？！“囧”不够强。我就去桌子下躲起来。。。这部分是“我知道我要做什么，而不知道什么方式让我做得了。”

Syllabus Standards (in English this time!)

I finally got around to it, here's the English version of my piece about syllabus standards that I wrote in Chinese. Between paragraphs I toss out some comments about "so... if I had the language to say this instead/in addition I totally would, remember that this is me trying to write quickly in a second language."

The whole world has been getting more global, and education needs to change to reflect that. The (dean? president? not sure which) of New York University said that students should be able to study at multiple places. He thinks the whole world's universities should adopt one set of course/curriculum standards.This is because all having one set of standards would let more students study at more places. No matter what major a student has, they'd be able to go to another university to study for a semester or a year.

Ok, so it's really just very privileged college students who have the opportunity to do study abroad/away most of the time. Just remember that. Making it available to more people is a thing that I like, but remember that this isn't the case. (Minor plug for the Gilman here, because while it's generally not going to pay for a program on it's own, it has making study abroad available to more people as a goal.)

Also, who's coming up with the one set of standards? If western colleges, hello more imperialism and hello more whitewashing of history. Who's deciding what majors are getting standards written for them?

But making all the colleges use the same set of course standards would hurt some students. Students with unusual majors. For example, not all mechanical engineering programs are identical.From professors to archtects, from mechatronics experts to nanotechnology researchers, mechanical engineers do different things. Even though these people can all be called mechanical engineers, their specialties are not the same. Since I do nanotechnology research, the curriculum that best suits me isn't the same as that of most of my fellow students. If all the course standards were the same, it would be very hard or impossible for students to study some of the more unusual/customized majors. Then all the mechanical engineers would be only prepared for the same things. But this isn't hard to solve: don't make the course standards the same, but make syllabus/course introduction standards. This way, all the colleges could have totally different classes, but students can still tell what they need to know using the syllabuses and course introductions. Some of the things students need to know are:

Yes, I used my major set as part of an example. Short time frame, during class, it's what I had. I have no illusions that mine is the hardest one to work with, and I think that engineers would probably actually get split up further to account for this. Nanotechnology is an extant undergraduate major at a couple places. Studying things related to activism and marginalized groups is probably in way more danger from this sort of thing than my majors are.

Along those lines: no, I should not be the sole person in charge of these standards for syllabi, I'm white and I'm from the USA. I also don't think those standards should be mandatory, but I do think they should exist so that schools that decide they want to be a part of this sort of idea can be. And finally, I don't know how to go about actually creating such standards without being oppressive in some way, probably imperialist. I can point out the things that I think would be useful though, which I will now do.

1) What will you learn by taking this course? Knowing the content helps a student figure out if the course is useful to them or not.
2) What majors can this course be taken for credit in. For unique majors, this might not be useful, but for common majors that most students are in, this is good to know.
3) What knowledge is needed before starting the class? Stating this might have the biggest change: right now, a lot of colleges use their own course numbers for that. This won't work: colleges would need to say what knowledge students need. Students could choose other classes or do independent study to prepare, they just need to know the prerequisite information and they should be fine.
4) What's the learning method? This part includes how the testing is done, homework, meeting days and times, if it's online or not, and more.

For #2, I figure a list of what majors it's been counted towards before would work. There might need to be some sort of standard about schools being consistent about counting stuff towards the same majors, but I don't know how to work that one out.

For #4 and online classes, the question of "do I need to get to campus for the final" is important, because if not, you might be able to take this class while physically at a different place depending on college policies. (I think they should be cool with this, logistics is another story.)

Writing syllabi this way, students could look at multiple universities courses and figure out what course program suits them best. They could plan out where to study when and go to multiple different schools: letting students do this is why he was saying to globalize. Different colleges having different courses isn't an obstacle, but rather a reason that a student would want to study at different schools. In my humble opinion, the best method for colleges isn't to make course standards the same, but to have syllabi written with the same methods/information.

So "in my humble opinion" was a language bit we were supposed to make sure to use in class.
I don't think there should be a requirement to translate the syllabus on the school or anything- it should probably be written in whatever language the class is being conducted in, because if you can't understand it in that language, you'd probably have an issue taking a class conducted in that language. But there also shouldn't be a rule against providing translations of the syllabus/course introduction/course description either. Up to the teacher if they want to make those.

