Mail 721 Tuesday, April 17, 2012

a comment on autism

Dear Dr. Pournelle;

First let me note that I’m pleased that you are feeling better. Your "voice," as it comes across in your writing, seems stronger. Second, and before my comment on autism, let me please add 2 points. I am a neuropsychologist and consider myself to be a scientist. That said, part of my training involved the practice of psychotherapy. In graduate school I was provided a broad spectrum of the classic theoretical approaches for psychopathology and that included the study of the theories of what goes wrong to create psychopathology. My classmates and I also were provided the critical thinking skills to determine where these theories break down (i.e., what phenomena they fail to explain) and what science exists to support the theories. There is experimental research that supports some aspects of Freudian theories. My point is that a doctoral level education in clinical psychology does not necessarily produce adherents. As a whole and over my professional career, the field has shifted away from the grand, all-encompassing theories (like Freud’s) and to smaller theories involving cognition and behavior. The field also is barreling headfirst into evidence-based clinical practice. I would note also that research papers written in the 1930’s describe the symptoms of ADHD. That diagnosis did not hit the mainstream until about 1980; however, prior to that time the diagnosis of "Minimal Brain Dysfunction" was used to describe children who were having difficulty in school. That included attentional symptoms. So the diagnosis of ADHD did not spring up, de-novo.

Now, please let me comment on the diagnosis of autism. In my state, there is considerable pressure put on psychologists, physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants to diagnose children with autistic spectrum diagnoses. In order to obtain behavioral services a sufficiently severe diagnosis is needed. Often I am referred a child who is pathologically shy and has social problems or who has Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, or who is aggressive and the family is desperate to have a diagnosis of Asperger Disorder for their child as it unlocks the state system for services. Imagine the scene: the mom says, "But doctor if you don’t diagnose little Billy with autism, he’ll lose his home therapist." It is especially difficult in these situations if a well-meaning clinician had "bent" the diagnostic criteria and already made the diagnosis, and it looks like I am going against the known medical history. The internet makes it especially difficult as parents are almost always well educated about the the symptoms of the autistic spectrum and provide information that is tailored, consciously or unconsciously, to support the diagnosis. Unfortunately, much of this information is quite broad and includes statistically infrequent behaviors that while odd, are not part of the current diagnostic criteria.

J

I note in today’s paper that there’s a theory that autism is related to sleep disorders. And I heard on the radio that fluoridation of the water is to blame. And of course there’s the whole vaccination business: when I was a lad we got DPT and smallpox. My children were subjected to about 15 vaccinations. Now, I am told, in some school districts you have to have 43. I have no idea whether being exposed to 40 plus diseases (well, that’s an oversimplification of vaccination and immunization, but it will do for present purposes) has any effect on the “rise in autism” and “ADD and ADHD”. I have observed that rich kids are more likely to have treatable disorders than poor children.

The combination of Internet and entitlements must make life very interesting for practicing psychologists in today’s world. It is a serious matter, but I am not sure what it means to take it seriously now.

I want again to emphasize that in my judgment we don’t know enough to have good theories. We need better case histories, and lots of them, preferably not filtered through the DSM or some grand theory.

Stand your ground & investigations

Dear Jerry –

Victor Hanson’s article on the Martin/Zimmerman case was worth reading, but it contains a common misunderstanding of the Florida Stand Your Ground law. The following information I learned from, of all places, a Public Broadcasting radio show, and was presented by a law school professor. Sorry, but I don’t recall her name or detailed qualifications. You may check it as you wish.

Hanson wrote "Most agree that when one party is shot, killed, and was not armed, then the evidence must be carefully reviewed to substantiate a self-defense plea; the objection is not to the review but to the prejudging of the review and public threats.".

Apparently, the Florida law was written not just to protect against conviction for not running away from a threat, but to protect against the damage an unsuccessful prosecution can cause to those of us who are not wealthy. According to the broadcast, a determination of threat by responding LEOs prevents any further action on the subject. Under the law, the police were actually prohibited from further investigation once they concluded (rightly or wrongly) that Zimmerman reasonably felt threatened.

Regards,

Jim Martin (no relation to Trayvon)

Interesting. And of course that is no longer the case. Zimmerman’s life will never be the same now.

