For the love of mathematics

My first love in life was maths. I was astonishly good at it. I had the kind of brain that just knew the answer to problems without even realising it. I was very much like Daniel Tamnet. He struggled enormously with his talent and the fact he wasn’t like anyone else. He also couldn’t connect with others. It was only later in life that he learnt that he was capable of more than just maths. He also is a celebrated linguist and has a phenomenal ability to explain how he does this seemingly unearthly talents.

While I no longer have such mathematical talents I am still very much interested in maths and physics problems. I’m just reduced to reading about others accomplishments as you will learn in the book, maths is a young persons game and by the time you reach your thirties your pretty much over the hill just like in sports. They have even proven that you are much more likely to win the noble prize when you are much younger due to the sheer output that is possible in your youth.

I don’t want to sound morbid because I still have many decades left in me I hope but I know that life can be cut short quite quickly as mine almost was 17 years ago. It’s almost like an anniversary. I don’t celebrate it but maybe I should. It reminds me that I was one way for so long and then in the blink of an eye I wasn’t. As an autistic that throws you the most extreme curve ball you can ever deal with. When you have reassess your whole life’s plan, reanalyse what you are now capable of but most crucially relearn basic human behaviour like walking, bowel control and sleeping through the night, is it any wonder that I have been lost for so long trying to rediscover myself?

I had barely found myself at 17 having led a very isolated and protected life. My mother worried excessively about my vulnerability to the point of making her obsessive about protecting me. This doesn’t help when your recovering from a near fatal car accident and she has to raise you all over again from not knowing what 2+2 is to the realisation that the reason you have sent your daughter to many hospital appointments is vindicated because she is autistic. Her differences with viewing the world finally make sense but now you have a new challenge as you don’t know the affects the car accident is going to have on her. Are you going to allow her the freedom to grow or are you going to increase your efforts to cocoon her from the harshness and realities of the world?

I spent the next year off school recovering and adjusting to my new way of being. I had done the SAT test immediately before my accident so that was a marker of my intelligence then but what was I now?

I never took the test again as far as I recall so we will never know but suffice to say I completed high school, did an Access course, a CISCO course in my spare time and got to university.

This is where the trouble begins because as well as losing my mathematical ability it seems I have also my ability to program. This is a big problem for a person who wants to be a computer scientist. Cue me exploring many other areas of interest while learning how to socialise, be a human and basically epically failing at my degree without me even realising. I passed in case your wondering.

For an autistic no longer having a sense of purpose is devastating. I had fulfilled all of the things (read my mother) had wanted for me. I had beat a accident that could have killed me, I had got a degree, I even had a partner with a house and his own business. What on earth was I going to do since I was clearly incapable of getting a job?

I’m still in the quandary of what do I do with my life and what am I capable of but I keep exploring new options. Life has never been simple or easy for me but hopefully I figure it out before it ends whenever that is.

Best wishes

Angela

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How the letters of the alphabet got their names – The Economist explains

Why B became bee and U became yoo
— Read on www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2017/11/14/how-the-letters-of-the-alphabet-got-their-names

If your curious like I am this is a good article to read as it explains curiosities like the lack of j in Spanish and the h sound.

Autism as a superpower

Greta Thunberg is fond of saying that her autism is her superpower and in a way that is true. It allows her to have the single mindedness that is needed to get the government to pay attention to climate change. It also allows her to continue on with her task regardless of the obstacles that are present or that are put into her path deliberately.

However this also blinds her to the fact that she was rather cruel to her mother making her stop singing opera because flights are bad for the planet. She is a bit like those hard core vegans that say cows are releasing methane into the atmosphere therefore we are no longer allowed to eat them since it’s too dangerous. South Park had an episode on this recently and I was stunned to find watching UFC that the impossible burger actually exists. I thought they made it up as a joke.

Autism can be regarded as your superpower but it’s extraordinarily fickle in its operation. You have to learn how to control it much like all the characters in Heroes or any other super hero oriented show has to. Before this is done it has more downsides than upsides. This is our eternal struggle. Autism is a gift but more often it’s treated as if you have an infectious disease that makes you incapable of anything.

We need not only autism awareness but autism acceptance. We didn’t make ourselves this way and we didn’t ask to be this way so we should not be penalised for something that we were born with. As Lady Gaga says “I was born this way!”