My feelings on globalization are also kind of mixed. I see how some pieces of it could be really cool- more people knowing more languages means more opportunities for communication (but it shouldn't need to be an "everyone learns the same one," just a "more languages is useful.") But the way it actually seems to be turning out looks more like "international corporations have huge amounts of power" combined with "the folks who were already powerful got more powerful." I'd like to see a version of globalization that worked as an equalizing force, though.

Science and the environment: 2 essays

So we do in-class essays every so often. These tend to be shorter than full weekly ones for Monday reports, but longer than the ones I write on daily homeworks or preparing for tutoring reports.

Here are two that I did in the unit on environmental stuff, they're both about science and environment stuff.


随着科技发展，越来越多人买电脑，手机等。这样，电子垃圾增多了。因为电子垃圾对环境污染造成了严重的后果，所以我们要解决电子垃圾得问题。

那么，我们会怎么解决呢？根据“从个人做起”的想法，个人会用可充电的电池，长一点时间用以各手机等。这样，个人扔掉的电子垃圾会减少。

但是，个人不会从根本上解决电子垃圾的问题。公司应该多开发可以回收的产品。而且，公司应该愿意修自己的产品，不让的人多扔掉。

不仅个人，公司要来解决电子垃圾的问题，而且国家政府要来解决电子垃圾的问题。因为个人难以让公司做应该做的事，所以国家要采用规则让公司开发可回收的产品。而且，国家要资助开发可回收产品的研究。

如果个人，公司，国家合作解决电子垃圾的问题，电子垃圾会减少，对环境又帮助。


And here's the other one.

有人认为科技发展越快，环境问题越严重。他们拿空调的发明，塑料袋的制作，车的使用等当他们的例子。反而，科技发展得越快，科技找解决环境问题的做法也越快。因此，我们不应该把环境问题归咎于科技的快速发展。

对环保来说，科技的快速发展是一柄双刃剑。人们滥用塑料袋对世界造成白污染。人们为了方便多开车又带来了不便（交通阻塞）又带来了环境问题。公司，为了挣钱，给世界巨大的污染问题。从企业革命开始，科技的快速发展及人类得经济选择一起带来了越来越严重的环境问题。

但是，科学也带来了一些解决环境问题的方式，即回收，太阳能，水能，风能。人们不使用这些方式来解决一些环境问题不是科学的问题，而是社会的问题。有一次，加拿大的一家公司提供完全没有排放的一辆车。没有人买这家公司的车。这不是科学得问题。我们不应该责备科学：环境问题是人类的问题。科技只当人类的工具。

Chinese Practice

Chinese, primarily education, should be trigger free?

 

为了帮助贫困问题，这些年轻人甘于放弃好的工作机会。他们宁要帮助贫困问题，不看重自己的工作。

之所以英语横扫了中国，是因为在国际贸易现在多用英语，而且是因为科学现在多用英语。中国要开拓国际市场，所以学贸易的人都学英语。而且，企业靠科学，科学多用英语。因此，中国也注重科学，科学家要学好英语。

在高考决定孩子的命运这样的情况下，出国留学是反对你不同意的决策。如果孩子生病，考得不好，他就不能上好的大学。这是应试教育和高考风靡一时的一个问题。在全球化的推动下，这个学生可以出国留学。孩子知道除了考高考以外，还有机会上大学会营造放松的氛围。因为只有钱的学生才可以出国留学，所以留学有如高考：有一些好的学生可以用这个做法读大学，但是也有很多好学生无法读大学。

随着全球化及科学的快速发展，教育越来越重要。父母为了孩子的成功要营造对学习好的氛围。为了进入好的大学，学生甘于化过长时间学习。但是，社会需要的教育反其道而行之。随着科技快速发展，人需要的知识也快速改变。由此，学好怎么自学宁应该普及，不比化太长时间学什么内容。例如，我和我的外公都是工程师。我们两个人，上大学的时候学到完全不同的知识。他的学习没有电脑软件，而我的教育靠软件。甚至我上初中的时候，没有我现在用的软件！因为科技发展的越来越快，所以我未来的工作会需要完全不同的软件或者做法。而且，个人可以上网查什么内容。如果我已经知道背景，也学好了怎么最好上网查事情，什么信息都容易找到。归根到底，学生最要学好怎么学习，大部分的内容在其次。

