Thursday, May 30, 2024
Ghostbusters: Afterlife Review: The Anticipated Sequel Captures The Spirit Of The Original But Really Belongs To McKenna Grace
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| https://www.cinemablend.com/movies/ghostbusters-afterlife-review-the-anticipated-sequel-captures-the-spirit-of-the-original-but-really-belongs-to-mckenna-grace |
The sequel Ghostbusters fans have been waiting decades for captures the spirit of the original movies, but lets down the classic cast.
Hollywood hates letting the past die. Nostalgia serves as inspiration fuel for the projects found on most studio slates, leading to new chapters in time-tested franchises like Halloween, Scream, Jackass, Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones and more. The laziest examples in this cycle trot out aging-yet-still-familiar faces, and then demands that they tap dance through a tired routine that screams, “Don’t you remember when you used to like this?”
More ambitious projects – like Jason Reitman’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife – try to push the narrative forward, employing beloved elements from the past, but using them to create something fresh and new. Reitman understands the family business (his father Ivan directed the first two Ghostbusters movies), so many of his creative choices work, even with tonal shifts that stem from the different directorial voices of the familial filmmakers. Some, however, do not land, and Reitman’s biggest swings are sure to create divisive and heated conversations amongst fans of all generations. Who ya gonna call? A mediator.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife does follow the recent trend of sequels connecting to older films on the timeline, thereby ignoring the existence of less-popular entries in the same series. After Alan Taylor’s Terminator: Genisys and David Gordon Green’s Halloween each announced their intentions to completely ignore such in-canon stinkers as Terminator: Salvation and Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers, you could almost hear studio executives collectively questioning, “Wait, you can do that?” You can if the fans allow it, and I have a hunch Ghostbusters enthusiasts will embrace Reitman’s decision to branch directly off his father’s original Ghostbusters and its 1989 sequel, leaving Paul Feig’s 2016 reboot in Ecto-1’s exhaust fumes.
The story in Ghostbusters: Afterlife is driven by the existence of the original four members of the Ghostbusters team, with the New York-based events from the initial two films being moments in history that characters in this movie remember. After a hurried prologue that establishes our new location and hints at the film’s larger threat, screenwriter Gil Kenan settles us into the plot as cash-strapped single mom Callie (Carrie Coon) moves her snarky son Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) and brainy daughter Phoebe (McKenna Grace) to their grandfather’s dilapidated farmhouse in Oklahoma.
Very little is known about the reclusive old man who once occupied the home. Residents of the town referred to him as “The Dirt Farmer,” and Callie provides no additional information as her dad left her at a very young age. But as Phoebe explores both the farmhouse and her new town, she, her newfound companion Podcast (Logan Kim), and an inquisitive science teacher (Paul Rudd) start to connect dots between recent strange Oklahoma occurrences and the historic events of New York City.
One should know going into Ghostbusters: Afterlife that Reitman’s film is almost exclusively about these new characters and how they come to interact with classic elements of the franchise. We don’t get to see Ecto-1 racing through the streets of Manhattan. Instead, Trevor discovers it under a tarp in the garage, conducts minor repairs, then tears through a cornfield as the signature siren blares. Rudd’s teacher is the one who recognizes a vintage Ghost Trap, while Phoebe gets the proton packs up and running so she and Podcast can conduct target practice. It’s endearing to see these props back in play, and refreshing to see how Reitman uses them in drastically different fashion than his father did.
McKenna Grace gives the standout performance in this new bunch. Once you realize which O.G. Ghostbuster she is channeling, her precise mannerisms, calculated sense of humor, and smarter-than-most attitude plugs directly into the unique atmosphere of the first two movies. Grace is confident and funny, stubborn, and practical. If the franchise wanted to move forward with her in a leading role, I’d say we were in good hands.
One of the worst kept secrets about Ghostbusters: Afterlife is that surviving cast members Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson, and Sigourney Weaver all return, and are playing their original roles. That, alone, makes Afterlife far more successful than Feig’s miscalculation, where he shoehorned the classic cast into uncomfortable and unfamiliar roles that were distracting, not endearing. But there’s no denying that when Reitman does employ the original cast members, it doesn’t land with the triumphant, celebratory note I was personally hoping to see. You won’t hear from me how Ray Stantz, Peter Venkman and Winston Zeddemore factor into the plot because of spoilers; all I’ll say on the matter is that their contributions to the overall story aren’t as emotional or significant as I hoped.
Additionally, Ghostbusters: Afterlife feels like it is painted into a corner by the reality of Harold Ramis’ death. As Egon Spengler and as a screenwriter, Ramis was a key contributor and powerful voice in the Ghostbusters franchise, and Afterlife has a chosen solution for how it honors his legacy. This will be a major talking point after the film has screened, and may be the dividing line between “loved it” or “hated it” for fans. I didn’t love it, but I definitely need to see it play out one more time to determine if I actually hated it, or if that’s too stern of a dismissal.
Behind the scenes, the story on Ghostbusters: Afterlife centers on a son attempting to live up to a major portion of his father’s professional legacy. If the son of the original Ghostbusters is going to try and make a Ghostbusters sequel, it damn well better be good. On screen, Ghostbusters: Afterlife flies highest when it’s drilling into the emotional elements of Egon’s estranged family: how they coped with his absence, and how they’re putting the pieces together the more that they learn important truths about him.
There’s actually enough story in the film to continue the grand tradition of Ghostbusters without returning the surviving titular team members, strange as that is to say. McKenna Grace makes the franchise her own, instead of borrowing a part in someone else’s game. Bustin’ might have felt better if the rest of the movie committed to that revolution, but for now, Ghostbusters: Afterlife is a sometimes rousing, sometimes amusing, and sometimes unbalanced continuation of a beloved franchise that Hollywood doesn’t want to see die.
Monday, May 27, 2024
Mongol Empire of Kublai Khan
Born in the vast grasslands of Mongolia, the Mongolian Empire was built by the almost mythical military might of the Mongol Horde. Modern day nations it controlled include Turkey, Russia, Iraq, Iran, and China to name a few. The only countries within reach of the Horde that they could not conquer was Vietnam and Japan.
This documentary focuses on the peak of that empire, the reign of the Great Khan Kubilai. A map has surfaced in Japan, showing the enormous plot of Kubilai. He looked for a united world with no boundaries. This map also has the earliest recorded mapping of the entire continent of Africa.
Also shows the great diversity that the Mongol Empire had, and the great tolerance for various religions and cultures. Islamic, Chinese, Turkish, African, and numerous others rose to the top of this huge empire and joined Khubilai's inner circle.
