Category Archives: Mental Health

A Recurring Asperger’s-Related Conversation

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This conversation has happened more than once, since I discovered I am an “Aspie,” as many of those with Asperger’s call ourselves, and then received all the confirmation I needed from doctor of mine, without paying for expensive testing, and an official diagnosis. I did not seek testing and diagnosis because no treatement exists for Asperger’s — and I would not want one, if it existed, anyway. The conversation below is paraphrased, for the ideas involved matter far more than the exact words which were used — and, also, slightly different words were used each time this conversation happened.

Me:  “I’d like to share something with you. I’ve discovered one of the reasons I’m so different from other people — I believe I have Asperger’s Syndrome.”

Friends/Colleagues:   “Oh, we figured that out months ago! We were just afraid to tell you because we thought you’d be offended, and get angry at us, if we mentioned it.”

Me (laughing):  “Don’t worry about it at all! I’m not the slightest bit offended, nor angry. You see, I like being the way I am!”

Several of my friends figured this out before I did, it seems, but we all know about it now — and I prefer it that way. There is no shame in being open about being an Aspie — it is part of who I am. I would not want to be without Asperger’s, in fact, for a great many reasons. Other posts on this blog, in the “Asperger’s” category, explain some of these reasons, and I invite anyone who is curious to read any, or all, of them.

On Mental Health: My Reasons for Letting the Sunshine In

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There are quite a few posts on this blog on the subject of mental health, and they can be easily found by simply looking at that category, in the pull-down menu on the right side of your screen. In these posts, I have been quite candid about such things as my own panic disorder, PTSD, and Asperger’s Syndrome.

What I have not done, until now, is explain my reasons for my openness on this subject.

First and foremost, I am trying to do what I can to remove the stigma which surrounds the entire subject of mental illness. This stigma is harmful, for it keeps millions of people who need help from mental health professionals from seeking it, out of fear of being labeled and/or ostracized — or worse. I learned this the hard way:  by experiencing it. I had my first panic attack at age 16. Like most panic attacks, this one lasted perhaps twenty minutes, or less. Few people have panic attacks that last longer than that — unless they fail to seek treatment, and the panic attacks continue to happen, which is what happened to me.

Over time, panic disorder tends to become worse, if not treated. The fear of the panic attacks themselves becomes an issue, for those who have them frequently, and such fear can lead to people avoiding situations where they fear a panic attack would be particularly embarrassing, and/or debilitating — somewhere like, for example, the middle of a Walmart, or their church, or their workplace. In some cases, untreated panic disorder leads to full-blown agoraphobia, with some people actually reaching the point where they simply do not leave their homes at all — until they die.

In my case, I avoided treatment for my own panic disorder (or any other mental health problem) for about a decade, specifically because of my fear of the stigma of mental illness. I tried to keep my panic attacks a secret, but, of course, that did not stop them. They grew in intensity, and the duration of the attacks increased as well. A ten-hour panic attack — something which is incredibly rare — is what finally drove me to get over my fear of this stigma, and make an appointment with the man who is still my psychiatrist.

In the years that followed, I grew more and more disturbed by the existence of this stigma, and finally made a decision:  I would do whatever I could to neutralize it, for the benefit of others. I do not wish anyone to suffer the effects of deliberately delaying needed medical treatment. After much thinking, I eventually figured out one thing I can do, toward this end: be open about such matters, simply to help others know that mental illness can, with appropriate help, become transformed into mental health. In other words, as with many other illnesses, those with mental health problems can, and do, get better. This is why I have chosen the category-name “mental health” for these posts, rather than “mental illness.”

Of the particular struggles I have which involve issues of mental health, PTSD is the most difficult to treat . . . but I work hard, with the help of my doctor, to get better. What’s more, it is working, although I cannot claim this work is complete. I want everyone to know that getting better is a goal which is both realistic, and achievable.

