August 22nd, 2010 |
Published in
Contemplation, News | 10 Comments
I’ve been feeing irritated again with my inability to interact naturally with people, and of course I wanted metrics quantifying the phenomenon. So I headed over to Wrong Planet and stocked up on tests.
The Broad Autism Phenotype Questionnaire gives me 123 aloof, 92 rigid and 97 pragmatic.
You scored above the cutoff on all three scales. Clearly, you are either autistic or on the broader autistic phenotype. You probably are not very social, and when you do interact with others, you come off as strange or rude without meaning to. You probably also like things to be familiar and predictable and don’t like changes, especially unexpected ones.
The Autism Spectrum Quotient comes out at 34, and “Eighty percent of those diagnosed with autism or a related disorder scored 32 or higher.”
The Empathizing Quotient and Systemizing Quotient puts me at 10% empathizing, and 75% systemizing, which makes me an “extreme systemizer.”
The important factor to consider is not your absolute scores, but the difference between the two (EQ – SQ-R). This indicates whether you have more natural ability as an Empathizer or a Systemizer. If your scores are about the same for your EQ and SQ-R, then you have well balanced empathizing-systemizing capabilities.
If you are an Extreme Systemizer, you might have AS or HFA.
The Understanding Facial Expression Test was pretty hard, and I managed to guess 24 of them, considering several of them just looked like blank eyes to me.
The Face Blindness / Prosopagnosia Test was tricky, but I managed a 72%, which is right between the 65% of someone considered face blind, and the 80% average. I’m not sure where that puts me, but I’ve always had mild trouble with faces, so not entirely surprising.
And of course, the Emotional Intelligence Quotient test says of my 63 score:
According to your self-report answers, your emotional intelligence is very poor. People who score like you do feel that they have trouble dealing with their own emotions and those of others. They struggle to overcome difficulties in their lives and they are unable to control their moods. It’s hard for them to understand how best to motivate themselves and reach their goals. In addition, they find social interactions quite difficult, for several reasons. They may have trouble allowing themselves to get close with others, finding it difficult to be vulnerable enough to establish intimacy. They also report having trouble offering support to others, likely due to the fact that they do not understand where others are coming from or they lack ideas about how best to help. Perhaps by working on your problem areas, you can become more confident in dealing with your own emotions and those of others.
This should come as no surprise to anyone who actually knows me. It just frustrates me that I never really got any help as a kid, when it may have actually done some good. Keep in mind that this is all after I’ve spent decades watching other people and trying to figure out ways to interact with them, like I’m an anthropologist or something. At least now I’m not so oblivious that I’m flubbing normal social routines. But that’s life from the fringes.
Until Tomorrow
July 21st, 2010 |
Published in
Poetry, Writing | No Comments
And she who danced upon the darkness,
breaks and thrashes on the floor.
Throwing fits of rage and fury,
torn and sundered to the core.
Blistered through and through with wonder,
blasted from the roles of fate.
Ripped and wretched for a moment,
crushed with woe upon the gate.
No paraiah is more vanquished,
than who buck the will of time.
Seeking but to make a difference,
though ’tis an eternal crime.
Oblivion wreaks its torment,
to creation, every one.
It’s an engine of destruction,
unconcerned with all it’s done.
So she writhes in silent timbre,
Jerking through those lives untold.
And she wracks the chains of nightmare,
of the timid and the bold.
July 20th, 2010 |
Published in
News | No Comments
After three years of having our summers trumped by Jen pursuing her Masters degree, we decided to take a crazily overboard vacation to make up for it. As it happened, Hawaii won the coin toss, and Maui seemed a good start. We ended up tweaking our travel times just right and got a deal, so from June 14th to the 20th, the continental United States could no longer taint us with its relative banality.
Getting there however, seemed to be part of the adventure. Though first assumptions may blame the two-leg flight, that was actually relatively uneventful. The pilot for the last leg was enthusiastic and offered a prize to any passenger who could guess when we’d be exactly half way there. Getting out of the airport took longer than we wanted, but really everything went well. It was everything that came afterwards on that fine Monday evening that initially had me literally cursing the island.