This was before western culture became a force, and in this era the world's strongest nation was by far the Mongol Empire comprised of numerous ethnicities and nations. It is interesting to think what may have been if the empire continued.
Sunday, May 26, 2024
Friday, May 24, 2024
Wednesday, May 22, 2024
Monday, May 20, 2024
Nikola Tesla (1856-1943)
The physicist, electrical engineer, and inventor Nikola Tesla was born into a Serb family in Smiljan, Croatia, at midnight on July 9, 1856. The family moved to Gospi when he was 6 years old, and he went to school there and in Karlstadt (Karlovac). He then spent a year hiking in the mountains before attending the Austrian Polytechnic School in Graz. Financial difficulty forced him out during his second year, whereupon he went to Prague, where he seems to have taught himself in university libraries.
In 1881, Tesla got a job in the Central Telegraph Office in Budapest. While there he suffered a nervous breakdown and also conceived his revolutionary idea for an alternating-current motor. In 1882, he moved to Paris to work for Thomas Edison's Continental Edison Company, and in 1884, he immigrated to the United States, again to work for Edison.
Later he worked independently as an inventor, originating many important electromagnetic devices, including a transformer known as the Tesla coil. The standard international unit of magnetic flux density is called the tesla, in his honor. He became a U.S. citizen in 1891.
Nikola Tesla died in New York on January 7, 1943, at the age of 86. Eight months after his death, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that he, and not the Italian physicist Guglielmo Marconi, was the inventor of the radio. His ashes were taken to Belgrade in 1957.
‘Tesla’s biographer, Margaret Cheney (1981), described him as a modern Prometheus, and many have noted his gigantic impact on science, and thereby on human life in general. For example, the engineer B. A. Behrend stated, “Were we to seize and eliminate from our industrial world the results of Mr. Tesla’s work, the wheels of industry would cease to turn, our electric cars and trains would stop, our towns would be dark, our mills would be dead and idle” (Cheney, 1981, p. 217). 1.C.M. Brentano noted in Tesla’s work “the importance of the achievements in themselves, as judged by their practical bearing; the logical clearness and purity of thought, with which the arguments are pursued and new results obtained; the vision and the inspiration, I should almost say the courage, of seeing remote things far ahead and so opening up new avenues to mankind” (Cheney, 1981, p. xvi).
While “people were to call him a wizard, a visionary, a prophet, a prodigal genius, and the greatest scientist of all time,” some also defamed him as “a faker and a charlatan” and “an intellectual boa constrictor” (Cheney, 1981, p. 81). Some fellow scientists resented what they saw as his bragging to the press over his inventions. As Cheney (1981) pointed out, Tesla, “spending more time in his ivory tower than on ground floors, was to be smiled on fitfully by fame and in the long run ignored by fortune” (p. 183).
Family and Childhood
Tesla’s parents were Milutin Tesla, a clergyman and spare-time poet, and Duka Mandic. He claimed that he inherited his photographic memory and his inventive genius from his mother, who could recite verbatim whole volumes of native and classic European poetry.
Tesla began, when only a few years of age, to make original inventions: “When he was five, he built a small waterwheel quite unlike those he had seen in the countryside. It was smooth, without paddles, and yet it spun evenly in the current. Years later he was to recall this feat when designing his unique bladeless turbine” (Cheney, 1981, p. 7). He attempted as a child to fly with the aid of an umbrella, jumping off the roof of a barn and knocking himself unconscious.
Tesla had an experience in his village much like one that Ludwig Wittgenstein had at a later date in the mountains. The village had purchased a fire engine, and an attempt was made to pump water, but no water came. He “flung himself into the river and found, as he had suspected, that the hose had collapsed. He corrected the problem.” Later he would recall, “Archimedes running naked through the streets of Syracuse did not make a greater impression than myself I was carried on the shoulders and was the hero of the day” (Cheney, 1981, p. 7).
Social Behavior
Cheney (1981) notes that Tesla was “a loner by preference when the time for lone operators was swiftly passing” (p. 77), and as “a perennial bachelor, working apart, not entering into corporate associations, and not mixing with friends — his personal life was obscure to outsiders. Such reclusiveness [marked] the career of one of the world’s leading figures in science and engineering” (p. xiii).
Although he was handsome and had a magnetic personality, Tesla was “quiet, almost shy” (Cheney, 1981, p. 79). Occultists and “odd men and women’ were attracted to him, believing him to be “a man of prophecy and great psychic power who ‘fell to Earth’ to uplift ordinary mortals through the development of automation” (Cheney, 1981, p. 82). As he seemed indifferent to women in a sexual sense, there were whispers of homosexuality, but there was no evidence, and he appears to have been celibate. For a period in New York, he lived almost a hermit’s existence. His friend Kenneth Swezey wrote, “Tesla’s only marriage has been to his work and to the world, as was Newton’s and Michelangelo’s ... to a peculiar universality of thought. He believes, as Sir Francis Bacon did, that the most enduring works of achievement have come from childless men’ (Swezey, 1927, p. 60).
In New York he was friendly with a couple named Robert and Katherine Johnston, who cultivated an elegant social circle, and often visited them. Katherine’s letters to him suggest that she may have been in love with him. However, when Tesla “got around to responding,” in typical Asperger fashion, his tone was inappropriately chiding: He “only succeeded in being cruel, going on about how he had found her sister, whom he had recently met, much more pretty and charming than she” (Cheney, 1981, p. 109). This is much like Ludwig Wittgenstein’s reply to a woman who similarly had helped him (Fitzgerald, 2005).
Cheney (1981) described Tesla as a mutant or polymath: He was “part of no group or institution, he had no colleagues with whom to discuss work in progress, no formal, accessible repository for his research notes and papers. He worked not just in private but ... in secret.” She pointed out that “the example set by Tesla has always been particularly inspiring to the lone runner” (p. 268).
The police regarded Tesla as a mad inventor. He showed sporadic anti-Semitism.
Narrow Interests/Obsessiveness
In his youth, Tesla’s favorite pastime was reading: He would read until dawn. He said that in his teenage years, his “compulsion to finish everything, once started, almost killed him when he began reading the works of Voltaire. To his dismay he learned that there were close to one hundred volumes in small print ... But there could be no peace for Tesla till he had read them all” (Cheney, 1981, p. 18).
Regarding his method of invention, Tesla wrote, “I do not rush into actual work. When I get an idea I start at once building it up in my imagination. I change the construction, make improvements and operate the device in my mind. It is absolutely immaterial to me whether I run my turbine in my thought or test it in my shop. I even note if it is out of balance” (emphasis in original; 1919, p. 12).
