Guest Post - "Dr. James McPartland is a Dick (and more)"

I received an email from a friend whose a member of an Autistic Issues student group called SWANSA that made some very valid points about not only autism, but "civilized" society in general, that I felt my readers would very much benefit from taking a gander at. The friends name is Walt Guthrie (he never told me whether or not he was related to Woody and Arlo):

I caught the James McPartland talk at Emory November 8.
Off the bat, three things you need to know about him.
One: he's the Assistant Professor in the Child Study Center.
Two: He's the Associate Director of Developmental Electrophysiology Lab
Three: he's a dick.
He's actually more than that. But we'll get to that.
First, the dick:

In the course of his "research," McPartland makes use of a computer program called "Cyberball," which is a sort of "video game". Now, I have put quote marks around the words "video game" because it is the most primitive-looking thing you can possibly imagine. We are not talking "Gears of War" here. From the brief demonstration, given during the talk, it appeared to be something that might have come out in 1975 just prior to the introduction of "Pong." But what do I know? For all I know it might have just popped out of the MIT Media lab last month. In any case, I cannot emphasize enough how boring this game is.
It is a simulated game of catch between three players. Each player can choose to throw the ball to the person on his left or the person on his right. That's it. That's the game. It doesn't appear that you can miss or that the other person can fail to catch the ball. There is no skill and no chance whatsoever involved. For all intents and purposes, assuming the demonstration of this game was representative of actual "play," the "game" is the equivalent of nothing more than three people with one person calling out the name of one of the two others, and then that person being able to do the same and so on and so on.
Of course no human being would ever willingly choose to waste their time playing such a "game," but McPartland has apparently made countless kids waste irretrievable hours of their childhood at no discernible benefit for themselves "playing" this simulation that simulates nothing.
But this is not what makes McPartland a dick.
This is:
What is the purpose of Cyberball? Well, it turns out it does have a one. According to McPartland, Cyberball is designed to make a player feel excluded and outcast. You see, the other two "players" of Cyberball don't exist. They are just part of the program and what they do is ignore the player and just toss the ball back and forth to each other. Now, McPartland claims that the children he works with are, by the nature of their autism, already shunned and socially mistreated by their peers. So what does he do with them? He experiments on them by making them play games designed to increase their sense of isolation and social ostracism. And these are experiments solely for his benefit since McPartland made no claim during the course of his talk that these sessions would provide any benefit whatsoever for the children playing them.
McPartland tricks ostracized children into performing activities designed solely to further their own sense of ostracism.
Where I come from this sort of person is also technically known as a douchebag.
Oh, and did I mention that he was excited about the prospect of a computer program that might test for empathy.
Let the irony of THAT sink in.

The bulk of his talk is old territory that I've addressed before. More laser-pointer-on-the-head sort of nonsense. This time we learn that autistics take 200 milliseconds or so to process faces. Regular folk take, on average, 180. Noting that that might not seem like a big deal, McPartland admitted as much and then went on to claim that it actually was, without offering the slightest bit of evidence except to note that those 20 milliseconds add up over time (Yeah, he's right Those two percents of a second add up. Work those face recognitions, kids. You only have 86,400,000 milliseconds in a day to work with!) During it all he performed the verbal sleight-of-hand of telling us that some of this was hard science, some was unpublished and some was just speculation. It was almost like a psychic doing a "cold reading" to the room, leaving himself plenty of wiggle room should anyone call him him on any of his claims (The main one being that autistics maybe just aren't properly motivated to have the desire to be social. Or something. As someone who understands the spectrum from living it, listening to McPartland's meandering theory of autism was like listening to my great aunt and her circle describe what goes on in Grand Theft Auto). There was more talk about perceiving upright faces vs inverted faces. If you believe this is relevant to anything on Earth then God love. I won't be dragged into another discussion on it.

