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Autistish

"Have you ever seen the movie Rainman? He's very literal like that. A crosswalk sign turned from 'walk' to a flashing 'don't walk' and he froze in the middle of the street." - My mom, trying to explain me to a caretaker at a development center for special needs children. I have not been diagnosed to be on the Autistic Spectrum, and there is no such thing as being 'a little autistic', but sometimes I wonder. The term "Asperger's autism" didn't exist until I was an adult, and I never saw the value in going in for a formal diagnosis. I did, however, spend a lot of my pre-teen years in various special-ed programs, back when those had the funding to deal kids that were a little off instead of being reserved for firestarters and retards. Growing up, I quite disliked child psychologists for being know-it-alls. I also mentally developed 'out of order', so to speak. I could multiply numbers before I could speak. I was o...
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The Rise of Anti-Vaxx, an Hypothesis

We like to blame the anti-vaxx (pro-disease?) movement on a few individuals like that one doctor who faked a link between vaccines and autism in order to sell his own brand of vaccines, one porn star that claimed the same link on daytime TV. Lots of conspiracies have come and gone, so why did this one stick when others like time cube and lizard overlords and Area 51 and bigfoot haven't? In a vacuum, this wouldn't have been enough fuel to spark an anti-science movement and keep it going to the point of protests and outbreaks of preventable diseases. The conditions for the anti-vaxx movement or something like it were set in place before, and it could even have gotten this far without Jenny McCarthy. In the 50s, we had radium watches and were told these were perfectly safe. After that it was widespread use of asbestos, which we are still clearing out of buildings. There were a couple of years in the 60s where birth defects due to thalidomide use were widespread, just do ...
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The Smith and Wesson Retirement Plan

Smith and Wesson is a gun company, and their so-called retirement plan is to work until you physically can't, then live until you run out of money, then kill yourself. (Or alternatively, commit a crime to go to jail, which might also involve a gun) My retirement plan is not so morbid, but the name stuck. I'm not saving for retirement. Not more than I'm legally required to through taxes. I'm not advocating for avoiding financial planning, just the locking away of money in something like an RRSP which penalizes me if I take it out early. First, people in my field tend to retire very late, I have co-workers going strong in their 70s. I want to keep working for 40+ more years myself. But what is the financial world going to look like in 40 years? We're at a critical point in history (yes, that's now-centric, but I believe it), where the range of scenarios for humanity over the next 40 years is extremely wide. From worst to first, all of these have a non-...
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Being anonymous and freedom of thought.

I've been writing online for 20 years now, since the days of dial-up. Having a potential audience has always made it more fun / therapeutic for me. But I've been more and more averse to writing things 'off brand'. Because they don't get written, they don't get fully processed and out of my head, so I'm starting another blog under this alter ego. Somewhere in the quest for personal branding and an audience, we forgot that one great thing about the internet is its potential to be anonymous. Sometimes I want to talk about mental health or gender or politics or personal issues without worrying a bout present or future people using it against me. Sometimes I just want to write something that isn't within my professional wheelhouse and doesn't fit anywhere else. Sometimes I want to write something that doesn't fit in the prescribed, search engine optimized length of 800-1200 words. Sometimes I want to write something really stupid and cr...
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