中国父母认为子不教，父之过，所以父母有责任教孩子。因为美国父母包括很多文化不同的父母，所以难以说“美国”的父母是不是这样认为的。但是，美国父母与中国父母在家庭教育的内容是不同的。在美国，如果孩子做不道德的事情，人们会认为这是父母的责任，但是上学的问题是孩子或者老师的责任。在中国，好像父母认为孩子读书的问题也是他们自己的责任：子不教，父之过。在道德的方面，中美两国父母同意：子不教，父之过。在读书的方面，中美两国是不同的：如果美国学生因为父母不让他学好所以有教育问题，人们才会认为这是父母的错误。如果父母没有来帮助孩子学习，这件事不是父母的责任，父母真的做什么事，害得孩子的学习，才能说这是父母的错。而在中国，帮助孩子的学习也是家庭教育的一部分。总之，中美两国家庭教育的不同点不是家庭有没有责任，而是家庭教育应该包括什么内容。

China and the WTO

Oh hey talking about China and the World Trade Organization because assignments.

This is the "presentation" I gave by typing it without looking at dictionaries or my notes or Google translate or Nciku or anything else, since speech wasn't really working when I was supposed to present. I started by flapping a lot and eventually gave up on the whole speech thing, typing this. The grammar should be fine, if a bit simple.

中国1995年开始申请入世。中国为什么要入世呢？
第一，虽然中国二十年前改革开放，但是中国公司开不拓国际市场。加入贸易组织会帮助中国公司开拓国际市场。例如说，联想开拓美国的个人计算机市场是中国入世后才发生。
第二，中国出口会被超大的关税。如果中国入世的话，中国产品被的关税曾下。
第三，中国的两极化问题越来越重要。在中国入世的推动下，中国农民更容易把农产和特产卖给国人。
中国2001年才当贸易组织的第143成员国。入世后，中国市场有巨大的改变。有一些中国公司开拓了国际市场（例如联想），也有跨国公司开拓了中国市场（例如星巴克）。从2001年到2007年，中国的纺织品和衣服出口增加高达220%。现在，中国出口总额是世界最多的。虽然中国还有过严重的两极化问题，但是农民把产品卖给外国人有帮助。
短期看，中国入世给中国经济带来大的改变，长远看入世会继续对中国生产深刻的影响。谢谢大家。  

This is the one I wrote as a report ahead of time. There were several words and grammar points I was required to use, and I probably messed up several of them. It's how I learn, right? 

中国入世不是一件小事。中国1995年申请加入世贸组织，2001才入世。中国入世经历了六年的时间。那么，中国为什么要花那么多时间，那么多力气入世呢？中国原先不是世界市场经济和多边贸易化体系的一部分，哪怕改革开放了二十年，中国仍然被排斥在世界经济之外，中国仍处于局外者的状态。因此，入世会让中国的经济进一步发展。与此同时，在加入世贸组织之后，在世界经济的推动下，中国对外贸易的风险降低了。因为在世贸组织成员国当中，每个国家都需要遵守关于贸易的条款和法规，这样就等于刺激了中国经济的发展，中国公司由此受益。从2001年到2007年，中国纺织品和衣服出口增加多达220%。表面上，这只是纺织业的进步，而实际上，中国所有的出口都有这样的趋势，根据这一事实完全可以判断中国的进出口总额是怎么改变的。短期看，这是纺织业的快速发展；长远看，加入世贸组织，为中国公司开拓国际市场提供了良好的机会。而且，入世也让跨国公司更容易的开拓中国的市场，给中国人更多选择。中国从加入贸组织收益巨大：现在，中国国内生产总值排在世界第二，超过除了美国以外的所有国家。中国的出口总额排到世界的第一，跟所有的欧盟出口总额接近。因为中国加入了贸易组织，所以中国的关税下降了，但进出口额增长了。因此，虽然关税少了，但是中国政府从关税得到的钱增长了。
除了上面谈的以外，中国政府也希望加入世贸组织会对经济两极化问题有所帮助。经济结构的二元化造成中国总体的发展不足，东部沿海地区先进的工业化、城市化经济和中西部落后的农村经济同时并存，差距很大。如果有什么政策会对农民有所帮助，中国政府一定会尝试。加入组织给中国8亿农民以发展机会：例如农民可以出口农特产。只有8亿中国农民从入世中受益，才能说中国从入世中受益。

