This is the title of a fantasy story by Robert Heinlein, first published in 1961. It gives a real feeling of what it is like to have AS (of course I have never been NT, so maybe it just describes the human condition?!?) I'm not sure which board to put it on, but I thought mothers of newly diagnosed AS kids would come here first, and I thought this book might be as good a way as any to get a glimpse into their child's mind.

http://www.amazon.com/Stranger-Strange-L...9953759-6640747

I read that book many years ago, and loved it. Isn't that the one which coined the word, "grok"?

There was another book I thoroughly enjoyed, but I haven't been able to find it again, and my only copy was stolen. Godbody, by Theodore Sturgeon. In fact, I think this was another of those books I'd consider pivotal in my life.

I read that book years ago too and loved it. In fact I copped the title as a phrase in the song I wrote about AS called "The World's Too Loud" which I still have not figured out how to send to this site. I would love you all to hear it..........

You could have someone video tape you singing it then upload it to youtube. You could put it on a CD and save it to yahoo jukebox. From there you could elect to share it. I would love to hear it. I take great solace in music, and to this day it still manages to convey my feelings better than I ever can. I love the song "Right Where It Belongs" by Nine Inch Nails. I will try to send it to you.

Yes, the martians grokked. Do you both agree that MVS was Aspie?

Here's your book, if you do ebay - if not, let me know your address, and I'll buy it and send it to you. Silly me - I just looked at it again, and they only ship to the US. Let me know your address, and I'll buy it and send it to you, or you can get it somewhere else on ebay and they'll ship it to you, there were multiple copies available, this was just the cheapest.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Godbody-by-Theodore-...VQQcmdZViewItem

Last edit, I promise... this one's in Canada:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Theodore-Sturgeon-Go...VQQcmdZViewItem

(Have not read this one, but Stranger in a Strange Land kicked off a 10 year science fiction frenzy in my early youth.)

Thanks Karin. I don't 'do' eBay, but you've brought up an interesting idea. I'll bet my local used bookstore has a copy. I never thought to check that, but I will now. Failing that, Powell's book in Portland OR will have it. They are HUGE!

I used to LOVE Powell's when I lived in Portland. I still stop in there every time I pass through town.

I adore their filing system - they put the used copies right next to the new and let the customer choose for him/herself. It is also fascinating to compare different translations of foreign works, especially those of the ancient Greeks. For that, it is better than a library.

Long live Powell's! I understand the daughter has taken over now, but I don't get the impression she is interested in ruining it.

Thanks for all the book suggestions. I need to keep a list or make a link somehow (any suggestion?). I've got about a years worth of basic reading waiting for me to get through. Just borrowed Carol Gray's Social Stories.


Linda, i would love to hear your song.

Ok, well if you don't find it, let me know, I'd be glad to get it and send it on to you.

I do have the song on a CD and I think it is posted on Itunes (our recording guy put it there to save it I think). Mark and I are trying to work on it - thanks for your interest guys! Linda

Back from beyond... this is lunar650 chiming in.
Linda, are itunes for macs?

yes regina, anyone can download an itune. You may need to set up an account, or buy a card with itune credits. If you don't have an mp3 player, you can hear the songvia your computer, assuming you have speakers.
It would also help to have the exact song and artist name.
over to you, Linda..........

Groovy. My sister works for an investment firm. She handles the technology companies (MIT grad). When she goes to these big conventions, they give her so much stuff! She supplies us with all of our MP3s and one came with an itunes card(?). You have motivated me to look into it further.

I have an iMac and I've used iTunes to purchase hundreds of dollars worth of music. Most of it is stuff I could probably never find in a music store, as it is not 'popular' music.

Wow! I never knew that. I tend to be off the mainstream when it comes to music.

A super nice bonus is that you can hear the first 30 seconds of any of the music, for free, and it makes decisions much easier. You can buy songs individually for $.99 or whole albums at a cheaper rate. My only irritant is that some albums have songs that are included in other albums, and this causes duplicates.

Note to self: Create special mixes with 30 second very-cool extra intros for bad songs licensed for sale through i-tunes.