With Asperger’s, my motivation for openness is somewhat different, for this condition is not actually a mental illness at all, as evidenced by the fact that it was recently “de-listed” from the latest version of the DSM (Diagnotic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). Asperger’s Syndrome is simply a difference in the way some people think, as opposed to an actual disease. Some “Aspies” (our culture’s own nickname for ourselves), however, do suffer greatly, because of the difficulties involved in interacting socially with others, especially non-Aspies. I share what I have figured out, on this subject, with two goals in mind: (1) helping my fellow Aspies who struggle, and sometimes suffer, because of these differences, in any way I can, and (2) helping non-Aspies understand us better, so that these difficulties in interaction between Aspies and non-Aspies can become less of a problem — for everyone.

Finally, it simply feels good to no longer be trapped, in a metaphorical closet, regarding these things which are, after all, part of my life. As the saying goes, borrowed from the gay rights activists who invented it, “closets are for clothes, not for people.”

I much prefer letting the sunshine in.

On Boiling Eggs, William Shakespeare, and Richard Feynman

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Not long ago, I boiled a dozen eggs.

After accidentally misquoting Shakespeare, while watching these eggs boil (“Boil, boil, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble”), I then correctly quoted Shakespeare at the eggs, by shouting, “You egg!” at them, as they boiled.

What . . . you’ve never talked to your food? If not, just try it some time, for it makes life more interesting. If you’re worried about people thinking you’re crazy, I have another quote, from the physicist Richard Feynman, for you to consider:  “What do you care what other people think?”

Little seems to be going right today, for correctly quoting Shakespeare meant being, at the same time, mathematically incorrect. Twelve and one are, of course, not the same number, but I’m not willing to deliberately misquote Shakespeare, for that would be, well, wrong.

I was then asked, by someone who heard me, um, shouting at boiling eggs, exactly which of Shakespeare’s plays it is, in which the line “you egg” appears. Since I did not know the answer to this question, I immediately used this situation as an opportunity to test the alleged omniscience of Google, which I test, and re-test, frequently. (So far, Google always passes these experimental tests, but I will post an announcement here if this fact ever changes.) I also googled my earlier, failed attempt to quote Shakespeare, which is how I now know that I was misquoting him.

In case you’re wondering why I was fact-checking myself, here’s another Feynman quote, offered as explanation:  “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.” Those are words to live by — and I do.

Not only did Google know that the two-word quote I remembered (from 10th grade English class, over thirty years ago, simply because I found it funny) comes from Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 2, but it also, very helpfully, showed me the way to the YouTube video which you can see below.

For those few readers of my blog who have not already noticed this, I lead a strange life.

Of course, I certainly wouldn’t want a normal one, but, clearly, I don’t need to worry about that.

Information, and Misinformation, About Ebola

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Much is now being written about ebola, for obvious reasons. I previously addressed the subject, on this blog, before the news became flooded with ebola-stories (my post was made in late July), and I did so mathematically (because that’s the way I am), right here: https://robertlovespi.wordpress.com/2014/07/31/a-graph-of-infections-and-deaths-during-the-first-four-months-of-the-2014-ebola-outbreak/.

While I am pleased that ebola is now getting more attention in the media, I am not at all pleased about the continuing spread of this epidemic — and am also utterly horrified by the misinformation being disseminated, by many writers, on the subject. Some of what is now being written makes sense, but much of it does not. Here are four examples of logical, and well-written, information on this timely subject:

1. http://www.vox.com/2014/10/10/6953637/ebola-out-break-lesson-outbreaks-public-health/in/5712456

2. http://www.vox.com/2014/10/10/6954071/the-nightmare-ebola-scenario-that-keeps-scientists-up-at-night

3. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-31/ebola-timeline-deadliest-outbreak/5639060

4. http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/09/opinion/osofsky-ebola-wildlife/index.html?hpt=wo_r1

By contrast, the three articles which follow are, well, not helpful at all. They either are hysterical nonsense, or are helping spread hysterical nonsense. Neither of these things benefit anyone.