Mine and Thine for Disability MOOC

Trigger Warning: References to ableism, death

 

I did the mine and thine exercise, approximately. I say approximately because in quite a few cases, the thing that I would be most frustrated by getting is not the thing that the friend most dislikes. [Cerebral palsy versus anxiety is the big one there- since I've already got anxiety issues, I'm kind of used to it. I don't have cerebral palsy and it's hard enough to play my particular set of sports while dyspraxic, so it'd be not so awesome for me to suddenly have it. Which I think kind of illustrates the point: the challenges we've already got aren't as big a deal to us as the ones we're not adapted to.]

I also realized just how many of my friends are also Disabled. Multiply disabled, in many cases.

In terms of disabilities, I came up with: blindness, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, depression, autism, anxiety, Ehlers-Danlos, ADHD, dyspraxia, PTSD, sensory processing disorder, and unspecified heck if I know extra medical issues. Yes, that's five friends. I think four friends is the shortest list I could pull that list from, no, I'm not telling you which friends.

I'm leaving unspecified off because I don't know what they are.

For my personal ordering of what I think would be most frustrating for me to adapt to, and let's be real here, I would adapt because that's what humans do, it's epilepsy. (See also: one of these things is not like the others... sudden unexpected death from epilepsy is a thing. I'm fairly sure none of the others can be directly fatal without the aid of outside factors.)

Then comes blindness. My auditory processing isn't good enough to do well with a screen-reader, so I'd need to learn braille, and adding an extra language is obnoxious, in terms of why blindness would be frustrating. Also, from the experience of a Blind friend, people tend not to to image descriptions. Access barriers. They would be obnoxious.

I think depression is next. The executive functioning issues I've already got because of other stuff, but I prefer not thinking the world is horrible and that nothing is worth it. It would make it harder to use caring about a thing to eventually overcome the executive dysfunction pile of messyness.

Now cerebral palsy. I like playing Ultimate, and that'd be harder with CP. Also, ramps. They are insufficiently good at existing where I want them to exist.

Ehlers-Danlos/PTSD are next as the ones where “This would really stink. But I'm not actually convinced I don't have the thing. I'm not sure what I would change, actually.”

ADHD I seriously might as well have. Pretty sure the only reason I don't “have” it is because the person evaluating me was aware of the whole “don't say ADHD and autism at the same time” thing in DSM-IV-TR.

Now for stuff I do have.

Anxiety is obnoxious. I would like to get rid of this one, thank you. Unfortunately, most of the stuff I am anxious about, it is because this stuff actually does happen. That means that even if “this is not realistically going to happen” did work for anxiety (if you think it does, then clearly you have never had anxiety) it wouldn't work for me because this realistically is going to happen. Does that even still count as anxiety?

Sensory processing disorder is also obnoxious. If I got to keep the ability to stim while getting rid of this, I would do it. Otherwise... frustrating as it can be, yeah, I'll keep it. Not even “I'd take it over thing X.” Just “Between having and not, I'll keep it.”

Dyspraxia can go away, please. I'd like to stop walking into walls and falling over and such sometime before aging causes me to start falling over again? Yeah that's not happening. Kind of obnoxious.

And now autism. I'm Autistic. Notice that this is the only one where I insist that I am going identity-first here and I am capitalizing it. This should tell you something about how I view autism. I want nothing to do with a cure, I want nothing to do with suddenly not being Autistic anymore. I'm keeping this, thank you.

So what do I learn? I learn that some of the disabilities we've already got, we might want to get rid of because it's obnoxious to deal with, some are just part of what is, and some we would fight to keep. As far as ones I don't have, I generally don't want it. If I don't mind much either way, chances are I've already got a lot of the traits.