Cheney (1981) noted that Tesla reported another curious phenomenon that is familiar to many creative people — that there always came a moment when he was not concentrating but when he knew he had the answer, even though it had not yet materialized. “And the wonderful thing is,” he said, “that if 1 do feel this way, then I know I have really solved the problem and shall get what I am after” (emphasis in original; p. 14).
At the Polytechnic School in Graz, Tesla brashly suggested to his physics professor that a particular direct-current apparatus would be improved by switching to alternating current. The professor responded that this was an impossible idea, but instinct told Tesla that the answer already lay somewhere in his mind. He knew he would be unable to rest until he had found the solution. (In fact, he wrote in his usual flamboyant way that it was a sacred vow, a question of life and death. He knew that he would perish if he failed (Cheney, 1981). Years later, as he was walking in a city park with a friend, the solution came like a flash of lightning. He had hit upon a new scientific principle of stunning simplicity and utility: the principle of the rotating magnetic field produced by two or more alternating currents out of step with each other (Cheney, 1981).
Tesla himself acknowledged, “I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success ... Such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything” (Cheney, 1981, p. 107). In relation to marriage, he stated, “an inventor has so intense a nature with so much in it of wild, passionate quality, that in giving himself to a woman he might love, he would give everything, and so take everything from his chosen field. I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men” (Cheney, 1981, p. 107).
Like Edison, Tesla could work without sleep for two to three days. In the later part of his life, he took a great interest in pigeons. Indeed, an entire chapter of Cheney’s biography is entitled “Pigeons.” He regarded them as his sincere friends. According to Cheney (1981), “No one knew when the inventor began gathering up the sick and wounded pigeons and carrying them back to his hotel,” where he took care of them (p. 187).
Tesla told a strange story to John J. O’Neill (his first biographer) and another writer, as recounted by Cheney (1981). He said that he had fed thousands of pigeons over a period of years but that there was a special white pigeon — the joy of his life — that he loved as a man loves a woman, and that loved him and lent purpose to his life. When she was ill, he stayed beside her for days and nursed her back to health. Tesla said that finally, when the pigeon was dying, she came to see him and a blinding light came from her eyes. When she died, something went out of his life, and he knew that he would not complete his work.
Tesla wrote poetry but never published it, considering it too personal. He could recite poetry in English, French, German, and Italian.
Cheney (1981) noted that Tesla “threw out all accessories, including gloves, after a very few wearings. Jewelry he never wore and felt strongly about as a result of his phobias” (p. 79). He was afraid of germs and fastidious in the extreme.
Routines/Control
In his 30s, when he dined at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York, Tesla followed a remarkable routine as illustrated in the following: “Eighteen clean linen napkins were stacked as usual at his place. Nikola Tesla could no more have said why he favored numbers divisible by three than why he had a morbid fear of germs or, for that matter, why he was beset by any of the multitude of other strange obsessions that plagued his life. Abstractedly he began to polish the already sparkling silver and crystal, taking up and discarding one square of linen after another until a small starched mountain had risen on the serving table. Then, as each dish arrived, he compulsively calculated its cubic contents before lifting a bite to his lips. Otherwise there could be no joy in eating” (Cheney, 1981, p. 1).
Tesla feared being controlled by others but could be very controlling; for example, of his secretaries. Cheney (1981) noted that he subjected himself at a very early age to iron discipline in order to excel. He wrote that up to the age of 8, his character was weak and vacillating, but a book by a Hungarian novelist somehow awakened his dormant powers of will, and he began to practice self-control.
As a young man, he started to gamble on cards and games of billiards.
However, he was able to conquer this passion. Later in life he smoked heavily and drank coffee to excess but once again used his willpower to stop completely. It would be unusual for someone to do this as successfully as he did.
Language/Humor
Tesla spoke in a shrill, high-pitched, almost falsetto voice. Franklin Chester stated, “When he talks you listen. You do not know what he is saying, but it enthralls you ... He speaks the perfect English of a highly educated foreigner, without accent and with precision ... He speaks eight languages equally well” (Cheney, 1981, p. 78). He does not appear to have had a developed sense of humor.
Lack of Empathy
The young Tesla developed two concepts that would later be important to him: that human beings could be adequately understood as “meat machines,” and that machines could, for all practical purposes, be made human. Cheney notes, “The first idea may have done nothing to improve his sociability, but the second was to lead him deep into the strange world of what he called ‘teleautomatics’ or robotry” (p. 15). Thirty years later, he marveled at the unfathomable mystery of the mind.
Tesla displayed occasional streaks of cruelty: People with Asperger Syndrome often have aggression in them. In an interview that he gave to Collier's magazine in 1926, Tesla described a future ideal society modeled on that of the beehive, with desexualized armies of workers whose sole aim and happiness in life would be hard work (Cheney, 1981).
Tesla was interested in eugenics. George Viereck (a German immigrant and friend of Tesla, who was later imprisoned for disseminating pro-Nazi propaganda) reported Tesla as saying that in a harsher time, survival of the fittest had weeded out less desirable strains, and proposing sterilization of the “unfit” in order to preserve civilization and the race. (Cheney, 1981, observed that one cannot say to what extent these sentiments originated with Tesla as opposed to Viereck.)
Naivety/Childishness
Tesla sometimes showed what might be interpreted as typical Asperger naivety in his business dealings. Soon after he started to work for Edison, he proposed a plan to make Edison’s dynamos work more efficiently — a major job. Edison responded, “There’s fifty thousand dollars in it for you — if you can do it.” Tesla’s salary was $18 per week at the time. Tesla worked flat out for months and succeeded in making the promised improvements, but when he asked for the fifty thousand dollars, Edison told him, “you don’t understand our American sense of humor.” When Tesla threatened to resign, Edison offered him a $10 per week raise (Cheney, 1981, p. 33).
When George Westinghouse said that his company could not continue to exist if it paid Tesla his full royalties, Tesla trusted him and tore up his contract. Thus, according to Cheney (1981), Tesla “not only relinquished his claim to millions of dollars in already earned royalties but to all that would have accrued in the future. In the industrial milieu of that or any other time it was an act of unprecedented generosity if not foolhardiness” (p. 49). He should have been a fabulously rich man based on his inventions, but in later life he had financial difficulties that even hindered his research.
In 1916, Tesla was summoned to Court to pay $935 to the city of New York in personal taxes. Cheney (1981) noted that the misfortune seemed unjustly cruel, coming at a time when Edison, Marconi, Westinghouse, General Electric, and thousands of lesser firms were thriving on the profits from Tesla’s patents. Tesla was penniless and swamped by debts and was even in danger of imprisonment.