Why aren’t they offering Secretary Napolitano the Martha Stewart suite?

Dr. P,

It appears that the high crime of misstating the truth to Congressional investigators is a greater offense than committing perjury before Congress:

“According to [author Katie] Pavlich, when Homeland Secretary Janet Napolitano testified before Congress about Operation Fast and Furious, she lied on at least two occasions. Twice she was asked if she had discussed Fast and Furious US Attorney General Eric Holder and twice she answered no. Pavlich says that there were five emails that clearly indicate that Napolitano and Holder discussed the failed program within two days after the death of US Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

“Another one of Pavlich’s sources told her that an agent from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had been assigned to Fast and Furious since it involved the US-Mexico border. ICE is under the Department of Homeland Security and Napolitano was regularly briefed on the operation by the agent.”

<http://www.westernjournalism.com/new-book-contends-napolitano-perjured-herself-before-congress/>

The only other possible explanation for the delta between the Department of Justice’s eagerness to prosecute Secretary Napolitano for false statements made under oath and its eagerness to prosecute Ms. Stewart for false statements not made under oath would be that some perpetrators are more equal than others. I’m sure that couldn’t be the case, could it?

Regards,

William Clardy

One might have thought so. But this is Washington in 2012…

Getting the new version from Amazon

Dr Pournelle

"Amazon has a policy of giving a free download of a corrected edition to anyone who bought the previous edition"

<https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?p=6833>

That’s what they advertise, but my experience differs.

In response to my request, Nancy Fulda posted ‘Hexes and Tooth Decay’ on Amazon. Bought it. Had a formatting error. I told Nancy. She corrected the error and uploaded the new version. I deleted my old version and reloaded. Still had the formatting error. I RETURNED my copy and bought a new one. Still had the formatting error.

I hear I have to go through Amazon Customer Service to get the new version. That is more bother than I care to go through. (So sue me. I’m lazy.) Oughta be an easier way.

My experience is that getting a corrected version of a work I bought before the correction ain’t easy and ain’t intuitive. That Amazon makes it possible does not mean their way passes my cost-benefit calculation. No matter what Amazon might think, my time has value — if not to them, to me.

Live long and prosper

h lynn keith

That isn’t my experience. When we found errors in some previous books, my agent simply took them down, I did the proofing, and we put them back up again. Of course if you work through publishers you’re pretty well at their mercy. In my case I have a couple of books I put up myself (well, with the help of Eric Pobirs and Captain Morse and Rick Hellewell and lots of other friends), and some which have been put up by my agent (she or her predecessors sold the books in the first place long ago and this seemed a very fair way to do this). In both cases it’s easy to get a quick response.

Regarding Red Heroin, I have been looking at the text and it’s not as bad as it might have been, but there are several irritating instances of the letter I being converted into a 1, which in a first person viewpoint story will cause a really bad break in empathy. I’m fixing it, and going over some of the other works while I’m at it.

I’m sorry to hear about the problem, but so far we haven’t had that difficulty to the best of my knowledge. Of course I have only my own book experiences as data.

Himalayan glaciers actually GAINING ice, space scans show:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/16/himalayan_karakoram_glaciers_gaining_ice/

An inconvenient truth?

Ed

Which is hardly astonishing since glacier formation is far more dependent on rainfall and moisture content than temperature. Actually, warmer climates ought to be wetter, shouldn’t they? Which would mean more snowfall and glaciers which should mean more reflectivity which should mean cooling which – but I am not a climate modeller. I would have thought that kind of loop would be built into the models, though.

Ancient weather History Channel Canada

http://www.history.ca/ontv/titledetails.aspx?titleid=251058

Ancient Weather

<javascript:window.print()> >>Watch Full Episodes <http://www.history.ca/video/default.aspx?releasePID=YucrvuYxjnHOZ_okGYrkvUeMx6gBxNqY>

[a cousin in Minnesota tried and found them blocked to USA viewers; perhaps you can find it on DVD or history.com will broadcast them – tell them you’re interested]

In this major new four-part [only three episodes broadcast] series, Tony Robinson travels back through 200,000 years of human history to find out what happened to our ancestors when violent climate change turned their world upside down.

