Thanks bc! Glad you liked it. I had a checkered career as a horn player (I've hung it up) and one disappointment is that I never played much French orchestral music. I mentioned that to the conductor of the university orchestra here and he said well, French orchestral music, as opposed to German (and I suppose that Tchaikovsky et al is really stuff in the German tradition) requires a lot more from the strings.
2025-09-27 04:32:59
I worked on a paper for a while where I argued that we might want to consider autism a cultural trait. Here in Japan, students often behave in ways that are similar to what people have said are symptoms of autism. Unfortunately, though I thought it was very enlightening (and continues to be as I deal with student post covid and see their adaptations to changed circumstances) I was never able to get the right tone. It may have been, like novakant says, I was instrumentalizing autism to deal with some debates about Japanese students and education, but I did think I was on to something interesting.
btw, I love the first link with the links to papers in each section. So much better than trying to follow Youtube vids!!
1912, from German Autismus, coined 1912 by Swiss psychiatrist Paul Bleuler from Greek autos "self" (see auto-) + -ismos suffix of action or of state (see -ism). The notion is of "morbid self-absorption."
but I like your etymology better. I was looking for some indication of what Bleuler was thinking, but a quick search didn't find anything.
wonkie, that's a neat observation, and I will shamelessly use it to launch into what is happening with the archive. There are just under 9000 posts and here are the categories with how many posts in each. The categories are non-exclusive and uncategorized is the default
abroad 49
books 6
corruption 32
culture-and-stuff 200
current-affairs 778
economy 59
energy-environment 5
ethics 52
film 2
food-and-drink 6
foreign-affairs 97
geekstuff 87
health-care 81
humor 131
iraq-and-terrorism 867
law 224
maher-arar 55
music 4
national-security 18
Not Yet A Buddha 136
nothing-else-fit 329
policy-wonkery 36
politics 2,050
religion 59
science 56
sports 36
technical-issues 93
telecom 40
television 2
torture-and-detention 138
travel 5
uncategorized 3,167
versifying 25
web-tech 10
Weblogs
weblogs 7
what-would-brian-boitano-do 162
Why Are They Saying Those Things? 177
I just added that to the sidebar (the design only has a right sidebar instead of two and I've not implemented a pulldown menu for either the archive date or the categories because I'm dropping in to try and catch errors) The founders up to hilzoy and publius were pretty careful about adding categories. After that, Eric didn't really categorize but Gary did, so at about 2010, you only have the occasional category and it looks like in 2012, they just aren't used. I've never really used a category and I'm still trying to find the origin of what-would-brian-boitano-do.
We also had tags, but only fiddler and Gary used them to any great extent.
Finally, hsh’s joke reminds me of my favorite jokes where a guy goes to Picasso while he is standing next to his portrait of his wife Jacqueline, and the guy says ‘geez, how can you say that looks like your wife? It doesn’t look anything like it’. Picasso says ‘do you have a picture of your wife?’. The guy gets a photo out of his wallet and shows it to Picasso, and says ‘this is exactly what my wife looks like’. Picasso looks at it for a moment and then says ‘your wife has a very small head…’
Thanks bc! Glad you liked it. I had a checkered career as a horn player (I've hung it up) and one disappointment is that I never played much French orchestral music. I mentioned that to the conductor of the university orchestra here and he said well, French orchestral music, as opposed to German (and I suppose that Tchaikovsky et al is really stuff in the German tradition) requires a lot more from the strings.
I worked on a paper for a while where I argued that we might want to consider autism a cultural trait. Here in Japan, students often behave in ways that are similar to what people have said are symptoms of autism. Unfortunately, though I thought it was very enlightening (and continues to be as I deal with student post covid and see their adaptations to changed circumstances) I was never able to get the right tone. It may have been, like novakant says, I was instrumentalizing autism to deal with some debates about Japanese students and education, but I did think I was on to something interesting.
btw, I love the first link with the links to papers in each section. So much better than trying to follow Youtube vids!!
Nous, enlightenment!
Hartmut,
Etymon online has this
1912, from German Autismus, coined 1912 by Swiss psychiatrist Paul Bleuler from Greek autos "self" (see auto-) + -ismos suffix of action or of state (see -ism). The notion is of "morbid self-absorption."
but I like your etymology better. I was looking for some indication of what Bleuler was thinking, but a quick search didn't find anything.
wonkie, that's a neat observation, and I will shamelessly use it to launch into what is happening with the archive. There are just under 9000 posts and here are the categories with how many posts in each. The categories are non-exclusive and uncategorized is the default
abroad 49
books 6
corruption 32
culture-and-stuff 200
current-affairs 778
economy 59
energy-environment 5
ethics 52
film 2
food-and-drink 6
foreign-affairs 97
geekstuff 87
health-care 81
humor 131
iraq-and-terrorism 867
law 224
maher-arar 55
music 4
national-security 18
Not Yet A Buddha 136
nothing-else-fit 329
policy-wonkery 36
politics 2,050
religion 59
science 56
sports 36
technical-issues 93
telecom 40
television 2
torture-and-detention 138
travel 5
uncategorized 3,167
versifying 25
web-tech 10
Weblogs
weblogs 7
what-would-brian-boitano-do 162
Why Are They Saying Those Things? 177
I just added that to the sidebar (the design only has a right sidebar instead of two and I've not implemented a pulldown menu for either the archive date or the categories because I'm dropping in to try and catch errors) The founders up to hilzoy and publius were pretty careful about adding categories. After that, Eric didn't really categorize but Gary did, so at about 2010, you only have the occasional category and it looks like in 2012, they just aren't used. I've never really used a category and I'm still trying to find the origin of what-would-brian-boitano-do.
We also had tags, but only fiddler and Gary used them to any great extent.
Finally, hsh’s joke reminds me of my favorite jokes where a guy goes to Picasso while he is standing next to his portrait of his wife Jacqueline, and the guy says ‘geez, how can you say that looks like your wife? It doesn’t look anything like it’. Picasso says ‘do you have a picture of your wife?’. The guy gets a photo out of his wallet and shows it to Picasso, and says ‘this is exactly what my wife looks like’. Picasso looks at it for a moment and then says ‘your wife has a very small head…’