The novelist Julian Hawthorne (only son of Nathaniel Hawthorne) described Tesla as having “the simplicity and integrity of a child” (Cheney, 1981, p. 78).
Nonverbal Communication
During his blockbuster lectures in the United States and Europe in 1891 and 1892, Tesla was “a weird, stork-like figure on the lecture platform” (Cheney, 1981, p. 51), yet he was handsome, and had a tremendously powerful personality. His hands were large and his thumbs abnormally long. “He was too tall and slender to pose as the physical Adonis, but his other qualifications more than compensated.” His eyes were “like balls of fire” (Cheney, 1981, p. 79).
Motor Skills
Tesla does not appear to have been clumsy or awkward, given his dexterity as an engineer and his almost professionally skillful billiard playing.
Comorbidity
Tesla appears to have manifested signs of mental and physical comorbidity in many phases of his life. For example, he experienced a “strange partial amnesia” at the start of the 1890s, and “was shocked to discover that he could visualize no scenes from his past except those of earliest infancy” (Cheney, 1981, p. 62).
In about 1881, he had a nervous breakdown during which he could hear the ticking of a watch from three rooms away. “A fly lighting on a table in his room caused a dull thud in his ear. A carriage passing a few miles away seemed to shake his whole body. A train whistle twenty miles distant made the chair on which he sat vibrate so strongly that the pain became unbearable. The ground under his feet was constantly trembling” (Cheney, 1981, p. 21). During this period his pulse fluctuated wildly, and his flesh twitched and trembled continuously. Yet his health returned, and soon after he solved the problem of the alternating-current motor that had been plaguing him for years.
As a child, Tesla contracted malaria and cholera; in his 60s, he was troubled by strange illnesses from time to time.
Conclusion
Like Charles Darwin, Stonewall Jackson, and John Broadus Watson, Nikola Tesla appears to have met the criteria for a diagnosis of Asperger’s disorder, which is defined more widely than Asperger Syndrome. Neither abnormalities of speech and language nor motor clumsiness are necessary for Asperger’s disorder under the American Psychiatric Association (1994) classification.
- Michael Fitzgerald, Former Professor of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
Saturday, May 18, 2024
Book Review: The Odyssey Series: 2001, 2010, 2061, and 3001, by Arthur C. Clarke – NSS
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| https://space.nss.org/book-review-the-odyssey-series-2001-2010-2061-and-3001-by-arthur-c-clarke/ |
Arthur Clarke has written another excellent science fiction novel in 2061, the third in the four- volume Odyssey series.
This odyssey begins with a flight on the spaceship Universe for a visit to Halley’s comet on its return visit during the year 2061. Dr. Floyd is one of the passengers on this trip. There are a few others, but they have little impact on the adventure. A third of the book is devoted to the exploration of the comet.
The Universe then receives a message that there has been a problem on Europa. The spaceship Galaxy has crash landed on Europa and needs help, and the Universe is the only ship available that can go to the rescue. And one of the crew of the Galaxy is Chris Floyd, Dr. Floyd’s grandson.
Then the same mysterious message in the book 2010 is repeated: “All these worlds are yours – except Europa. Attempt no landings there.” The Galaxy has crash landed on Europa in violation of this mysterious edict.
The Galaxy had been hijacked and crash landed on Europa so the hijacker could investigate a mountain made of diamonds, expecting to make a fortune. However, as the survivors of the Galaxy are being rescued, the diamond mountain sinks into the watery portion of Europa.
The book ends more or less with the crews of both the Universe and the Galaxy back on Earth. And the diamond mountain is gone. The creatures of Europa, untouched by humans, are able to continue their evolution.
This book continues the Odyssey journey beginning with 2001. It is my opinion that Clarke was expanding his view of the future in this novel. One where space flight, exploration and evolution are at work in the Solar System.
2061 is a good read and equal to the ability of Clarke to work action, excitement, plot, and human emotions into plausible descriptions of space flight and exploration in the solar system. Continuity is also maintained by using the black monoliths as a thread in the series, as well as by using characters from the previous two novels. However, where 2001 is a must, 2061 is seen more as just a pleasant journey through the world of Arthur C. Clarke.
Autistic masking – let’s see it for what it is
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| https://undercoverautism.org/2021/07/09/autistic-masking-lets-see-it-for-what-it-is/ |
The framing of autistic camouflaging as a means to fit in, invalidates the lived experience of many autistic people. It fails to take responsibility for the discrimination and abuse directed towards autistic people. Until society accepts responsibility for the way autistic people are treated and changes this to become more positive, autistic people will need to protect themselves by masking their autism.
Time and time again I read and hear how autistic people camouflage their autism so that they are more able to fit in. This makes a huge – and rather arrogant assumption – that we want to fit in – that we don’t want to be autistic.
I can only speak for myself but would like it on record that this is certainly not the case for me! The photo above is of a Speckled Wood butterfly, camouflaged against the woodland floor. This butterfly does not wish to “become” the woodland floor, nor does it want to stop being its authentic butterfly self. It has one reason for camouflaging and one reason only – to avoid predation.
Autistic people mask or camouflage their autism for many reasons; and frequently report the devastating impact of this on their mental health and wellbeing. Autistic masking is more than the reputation management and social niceties most people use every day. It is not simply about fitting in – often it is about avoiding bullying, discrimination, reduced opportunities or downright harm – predation even!
The framing of autistic camouflaging as a means to fit in, invalidates the lived experience of many autistic people. It fails to take responsibility for the discrimination and abuse directed towards autistic people. Until society accepts responsibility for the way autistic people are treated and changes this to become more positive, autistic people will need to protect themselves by masking their autism.
We may wish to take part – but this is not the same as “fitting in”. We may even be invited to join in – but frequently this is tokenistic. Inviting me to a place that I cannot enter because of my needs, but refusing to change it so I can enter or take part, is not inclusion.
I’d like to reframe the idea and commonly accepted use of language about autistic people camouflaging in order to “fit in” – and suggest we use the words to “take part” instead. It is a subtle change of language but the former suggests that those “others” want to become the same as the majority. Whereas “taking part” allows people to retain their identity whilst still belonging to the whole group.
Disabled people should not have to pretend we are not disabled. I would never expect my colleague who uses a wheelchair to put his chair to one side all day at work, because after all he can walk a few steps when he needs to. I would never tell him that I saw him walking a short distance the other day and he looked like he was doing it really well so why can’t he go without his wheelchair all the time? I certainly wouldn’t suggest that we all have to put up with things we don’t like and if we let him use a wheelchair, everyone will want one!