Afterwards, in the reception following McPartland's talk, I asked him directly whether or not autism was empirically or definitionally a "disorder." He responded that it was definitional and that ALL people on the autistic spectrum are, by definition, "disordered." Then, having admitted this, he jumped to the it's-only-a-word defense. If I found the word "offensive" (a word I never employed in the course of the discussion) then that was on me. Because who could find any objection to being labeled "disordered?"
I told him what the word "disordered" actually means.
It means "nigger."
It means "faggot." It means "kike."
It performs the same societal function and is derived in PRECISELY the same manner. It is a derogatory classification whose purpose is to dehumanize one arbitrarily grouped and categorized set of humanity. And like the white racist, who feels that he can designate, by his own criteria, any one that he chooses to include into or exclude from the inferior class of "nigger," James McPartland and his intellectually low-functioning behaviorist brood think they are entitled to arbitrarily classify an entire subset of humanity as definitionally "disordered" and then have full power to say who is and who is not in that set. Neither James McPartland nor the typical hardcore white racist feel any need to empirically justify their respective words. Why should he? Just as the word "nigger" empowered and elevated the white power structure, the word 'disorder' gives the behaviorists their power, income, and justification for their very existence.
James Mcpartland is a grinning clown, the moral equivalent of a racist, who experiments on vulnerable socially outcast children to make them feel worse about themselves, all so he can grind out a steady stream of lazy speculation disguised as science.
Fuck him.

A Very Special Conversation

Image by Andrew Braithwaite, license cca 2.0 generic

This is a conversation I've been tracking from the Politico community and one other source:

Obama [1]: "On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.

We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the fainthearted -- for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things -- some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor -- who have carried us up the long, rugged path toward prosperity and freedom."

Then Dodd talks about his "long, rugged path":

Senator Dodd [2]: "My patience is running out, I’ve extended the hand. I’ve written provisions in this bill to accommodate various interests. But I’m not going to continue doing this if all I’m getting the other side is a suggestion somehow that this is a partisan effort." (para. 2)

[They are spreading] "outright falsehoods” [which are] “now being repeated by people who should know better and frankly do know better." (para. 3 end)


Then these comments come flying at Dodd, and at the commenters:

Commenter 1: "Democrats...THE PARTY OF NO." [3]

Commenter 2: "Why not cut them out of the loop entirely on all issues? Their stated intransigence is equalled only by their political ignorance in condemning themselves to a long spell of superminority irrelevance."

Commenter 3: "The American people are sick and tired of the GOP's refusal to GET TO WORK."

Commenter 4: "Dodd is both a crook, and in charge of this bill."

Commenter 5: "D-day (roasted rats) is coming at a poll near you 11/7 !"

Commenter 6: "The Republican Party is not interested in governing unless it calls the shots."

Commenter 7: "How can anyone take the GOP seriously when all they're doing is trying to block reform be rehashing the same stale GOP talking points they used with health care?"

Commenter 8: "SORRY, THE PARTY OF NO LABEL BELONGS TO REPUBLICANS SOLELY!

NO TO AMERICANS BENEFITS

NO TO HEALTH CARE REFORM

NO TO BANKING REFORM"

//Caps make the world a better place.>>

Commenter 9: "REALITY BE DAMNED!"

Commenter 10: "These people aren't interested in facts, WWE. They lie, even to themselves. To recognize what Republicans are doing woudl be, for the Republican minions, the same as recognizing their own gullibility and stupidity. They MUST ignore the facts. If they didn't, they'd lose whatever little self-esttem they have left after lifetimes of being left behind and walked over and ignored because they are too stupid to understand the world."

Okay, this isn't the entire discussion, but you get the idea.


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Footnotes:

Feel free to question the use of any source or context of any quote from source:

[1] Obama Inaugural Speech, paragraphs 7-9, source: CNN.com; http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/20/obama.politics/index.html

[2] Carrie Burdoff Brown, "Chris Dodd threatens to cut GOP out of financial reform talks," http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0410/35800.html, 4/14/2010

[3] Message board for [2], http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0410/35800.html#commentsform, first 20 comments

The Copenhagen Post

Looking at many articles pertaining to Climate Change (and many of the stories revolve around Denmark), I have found a rare gem.

This quality Danish newspaper is concise, informative, intelligent, and has a wonderful English language edition. Very few of their newstories are over half a page, and yet they give you five pages worth of information. I especially loved this gem on public opinnion related to Nuclear power: "'Nej Tak' to nuclear after all".

They started by mentioning the two polls and their collosally different results. They then briefly mentioned the question that one of the polls asked versus the other. Then they gave a simple and clear reason - "did not ask respondents about the actual placement of nuclear power plants in Denmark" (4th paragraph, last sentence) - for the discrepency. It followed this up with a one-sentence explanation (without making it clear that it was an explanation) for why they looked in to this to begin with, and finished with the status (in the last paragraph) of Danish political parties on the issue.

