Check it, peeps:
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/12/08/copley/

If you feel moved to comment, please do it over there. Thanks!

Tonight at 7:30
Common Good Books
http://www.commongoodbooks.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp

It will be fun! Come on down!

ETA: can't respond to comments, still -- sorry.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/17/obama.troops/index.html



Sorry; can't respond to comments. Still have tendinitis.

tendinitis which should by all rights be spelled tendonitis wtf

If you love me do not email to see if I'm okay; responding will make it worse.

Unless you want to suggest shows I can watch on hulu. I apparently shouldn't hold a book, even, and I was JUST in the middle of a lovely Miss Marple.

ETA: make that 3 weeks

If you want one, Alan DeNiro's book Total Oblivion, More Or Less debuts today!

Full disclosure: I adore Alan DeNiro and he published my first short story, took me to my first WisCon, and is in one of my writing groups.

However, that does not take away from the fact that this is an amazing book.

Take a look at some of the reviews on his web site:
http://www.goblinmercantileexchange.com/

The reviews will tell you the basic plot, which is that in the near future, ancient invaders will return to take over the planet and technology will get all screwy. Also there will be a super disgusting and incredibly imaginative plague.

I love this book because it is an adult book with a teen protagonist, which is so rare since publishers get antsy about this but it should happen more often. I love it because it is weird as FUCK (one reviewer, at TOR, I think, complained that it was weird "just to be weird," and I thought: wait a minute. That's a bad thing?). I love it because it is an incredibly well-put together story on its face but it also has enormous amounts of resonance on a metaphorical and political level.

It's everything I think a fantasy book should be: surprising, interesting, fantastical, upsetting, and bizarre, with an incredibly strong protagonist and voice.

Books like these, and writers like Alan, don't come along every day. I want it to do fantastically, not only for Alan, but also so that other weird and wonderful books will be given a chance.

So please go out and buy seventeen books apiece. Thank you.

You can buy it straight from Random House:
http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780553592542

Or, of course, amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Total-Oblivion-More-Less-Novel/dp/0553592548

http://www.disabilityscoop.com/2009/11/23/medicinal-marijuana/6277/

More in-depth story (the first skips the fact that she did research and found a doctor who has a protocol for this, and the fact that he was probably starving):
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/AutismNews/mother-son-marijuana-treat-autism/story?id=9153881

I will admit this story gave me pause. How can you give a kid pot? I thought to myself. He can't really give his full consent, blah blah blah.

Then I remembered: I am giving my kid the equivalent of crystal meth, basically. With the full support of the medical establishment. And no one has tried to scare me with "development of psychosis and schizophrenia."

Let me tell you: if every person who was a habitual pot user developed psychosis and schizophrenia -- hell, if one FOURTH of habitual pot users developed psychosis and schizophrenia -- we'd be up to our eyeballs in psychotic schizophrenics.

Which we aren't. Utter pap, these scare tactics. When are people going to stop seeing pot as some sort of boogeydrug?

Edited to Add: I do not believe this conflicts with my earlier posts about radical treatments. If researchers were actually WILLING to test pot, and there had been no clinical proof that they helped, I'd call it a wacko treatment, too. But no one will fucking test it.

Someone at the Chicago Tribune is on a MISSION:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/chi-autism-science-nov23,0,240420.story?page=1

Note the related stories in the lefthand column.

Such a joy to see reporters who understand the basic tenets of investigative journalism instead of someone who lazily throws in a Jenny McCarthy quote next to a quote from a well-regarded doctor and calls it a day.

I had to laugh when I saw the rules for posting over at the State Journal Register in Springfield, IL. #5 states: "5. Don't say anything here you wouldn't say in front of your mother at the dinner table."

They have obviously never been to MY dinner table.

From the Chicago Tribune: "Therapies amount to uncontrolled experimentation on children, investigation finds:"

http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/chi-autism-treatments-nov22,0,1396079.story?page=1

It's nice to see reporters actually DOING THEIR JOBS. The article underscores a few things:

1. Some parents are desperate enough to try anything "doctors" tell them to try.


2. Some "doctors" are evil, greedy M.D.s quite willing to capitalize on this.

From the article:

"They really should be seeing treatment of patients with unproven therapies as dangerous experimentation," said pediatrician Dr. Steven Goodman, a clinical trial expert at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. "The problem with uncontrolled experiments ... is that it is experimentation from which we can learn nothing."

You know what, then? We need to be pulling medical licenses from these doctors. And jailing them. This is criminal child abuse. And, even though I remember how frantically, desperately panicked I felt before we discovered blissful, wonderful, delightful Adderral, I think some of the parents in these extreme cases also need to be prosecuted. I do.

Before you jump in here and tell me I don't understand 'cause my kid is just an Aspie, please know the following things:

1. The U of MN tested him right on the line between autism and Asperger's. He scored exactly in the middle. They rather arbitrarily assigned him "Asperger's" because of his verbal ability.


2. The Psychiatric Association will soon remove Asperger's as a distinct diagnosis as it really has no meaning.


3. I remember the fear, and the panic. I remember staring, wild-eyed, at janradder as it became clear that every single day Arie was going to punch a teacher in the eye, tear things off the walls, or flip his desk -- all the time laughing maniacally like the Joker. I remember the fear and the panic and the misery. Things are better with Arie now, but it wasn't always like this.

And even so? It never occurred to me to take him to some quack who would give him a test rigged for a false positive and hook him up to toxic substances, stuff him in a hyperbaric chamber, or give him drugs to suppress his testosterone (wtf?!?!).

Sure, Arie tried some alternative things: things that caused no harm, even if they didn't do much good: biofeedback. Craniosacral therapy (that actually DID help, even though there is no damn science behind it, but if it hadn't, it still wouldn't have harmed him). He takes absurd amounts of vitamins -- almost as many as I do. He practices yoga. Friends of mine have seen good results in withholding wheat gluten or red dye from their kids. But we drew the line at unproven things that could harm our children. Because that's what parents are supposed to do.

And, more the point, that's what doctors are supposed to do. These people should lose their licenses, their ill-begotten money, and their freedom.

I was SO afraid I would be Emma!

Take the Quiz here!