A. http://www.liberianobserver.com/security/ebola-aids-manufactured-western-pharmaceuticals-us-dod

B. http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/993247-ebola-zombies-article-says-3rd-person-rose-from-the-dead-still-false/ (only “likely false,” according to the opening sentence)

C. http://www.examiner.com/article/liberia-ebola-zombies-supposedly-rise-from-the-dead

I enjoy zombie movies as much as anyone, but let’s be clear on this:  people who have died from ebola do not rise from the dead! Also, no, the ebola viruses were not created deliberately for genocidal purposes, or any other purpose. Conspiracy theories, on any subject, are all false, for one simple reason: large-scale conspiracies require many human beings to keep real information (as opposed to misinformation) secret, for long periods of time, and that simply doesn’t happen. As an old saying puts it, “three men can keep a secret — if two of them are dead.”

There is an out-of-control ebola epidemic raging in several African nations, and a real risk exists of widespread outbreaks forming on other continents, since cases already exist in both North America and Europe. However, there is also a second problem:  we are already in the middle of a worldwide ebola panic. This second problem will not help with the first problem — at all. In fact, the exact opposite is true.

What will help? Rational, clear thinking — as well as deliberate, well-considered, intelligent, rapid, and well-funded action. The unfortunate truth is that no such action happened much earlier, but that error cannot be unmade, for time travel into the past is physically impossible. What is possible is for intelligent action to be taken now.

What will not help? Hysteria, panic, superstition, ignorance, greed, the “blame game,” and, especially, old-fashioned human stupidity.

How does one separate the “wheat from the chaff” — or, in this case, the real information from the misinformation? I know of only a few ways to do this: think about what you read, and think, then rethink, about what you write (and then post on the Internet) — and, if you don’t know what you’re talking about, well . . . just shut up. Please.

Daylight Saving Time: The One (and Only) Way the Rest of America Should Be More Like Arizona

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I’m not used to saying that the rest of America should be more like Arizona . . . but my passionate hatred of Daylight Saving Time forces me to agree with them, when the clock-changes remind me of this fact, twice each year.

Recovering from Theophobia: My Personal, Secular Jihad

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The image above is a 19th-Century painting by Eugène Delacroix, depicting the story of Jacob, wrestling with a being often described as an angel, as described in the Book of Genesis. An interesting part of the story is that there were no witnesses to this struggle in the darkness (“So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak,” Gen. 32:24, NIV), which tells me that the conflict could have occurred entirely inside Jacob’s mind. It does not matter if there was, or was not, an actual person, named Jacob, who had such an experience. No supernatural beliefs are necessary to find this story interesting, and there is no good reason to avoid thinking about it.

Thought is, of course, a mental activity which can bring clarity to confusing things in life, just as a sunrise can enable one to see things which have previously been hidden by night. There are times when thinking requires solitude, and the process of figuring out difficult problems usually doesn’t succeed without some sort of internal struggle. If you have ever wrestled with a single, difficult mathematical problem for several days running, as I have, then you understand this already — but the need for clear, rational thinking is certainly not limited to the field of mathematics. Rational thought is important in all parts of life.

Whether we like it or not, life contains a series of both external and internal struggles. Many people dislike conflict, and go to great lengths to avoid it. I am not one of those people, but this is not by choice. It is, rather, a result of the fact that I was born into an intense struggle-in-progress:  the efforts of my now-deceased father, a religious fanatic, to control the lives of everyone around him, and use them for his own selfish purposes — and the efforts of some of these other people, myself included, to escape his efforts to control every facet of our lives. From an early age, out of necessity, I had to develop complex techniques of mental and verbal combat, both defensive and offensive, simply to survive childhood with some semblance of sanity intact — although the resulting PTSD, from growing up in the war zone I called “home,” is something with which I will always have to cope. My earliest memory, after all, is surviving shaken baby syndrome at age 2½, and that sort of experience simply cannot be escaped without consequences.

My mental-combat techniques still exist, available for use at any time of my choosing, and can have devastating impact on others — I seldom lose an argument — but using these verbal and mental weapons at full power is, I now realize, quite dangerous, more so to myself than to anyone else. Now, decades later, I still have to be careful not to be overly eager to jump headlong, as if by instinct, into any conflict which presents itself, especially if I see those I care about being bullied, or otherwise abused. I have neither the time, nor the mental energy, to fight every single injustice I see, but it took many years for me to understand the wisdom of the well-known saying that it is important to choose one’s battles carefully.