I will no longer be referring to autistic camouflaging or masking as a strategy used to better “fit in”. I shall tell it like it is. There are no excuses. Until society accommodates autistic people and stops the discrimination, mistreatment and abuse so that I can “be” autistic without needing to hide, I shall remind people that they play an important part in my need for masking; and they need to stop!
Thursday, May 16, 2024
Tuesday, May 14, 2024
AMANDA BYNES HAS A BRITISH DADDY (feat. @PinkPopcast)
One actress has never appeared in any movie or show we've watched in over a decade, even though she was one of the best parts of my childhood and has some absolute banger movies. This actress is none other than 90's Nickelodeon royalty herself... Amanda Bynes. Sort of Mamma Mia meets Winning London, this movie finds Amanda in jolly old England on a quest to... find her father? I mean she knows who he is. There's actually not much conflict to be honest, but it's a fun time - and Pink Popcast is joining me for the ride!
Persona 3 Reload Review
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| https://nichegamer.com/reviews/persona-3-reload-review/ |
When Persona 3 came out in the summer of 2006, it was a major paradigm shift for the franchise and Atlus overall. It became one of the hottest PlayStation 2 RPGs; spawning manga, anime movie adaptations, a ton of merchandise, and even a stage play based on it.
Persona 3 was a very edgy and fresh concept in its day. The story deals with heavy themes of existentialism and isolation as a teenager with death looming over the narrative as it unfolds. Bleak though it may be, Persona 3 is also about finding meaning and connection in the face of those challenges. It explores friendship, acceptance, and the courage to live life to the fullest, even when you know it’s finite.
For a while, you only had the PlayStation 2 version or the hopelessly gutted PSP port. While you could play the definitive version of Persona 3 on PlayStation via PSN, the time has come for a remake that aims to match the production values of Atlus’ latest games. Is this the ultimate Persona 3 experience? Did this need to be remade? Find out in our Persona 3 Reload review!
Persona 3 was such a big deal that it supplanted Atlus’ Shin Megami Tensei series, the very franchise that Persona spun off from. With every sequel, the series would further become more stylish and would center on managing daily life routines as an anime high school student while leading a double life as a persona user.
Before Persona 3, there were two Persona 2 games(Innocent Sin and Eternal Punishment), and both of them featured a cast of adults. Looking now, it’s hard to imagine the franchise being anything other than what it is known for today. The double life and Jungian symbolism of masks seem like it was always a part of the franchise, but it was the third game where it all came together satisfyingly.
Persona 5‘s distinct style and presentation became one of its defining characteristics. The newspaper clipping-style fonts and typesetting, coupled with the graffiti-like flourishes, made the game stand out. Even navigating menus felt engaging due to their animation and audible feedback, which extended to the battle interface as well. Persona 3 Reload takes this design philosophy and applies it to the classic Persona 3 experience.
Persona 3 Reload centers on the mystery behind the Dark Hour and Tartarus. The Dark Hour is a hidden period of time unseen by most, where Shadows roam the world shrouded in darkness and people become coffins. Tartarus is a massive tower, the source of the Shadows, which the party will engage with.
The unnamed protagonist is recruited by S.E.E.S., the Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad, a group of students who have the power to fight these Shadows. This power comes in the form of Personas, manifestations of their inner selves. By wielding Evokers – magical pistols – they can summon their Personas to combat the threats.
The story follows your character as they navigate a double life: attending school, building relationships with classmates, and venturing into Tartarus to fight Shadows alongside SEES. As you delve deeper, you uncover the secrets of the Dark Hour, the origin of the Shadows, and a looming threat with dire consequences.
The SEES companions delve deeper into the tower, facing stronger Shadows and encountering figures who may hold the answers. The story also explores how the characters confront their mortality and the inevitable approach of a special date linked to their destinies. This setup takes several hours to establish and for the next 20-something hours, there is no story until July-August, which is when the plot finally begins to form.
A pro-Shadow cult gets introduced and while they do push the game towards having some plot, they aren’t the main antagonist. The motivations of the true villain are saved for the twilight hours of the game and it can take a long time before there is any idea of what the point of anything is. The wait is worth it, but it will demand some patience.
The main plot is not the reason why anyone would get absorbed by Persona 3 Reload. The heart of this game is its characters and human side stories that flesh out the setting. The Social Links each have a mini-narrative that drives the game’s core themes. The power of friendship makes sense since the world around them is shaped by belief and the collective unconscious. Friendship is a power, as is religion and other forms of belief.
Persona 3 Reload‘s story is understandably the same as it was in 2006 but with weaker voice acting and some questionable casting choices. Akihiko’s voice is way too deep. Yukari lacks curt and harshness in her performance. There are even some bizarre instances of self-censorship in some of the rewritings of some scenes that make no sense.
Some may say that they recast the English actors for new talent, but they didn’t recast Elizabeth’s voice for some reason. It is interesting how she is the best actor in Reload, yet is also the only returning performer from the original.
The real failing of Persona 3 Reload, is that it is a completely unnecessary remake. The major draw is that there are some new social links and the presentation has been updated to be more in line with how stylish the series has become.
There is no question that Persona 3 Reload‘s UI design is first-rate. It is sleek and cool, and the new character models are some of the best examples of how to do anime-style shading in 3D. No matter what angle you look at them, they always look excellent and better than anything Atlus has done so far.
Regretfully, this remake is not always consistent. While the characters look amazing, the environments can be very hit-or-miss. The Gekkoukan dorms are a perfect example of how the artists missed the point of the original’s dark and moody ambiance. In Reload, the dorms have very flat and sterile shading. The results make it look lifeless and boring.
Not only are some of the visuals not as appealing as the PlayStation 2 original, but Atlus failed to address the shortcomings. Tartarus was made up of repetitive recycled halls and rooms. It was a trade-off because Persona 3 was a mid-budget PlayStation 2 JPRG, so you ended up with a very boring dungeon in your elaborate life-sim RPG.
Persona 3 Reload missed the opportunity to redesign Tartarus with new ideas and potentially make it engrossing. The developers did try to make the repeating halls have more variety, but there is no disguising it. They could have had some insane M.C. Escher-inspired designs or utilized Unreal Engine 4’s ability to distort space as seen in Psychonauts 2. Tartarus could have been anything.