This was easy to do, because the Honoapiilani Highway (30) spends most of its time as a four-lane split roadway around the north bulb of the island. But keep going straight long enough, and it becomes a glorified goat trail wrapped around the mountain, cluttered by switchbacks, blind turns, and one-lane bridges. Surprisingly, this was all paved. Verizon Navigator assuaged our suspicion this path was awfully convoluted for a resort, and really it was kinda fun . . . for the first twenty minutes. Hawaii is five hours behind Illinois’ time zone, meaning I was driving around a treacherous mess of mountain roads in the dark, at 3am Central. It wasn’t until we lost cellphone reception that I really started to worry, and being scared generally makes me angry, so we turned around and went back to a side road we remembered seeing before getting caught in the spaghetti.
There was a supermarket there which hadn’t quite closed yet, and they directed us to the correct road to Napili Kai, all while I vowed to obliterate Verizon and their filthy Navigator. It turns out that highway was split thirteen years ago into an upper and lower portion when a huge resort built out the coastline. Even though we entered the address for our resort, the thirteen-year-old (or older!) map in Verizon’s system blithely directed us into the upper portion, which is intended to be a 4WD trail around the northwestern half of Maui, shortly after the point we gave up and turned around. So if you go to Maui and have Verizon, throw your phone out the window and drive over it; you’re better off with paper maps and a goat.
We eventually found the resort and checked in some time around midnight, some three hours after landing. Upon arrival, I couldn’t help but notice that the main office has no doors. It didn’t even have walls, just a series of pillars to hold up the roof. The front desk, concierge desk, furniture, bookshelves, everything was just sitting around in the open air. The hot-tub the size of a pool was clearly visible from the stairs leading down from the office, and tiki torches lined all the walkways. Despite the harrowing trip, I started relaxing almost automatically just wandering around the resort grounds.
But I was tired beyond reason, so I slipped bonelessly into our king-sized bed and passed out, glad to have arrived at all after the mildly terrifying detour. Tuesday, as it turned out, was much more enjoyable.
Until Tomorrow
July 19th, 2010 |
Published in
News | No Comments
And so, I’ve fallen off the planet once again.
It’s not exactly like nothing has been going on, It’s just that my unparalleled boringness was eclipsed by my aggressive laziness. My vacation in Hawaii—which I returned from a month ago—still remains woefully unchronicled. Instead, my precious hours have been consumed by gambling and collecting bellybutton lint. Except for a few minor items . . .
For one, my eternal tenure at Leapfrog Online has been trumped by an apprehensive incumbency with Peak6 OptionsHouse. My years with Leapfrog were great, but my wanderlust was simply impossible to ignore any longer. Besides which, the slow dismantling of much of the arcane incantations I disseminated there, ensured my eventual obsolescence. And the protégé I left them is far more sane, so if they’re not celebrating my departure, I’ll have to visit once in a while to remind them why they’re better off without me.
Which I’ll attempt often, provided I’m alive to do so. Hawaii rendered me rather crispy, and combined with the lack of sleep from the long flights, and dehydration brought on by lackadaisical flight attendants, I almost did my best imitation of a narcoleptic. What began as an evaluation of the ferocity of my sunburn, ended with me in the ER for possible heart failure. Apparently, like a little old man swooning in the heat, my cardiovascular system can be knocked awry by anything more strenuous than catching a fleeting glimpse of some stairs.
And last weekend I went back to the ER because I tried playing ITG for half an hour. My suspicion rose after six songs left me slightly lightheaded. By twelve songs, I knew something was amiss when my favorite lung complained bitterly of misuse. Half an hour. Not two years ago, I’d stomp on a metal pad for seven hours or more with nary a thought. I would have simply ceased heaving my wretched carcass about, if my heart hadn’t been stuck at twice its normal speed for four hours afterwards. Half an hour of exercise should never trigger four hours of heart palpitations, periodic dizziness and mild chest pain. Of course I waited too long; by the time I got to the ER, my EKG was comparable to an older one they had on file. I’m still going to have them forward it to my cardiologist just in case.
