Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha...

*GASP*

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Thanks for the best laugh of the week. You should take back your meds.

+1 dude. Anybody who thinks they're going to protect themselves, family, friends, or property from the government with their guns is living in a fantasy world. You might take a few cops/soldiers with you, but you're still going down. There's simply no scenario where you fend off govt forces and they go away and leave you alone.

I hear ya. We just had the initial eval for the IEP today, and while the school district people mean well it's pretty clear that we know more about treatment than they do. Based on my discussions with other parents, I'm not optimistic that the school system will do an adequate job. We're going to push for a lot in the IEP and then document actual delivery very closely. If they fail to deliver, NC has a law that says we can put our daughter in a private program at the state's expense. I don't like that option for a lot of reasons, but in the end my goal is to get my daughter the best care and services I can. I've got very few regrets in life, and don't want one of them to be that I didn't do everything I could to give her the best chance at a "normal" life.

I'm not sure what state you're in, but you may have a case if the school says that can't provide care for budget/scheduling reasons. That may be the reality, but the law as I understand it (IANAL, nor do I play one on TV) doesn't permit limitation of services based on availability. In short, if the IEP says your kid needs X speech therapy sessions/week then the school has to provide that or there are steps you can take to get that level of assistance. It's a pain, and it's not going to help you make friends with the people in your school district, but that's not the point. There's a pretty good set of rules and procedures in the IDEA act to make sure the right level of accommodation is being provided.

So I hope it works out for you and your girl. Thanks for doing all of that for her.

My daughter was diagnosed with PDD-NOS a year ago and turns 3 in January. She's adopted, so I don't know if her birth parents were "smart" or "geeky" but I can second everything else here. My wife and I are smart and geeky, respectively.

After talking with a lot of doctors and specialists over the past year, my feeling is not so much that the incidence of ASD is higher as much as it is that we're identifying it better now. But there are two things I know for sure: that early, intensive intervention is extremely important and that dealing with this disorder is just fucking heartbreaking. Our daughter is at the "mild" end of the spectrum, and we are very fortunate that we're able to afford the speech, occupational, and physical therapy as well as the many specialists who have been involved over the past year. My insurance through work is adequate for regular stuff, but totally sucks for getting treatment for Autism. As a result, we're out-of-pocket to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars just for the past 12 months and it's not looking like that's going to change. All we can do is advocate for her and make sure we exhaust every possible legitimate avenue for treatment and hope we can pull her far enough out of the hole she's in to make a difference.

Still, I can't stress strongly enough that early diagnosis and intervention is the best way to mitigate the effects of Autism. A lot of parents don't want to admit that there could be anything wrong with their child, which just makes things worse for everybody. We all want to think that our kids are perfect and all, but denying that there is a problem leads to bad decisions, lack of care, and much worse outcomes.

So good luck, anonymous dude. Make sure your kid gets a good IEP and starts in the school system at age 3. And keep up the work on all the therapies. Try to get as much ABA therapy as you can afford and stay away from the snake oil "amazing cure" crap. Like you, I have no idea what the future holds but I'm determined to do everything I can to help my daughter be happy and healthy.

No size of portable computer from wristwatch to 17" notebook will ever be obsolete. Different tasks require different sized screens, and people who do those tasks will always want the most portable device they can do them on. Yes, for some tasks that will mean a wristwatch. But for many others that means a smartphone, or a netbook, or a desktop computer with three 21" monitors.

Haven't we had this discussion before?

they want a bot that moves and fires randomly and then types "fuk u faggit" into chat every time you kill it.

The "all but..." in English means that it something had come very close to that point, but hasn't quite taken the last step. So, "Money has all but disappeared" means that money has not disappeared, but it has come very close to doing so. Though obviously the author is actually predicting that cash, not money, will almost vanish.

You might be. The first thing I thought of was vagina, followed closely by toilet seat. Once you get past that, it's just an airport.