Some civilisations flourished while others were destroyed. Vicious and sudden changes to the climate killed millions; but benign climate conditions have enabled humans to multiply and develop at an extraordinary pace. Using CGI effects and stunning imagery, this series visualises the world’s changing landscape over tens of thousands of years.

Tony asks what our society can learn as we face our own climate crisis today and seeks answers at some of the world’s most important and intriguing archaeological sites, speaking to leading archaeologists, historians and climate scientists. Helping on his quest are climate change archaeologist, Dr Jago Cooper and climate modeller, Dr Joy Singarayer.

upcoming episodes

The Triumph of Homo Sapiens airs Saturday, April 14 at 1:00 AM EST (CC) <http://www.history.ca/ontv/titledetails.aspx?titleid=250957>

The Birth of Civilization airs Saturday, April 14 at 2:00 AM EST (CC) <http://www.history.ca/ontv/titledetails.aspx?titleid=250895>

Killer Climate airs Saturday, April 14 at 3:00 AM EST (CC) <http://www.history.ca/ontv/titledetails.aspx?titleid=250995>

[The modern world online/not broadcast; there were two interruptions saying content not available in first half, then resumed]

Their summaries don’t suggest the extent of the extreme climate change that has occurred over 200,000 years. At one time the Atlantic ocean sea level was so low that the British Isles were connected by a huge land bridge to Europe and people farmed where the Black Sea now exists. One extreme change made the difference. Or the fertile Sahara became a desert. Just for the serious and intellectually honest viewer.

I’m glad you’re recovering from whatever ailed you. Me, I’m in wait and watch mode with a prostate cancer early stages diagnosis but enjoying life in the meantime. I leave the worrying to those who can do something about it. My Grandfather survived cancer in his 70s and lived to 92.

Cheers, Ray Whidden

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

My daughter has developed theories of how early civilizations and cities formed in what is now the Persian Gulf (see Diving into Noah’s Flood) and that’s just a few thousand years. Of course Niven and I had quite different weather in our pre-histories (Burning City, Burning Tower) which take place 14,000 years ago just after Atlantis sank… (I hasten to add that Jenny’s theories are intended to be serious…)

Civilizing Humanity

I’m just a house-wife, but I think that last link you’re still thinking on is looking at societies as individual things, rather than vague… group-area things. Objects instead of colors, to try to use metaphor to explain.

Death tends to happen on the edges of society or control– the more advances a society is, the more it can "cover," and there’s less need for death. Picture the proper treatment for someone who randomly thinks that everyone is trying to kill him in a low-level tribal society (death– or he’ll kill you, and a bunch of other people) or modern society (put him in a mental ward.) Ditto for a family that tends to produce kids who are homicidal psychotics– kill off the family as a potential threat, or monitor the family closely for signs of psychosis.

"Out-laws" were those who were outside of the protection of law, yes? That’s why it was such a big deal. And cultural clashes are sort of like the plates of the earth– sometimes they both just there, sometimes they pull apart, usually they’re grinding against each other.

Way-back, there were small color blots of cultures that faded out before they really reached any other blot. Time goes on, and the blots start clashing, with the saturated blots wiping out the faded edges of other blots. Now? The blots are petty solidly saturated, so you get mixing, but there’s not so much overwhelming.

Sorry for the funky metaphor. Really long way of saying that the folks who will kill people have to have targets that aren’t either able to protect themselves or be protected by others, and the more packed in folks get, the more unable-to-defend folks can be covered by a group defender.

Amanda S.

As the rule of law fades and we build more and more structure things will change. And not for the better. Street gangs are a reaction to the absence of law and order. Perhaps it is the duty of the young men to be warriors, and if society gives them no part in that they will take one.