My ulcer is gone, with only some remaining irritation in my stomach lining. What concerns me however, is that the doctor noted my stomach is misshapen, apparently because my heart is compressing it. I have dextocardia, so the larger left ventricle of my heart is turned toward the right side, and most people have their stomach on the left, so this new information is disconcerting to say the least. And once again, I’ll have to ask my cardiologist what this means in the long run. Am I finally turning into a “heart patient” after all these years? I am out of shape compared to a year or to ago, and I am getting on in years, but normal people don’t have this happen to them until they’re twenty or thirty years my senior. That’s what living with a heart defect is like, folks.
I used to take my limitations for granted, because I never had any before; now I don’t have that luxury. It’s depressing. I haven’t quite been living in denial for the past two and a half decades since my surgery, but I had a longer run than I had any right to expect. Almost twenty-five years symptom-free after a major open-heart surgery? Twenty-five years I probably never would have had anyway? I’m grateful for it, and while I clearly don’t anticipate kicking the bucket any time soon—I’ll get a freaking heart turbine if I have to—it’s become too obvious to forget I’m not like everyone else.
In other news, I saw Inception this weekend. I may write a longer review later, but for now: it’s excellent, go see it.
Until Tomorrow
June 30th, 2010 |
Published in
Book, Review | No Comments
I’ve finally gotten The Windup Girl off my to-read list, and having finished it, I’ll have to watch Paolo Bacigalupi for future novels.
The Windup Girl is something different than I’ve ever encountered. It’s part wild cataclysm, part dystopia, part social commentary, and all action. I’m not kidding on the last, either. Whether it’s Hock Seng shrewdly planning the rebirth of his financial empire, Anderson Lake pursuing an elusive new fruit on the behalf of shady agricultural megacorporations, Jaidee’s crusade against the corrupt Trade cartel that aims to hijack Thailand’s sovereignty for financial gain, or Emiko’s constant struggle against her lot as a Windup, something is always moving.
In this universe of the future, plagues of disease and gene-hacked insects have washed over the globe and oil is scarce or nonexistent. Not only has transportation crashed, but crops immune to the newest mutations of both are in short supply, and Thailand is one of the last bastions of agriculture not owned wholesale by the various calorie monopolies. It’s a snapshot of a future dictated by gene patents, industrial sabotage, energy shortages, and nouveau slavery. Where kink-springs and flywheels are manually wound and filled by human and animal labor, countries fanatically guard their seed banks, and human life is worth less than ever before, because now it’s direct competition.
It’s bleak and terrible, at least in Thailand. Bacigalupi crams this implicit desolation into every paragraph. Each character assumes it, thrives on it, perpetuates it for her own survival. Everything is dead or dying. Disease is around every corner. Starvation is a fact of life. It’s very clear the world is now utterly despoiled of its bounty, and the remainder of humanity has been reduced to scavengers of various description. The pressure has brought out the worst in humanity, and the crucible of its survival is underway.
By the end of this novel, I was defeated and broken. I hated humanity and all it wrought in this novel’s universe. The plight of the Windups clinched my feelings in this regard. They’re not people, but assumed automatons, bequeathed no souls by even the most liberal-minded, slaves and tools every one of them. Yet simultaneously they are the future, having faculties and abilities far outstripping their antiquated cousins, if only rendered infertile by public mandate and clever gene manipulation. It’s certain that these impediments will eventually be removed, and then in decades or centuries to come, humanity will breathe it’s last gasp and the real future will be born. This is the turning point we witness in The Windup Girl. It’s a glimpse of the chaos necessary for the transition; a tiny justification of its origins.
Despite the unrelenting action, the depressing atmosphere, the inescapable tincture of decay and desperation, this is a wonderful read. I’d dare even call it a classic in the making. Post-apocalyptic fiction is difficult to read, with the inherent hopelessness and depressing imagery, and this was no different, yet I can’t help but cheer for Emiko and hope her ending will differ from the one humanity brought upon itself. It’s compelling despite everything that makes it difficult to read, and I strongly suggest you make time for The Windup Girl.
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