Best wishes

Angela

The difference between an early and late diagnosed autistic

I’m going to start by saying this is just my personal opinion based on what I have observed so far. I am a late diagnosed person on account of the fact that myself and my personality were quite developed by the time I got my diagnosis at 17. An early diagnosis I classify as you got it very early on in your life so you’ve always been autistic. There was never a time that you can remember being an undiagnosed autistic.

The reason I decided to make this distinction is that it shapes your personality. There is the debate about whether you are an autistic person or a person with autism. This is more than the simple language debate it would seem. I know a lot of people would think what is the difference but it’s there. It depends how much you think autism is a part of you and your life. Does your autism define you in the way that a footballer is sometimes only thought of a footballer and when they stop playing they have lost their identity? For me my autism is a big part of me as it’s always been present whether recognised or not but it’s not all that I am. I am interested in a great many things in this world. Yes I can be obsessive, literal and single minded but I can also be social, warm and affectionate.

I think my late diagnosis helped me as I learnt the habits that I need to survive. I don’t have the strange eating habits of only eating chicken and chips or other similarly limited diets. I may say inappropriate things occasionally but I’m generally polite. I’m a fairly well rounded person who luckily escaped something much more debilitating like Down’s syndrome or Tourette’s but even here people are making strides towards acceptance. They are being welcomed into the community.

I think an early diagnosis is akin to helping a butterfly out of its chrysalis. You damage it in ways it can’t know until later on. I was hurt by others and by not knowing myself but now I think I’m being reborn like the butterfly and I’m flying free due to having gained the strength from my earlier struggles. One of the things my mother always said to me was “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” I’m not quite sure whether she was joking, being sarcastic or truly meant it as it differed when she said it but it’s true. Also “You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.” Or “Cry and you cry alone, laugh and the whole world laughs with you.” These were epithets delivered on how to make friends and the mood you should be in to attract other people.

People are what make life more interesting but you have to be in the right place to be able to accept them into your life. If you have more drama and issues stored inside of you than the average soap opera; your not going to be in a fit state to be anybody’s friend. It is up to you to make the most of your life as you only get one. Your not a cat I’m afraid.

Best wishes

Angela

How to evolve work to benefit autistics

I read Digital Darwinism this morning on Blinkist and it spoke about changing businesses to account for the internet in the way we did for first electricity and then secondly computers. These have become integral parts of our lives but it took some time to accept them in roles that were more than just bolt-on additions. We need to do this with our workforce’s. We need to utilise location independence and free ourselves from the restricting 9-5 m-f culture. This is another barrier that can be removed with some innovative thinking. It mentions the perils that come from not adapting but also the successes that can come from revolutionising employment. For more information about different work practices read or listen to on Audible Cal Newport’s various books or Scott H Young for inspiration.

We need to evolve work so that it benefits autistic people.

• Autistic people are kind, caring, idealistic and often put the needs of others before themselves.
• This means that they will help others often to the detriment of themselves in the workplace.
• They will also not promote themselves so they won’t get the due rewards that comes from their achievements.
• They are also extremely empathetic to the point that your unresolved issues will cause them emotional distress.
• This means that we don’t fare well in the closeted atmosphere of the typical office. We are not to be found gossiping around the water cooler and certainly not about what happened last night on Love Island etc.

It is shocking that only 1 in 6 autistics are in work. Not having work is a major contributor to depression. This is highly prevalent in the autism community. Anxiety is another factor that ranks highly and is caused by uncertainty. Not knowing what your going to do in your life or how your going to survive from one day to the next makes you ill. A lot of autistics feel suicidal as it affects them that much.Monique Botha

We have difficulty blocking out the trauma of the world yet to the average person everyday life isn’t traumatic. We can’t desensitise like you do. We are present in life much more than you. We are worrying about the bigger issues of the world like Greta Thunberg for instance. We are not often motivated by money or material possessions. We are striving for self actualisation.

There are reasons we like gardening (Alan Gardner), animals (Temple Grandin) or computer science (majority of Silicon Valley). These are all unemotional things in terms of human emotions. This is what disables us so we are unable to communicate. We are have a lot to offer we just have to be given an environment in which to do so.

My personal experience

I tried to become a part of the workforce but I’m too stubborn and resistant to allow myself to enter something so completely alien to me. When I went for interviews I never sold myself as I didn’t really want the jobs. I just felt I had to go through the motions and somehow I would earn a living. It always felt completely inauthentic. Even the clothing was distasteful to me!

I would like to work but I’ve never found anywhere that was comfortable for me because the energy present was toxic. I am a person that will walk into somewhere and if it’s too noisy I will walk straight back out again. I have done on several occasions. The people I have been with are sometimes ok with this and sometimes not. I have never found social environments inviting because of this unsettling behaviour. Since all workplaces have people they can be classed like that.