That's my thing from mine-thine. Since I saw, “if you have a disability, describe your reaction to this week's lesson,” here's that, quickly. I admit it. I wince every time I see autism used as an example when touting person-first language, because as an Autistic person, I know autism is a disability that doesn't have that kind of consensus. It's important to respect people who want to be referred to that way, yes, but it goes both ways and I am Autistic not a person with autism and telling me I am a person first is the opposite of helpful my problem is with people refusing to acknowledge the ways I am different. I winced when one person with a disability (names, faces, what are these? Remembering names and faces isn't a thing that happens) said that he thinks people with disabilities are demeaning themselves when they call themselves “cripples,” because that's not what they are and they're people first. He has the right not to want that language himself, and to have his desire not to be referred to that way respected. It's not his place to tell other Disabled people they can't have it. It's not his place to tell them what it means for them. Just like it's not mine to tell him he should call himself parapalegic instead of saying he has parapalegia, it's not his to tell other disabled people what they call themselves.

Educational Experiences

Uh, have a thing I typed out in Chinese class when speech wasn't a thing and we were talking about experiences with education. If you read Chinese, then:

Trigger Warning: References to school abuse.

If not, I mean, the warning still holds but you can't read what I wrote?

我从幼儿园到四年级在波士顿的一个私校上学。父母送我到这个学校不是因为教育的质量好，而是因为他们担心波士顿公立学校的安全问题。这个学校的学生对我不太好。他们认为我太奇怪。因为老师也认为我太奇怪，所以他们不太愿意帮助我。甚至有一次，老师用一本书打我。学生，老师都会欺负我。因为这是小学，所以学得放松一点。但是放松也有问题。他们不愿意让我学我想学得数学。因此，我从四年级参加数学得补习班。

搬到别的小镇的时候，我开始上那儿的公立学校。因为五年级还是小学，所以挺放松。

六年级是初中的第一年。大部分的学生上一门数学课，一门科学课，一门历史课，及两门英文课。学校第一年有中文课，就是让选中文六年级的学生上一门英文课，一门中文课。七年级，所有的学生选外语。有中文，发文，及西班牙文。六年级学中文的学生可以继续学中文，也可以换到发文或西班牙文。外语是学生第一次选自己选课。学生继续欺负我，但是初中的老师喜欢我。

从八年级开始，数学班被分开。我以为我会参加数学高级班，而实际上我的数学比高级班的数学更高级。那一年我是“自学”数学的。我真的做数学补习班的作业或者练习数学比赛的问题。我不太明白我妈妈为什么让我八年级的时候考美国的高考。。。但是考了。考到2130分，所以朋友说我不应该上高中，应该上大学。

九年级开始高中。学生可以换他们学的外语。除了中文，发文，及西班牙文，高中生也可以学拉丁文。而且，科学从九年级分高级班和“标准”级班。除了高级班的介绍物理课以外，我上了十一年级的高级数学班和中文2、3的高级班。（一年学了两年的中文课。有点复杂了。）因为上适合我的数学课，所以九年级停止上数学的补习班。从十年级开始，历史和英语课也会分开到高级班和“标准”级班。注册明年的课的时候，老师会看今年的成绩。但是最后，如果你决定你要上高级班的课，这是学生和家长的选择。个个学生都要学四年的英语，三年的数学，三年的科学，三年的历史，级两年的外语。学完了以后，继续读或者.选别的课是学生和家长的选择。因为每一年都有注册课的问题，所以我现在很熟悉我高中注册课和安排课的做法。我的问题大部分是从九年级学两年的中文课和上十一年纪的数学课来的。最大的问题大概是第三年的数学课。因为十年级的时候上最高级的数学课，所以难以找第三年的数学课。最后，我上网上大学的数学课，再成为“自学”数学。其实不是自学，而是上大学的课。

Fixing Problems

Oh hey have a Chinese essay about responsibility for fixing environmental issues where I cited Young Wizards because why not?