You are a rip!
I subscribe to the Yahoo version. My playlist are as scatalogical as me. It can run the gamit from Gregorian chants to Seether.

Oh and it only cost me 79 AAACCKKKK. I just realized there is no "cent" sign on the keyboard!!!!!
This is more attempts by people who are trying to do away with the penny. It is a conspiracy. This is one of the greatest coins. Could have something to do with my interest in Abraham Lincoln and Civil War history.

No cent sign? Really? I can ¢s that you are joking with me.

On my computer, an iMac, it is ALT 4, to get it to come up.

Bart! Stop it. I had to read and re-read that post. Finally too funny. I love word games. In a word program you can insert a symbol. Not on line.

To make the cent symbol in Windows, first make sure your "num lock" is on, so the numbers over on the right of your keyboard work. Then hold down the Alt key while you type in 0 1 6 2. Let go of the Alt key and you will have ¢

Happy now?

0162¢ Hmmm
It definitely works differently on iMacs

¢ool! Thanks Brookler! Learn something new every day!

How is your socialization project going?

On the verge: My traveling friend is coming over for tea and a walk tomorrow. (See, I've already gone from thinking I had no friends to considering her one! Progress!)

Good for you!

I hope the weather there is as nice as it is here, Brookler. The predicted rainstorms have failed to appear here.

¢
dip me in s--t and call me stinky, I am a happy girl!

I have a lap top with no num.lock and no little extra panel of numbers on the side. boo hoo. Any suggestions?

I guess I am the only one who doesn't feel the need for any ¢'s at all! But I was sure happy when I figured out how to make the copyright symbol!

That's asking for a lot!

Actually, there is a way, but it's a little tricky. Hopefully you have Microsoft Word. First open a blank document. Hold down the Ctl key with your left hand and then hold down the / key with your right hand. While you continue to hold down those two keys, type c and you will have a cent symbol. Since this ONLY works in Word, you will have to copy and paste the teeny symbol if you want it elsewhere (like on this Discussion Board).

That is how I put this little guy here: ¢

Wow! You are full of answers! Can you tell me how to get the symbol for British pounds? You know - that silly "L" thing.

€

Okay, you can now try for this one, the Euro.

£ That one was easy.

Sorry guys. It's actually remarkably easy on an iMac.

Don't worry BK - soon America will run the world and there will be no other currrencies.

In New Zealand the cent symbol is c (simple) - without the cross through it - the dollar is $.

Sure! Do the num lock thing again, then hold down Alt while you type 0 1 6 3 and you get £.

£ -- clever brookler

Alt 0 1 2 8 = €

£ -PERFECT!

Thank you so much! Now I can tease Whisperer in her own currency.

You rock Bookler! What are you, some kind of geek?

wooo hooo! i now feel like a complete woman!
¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

Now Linda it is your turn to show off how to do the copyright symbol. I seriously do need to know that one for work.

And again pretty please for those of us with a lap top. While you're at it, the euro would be mighty handy. ta

OK, just to stop you all driving Brookler nuts, here is the complete method of getting any character you want on the screen: go to http://www.unicode.org/charts/charindex.html and find a description of the character you want and it will show the unicode number for this character - in hexadecimal, unfortunately. (If you want to brush up on hexadecimal arithmetic, you might want to start with Tom Lehrers 'new math' on youtube, as discussed in an earlier thread.) You can use the windows calculator (all programs - accessories) to convert hexadecimal to ordinary decimal. Put the calculator in scientific mode. Click on the hexadecimal 'radio button'. Type in the unicode character from http://www.unicode.org/charts/charindex.html (you can ignore any leading zeros). Now click on the decimal radio button, and the number will change to decimal. Put back enough leading zeros to make four digits, and you have the number you need for Brookler's method.

This way, v-dog can give us quotations in the original cyrillic, though it might take him a little time.

One question for Brookler (or anyone else): is there a way of entering the hex value instead of having to use the calculator?