I have also never understood the way the average person keeps going into work even though they hate it. It completely drains them so they live for the holidays or the weekend. They numb themselves with alcohol and moan to their colleagues yet do nothing to improve their situation. When such things are classed as normality is it any wonder I have stayed far away from that.

Best wishes

Angela

An alternative perspective on autism

This article is about an amazing book I have read about autism and this is one of the best descriptions I have come across. It’s certainly the best from someone who isn’t personally on the autism spectrum themselves.

transformingautism.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/eBook-TAP-May-2017.pdf

Sociolinguistics or the use of context appropriate language

This is a field within the study of language that concentrates on how language use differs between social classes. This is very important for social development as how you communicate with your peers often vastly differs from how you would say the same phrases to an authority figure (police etc).

There is a method of communication called the restricted code that is used by children as it’s extra verbal. By this I mean that it is focused on things other than speaking. Touch and facial expression are the main means of expressing what you want to say. This also means there is little room for individual expression. This can be very problematic for the autistic child as they don’t like to be touched and have trouble understanding facial expressions. They also like to express there individuality. So immediately the neuro diverse child is at odds with the neuro typical child. The neuro diverse child understands their way of thinking. However the neuro typical way which is dominant and therefore more prevalent; makes no sense to them. Since the majority of people are neuro typical; in order for the neuro diverse child to get along they have to understand a way of thinking that is completely alien to themselves . The neuro typical child never needs to make any effort to try to understand the neuro diverse child though because there in a minority here.

So a neuro diverse child is disadvantaged and when they get older things get more difficult because the communication rules change again. We start to use the elaborated code with the increasing amount of time that we spend outside of the family and talking to adults. We still don’t understand our peers. The elaborated code has a focus on verbal language which can explain an autistics odd language. There language skills have been honed in isolation and they respect the formality of their native language. They are often to be found talking in a standard dialect. Their peers on the other hand talk in a non standard dialect. This is even more obvious if you come from a lower class background or move to one later on as there is much more deviation present.

It is only much later when the neuro diverse person has grown up that they can replicate neuro typical behaviour like it’s there own. This is very time and energy consuming for the neuro diverse individual. It is also known as masking when an autistic pretends to others that they are something they are not.

We never make neurotypicals act in a neuro diverse way so why do the neuro diverse have to act in a neuro typical way always?

Angela

Alignment

This is a popular word at home the moment if you follow the American positivity movement. I am friends with various life coaches who assist you with various aspects of your life.

It is ok to want help to get the best out of your life. The struggle for perfectionism is real and it stops us from being our real authentic selves. I have recently been on holiday and found that yes I can make friends with people from completely different backgrounds as they resonated on the same frequencies as me. I know that sounds like feng Sui but there is a lot of truth with energy movement. It’s what computer scientists look into when designing websites with eye tracking software. It also what you analyse when designing a new and effective gui or graphical user interface.

I found that when people are at there most relaxed then they are more open to accepting connections from strangers that they would never come across otherwise. If you like your job, your social life and everything else is going well for you then you project that positivity onto all that you meet.

I found it odd that I met some new people who are going to be our new neighbours in a bar yet because we’re British we didn’t exchange contact details, hug/kiss, take a picture of ourselves or even do a formal introduction of my name is … what is yours?

We instead talked about general things like the airport dramas we had being involved in with me trying to outdo them which I succeeded with and then we went on to places we had been to in Mexico which we only barely connected on and finally a festival which takes place in the summer on our new road which I had never heard of despite living in my town for many years now and in a couple of different places.

In complete contrast to that I met some Americans who are lovely people and we found out there names after the initial ok look there is pina colada guy. If you get a nickname that means your onto something as your interesting and it’s immediately informal. We took pictures, hugged, exchanged details, stayed up till 3am talking to them and had the bar close around us after the barman politely fed us pizza as we were rather drunk. We met up the next night for dinner (her phone camera is much better) and talked some more about our lives, our likes and dislikes as will as the struggles of the day since the amount of alcohol we had consumed was considerable. It takes its toll on you surprisingly early as were all in our thirties but we can’t do what we used to in our twenties. They also invited us to stay with them in there home town. This seems to be a common American thing although these were the least American Americans I’ve ever met. It was refreshing to chat with people that just get you as that seems to be such a rare thing for me nowadays. I had to go half way round the world to find them.

