Came down here to Georgia to visit with Greg and Grandma. Went to the Assisted Care center in Commerce this morning. On the way there, Robyn and I talked about childhood memories. On the way home, we talked about growing old.

I've been exploring a lot lately, and I've found a few scripts that, in simulating the kinds of patterns biologists and astronomers and other scientists study, may also offer some insight into social patterns or the patterns of an individual life. Here's one that's interested me today: it's called Cellular Automata, and it simulates cell behavior based upon the following four rules:

1. Cells die when they are lonely. In this simulation, a cell is lonely when it has less than two neighbors.

2. Cells die when they are overcrowded. Here, a cell becomes overcrowded when it has more than three neighbors.

3. Cells reproduce when they're in good company. Here, three's company. An empty cell with three neighbors will come to life.

4. Cells reach stasis when they're in the right company. A cell with exactly two neighbors will remain unchanged.

Go visit the link first, and then come back here for more pointers on what you can do with the animation. 

You can click the grid while the animation is playing to add a cell to the mixture. You can also clear the grid and experiment with different patterns of cells by clicking to add cells and then starting the animation. You can also increase the number of cells in the grid. Interesting. Lovely. Fascinating.

Cellular Automata was developed by Grant Robinson, who says he found his inspiration for the app in a book called Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software by Steven Johnson. I plan to find a copy of that book asap.

And who is Grant Robinson? He is a digital designer in New Zealand. You can look at more of his fascinating designs and other projects he's working on at his page.

I hope Longfellow is right. He may yet be. I've been studying history for a pretty long time now, and it's hard not to notice that war seems to keep coming back to us. It somehow seems to me that we're further than we ever were from the failure of wrong and the truimph of good. We humans are such flawed beings.

But I think maybe that's what Longfellow was getting at - we are deeply flawed and, yet, as long as we still celebrate Christmas, there's still hope for us. I was thinking about this as I went about finishing my Christmas shopping, when I noticed some impatient motorists tailgating one another at the entrance to the mall. They were shooting angry glares at each other as they turned off in separate directions in the parking lot. "I'm trying to make Christmas perfect for my family, and how dare that person be in my way!" I could feel the hateful vibes rolling off them. "There is no peace on Earth," I said. How does Christmas give us reason for hope?

Christmas celebrates the intersection of the divine ideal and the earthly reality in the form of Christ on Earth. Christmas reminds us that, deeply flawed though we as humans most certainly are, our Creater, whoever or whatever He or She or They may be, loves us dearly and unconditionally, and loves us enough to walk among us and experience our pain and our joy.

The spirit of Christmas comes from the recognition that all our human brothers and sisters are as deeply flawed as we ourselves are. When we remember, at Christmas, that the reason people make mistakes is because they are imperfect, then we can react with sympathy instead of anger and frustration. The spirit of Christmas is the spirit of forgiveness, of sharing pain and joy, of loving unconditionally our fellow human being, regardless of whether they look like we do, or think like we do, or live like we do, or dream like we do, or believe like we do. When we catch that spirit, then we truly do make contact with the divine. There we find grace, and in grace, hope.

Most of us think of Christmas as a special time for family, for friends, for church  -- and so it should be. But the true Christmas spirit doesn't draw boundaries around groups based on ties of blood or friendship or belief. The true Christmas spirit, originating in our recognition that we all fall short of the ideal, is of peace on the whole of the Earth, and good will toward all of humankind. In the true Christmas spirit, we shower our loving kindness on strangers as well as friends, on people with whom we share our community, nation, and planet, as well as on people with whom we share the bonds of blood and domesticity, on people who receive the message that the divine and the human co-exist in this Universe through the Koran, or the Torah, or the Sayings of the Buddha, or the Tao Te Ching, or the Bhagavad Gita, or in some other story of faith as well as on those who recieve that message from the Christian Bible and the story of a cold night somewhere in time and space when a fair maiden laid a divine and helpless babe in the humble manger of a lowly stable.