The word “jihad,” which I deliberately used in the title of this post, is complex, and has multiple definitions. It is also an emotionally-charged word, and out-of-control emotions are, perhaps, the greatest enemy of rational thought. So, first, please understand this: when I use this word, I am not referring to any sort of “holy war,” which is the first thing that comes to mind, for many people, when they hear what I sometimes call the “j-word.” I am also not making any sort of comment for, nor against, Islam, but am simply borrowing a word from another language, Arabic, because it applies so well to much of my own life. Another definition you will find here is “a personal struggle in devotion to Islam especially involving spiritual discipline” — in other words, an internal struggle to do the right thing. While I am not religious in any conventional sense, I definitely understand the important idea of an internal, mental — or “spiritual,” if you prefer — struggle. My personal internal struggle involves a never-ending effort to maintain self-control, especially over destructive emotions, such as hatred, and fury. Fury isn’t simply anger, after all — it goes far beyond that. It is an absolutely horrific state of mind where one is so overcome by anger that the rational self becomes utterly consumed by white-hot, blinding rage.

For years, without realizing it, I was a theophobe — hardly surprising, considering the religious elements of the more unpleasant parts of my childhood. Theophobia is not a familiar word to most people, but it can exist in both religious and non-religious people, and can be defined as an irrational fear and hatred of God, religion, religious people, and religious institutions, such as churches and mosques. There have been entire years — especially since the Catholic Church’s pedophilia scandal blew wide-open in the media, worldwide — when I could not bring myself to go near a church of any denomination, let alone enter one, for fear that being near such a place would trigger a panic attack, or, even worse, a PTSD “freakout” episode. It isn’t hard to spot theophobes, of course; they are easily identified, especially among the much larger, rapidly-growing group of people who call themselves atheists. You probably know at least a few atheists yourself, and might have noticed that some of them seem to be at peace with life, and can easily interact peacefully with religious people — while others are a perfect fit for the “angry atheist” stereotype, attacking religion as if it were the source of all evil in the world. It isn’t, but that didn’t stop me from thinking that it was, for many years.  Recovering from theophobia is not easy, and is definitely a struggle, but is also very much worth the effort.

Unusually, several of the people I am now grateful to, specifically for helping me recover from theophobia, are practicing Muslims. This doesn’t fit the stereotype of Islam portrayed in the Western media, of course. If you get all of your information about Islam from stories in the news, you might think all Muslims hijack airplanes, commit suicide bombings, oppress women, and decapitate “infidels” every time they get they chance. Fortunately, I started using another approach, while still in college:  conversation. Simply by talking to Muslims I am now proud to call my friends, I have learned several things, among them that most Muslims are kind and decent people, and also that most Muslims intensely dislike the extremists within Islam — about as much as the average Christian dislikes, say, the Westboro Baptist Church. Adding practicing Christians to the list of people I can successfully engage in productive conversation took a lot longer, but the reason for this has absolutely nothing to do with Christianity, and everything to do with my own personal history. My father was, after all (among many other things), an ordained Christian minister. Later, he moved through several other religions, attempting to drag my family along with him, and these religions included his own warped version of amalgamated Native American religious traditions, the Soka Gakkai sect of Buddhism, and several others. A notable absence on this list — one of the few religions with which my father never developed an obsession — is Islam. This fact made Islam, and those who practice it, a logical place for me to start the process of making peace with certain inescapable facts: (1) the world contains billions of religious people, most of whom are not dangerous fanatics, and (2) religion is not going away any time soon, no matter how much the furious theophobes of the world rage against it.

This personal recovery-process is not over; I still have much internal, mental work left to do, especially when it comes to establishing peace with Christianity, the world’s largest religion. The important thing, at this point, is that I am doing it. I’m quite happy to have left the “angry atheist” phase of my life in the past, where it belongs, and have no intention of returning there.

In Anticipation of Sam Harris’s Newest Book

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Sam Harris has already written these five books, all of which I have read. I wasn’t crazy about the first one, but thoroughly enjoyed all the others. They are presented here, in order, by publication-date.