All the enemies still have the same issues from the PlayStation 2 carried over. They are nondescript Shadow enemies that don’t have a lot of variety among them. Persona 5 was smart to utilize the demonology from Shin Megami Tensei for its foes, but Reload does not follow suit. There could have been more unique designs for all the shadows, but they are still utterly stifled by the same few concepts.
This was the chance to make Persona 3 all it could be and push the series forward. Instead, it falls into a lot of the same traps as its predecessors. The unbearably long introductions, the daily school life, social links, and the metaverse; it’s becoming tired and generic. Worse yet, Persona 3 FES is still widely available on PSN for cheap if you still have your PlayStation 3.
The combat blends elements from Persona 3 through 5, offering a “greatest hits” of proven mechanics. Atlus wisely preserved this core aspect, applying some twists to existing strategies to complement new features. Persona 3 veterans will be especially satisfied.
The turn-based battle system is a variation of the press-turn mechanics seen in the Shin Megami Tensei games. Hitting enemies with their appropriate weaknesses will grant the player one extra turn and send the foe into a fallen state. Getting all enemies fallen allows players to do an all-out attack for major damage.
Something to always consider is that enemies can put party members into a fallen state too or missing causes them to slip as well. There is just enough randomization to keep battles interesting, but there is always an opportunity to turn things around. The drawback is that Reload ends up feeling like a cheap rehash of Persona 5 rather than feeling like a remake of Persona 3.
Regretfully, Persona 3 Reload has a substantial amount of cut content which is going to be sold as DLC. The Answer was a lengthy bonus scenario where Aigis, the party’s cyborg, becomes the main character. This arc is standard in Persona 3 FES on PlayStation 2 and is the version that is available for $9.99 on PSN for PlayStation 3 users.
Reload cuts this sequence out and will be sold as DLC when it already is priced at $69.99. The new social links and added production values are genuinely impressive, but they are not worth $69.99 when the game is still a PlayStation 2 game at its core, especially when the original is still out there for a fraction of the price and is complete and uncut.
Cutting out The Answer is unforgivable for a AAA price, especially since Reload does not justify itself. If you’re a fan of Persona 3, chances are you already have FES and would be better off replaying it because Reload has more in common with Persona 5.
Reload is not different enough where it counts and fails to honor the original intent with some of its many alterations. This remake lacks ambition where it could have addressed the shortcomings of the original game and its new content is hardly worth the price of admission. Some of the new visuals are great, but there are several instances of the art being a step backward.
Environments are still small areas that need to be loaded. Most story scenes unfold like a visual novel with big portraits and text. Tartarus is still a randomized assortment of samey halls. You can’t go fishing or play arcade mini-games. There isn’t even any close-up of detailed food models. You never feel like you see the money on screen.
Persona 3 Reload is a cynically made cash grab that has no wow factor. It’s peak remake culture where a lot of the edge gets sanded off to be in line with “modern audience expectations”. It may look great (in parts), but it lacks the vision to realize the full potential of what a modern Persona 3 could be. Even if it didn’t cut content, it is still a grossly overpriced remake that still feels like a PlayStation 2 game. Go play Persona 3 FES instead.
Monday, May 13, 2024
Halo 4 review: Our new Chief Operating Officer
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| https://www.engadget.com/2012-11-01-halo-4-review.html |
Halo 4 is adamant about proving its competence and convincing you of its necessity. You don't often see a monolithic franchise putting up a fight for fans, but the departure of Bungie has awakened doubt – enough to incur a fierce response from Halo's new custodians at 343 Industries. And so the developer launches the best kind of protest, which is to wave an impressive, throbbing shooter in your face.
The speed at which that uncertainty evaporates is the real surprise. You enter with a fair fear of Halo being stale; then Master Chief exits the cryogenic casket like a crisp piece of let-us-start-killing-things. Meanwhile, his companion Cortana skirts around fatigue, madness and Microsoft metaphor – the inevitable fate of software that's been in service for much too long. But she too comes out stronger, more endearing and heroic than ever before. Maybe she's just been inserted into one too many alien plinths over the years.%Gallery-169920%
Chief's alarmed awakening in the Forward Unto Dawn, a ship misplaced and beset by invaders, is at once a perfect remembrance of Halo: Combat Evolved's opening and an ideal showcase of 343's quickened approach. The game waits for you to advance, as most games do, but the rousing music and implied degradation of the environment makes a leisurely pace seem ... wrong. Halo 4 is an expert at making you play along with the unfolding spectacle, and makes sure you're never ensnared by it.
Even this early level is littered with powerful weapons, and a harsh restriction of ammo forces you to loot, drop and juggle them whenever you can. There's a faster, harder edge to combat now, and the Covenant sect that boards your ship seems more fanatical and wily than you're used to. The increased difficulty shakes you out of playing Halo on auto-pilot, though it might make it tough on those who aren't familiar with the amorphous encounters or cunning AI.
Once Chief lands on Requiem, a vividly realized planet and vector for a new villain's vengeance, he enters a breathless push from one urgent objective to the next. Halo 4 can be haphazard in filling in the gaps between plot and lore, but top-notch acting and jaw-dropping facial capture pair up for entrancing presentation. 343 is also wise to avoid the easy callbacks, so don't expect to set foot on yet another ring world.
The introduction of challenging new enemies – the armor-clad Prometheans – is a major alteration within Halo's intricate and iterated combat. Whereas the Covenant evoke responses that border on muscle memory at this point, the Prometheans will trip you up for a good while. The airborne Watchers can shield their companions and return your grenades, while the hulking Knights can disorient your aim by teleporting. If they finish you with a brutal hit, it's because your shields were whittled away by a pack of canine-like Crawlers, who wield all sorts of guns in their mouths. No bees, though.
You're a good match for the Prometheans once you learn their stellar weaponry, but they're another symptom of what could be Halo 4's biggest problem. I've never concentrated this hard in "Heroic" level Halo. I'm split between thinking that success under pressure is inherently rewarding, again and again, and suspecting that "again and again" will be how some players describe their deaths. It irks especially when the story calls for climax and triumph, while the game kicks you back and restarts the music's fanfare. Nothing deflates drama quite like the protagonist's ignominious death.
But it's rare to bite into these hard, unheated popcorn kernels, and they can't come close to undermining a proper blockbuster campaign. Exploring the deserted, vibrant realms of Requiem is like walking through the matte paintings of an old sci-fi film, albeit one that costs as much as thirty of those. The immense levels open up when Halo's mammoth vehicles come in to play, and subtly hem you in when it wants more claustrophobic shootouts. Later, an arid canyon envelops a jet-packing Chief in the campaign's best moment – an escort mission that doesn't suck in the slightest. In terms of consistency, scope and player motivation, this is the best Halo campaign yet.