随着科技发展，全世界的变化越来越明显。但是无毫节制地发展是一柄双刃剑。在国际越来越发达，越来越全球化的同时，世界面临越来越严重的环境问题。解决这些环境问题是谁的责任？我们应该怎么来解决环境问题。

如果说，“谁引起问题，谁就要解决问题，”的话，那么公司应该解决环境问题。从工业革命开始，公司都为了获益滥用我们世界的资源，从而引发了严重的环境问题。不仅公司滥用资源，而且公司从前不注意可持续发展。现在面临的环境局面就是公司的责任。他们的做法是资本主义弊端的体现：为了获取高额利益而不择手段。但是，令人欣喜的是当代的公司纷纷意识到了自己这种做法的错误，并开始逐渐改正。那么，公司应该怎么解决环境问题？现在，公司为了卖更多的产品，会卖很多残次品，让客户快把产品扔掉。公司必须停止这样的做法。而且，公司要生产可回收的产品。在可再生能源的一方面，公司应该加强研究：怎么可以用可再生能源来生产产品（例如：使用电能开车就是应该研究的一件事）。总之，公司应该采用保护环境的行为准则。

但是，“谁引起问题，谁就要解决问题，”不是唯一的看法。在Duane写的“年轻眩人”的系列丛书中，作者认为的做法是“谁找到了问题，谁就要解决问题。”如果说我们世界也是这样的话，那么个人要解决环境问题，特别是环保专家要解决环境问题。虽然个人来解决环保问题并非能从根本上解决环保问题，但是个人少开车会在大局方面有利于环境的保护。由此，个人应该做自己可以做的，拿少开车来说。如果每个人都少开车就会让车排放的尾气下降。而且，少开车会让个人多走路，多骑自行车，多坐公交车。因此，个人的身体健康和城市里的交通情况都会改善。再如，个人应该买可回收的产品，而且，如果个人只愿意买可回收的产品和用可再生能源做的产品，那么公司就都要卖这样的产品。这样，个人的消费理念就会引导公司保护环境。

政府是个人和公司的领导。那么，政府应该怎么做？因为政府已经资助科技研究，所以资助环保和可再生能源研究是好的做法。除了环保和可再生能源研究以外，政府也应该多提出环保的政策。如果政策和个人的消费理念都鼓励公司做环保的事情，公司的做法会变得更加环保。

个人不能从根本上解决环境问题。公司最看重的是收益。政府的政策会让公司现在做的好一点，但是因为公司比个人更具有经济实力，所以公司的下一代会让政府改变政策。由此，解决环境问题的做法需要个人，公司，及政府一起来解决。这样，我们才能给子孙好的环境。

Chinese essays

Have an assortment of Chinese short-ish essays.

政务微博为政府形象带来影响。在好处的方面，四川地震后，政务微博使得政府更能找被地震害的人民。四川人纷纷发微波，让政府知道什么事发生了，最好怎么帮助。而且，政府会使用微波引发信息。但是，政务微博是一柄双刃剑。例如，“僵尸微博”给政府负面影响：人看没有更新微波，会认为政府不在乎。由此，中国政府应该注意怎么使用微波：会有用，而政务微波并非魔弹。

联想公司1984年在北京成立。一开始，联想公司所有的员工都是中国科学院计算技术研究所的成员。1988年联想公司开幕香港队部，也是联想第一次找新的员工。因为联想成立的20万人民币是政府投资的钱，所以有些人以为联想现在是政府的企业，与自由市场有悖。但联想是为了商业化中国科学院的研究结构成立，而不是政府的企业。依在下偶见，联想公司就是中国市场好质量的象征。联想公司怎么到这样的情况？

买IBM公司中个人计算机部前，联想在国内个人计算机市场遭遇瓶颈，联想务必开拓海外市场。如果不开拓海外市场的话，联想继续卖得不好，会有太大的问题。但是在海外，人以为中国只能做便宜的产品，人尚未相信一个中国公司能卖好的电脑。而且，联想的科技不如硅谷的科技。

这时候，IBM也面对问题。鉴于IBM公司中电脑业务不好，拖累了IBM公司的整体业绩，IBM想卖个人计算机部。联想知道I收购IBM公司对联想公司的产品有很大帮助：IBM的科技得以发展联想的电脑。