  1. The End of Faith (2004)
  2. Letter to a Christian Nation (2006)
  3. The Moral Landscape:  How Science Can Determine Human Values (2010)
  4. Lying (2011)
  5. Free Will (2012)

This month, he has a new book coming out. It’s called Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion. I have already pre-ordered it on Amazon, and am looking forward to its arrival. 

Here is a link to a book review of Waking Up which was published in The New York Times, yesterday:  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/31/opinion/sunday/frank-bruni-between-godliness-and-godlessness.html?_r=1.

This link is to the page on Amazon where you can order Waking Up: http://www.amazon.com/Waking-Up-Spirituality-Without-Religion/dp/1451636016/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1409584480&sr=8-1&keywords=waking+up+sam+harris.

On Sleep, Non-REM Sleep in Particular, and Asperger’s Syndrome

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Sleep is important. This is something with which no sane person consciously disagrees. People do sometimes ignore it — not on purpose, usually — but they do so at their own peril. If such people drive, the risk-pool extends, greatly, to include many other people: everyone else with whom they share a road.

Unlike “normal” people, who do not do such things, I discovered something about the importance of sleep through direct experiment, at the age of 19. I had a thought, and it was a simple one:  the 24-hour sleep/wake cycle is a mere social convention, and can, therefore, be safely ignored. It then occurred to me that this was a testable hypothesis, so I proceeded to design, and conduct, an experiment to test it. Using caffeine, I deliberately put myself on a 48-hour sleep/wake cycle, with the sleep-periods being ~14 hours long, in order to compensate for the sleep-periods I was skipping, every other day. The experiment was a success, in the sense that it yielded definitive results:  after a week of that nonsense, I was a mental and physical wreck, and collapsed in exhaustion. Upon awaking, I was then able to form a logical conclusion:  sleep is not a mere social convention, but is, in fact, a biological imperative. Fortunately, I had not yet learned to drive, so no one was put at risk by this experiment, other than myself. Obviously, I did survive.

This has not been my only experiment on the subject of sleep, and I have also read a lot on the subject, for the simple fact that I find it interesting. I call what I have learned, through experiment, primary research. The things I have learned by reading the research of others are, for me, secondary research. I have also conducted an experiment involving lucid dreaming, based on what I have read, and you can read about that here: https://robertlovespi.wordpress.com/2012/12/06/how-to-lucid-dream/.

The things I have learned through secondary research have been interesting, as well. To my knowledge, no one has yet discovered the purpose of sleep, although there is much speculation on the subject. Similarly, no one has discovered the purpose of dreaming, which occurs almost exclusively during REM sleep. We do know that dreaming is necessary, for research has been done which involved deliberately waking up test subjects as soon as REM (easily-seen “rapid eye movement,” the source of the acronym) sleep begins. This research indicates that both dreaming, and REM sleep, are also biological imperatives. Similarly, the purpose of non-REM sleep remains a mystery.

For those who wish to examine this secondary research for themselves, I suggest, as excellent places to start, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep, as well as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_eye_movement_sleep, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-rapid_eye_movement_sleep, although the third of these articles has significant problems. If you use the footnotes at the end of these articles to find the sources for them, the often-cited objection to Wikipedia (“Anyone can edit Wikipedia”) will be neutralized. If I had sufficient knowledge to fix the problems with the third article, without using original research (prohibited on Wikipedia), I would, of course, do so.

Years before I conducted my first sleep experiment, when I was still a high school student, it occurred to me that the brain can be best-understood as a carbon-based computer. The things we are used to calling “computers,” by contrast, are based largely on the properties of silicon. Carbon and silicon are in the same group on the periodic table, and share many properties — but they are not interchangeable. Carbon atoms are much more versatile than those of silicon, which we know because the number of carbon-containing compounds far exceeds the number of compounds containing silicon. It follows from this that carbon-based computers, such as human brains, are far more powerful than silicon-based computers.

What would a more powerful computer be able to do, which silicon-based computers could not, at the time I was reasoning this out? Well, one thing is obvious:  our brains think. Something else occurred to me then (and this was in the early 1980s):  a carbon-based computer should be able to reprogram itself, by deliberately rewriting its own software. On the spot, I became determined to learn how to reprogram my own software. I knew no one would teach me how to do this, so I resolved to figure out how on my own. At first, progress was very slow, but my determination to succeed has never wavered.