The last time I felt such a profound connection I was on a cruise in the Canary Islands but with British people this time. The story of how we met is similiar but takes place over a week. It’s also ironic they were both celebrating birthdays .

They live in the uk but due to her job as an airline hostess she is often away. She travels even more than we do!

So the lesson learned here is to get out of your current negative environment in order for you to be reborn. You will find that you are doing what is necessary in life already and you already have all your required skills. You just needed to grow into a new space. Your energy has grown to the point that it fills its current container so you effectively need a new bigger pot like a plant that needs to be transplanted to allow its roots to spread once more.

I wish you all the best in what ever your trying to accomplish right now.

Angela

Linear B

This is a very early writing system that predates the Greek alphabet. There has been extensive studies to understand this pre alphabet in both Crete and Cyprus. Knossos is a very important historical site in Crete where these tablets have been discovered on archeological digs.

On Cyprus lectures are given about its importance about its role as a precursor to the Greek language. These lectures are given in Greek at the university of Nicosia in Cyprus but I was able to find out about it because the lecturer is in fact English. There was a magazine article I read about his work and how he came to learn the Greek language over a period of approximately 30 years. I found it fascinating that there is still much to learn about prehistoric times because the information was either recorded in a language that is now indecipherable to us; or was just passed down verbally as they had no means of remembering things in terms of texts.

Linear B is a written language that is in itself predated by Linear A which hasn’t been decoded yet. Linear B was uncovered by English architect Micheal Ventris. He was a Classist and self taught linguist. His specialty was the Mycenaean era of Greece. He sadly died in a car crash very early on in his life otherwise this new field could be much further forward than it is today.

Best wishes

Angela

Spanish conversation basics

Hola senor, senorita, a todos,

Buenos Dias/Buenas Tardes/Buenas noches,

Como Estes? Que pasa?

Bien, muy bien.

Adelante,

Dos cafe sin leche pero con azucar por favor,

UNO mas?

Si/No.

Une cerveza con limon por favor.

Muchos Gracias.

Salut!

Hasta las vista.

Adios.

Hello guy/girl, everyone,

Good Day, Good Afternoon, Good Night.

How are you? What’s up?

Good, very good.

Come on in.

Two coffees without milk but with sugar please.

One more?

Yes/No.

One beer with lemon please.

Thankyou very much,

Cheers!

See you later.

Goodbye.

The Mayan anthropology museum

This is a museum about the visual word. It demonstrates that the Mayan way of communication is completely different to anything else in the world. There are 31 different dialects and it shows in chart form how and where they evolved. It also demonstrates how the sound has changed over time.

The Mayan language started off being written in hieroglyphic form but with a completely different set of symbols to Egyptian. However when the Spanish invaded this was banned. So all Mayan practices had to conducted in secret or with the Latin language. As a result of this it meant that the ability to read and write was mostly lost until recently. The museum charts the work of anthropologists, enthographers and linguists from around the world but particularly Dresden, Madrid, and St Petersburg in there battle to understand this mysterious code. It was cracked but it took until the 1950s for this to happen. The Mayan language is now written universally in Latin and the hieroglyphs are left as part of there cultural heritage.

The reasoning for this is that the mayans used a vigesimal system which meant that they counted in 20s. This is quite a feat but remember there was no electricity in those days so no internet, television, radio, phones, computers to distract them.

For other number systems see here Alternative number systems.

The Mayan mathematical system was unique using dots and dashes to add all numbers together. They invented zero long before the Arabic zero. The Romans with their numerals never had the concept of zero. The Mayan knowledge of mathematics, physics and astronomy was comparable to the Ancient Greeks.

The Mayan calendar system was also unique in that it had 18 months of 20 days and 1 month of 5 days to create 365 days. The extra days were celebratory. They each had there own name and these were only repeated every 52 years. The date is written in 5 parts. The first 3 in numerals then you get words to represent where you are in that particular cycle.

The Mayan calendar system is similar to the Aztec calendar system so you can get easily confused as they are equally big numbers that seems rather abstract at once glance. You have to have a systematic and mathematical mind to grasp it. A bit like the old system of pounds, shillings and pence was once commonplace but now seems so awkward and obsolete.

There isn’t much in the museum itself anymore as it’s been open for 60 years now. It’s been moved to a new location further north but what is left is still intriguing. The artefacts themselves, the stories and the knowledge contained within. By the way this is in Spanish but you can get an English book if you left them hold your ID for the duration of your stay. It takes about a hour to look at it all.

Best wishes

Angela