I don't know if the following instructions will work for all of you and your systems:
Go to the bottom left of the Windows screen, to Start. click
Scroll to Programs, which brings up a drop down menu.
Hold cursor over Accesories, which brings up another drop down menu.
Hold cursor over System Tools, which brings up another drop down menu.
Hold cursor over Character Map and left click.
A new screen/window comes up and you can select the font you want to use.
If you click in any character you see, the bottom right of that window will show the Alt + keystrokes needed to get that symbol. If there is no instruction, you can use the Select to copy the symbol and then paste it wherever you want in another document or article.

And in the bottom left corner of the Character Map window, you see the hex unicode number for the character, which you can convert, write down for later use of Brookler's method.

It does other languages too!

OMG! OMG! I'm soooooooooooo excited. I want to kiss you both. Will have to settle for jumping up and down. Oh no, can't. Hubby is asleep next to me. Not sure what will make him moore grizzly; jumping up and down, or kissing 2 men I've never met??

Actually it was quite fun!

I didn't know about the character map or any master plan of all the symbols. I learned about them years ago when I first had to write in French and needed the accents for école or Pâques. A correspondent told me how to do a couple of them, then told me to just play around with digits to find the others I needed.

The Word symbols was something I just learned now to help those with laptops. I discovered that under Insert, if you click Symbol you get a chart showing how to make all the symbols in Word.

You blew my excuse for showing off!

It occurred to me that this book also has an aspie as its central character (and is also one of my favorites).

I read somewhere recently that superhero comicbooks were popular with the young because the superhero's powers left him isolated from others. An idea similar to my belief that aspies are ovverrepresented among the famous because we tend to be the first to espouse a new idea.

a black sun, a prison from which there is no escape, a place where reason itself does not exist, one can little doubt clarke envisioned black holes, even if not having a fully formed though of them in the fore-front of his mind.

as allegory its easy to see why (as per clarke) campbell, at least at first, rejected the story.

i may re-read _the city and the stars_; reading s.f. as i have (since 1958 or so) i am certain that i've read it, but i do not remember having done so; i am older now.

i'd think "superhero comicbooks" are popular with children (socialization no doubt being responsible for the probable but (as far as i know) undocumented preference boys have for them (a very interesting subject that)) as they create a place that has the bounds of accepted physical limits loosened, a thing that leads in the direction of a loosening the bounds of one's mind also - girls would even out that curve, but they've been taught, and by that time have accepted, that there are interests not theirs to engage in.

heinline's _friday_ and _glory road_ show they were written to counter that limiting attitude, but they, while excellent and imaginative stories (if you know _friday_, you know, for example, what he therein offers as a viable form of marrage) they, alone, are no where near consequential to the social attitude.

but, back to... what is the attraction of comicbook super-heros for boys? potent limitlessness or company's support for a loner?

i'd think many an answer leaps to conclusion.


regards,

I'm pretty sure that Clarke envisioned his 'Black Sun' before the idea of a black hole had been published. Indeed, when they were first postulated, they were called 'frozen stars' because of the time-dilation effect. I don't know to what extent TC&TS influenced the shift to the 'black hole' name.

i thought hawkings had advanced the idea but, surprisingly...

More recently, Michell's main "claim to fame" is considered to be his letter to Cavendish, published in 1784, on the effect of gravity on light. This paper was only generally "rediscovered" in the 1970s and is now recognised as anticipating several astronomical ideas that had been considered to be 20th century innovations. Michell is now credited with being the first to study the case of a heavenly object massive enough to prevent light from escaping (the concept of escape velocity was well known at the time).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Michell

overestimating the effects of bias on articles written for wikipedia, i was, at first, dismissive of it; i've grown to like it quite a bit.


regards,

Newtonian mechanics really makes no prediction on the path of a massless particle such as a photon in a gravitational field. It would be equally plausible to argue that a massless particle would be unaffected by gravity, or that a photon would follow the track of a massive particle with the same velocity.

General relativity predicts clearly that a photon follows the same track as a massive particle, but more surprisingly, it predicts that the deflection of a particle travelling at light speed is twice that predicted by Newton. This prediction was verified by British measurements at the eclipse of 1919.

I'm not completely sure of my ground