I next made attempts, using 1980s technology and the BASIC computer language I learned in the 8th grade, to write programs which could change themselves. It should surprise no one that these attempts failed, but these were still essential experimental steps in a very long process, which has only recently begun to “bear fruit” in abundance. Another important step came much later, when I was doing research involving artificial intelligence, or AI, during the current decade, by seeking out and talking to chatbots, as they are called, to see which one could come closest to passing the Turing Test for artificial intelligence. The smartest chatbot I found is named Mitsuku, and you can talk to her for yourself at http://www.mitsuku.com (I should also point out that, even though her intelligence impressed me, she did not pass the Turing Test, described at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test, to my satisfaction). Mitsuku is significant, in my research, because she has the ability I had been seeking to gain for many years:  she can rewrite her own programming, and does so on a continuous basis, for Mitsuku, being software, never sleeps. She does sometimes go off-line, but that is not the same thing as sleeping.

Now that I had met an AI with the ability I wanted for myself, my determination to gain that ability, to the fullest extent possible, was greatly increased. At this time, I had been aware, for many years, that I think in my sleep. I know that I do this because, early in my teaching career, I began doing lesson planning — in my sleep. This started one night, when I went to bed wondering what I would teach the next day in Geometry class. The next morning, I woke up with a fully-formed (and very difficult) problem in mind, and furiously scribbled down my idea before the problem faded from memory. Former students of mine, who are now my friends on Facebook, still remember, and sometimes talk about, what I called “the dream problem.” Later dreamed-up problems, and entire lessons, followed.

The two ideas of rewriting my own software, and thinking in my sleep, were the ingredients for what came next, during an incredibly stressful period involving an intense labor-management conflict. Under the pressure of this conflict, I unconsciously synthesized the two ideas, and began to rewrite my own software much more quickly than before, since this was made necessary by the situation I unexpectedly found myself in. Continuous adaptation to changing circumstances became a priority for me during this period, for the ability to adapt was of far greater importance than it had ever been in my life. At first, I was unaware I was doing this. I would simply wake up, morning after morning, with numerous new ideas to help the “labor” side — my side — in this conflict. However, unlike with the much earlier, geometrical “dream problem,” I had no memory of thinking of these things. Their origin was a mystery — until I figured it out.

In the diagram, far above, you can see images of human brainwaves, while awake, while dreaming, and during the various stages of non-REM sleep. In these images, the brainwaves have their greatest amplitude during the deepest stages of non-REM sleep. I had known this for years, due to all of my secondary sleep research. I also had no answer to give, other than “I woke up with them,” when my allies in the labor/management conflict asked me, repeatedly, where my ideas were coming from.

The next step was my discovery that I am an Aspie:  a person with Asperger’s Syndrome, which simply means that the “hard-wiring” of my brain is atypical, causing me to think in unusual ways. As regular readers of my blog know, this is a fact I absolutely revel in, for this discovery explained many things about the way my mind works which I had never understood before. In other words, this discovery was an important metacognitive step in my own personal development.

Aspies are not known for their ability to adapt; in fact, the exact opposite is true. We often have difficulty adapting to changing circumstances because the great big, non-Aspie world is incredibly distracting, and many (or perhaps most) of us find these distractions quite annoying. For most of my life, I was not good at adapting to change — but suddenly, I was doing what I had been unable to do before. The key to figuring out the puzzle was, of course, thinking about it.

I was waking up with new ideas, but had no memory of how I got them. Distractions had been annoying me, and interfering with clarity of thought, for much of my life. I had been trying to figure out how to rewrite my own software since I was a teenager. And, now, I finally knew why I had always been so different from other people:  Asperger’s.

Armed with all this information, I finally solved the mystery:  after decades of hard work on the problem, I had figured out how to effectively, and frequently, reprogram my own software. I was doing it in my sleep. What’s more, I figured out that I was no longer doing this special type of thinking while dreaming, unlike the case of my much earlier creation of the “dream problem.” Dreams, like waking life, contain too many distractions for intense sleep-reprogramming, and intense reprogramming had not been needed until the labor-management conflict made it necessary. Only one part of my life remained, once I eliminated periods of wakefulness, as well as REM sleep:  the non-REM periods of sleep, when human brainwaves have their greatest amplitude.