Tornado Recovery: How Joplin is Beating Tuscaloosa

Comment: the comprehensive plan adopted by Tuscaloosa is laced with the philosophical poison of sustainable development and chapter 6 is specifically devoted to the subject. Mayor Maddox acknowledged that one of the strings attached to FEMA’s supposed grant (there is no free lunch) is the official adoption of a comprehensive plan.

http://tuscaloosaforward.com/documents/Tuscaloosa%20Forward%20-%20August03.pdf

FEMA document: Planning for a Sustainable Future

http://www.fema.gov/library/file;jsessionid=7D9A938D46B57918A7D884527DBBA344.Worker2Library?type=publishedFile&file=fema364.pdf&fileid=2545c8a0-46ef-11db-a421-000bdba87d5b

Wall Street Journal: Tornado Recovery: How Joplin is Beating Tuscaloosa

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303404704577309220933715082.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Wall Street Journal

April 13, 2012

Tornado Recovery: How Joplin Is Beating Tuscaloosa

by David T. Beito and Daniel J. Smith

Last April 27, one of the worst tornadoes in American history tore through Tuscaloosa, Ala., killing 52 people and damaging or destroying 2,000 buildings. In six minutes, it put nearly one-tenth of the city’s population into the unemployment line. A month later, Joplin, Mo., suffered an even more devastating blow. In a city with half the population of Tuscaloosa, a tornado killed 161 and damaged or destroyed more than 6,000 buildings.

More than 100,000 volunteers mobilized to help the stricken cities recover. A "can-do" spirit took hold, with churches, college fraternities and talk-radio saions leading the way. But a year after the tragedies, that spirit lives on far more in Joplin than in Tuscaloosa. Joplin is enjoying a renaissance while Tuscaloosa’s recovery has stalled.

In Joplin, eight of 10 affected businesses have reopened, according to the city’s Chamber of Commerce, while less than half in Tuscaloosa have even applied for building permits, according to city data we reviewed. Walgreens revived its Joplin store in what it calls a "record-setting" three months. In Tuscaloosa, a destroyed CVS still festers, undemolished. Large swaths of Tuscaloosa’s main commercial thoroughfares remain vacant lots, and several destroyed businesses have decided to reopen elsewhere, in neighboring Northport.

The reason for Joplin’s successes and Tuscaloosa’s shortcomings? In Tuscaloosa, officials sought to remake the urban landscape top-down, imposing a redevelopment plan on businesses. Joplin took a bottom-up approach, allowing businesses to take the lead in recovery.

The city of Joplin, Mo., has relaxed zoning mandates and issued thousands of repair and building permits since a major tornado struck on May 22, 2011.

"Out of the heartbreak of disaster," declared Tuscaloosa Mayor Walt Maddox several days after his city’s tornado, "rises an extraordinary opportunity to comprehensively plan and rebuild our great city better than ever before." In this transformative spirit, Tuscaloosa’s city council imposed a 90-day construction moratorium in the disaster area, restricting commercial and residential redevelopment until officials could craft and adopt a long-term master plan. Many of the restrictions remained long after the moratorium officially expired. Joplin, by contrast, passed a 60-day moratorium that applied only to single-family residential structures and was lifted on a rolling basis, as each section of the city saw its debris cleared, within 60 days.

The Alabama city’s recovery plan, "Tuscaloosa Forward," is indeed state-of-the-art urban planning—and that’s the crux of the problem. It sets out to "courageously create a showpiece" of "unique neighborhoods that are healthy, safe, accessible, connected, and sustainable," all anchored by "village centers" for shopping (in a local economy that struggles to sustain current shopping centers). Another goal is to "preserve neighborhood character" from a "disproportionate ratio of renters to owners." The plan never mentions protecting property rights.

In Joplin, the official plan not only makes property rights a priority but clocks in at only 21 pages, compared with Tuscaloosa’s 128. Joplin’s plan also relied heavily on input from businesses (including through a Citizen’s Advisory Recovery Team) instead of Tuscaloosa’s reliance on outside consulting firms. "We need to say to our businesses, community, and to our citizens, ‘If you guys want to rebuild your houses, we’ll do everything we can to make it happen,’" said Joplin City Council member William Scearce in an interview.

Instead of encouraging businesses to rebuild as quickly as possible, Tuscaloosa enforced restrictive zoning rules and building codes that raised costs—prohibitively, in some cases. John Carney, owner of Express Oil Change, which was annihilated by the storm, estimates that the city’s delays and regulation will cost him nearly $100,000. And trying to follow the rules often yielded mountains of red tape, as the city rejected businesses’ proposals one after another.