Once Master Chief's mission concludes, the operatives in the Spartan-IV program – Chief is only a Spartan-II, remember – carry on in the game's ambitious co-op mode (offered in addition to the campaign co-op). The nature of Halo's fighting, which is to push back just as hard as you prod it, translates beautifully to a four-party team, but it's the method of delivery that makes the Spartan Ops mode exciting. Every week a new episode will add five missions, exploring the fallout of Halo 4's events and giving direction to your slaughter of the alien hordes. If you find less and less time for games in your life (i.e. you're an adult), this bite-sized commitment is ideal, and well worth being bossed around by the voice of Jennifer Hale. And yes, we should start calling her Jennifer Halo.
There's a literal connotation to the progression of multiplayer in Halo 4. The introduction of an XP-driven system of gameplay unlockables is risky, and perhaps a call to dutifully invite comparison to other shooters. But this concern also disappears in 343's vicious war against doubt, this time coinciding with the first, kick-ass KERPLUNK of new ordnance being dropped from the sky. Fine-tuning loadouts and unlocking new abilities introduces a mesmerizing array of strategies to the frantic shooting, and changing them on the fly can help you stay fluid with every map's layout.
There's an addictive sense of discovery with each new weapon and ability in your loadouts (which is why it's best not to list them here), and perhaps some educational value in toying with them piece by piece. The slick, easy interface keeps things orderly, and respects the time you'll spend coming up with sets that empower long-distance fighting, close-quarter scrambles and diversionary tactics. The aforementioned ordnance drop, a choice of weapons to summon once you earn a string of kills, is a thrilling reward for playing well, and it meddles with Halo's gameplay as much as any of the unlocks do: it adds rapid-fire choice and complexity to moment-to-moment fighting, but doesn't wobble the pillars of Halo's refined systems. Way down there at the bottom, it's still about dropping shields, exploiting grenades and using melee attacks at the right moments.
Halo 4 is Halo – a surprisingly successful, mandatory step for 343 Industries. But the game strives for more than competence, giving it a forceful march and a decadent show of strength. Our doubt and questioning of Halo's continued existence has, in some small way, helped deliver one of the best games in the series and one of the finest shooters in years. Of course, if we want to use this tactic for the next one we'd better start now.
Halo 5 is going to suck!
Beating Malenia with Elon Musk's Terrible Elden Ring Build
All videos are in NG+1 (Journey 2) unless specified elsewhere. I use backup saves so I can take on Malenia over and over. Footage has been captured from the Elden Ring PS4 version on the PS5 for better performance. Some visual alterations have been used in this video using editing software.
Friday, May 10, 2024
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
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| Thomas Jefferson by Mather Brown, 1786. |
Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States and author of the Declaration of Independence, was a prominent revolutionary leader and political philosopher. The purpose of this chapter is to summarize the evidence that Jefferson had Asperger Syndrome — a possibility that has already provided the subject matter of an entire book (see Ledgin, 2000).
Life History
Jefferson was born in Shadwell, Albemarle County, Virginia, on April 13, 1743. His father owned a plantation; his mother belonged to a prominent colonial family. He had read all his father’s books by the age of 5 (McLaughlin, 1988). The young Jefferson was interested in various aspects of science and philosophy. He studied law, was admitted to the American Bar Association in 1767, and became a successful lawyer. He married Martha Wayles Skelton, a young and wealthy widow, in 1772. She died in 1782.
Jefferson was governor of Virginia from 1779 to 1781, and later in the 1780s was a minister of the U.S. government in France, where he witnessed the early stages of the French Revolution. As a representative of the Republican Party, he became U.S. vice president in 1797 and president in 1801. Jefferson officially retired from public life in 1809, but he continued to take a keen interest in the great issues of the day, such as slavery. He died on July 4, 1826 — 50 years to the day after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Social Behavior
Jefferson was extremely shy, socially awkward, and lacked empathy. Ledgin (2000) notes, “If anyone became emotional in his presence, he was likely to have been discomforted noticeably. If anyone raised his or her voice, almost certainly Jefferson would have found a polite way to remove himself” (p. 1). He failed to recognize social cues and was not very interested in other people. He also failed to recognize or understand irony and tended to be a concrete thinker and to lack common sense.
Ledgin (2000) speculated that Jefferson’s relationship with Sally Hemmings (his wife’s half-sister) was partly due to the fact that she was also an outsider, being a slave. Ledgin also pointed out that many people with autism spectrum disorders seek the company of others with similar problems, as in the case of Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Jefferson’s magnetic intellect made him interesting to others, and partly for that reason the one-sidedness of his conversations was tolerated, similarly to Wittgenstein’s situation. Ledgin (2000) noted that Jefferson was apart from the mainstream in many respects and that he was eccentric and quirky.
Narrow Interests/Obsessiveness
Jefferson was described by James Parton, a nineteenth-century biographer, as a man who could “calculate an eclipse, survey an estate, tie an artery, plan an edifice, try a cause, break a horse, dance a minuet, and play a violin’ (Ledgin, 2000, p. 195). His interests clearly were not narrow in the usual sense (they included architecture, birds, coinage, weights and measures, distance measurements, English prosody, grammar and etymology, Indian vocabularies, natural history, piano tuning, Philadelphia temperatures, and scientific phenomena), but he focused on each interest in a narrow and obsessive way. He spent extremely long periods of time writing and studying alone, and noted at the age of 75 that he was still a “hard student.”
As US. president Jefferson established an economic embargo against England, which had devastating consequences similar to those of the Irish politician Eamon de Valera’s economic war with Britain in the 20th century. He wrote an enormous number of letters, like Lewis Carroll (Fitzgerald, 2005) and many others with Asperger Syndrome. He spent 54 years constructing and reconstructing his home at Monticello.
Routines/Control
Jefferson favored ritual and preservation of sameness and tended to line up or carefully arrange books, works, or toys. From about 1767 onward, he formed a habit that developed into a daily ritual of “making memorandum book entries for the rest of his life. His recording of minutiae about expenditures evolved into an everyday exercise that served little if any purpose, for he lacked meaningful accounting abilities” (Ledgin, 2000, p. 28). For 60 or more years he started each day by soaking his feet in cold, preferably icy, water.
Temple Grandin (1986), an academic and author who has autism, says that Jefferson “compulsively measured the distance his carriage traveled” (Ledgin, 2000, p. 197). This is very similar to Tesla at the dining table and to some autistic mathematical prodigies. Ellis (1997) has noted that the computer would have been the perfect Jeffersonian instrument — for example, its impersonality would have suited him well.