I also found a wonderful article there about an accounting scandals involving carbon credits and a VAT carousel. It involves a classic conflict-of-interest scenario, where registering the VAT you paid to buy your goods for resale, you drop the VAT Receivable of the “cooperating” businesses without collection, and run off to a foreign country before you have to pay the VAT yourself. The "chum" businesses who "sold" you the goods also disappear, leaving no complete recursion for the collection of the tax.

Look at it yourself any time:

http://www.cphpost.dk/index.php

Teaching Cowardice - The Gruesome Morality of ObamaCare

I had a suicidal thought today. As I lay waiting in the 16th floor lobby of a G-I specialty institute at Emory Atlanta, I looked out the window, saw the great height, and for a moment, longed to run and jump to my death. I cringed at horror at the vileness of my own mind, and in reflection, I realized why.

I've always considered myself a tough, strong person. I've always considered myself a survivor, a child of the frontier and the high north, an adventurer. And on a level I am. But there is something about a condition that had troubled your life for as long as my ulcer that was supposed to go away 2 months ago and now you face the possibility of a much grimmer prognosis. There is something that destroys your very image of yourself, cuts your own roots, salts your own soil, makes you shrivel before the threat in front of you and takes away even those whose faces should be in front of you.

But I withheld myself. I remembered my God, and his will, and certain prophecies I had inherited, and I knew it was not my time, nor would my God ever let me die that way but either through the process of nature, or natural consequences, or the dignity of good martyrdom. I withheld myself and held strong in my seat. And it's good I did, and God was righteous to avise me beyond and teach me once again who I was, a strong young man in his hands, a reasonably okay servant, but still a servant nonetheless, and beyond that, someone who had, one way or another, touched the lives of many people, and would defile the affections and loyalties of many if I were to take my own life. See, I am a human being, a real living person, who has friends, relatives, classmates, churchmates, a cluster of loving people all around me. I don't appreciate them enough, not nearly enough, if I had this horrid thought would've never come to my mind, but God was there for me, even as I was alone there, and pulled me through it through his righteousness and justice.

I also realized that, if I had betrayed God like that, I would not just receive Hell, I would deserve it.

But there are some who would want me to jump. There are some who are worried about cost, and see me as a number, an expense, not a familiar face or a friend or a family member. There are some who, for the sake of the economy, want me to give up.

Of course, then again, this is too narrow of a view, because in general (healthcare cost being, perhaps, the only exception) all sectors of the economy do better with people who don't give up but have iron resolve. Adventurers. Conquerors. Goldminers. Frontiersmen. These are the people who built cities, and, to a point, still build them. Those outcasts who parouse the streets in their cockeyed hats with a stint in their step, a smirk on their face and a dream in their eyes, the people who don't fit all the "roles" that society has for them but forge their own trail. You know, the guys (and Annie Oakleys) who can face the freezing cold and through their own innate toughness, stubbornness and everything not societyness, make it back to camp with their own honor and life in their hand, and can head 1500 miles west from home against the better advice from all their friends and build the Golden State.

But back to the point. So I didn't give up, and my friends couldn't be happier. So what about this VA Death Book we keep on hearing about? I know many consider it to be encouraging the self-destruction of the weak and disabled -how very Spartan- and I will say, while in general the pamphlet does aim to be non-partisan and balanced (maybe,) there are some suggestions in it (like requesting to not be revived with CPR, which causes no harm and has no cost later on) that seem odd and out of place and a few lines of logic (like "Even if you are conscious, you will not be able to talk very well or at all."(35) Ever heard of writing and typing? Worked well for Steven Hawking all these years!) that are just plain stupid and perhaps even manipulative. Perhaps "If you have a terminal illness, a mechanical ventilator will only prolong dying." (35) is the most cynical line of all. How about "prolong living"!

While there is no single quote that you can point to in this book and say "this advocates giving up," the basic attitude of anybody finding simply having to write instead of talk reason to give up wanting to live another few weeks is disgusting. Further, as any good English student knows, putting this phrase, "even if they might not have wanted it" (34), after a comma is an element of irony, telling the reader that this is not a good situation rather then letting him decide for himself. In fact, really, it's not aiming to be non-partisan and balanced, it's aiming to look non-partisan and balanced while, discreetly and quietly, handing them something completely different under the table, "even if they might not have wanted it." (34)