"It’s just been a hodgepodge," says Mr. Carney. "We’ve gotten so many mixed signals from the get go. The plans have been ever-changing." Boulevard Salon owner Tommy Metrock, one of the few business owners to rebuild on Tuscaloosa’s main thoroughfare, McFarland Boulevard, says the restrictions created "chaos" as people put their livelihoods on hold while the city planned.

Joplin took a dramatically different approach. According to interviews with local business owners, right after disaster struck the city council formally and informally rolled back existing regulations, liberally waving licensing and zoning mandates. It even resisted the temptation to make "safe rooms" a condition of rebuilding.

The owner of one Joplin construction company told us that when it came to regulations, the "city just sort of backed out. . . . We had projects that we completed before we got building permits." Said another Joplin resident: "When you have the magnitude of that disaster, really the old ways of doing things are suspended for a while until you create whatever normal is. . . . The government was realistic to know that there is a period of time when common sense, codes and laws that are in place to protect people are suspended for the sake of the greater good."

Despite it all, Tuscaloosa officials are determined to stick to their plan. The final version of Tuscaloosa Forward is on track for approval by the City Council. The city is banking on defraying its costs through as-yet-unreceived funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and other federal bodies. As Tuscaloosa Forward bluntly acknowledges, full implementation of the plan is impossible without "public subsidies to leverage private capital."

Last year’s decentralized volunteer response seems to be entirely forgotten by city officialdom. As Mayor Maddox recently said: If Tuscaloosa "had a trained FEMA corps on the ground" when the tornado struck, "they could have taken over organizing the volunteers immediately."

In an age of mounting deficits and limited federal attention spans, hoping for more subsidies from Washington, D.C. is a risky bet at best. Joplin’s safer wager is in the good sense and independently generated resources of those individuals and businesses most directly affected by nature’s fury.

Mr. Beito is a professor of history at the University of Alabama. Mr. Smith is a professor of economics at Troy University and the co-author, with Daniel Sutter, of "Private and Public Sector Responses to the 2011 Tornadoes," a study forthcoming from the Mercatus Center.

I truly believe that we were far better off with Civil Defense, and that FEMA can’t possibly work. But I have said that often before.

Normal Holocene Weather

Mr. Tips comment that weather from 1920-1980 was unusually benign, and that we are now returning to Normal Holocene Weather was interesting. Looking for more information, I searched for the term via Google. It seems he has posted similar comments on a number of climate blogs. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find any other references or supporting material for this claim. The only lead he offers (in comments to other blogs) was that it might have been published in Smithsonian magazine in the 1974-75 time frame.

While I don’t doubt that Mr. Tips is sincere in what he recalls, I am old enough to have discovered that I sometimes suffer faulty memory recall for things like this, and hence tend to treat my own recollections with some caution. It would be nice to have additional references for something this intriguing. I wonder if any of your other readers can provide links to publications which support the assertion.

Craig

I have heard this said often, but off the top of my head I don’t recall the sources. I make no doubt some will come to us. Thanks

Memory Engineering

Jerry,

This is, I think, quite important – a theory of how memory works that includes techniques for modifying and/or erasing specific memories, using currently available neurochemicals, with considerable evidence that it works. There are interesting implications.

Apparently long-term memory involves destructive reads – recalling a long-term memory automatically rewrites it, modified to some extent to reflect your current mental state. (Anyone who’s looked into witness unreliability over time says, "ah-hah!")

There are therapeutic implications: Recalling a traumatic memory while in a positive mental state (however induced) can reshape the memory and reduce the trauma.

There are terrifying implications: Recalling a memory while dosed with a blocker for an essential memory (re)formation neurochemical erases that memory.

They’ve tested it on rats, so far. It requires direct injection of the blocker chemical into the brain, so far. It works quite well to erase specific rat memories, so far.

We live in interesting times. (Uh, what were we talking about?)

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2012/02/ff_forgettingpill/all/1

Henry

I once participated in implanting memories (harmless ones, with parents’ consent) in young children. They become very real. And I am now becoming very familiar with the phenomenon of forgetting, becoming well known as absent minded, particularly for names. Embarrassing. My consolation is that my present memory isn’t much worse than Niven’s was when I met him forty years ago.

"They say a snake bit her once …

… and died."

http://paulinhouston.blogspot.com/2012/04/snake-bit-her-once.html

>Paul Gordon