当谈到环保这个话题的时候，很多人批评政府，公司做得不够。在批评政府及公司做得不够的同时，也在很多人自身做得也不够。人去出的时候不一定关灯，就把电能挥霍一空。如果个人无毫节制的滥用石油，天然气等，就让下一代面临更严重的能源匮乏问题！多用煤，石油，天然气会产生环境问题。环境问题会导致人的健康问题。因此，无论是顾及眼下还是着眼长远个人都应该少开车，支持保护环境的公司。这些都是保护环境行为的体现。令人欣喜的是，如果支持保护环境公司的人许多，所有的公司都会开始可持续发展。不仅个人要自己做这样的事，而且个人更要教孩子这样做。如果教孩子的话，下一代会继续保护环境，教他们的孩子，下下一代也会这样做，等。正像中国俗话说的那样：“子子孙孙无穷匮也。”

Have some more essays!

Woo, have 4 more things I wrote for Chinese class.

This one is about environmental stuff and subway construction in Nanjing.

 

南京为了建新的地铁线会砍树及移树。从环境保护的角度来说，因为在南京移的树中，只有15棵存活，保存率只有18％。地铁建设部不仅不看重保护南京的桐，反而更好的地铁也对保护环境好。反过来说，发生之所以地铁建设部移这么多树，是因为设计问题：政府让他们少移树，地铁建设部就从1065棵减少到780棵减少到328棵。这样做表明地铁建设部不必这样做。通过政府“移树”的观点，因为政府有办法一边建地铁，一边保护桐，所以他们应该这样做。

 

This one is about global warming.

全球变暖是非常严重的一个问题。虽然有一些人说“谈气候变暖的科学家都是危言耸听，”但是气候变暖已经会殃及。（对于科学来说“气候变暖”绝非 完全对的名字，而是给气候变化的一部分表明。世界变暖只是冰山一角。除了变暖以外，也有龙卷风变多，暴风雪变多，海平升高等。） 无止境排放尾气会引发一系列连锁反应：温室气体让气氛有更多水汽。水汽是一种温室气体，就是一种周而复始。而且，冰帽反影太阳光。如果冰帽融化的话，冰帽反映的太阳光减少，由不得世界变得更暖。这个问题已经会过昂贵！但是，我们还有能力解决（或者帮助）世界变暖的问题。如果个人都少开车，政府提供环保的政策，公司来少排放尾气，这样做会有帮助。而且，多种树会让气氛里的二氧化碳减少。总的来说，快来做环保的事情对气候变暖问题有帮助。

 

Education by the family/at home between China and the USA.

中美家庭教育虽然表面上是截然不同的，而实际上中美父母做家庭教育为的是孩子的成功。中国父母注重成绩是因为在中国成功历来都是从教育来的（找好工作，这样的事情）。美国父母注重孩子快乐是因为我们认为快乐是一种成功。而且，中美两国的教育情况不一样。在美国申请大学比在中国申请大学容易多了。在美国，大学看成绩，考试，和课外活动。中国大学绝非放松，而是只看重一次残酷性的考试。 归根结底，问题在于教育情况，而不是中美父母完全不一样。中美父母都要希望孩子会有成功，区别是“成功”的结构和得到成功的方式。

 

Actually kind of the same as the last one lol.

中美两国的教育有一样的，也有很大的区别。在美国，孩子上小学的时候，父母不注重考试。（有一些学生，第一次考试是小学三年级。）而且，美国的小学生晚一点学好怎么静坐。 按说，中国学生从幼儿园要静坐。在课后的事情，中美两国也不太一样。条件充许的话，美国小孩儿尽是运动都参加。什么活动都做的不太好，但是什么都不惜参加是美国孩子的做法。中国孩子选少一点活动，直到做的非常好为止。中国教育注重做的非常好，美国教育注重学好很多事。

 

但是，中美两国都注重考试。中国历来都看重考试，美国今时越来越看重考试。因此，准备考试的补习班越来越大行其道。而且，美国教育注重考试的内容。在中国，注重考试的原因是从历史来的。而且，中国的高考过渡重要：每一年考一次，高考的成绩决定学生可以上什么大学。美国也有上大学的考试，但是没有中国的高考这么重要。在美国，考得不好但是高中成绩好的学生还可以上挺好的大学。在中国，这是不可能的。