The Asperger Child

I was trying yet again to get rid of a load of horrific clutter in my horrifically cluttered flat, when I found various notebooks that I have kept haphazardly at various times in various places.

Most of them are comparitively recent and full of various scrawls; the book of holidays, which is red, and the book of moon-a-mucks, which is brown, and horror and prose and thankfully no bad poetry whatsoever.

What I also came across was a very 80s design A4 notebook, which I was using in about 1987.

This was the book of planetary geology and economics, of flying saucer sightings, interstellar space craft design and a navy belonging to a nation and history that never existed.

These are all my designs. My stories, the external expression of what went on in my head and what still does, endless design of aircraft and navies and cricket teams and all sorts.

I had no idea back then, but thanks to reading Oliver Sacks I have since discovered that this is very much a trait of Asperger Syndrome, as is the obsessive bowling of tennis balls against trees while commentating on it in Richie Benaud voices. Which I've greatly enjoyed doing since 1980 and never will stop doing.

Tourettes and Aspergers do often run together, their spectrums ribbon around each other like friendly snakes, and both share OCD and ADHD co-morbids. What I am, and which bit of all this does what, is very unclear to me and doesn't matter anyway.

So here it all is, the created universe of Si!

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 15.11.16

Will Storr - Of Heretics and Skeptics

Or, a warning for the ultra-skeptics amongst us.

I’m not a book reviewer. I’m not a scientist. If I was, I’d be writing a proper piece  using reams of notes, annotated margins, and perhaps dictaphone recordings of interviews with some of the protagonists. Tucked behind the mantlepiece would be a copy of my contract with the Times Literary Supplement.

Instead I’m writing this in a works second string canteen, with a mound of banana peel by my left elbow, and a brain possibly of insufficient ability to attempt this task.

“The Heretics: Adventures with the Enemies of Science” is a book by Will Storr, a writer with an apparent religious family background, and issues with mental health in his past. In it, he makes Louis Theroux style visits on “independent thinkers” - a hardline creationist homophobic preacher, devotees of extreme yoga therapy, homeopaths, UFOlogists, and in one memorable chapter, Holocaust denier (or perhaps no longer) David Irvine and a merry band of right wingers as they tour the Extermination camps of Europe.

He also spends time with the Skeptic movement movers and shakers, as they attempt a mass homeopathy suicide, and original Skeptic hero James Randi.

The book is fascinating, although sometimes you feel that the time he spends with his subjects is almost cut short just as his visits get into their stride - something you never feel with Theroux, say - and that he has to throw some proper, but tough to follow, science as a little bit of padding. However, this may just be myself as a non-scientist who prefers the character case studies.  Saying that, the chapter dealing with Recovered Memory Syndrome is truly dramatic, and here Storr really does get to grips with the damage that can be caused by dabbling with this sort of therapy, especially when the investigator is so convinced the abuse exists that any rational refutation is ignored.

And this is the crux of what the book is about. He finds that in some cases, the Skeptics are just as dogmatic, if not more so, than the so called cultists, and a lot less sympathetic in a kind of striving for uniformity of thought. Their methodology is also called into question, when really there experiments should morally be far more stringent than those they seek to discredit.

Ultimately, however, all the evidence in the world is pointless if your brain is going to ignore anything that doesn’t agree with your own innate prejudice, deeply ingrained by years of seeing the world from your own perspective. This is something called “Confirmation Bias”, a way of skewing the world to fit your own vision that both the cultists, and the Skeptics, and myself, are guilty of. And to me this is quite frightening.

How can we be possibly open minded, if our brains won’t let us? Is everyone who says that they are truly open minded, nothing other than a bigoted liar who sees only what they want to see?

It is disturbing. And a point brilliant explored by this book.

Copyright Creamcrackered 05.08.14

Willy Wagtails and UFO Geese

Now that there is a distinct chill in the air, never more noticeable than when I cycle to work at 6am, the Pied Wagtails have descended in large numbers to brighten up a gloomy writer.

My mother calls them Willy Wagtails, no idea why, or if this is a generally accepted common name for these twitching, black and white smart little birds. But it suits them rather admirably I'd say, a polite little bird with dress and manners out of another century.

The best time to see them at the moment is 630pm, when I leave the Warehouse after another eleven and a half hours of daydreaming of not being there. The piping whistle gives them away before you look up and see them massing over the warehouse roof against a darkening indigo sky, long tails like tiny black comets; flight undulating like a sine wave. And then as you cycle away, you see them massing on the ground expertly dodging the cars, sitting on the fences, and swooping in little groups Starling like before pulling away at the last minute from the bushes by the lorry park where they seem to have a mass roost.

There is beauty to be found in every brown field wasteland or macadamised car park. If you are strolling by The Bell pub in Slab Square in Nottingham, take a look at the trees outside, especially when they have the christmas tree lights up. There's hundreds of Wagtails in there!

The other fun thing I've been noticing during my late night astronomy sessions - sadly misted out last night before midnight - are fleets of mysterious grey UFOs coming over, eerily lit in the moonlight. Flying in V shaped echelons, their engines emit a mysterious gentle honking noise- my god, what kind of propulsion systems are they using???!!! - and they have a long cockpit section and a chubby fuselage.

Things look different indeed by night. A woodpigeon went by the other night that looked like a giant Vampire Bat by the full moon.