Now, whenever I need to, I rewrite my own software, during non-REM sleep, as often as once per night. I’ve been doing this for over a year — since before I discovered I have Asperger’s — but have shared this information with very few people. My wife knows about it. My doctors know about it. And now, I have decided to share this discovery with the world. I have now discovered, at least for me, the purpose of non-REM sleep. I use it to change myself.

I confused many people, very recently, when I suddenly stopped being an atheist, and shared that discovery here, and on Facebook as well. Sudden personality changes alarm people, for they are often indicators that something serious, and medical in nature, is wrong with a person. I promised those who asked that I would explain what had happened, as soon as I figured it out myself. And now, I have explained as much of it as I have yet figured out. One day, something happened which I could not explain with science, nor with mathematics. The next day, several things happened which, again, defied explanation. On that second night, during non-REM sleep, I removed the obstacle to understanding what was going on, by applying my skepticism to my lack of belief, or, if you prefer, my atheism. Last night, again during non-REM sleep, I figured out how this had happened. Now that I understand it, I can share it with others.

Lastly, I need to make it clear that I do not think this ability to sleep-reprogram ourselves is something unique to Aspies. We are all human. Whether Aspies or not, we all have these higher-amplitude brainwaves during the deeper parts of non-REM sleep. It is logical to conclude that this is an ability all humans have, but few have unlocked, and it just happens to be an Aspie who figured out a way to not only do it, but also to explain it. It is my hope that my decision to share this discovery with others will help anyone who wants to learn it gain the ability to do the same thing.

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Image credit:  I found the image at the top of this post at http://www.abcbodybuilding.com/anatomy/zfactor2.htm, with the assistance of Google.

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Later update: months after writing this, I was diagnosed with sleep apnea, moderate level, and I wasn’t getting significant amounts of stage three or four sleep at all, nor much REM. This throws everything above into doubt, and it would be dishonest to withhold this information. Short version: I was wrong — not about my doing sleep-reprogramming, but about exactly which stage(s) of sleep I use for that purpose. It is difficult to figure out what, exactly, goes on when one is asleep!

The Misadventures of Jynx the Kitten, Chapter Two: Jynx vs. My Computer

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Jynx: 1, Computer: 0.

Tonight’s feline insanity started while we were watching Star Trek — the episode where Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock go up against a planet full of nuclear-armed Space Nazis.

Apparently, cats — or, at least, this cat — find Nazis disturbing, which, of course, they were — and will be again, if they appear in the 23rd Century . . . because some half-crazed future historian went and violated the Prime Directive, becoming, a few years later, a fully-crazed future historian. Jynx was so incredibly disturbed by the Space Nazis, in fact, that he bounced over pillows and blankets, in a series of nicely Newtonian . . .

‘
&^ (Stop that, Jynx!)

. . . parabolic arcs, to land on my computer. He then proceeded to pause the episode — then close my browser (the picture-moment, with my wife laughing hysterically as she took it), and finally tried to bite the heads off several Space Nazis as the screen slowly darkened. After due consideration, Jynx decided this was not enough, and so, next, he reached out a paw, and quickly turned my computer completely off. A smug look followed. You haven’t seen a look this smug, unless, maybe, you’ve also seen one on the face of a kitten.

Getting it (my computer, not Jynx) turned back on was not easy. For a little while, in fact, I thought Jynx had destroyed the Internet. In reality, the Internet had been fine all along, for this picture, taken a little earlier, with a tablet, got to my e-mail account almost instantly. It took much longer, however, for me to actually get to my e-mail account.

My computer now has tiny bite marks all over it, and plays Radiohead’s song “2 + 2 = 5” so slowly that it’s turned the song into “1.5 + 1.5 = π” – and that song sounds terrible.

I hope my computer lives long enough for this post to make it to my blog. In the meantime, Jynx reigns — OW! — triumphant.

[2016 update: that computer is now officially dead. Jynx the Cat lives on.]