The message and meaning of that story were powerfully framed by a French poet in the early nineteenth century, Placide Cappeau, whose words were later adapted into the beloved carol, "O Holy Night", which, when sung by a voice with a touch of the divine, moves Christians to tears. Look at the message it contains:

Oh holy night! The stars are brightly shining,

It is the night of the dear Savior's birth.

Long lay the world in sin and error pining,

Till he appear'd and the soul felt its worth.

A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,

For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

Fall on your knees! Oh, hear the angel voices!

Oh night divine, Oh night when Christ was born;

Oh night divine, Oh night divine.

Led by the light of Faith serenely beaming,

With glowing hearts by His cradle we stand.

So led by light of a star sweetly gleaming,

Here come the wise men from Orient land.

The King of Kings lay thus in lowly manger;

In all our trials born to be our friend.

He knows our need, our weakness is no stranger,

Behold your King! Before him lowly bend!

Behold your King, Behold your King.

Truly He taught us to love one another;

His law is love and His gospel is peace.

Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother;

And in His name all oppression shall cease.

Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,

Let all within us praise His holy name.

Christ is the Lord! O praise His Name forever,

His power and glory evermore proclaim.

His power and glory evermore proclaim.

Have a loving Christmas, everyone. May you all feel that touch of grace in the still and holy moment when human imperfection encounters the divine.

Here's what we've been doing to get into the Christmas spirit! Robyn mixed, cut, baked, and decorated these cookies pretty much all on her own, with some tips and pointers from her Mama.

An artist's hands at work!

Treats for the eyes and the tastebuds!

A closeup of the masterpieces

We sent a bunch of these off to Dean's work, and we're making another batch today for Robyn to distribute to her numerous, various, and sundry grandparents, great-grandparents, step-grandparents, and step-great-grandparents. Hope she doesn't eat too much dough this time!

I was reading the 5 December 2005 post at 43 Folders and discovered that, not only am I a nerd, not a surprise to my husband and daughter, who have both long since accepted their own nerdliness, but that I also suffer from a couple of common but seldom recognized syndromes to which nerds are prone. Both these clusters of behaviors result from certain (nerdy) people's adaptations to the information-rich environment we now inhabit.

Nerd Attention Deficiency Disorder (NADD) was first identified by the management advice blogger, Rands in Repose. If you think you're not a nerd, and that, therefore, you must not suffer from this disorder, go and visit the 2003 post in which the disorder was introduced. But since NADD is as much a disability as it is an asset in this nerd heave in which we now find ourselves, I'm less concerned by it than I am about Repetitive Information Injury (RII), a more pernicious complication of NADD that renders affected nerds incapable of making progress on important projects that they are perfectly well capable of completing. Here's the clip from the Rands in Repose post of last month in which RII was introduced:

Know the signs. As described above, RII is when you’re stuck in a consumption loop. Your brain is thinking it’s more important to continue to find something to soak in rather than moving on to your next project. It’s tricking you into continuing with thoughts like, “Hey, it just takes a second to press that Get Email button… or that Refresh Feeds button…. go for it man! You never know when you’ll hit the information gold-mine!” Problem is, those seconds turn into minutes… and you’re suddenly staring at the same pages, listening to the same JUST DO IT advice, and suddenly 30 minutes have passed and you haven’t actually done anything.

Hmm. I never realized it before, but this seemingly innocent nerdly behavior may well be the answer to my plaintive "why me" from my last, self-pitying post.

Could this be you, too? Don't wait to find out.

 

I just got an e-mail from a fellow grad student of mine who entered Cornell the year after I did but who has now finished and has a fabulous job teaching at a fabulous University. My brother just finished his exams and my mother-in-law is defending her dissertation last week. Congratulations to everyone, but I can't help but feel jealous and frustrated. What's the matter with me? Why can't I proceed forward to reach my goals? Why does everything I do take so long and come so painfully?

And why must I forever have some hangnail or another causing me pain upon my fingertips?