Jefferson was extremely controlling, particularly in looking into every aspect of the University of Virginia, which he was involved in setting up. He was hopeless at managing his own finances and had massive debts when he died. According to Ledgin (2000), Jefferson’s drawings for Monticello were carried out to precise scale and measured to several decimal places — the work of a compulsive personality.
Language/Humor
Jefferson was an extremely poor public speaker and avoided speaking in public as much as possible. Yet he had a great interest in English prosody — his kinds of linguistic interests are common in persons with Asperger Syndrome. It is noteworthy that his autobiography is unfinished. Persons with Asperger Syndrome have difficulty with autobiography.
Naivety/Childishness
Jefferson had a child-like personality and was emotionally immature. The great John Adams stated, albeit jokingly, “Jefferson was always a boy to me.” Ledgin (2000) described him as utterly naive, referred to an “Asperger’s inclination to treat fiction as fact” (p. 70) and stated “his relative immaturity ... was what made him an either-or person, one who judged on the basis of perceived right or wrong without contingencies” (p. 72).
Nonverbal Communication
Jefferson was described as the “ever-elusive Virginian with the glacial exterior and almost eerie serenity” and had problems in expressing himself (Ellis, 2000, p. 74). His behavior was sometimes enigmatic and unpredictable. According to Ledgin (2000), “He had no talent for public speaking ... he seemed uneasy with eye contact. To some his body language appeared odd and awkward. He sang under his breath constantly. Often he looked disheveled, and he drank too much’ (p. 1).
Ledgin (2000) listed the following features of autism in Jefferson: avoidance of eye contact in conversation, an inexpressive face or far-away look, few meaningful nonverbal gestures, failure to swing arms normally when walking, insensitivity to low pain levels, odd mannerisms, and trouble in starting conversation.
Jefferson was also described as having “limbs uncommonly long; his hands and feet very large, and his wrists of extraordinary size” (Chandler, 1994, pp. 26-27). His dress was extremely eccentric — he even wore slippers on state occasions. Further, Ledgin (2000) pointed out, “many of President Thomas Jefferson’s close contemporaries would have believed his greeting guests accompanied by an uncaged mocking bird or with his hair in disarray were items not worth belaboring,” as “polite people tend to look for and deal with the substance and character of those they admire” (p. 10).
Visual Thinking
According to Temple Grandin (1986), “There are two kinds of autistic-Asperger’s thought. Some who are affected are visual thinkers like me, and others are numbers and word thinkers. Both types concentrate on the details instead of the overall concept. Visual thinkers like me and visual thinkers like Jefferson are good at building things and good at mechanical design. The nonvisual detail thinkers are good at accounting and mathematics. Both types have enormous memory” (cited in Ledgin, 2000, p. 204).
Jefferson was particularly interested in architecture. In 1786, he referred to his ability to think pictorially. He wrote of visualizing “architectural ‘diagrams and crotchets’ (jointed wood used as building supports)” as a means to relax in order to fall asleep (Ledgin, 2000, p. 43). Indeed, Monticello has been described as “the quintessential example of the autobiographical house” (Adams, 1983, p. 2). “Signs of that are everywhere, especially in the built-in gadgetry” (Ledgin, 2000, p. 88). This is reminiscent of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s house in Vienna. Ledgin (2000) also stated that “architecture critic Paul Goldberger wrote that ‘both conceptually and physically’ the Jefferson intellect was central to the project. Jefferson’s psyche’ gave meaning to an exceptional architecture (Goldberger found in it ‘nothing universal’), and the more deeply one might ‘penetrate that psyche’ the more pleasure one should draw from the place” (p. 88). According to Ledgin (2000), Jefferson “must be given credit for advancing America’s household functionalism” (p. 91). Wittgenstein was also interested in functionalism.
It has been pointed out that for Jefferson, “beauty and function were inseparable” (Burstein, 1995, p. 21). This is exactly similar to Wittgenstein’s ideas on architecture. Further, like Wittgenstein, Jefferson was an inventor.
Morality
Jefferson had, according to Ledgin (2000), an unyielding perception of right and wrong. He thought of the world in black and white. This is very characteristic of people with Asperger Syndrome. Ledgin (2000) also noted that “Jefferson ... made differing judgments about the worth of individuals on grounds of their ethical conduct, sometimes relying on only a few observations or experiences with them in order to do so” (p. 91). Wittgenstein may have made equally quick judgments based on insufficient information about people. We believe that this is because of the autistic condition.
Autistic Mental Mechanisms
Jefferson has been described as an “impenetrable man” (Peterson, 1970, p. viii). Ledgin (2000) notes, “Jefferson’s knack for shielding himself against reality when fiction suited his romantic notions better,” and that “Jefferson’s taking of such poetic license influenced the drafting of the Declaration of Independence” (p. 20). This is similar to de Valera and the Irish constitution.
Ledgin (2000) also noted, “The biographer Ellis is probably the first among interpretative historians to discover that two levels of reality served Jefferson. Ellis wrote that Jefferson was capable of creating inside himself ‘separate lines of communication that would sort out conflicting signals. My Asperger’s interpretation simply adds this: On the one hand there was reality as you and I know it, and on the other hand there was a Jefferson reality which the rest of us tend to see as idealism ... The two levels are common to persons with high-functioning autism, and they deal with those separate realities daily in ways not yet clear to nonautistics” (p. 60). This is similar to de Valera’s mode of operation (i.e., there was a “de Valera fact” and then there were facts recognized by persons without autism, or de Valera’s autism — see Fitzgerald, 2004).
According to Ledgin (2000), Ellis noted that “denial mechanisms” gave Jefferson some guidance and that “interior defenses” protected him from becoming unduly pressed (p. 84). Ellis maintained that “capsules or compartments” had been “constructed” in Jefferson’s “mind or soul” to stop conflicting thoughts from colliding (Ellis, 1997, pp. 88, 149, 174). Such compartmentalization is common in persons with autism, such as the artist L. S. Lowry; we also see it in Einstein (Fitzgerald, 2005).
In discussing high-functioning persons with autism, Ledgin (2000) stated, “To put it simply, they live mentally and perhaps emotionally on two planes. They live in our world of nonautistics, but they carry with them a separate and otherworldly ‘reality’ — their reality. The rest of us see it as idealism, but autistics seem to convert it into something palpable” (p. 58).
Conclusion
The evidence that Thomas Jefferson had Asperger Syndrome is very convincing indeed.
- Michael Fitzgerald, Former Professor of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
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