Pretty lady.

Queen Elizabeth I herself was an amazing woman. Blanchett plays her well. Blanchett offers us a tantalizing glimpse of the young Elizabeth and then retracts it, allowing the personality to withdraw inside the body. Just as Elizabeth Tudor utterly subverted her private desires to the happiness of her people, becoming in the end a vessel for wants and desires of her Kingdom, Blanchett removes individuality from her character, leaving the parched-white virginal outer shell that we see at the end of the film.

It's difficult for us to imagine such a ruler. She elevated becoming the will of the people to the highest form it has ever reached. We've never known anything like it.

Up since 4am - horrible tinnitus ringing in ears.

This post is for Amy and any others who may be interested in knowing more about autism and autistic spectrum disorders. I'm so pleased you asked, Amy!

As per Amy's request, here are some informative websites on the topic of autism:

Austism Today online magazine

"Autism Today is the leading source of objective information about Autism Spectrum Disorders, including Autistic Disorder, Asperger's Syndrome, Rett's Syndrome, Childhood Disintegrative Disorder & other Pervasive Developmental Disorders Not Otherwise Specified."

Autism Resources

This site is maintained by web designer, John Wobus, whose son is autistic. His son is grown now, but he continues to maintain this collection of links and information about resources, with the aim of being helpful to other parents of autistic children.

O.A.S.I.S. -Online Asperger's Syndrome Information and Support

One of the first sources of information about Asperger's Syndrome. The left panel links to a number of interesting pages explaining Asperger's (which is Robyn's diagnosis) and other disorders in the autism spectrum. Be sure to check out the "Other AS pages" link and the "Other Autism Pages" link.

The Australian Scale for Asperger's Syndrome 

This is the diagnostic tool developed by an Australian psychologist, Tony Attwood. He has also written a book for parents of Asperger's kids. I find it's the best way to describe to people what Asperger's Syndrome is.

I'll post more as I discover them.

Well, I got the telephone call from the school psychologist today -- they've finished the evaluation and are ready to have The Meeting At Which It Is Decided What Services Will Be Provided To My Child. I called Robyn's therapist and told him I'd like him to be there if possible. I hope it's possible.

The school psychologist said that Robyn is an extraordinarily interesting case. They did discover that she's more than just a little bright. They also found she's more than a little lonely. I'm not at all sure they got a sense of what's causing Robyn difficulty in class, but we'll find out at The Meeting on the 12th of December.

Last night when I was on real-time tutorial duty at Smarthinking, a student came onto the whiteboard looking for a paper topic. The prompt asked her to describe a classmate that might be someone they could really learn from.

The idea, I realized, was to get these naive students to think about diversity by talking about what they might learn from someone different from the heterogenous populations of their high schools. But that wasn't working for this particular student, because she had been raised in a highly diverse set of environments.

Our technique is to ask students probing questions that move them towards a topic they might like. So I started asking questions, trying to find some sort of diversity she hadn't had experience with yet. I asked questions that started with "Have you ever had a friend who . . . " and filled in the blank with all sorts of descriptions -- religion, ethnicity, multilingualism, more religion, life experience, age, interests, disabilities. I was about to run out of ideas when it suddenly occurred to me that I had left out the type of diversity I am myself most acquainted with.

"Have you ever had a friend who . . . was autistic but high-functioning?"

No, she hadn't. She wanted to know more. I told her about autism and about how many people there are out there with mild forms of it. I explained that these people rarely have a lot of friends becuase of the communication challenges and social awkwardness. I made her aware of the fact that many high-functioning autistics have special abilities, and that a large number of the great advancements in science and technology may very well have originated in minds affected by autism -- Einstein? Newton? Bill Gates? We'll probably never know. But sure seems likely. Could we learn something from these people who think so differently from the rest of us? No doubt we could.

She was fascinated -- she was inspired. She said, "I can do this!" She was happy. And I was happy.

I made someone think of autism as a form of diversity.