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Julian Assange: Autistic Hacker Or Just An A-hole?

Last year I wrote a post about a report suggesting autism is an affliction of the brilliant. One man mentioned as an example was WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has described himself as having the “hacker’s disease.” Yesterday, a reader’s comment inspired me to revisit the issue.

Mood music:

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The reader said in part:

This compares a neurological disorder to genius people whose curiosity takes finite state machines to places that their creators never imagined. How’s that? Julian (who I met once) is an egomaniac and an arrogant prick, and Daniel (who I do know) and the rest of them have given him the Heisman. If he’s representative of hackers, then I’m cancelling my membership! Kids have always been a PITA for parents, especially ones that “won’t behave”. First it was “hyperactive” – then it was “ADD” then “ADHD”. It’s always some excuse for f**ked up parents who hit their kids, kids who are too smart and see through their parents’ bullshit.

 

A friend in the security community once took me to task for using the autism angle because he felt it was unfair to compare someone with a neurological disorder with me and my OCD struggle. He was right that the two are vastly different things, but for me it wasn’t simply about comparing myself with someone who has autism. It was more about my interest in people who have abilities within them, diseases and disorders be damned.

We’ve seen countless stories about people who rise above physical and mental limitations to achieve greatness, and I’m always inspired after hearing about them.

As for the reader’s comment, I agree with one thing: A lot of parents do make excuses for kids who don’t fall in line, and that often leads to a misguided diagnosis. But that’s beside the point.

Is something like autism a hacker’s disease? I have no idea. Frankly, I don’t care.

Each of us has something from within that can either hold us back or propel us forward: A blessing hidden inside a perceived curse.  That’s what OCD has been for me: A curse when left to rage out of control, and a blessing when managed and properly harnessed.

Some of us are afflicted with disorders that can’t be managed so easily; maladies that force people into wheelchairs or psychiatric hospitals. The victim has little control over it, and is trapped. For some, the affliction attacks the nerves and muscles. For others, the disease targets the brain and disables basic functions. In both cases, all or part of the brain still burns brightly, and the individual is able to ride that to something good. Like Stephen Hawking. And, in some cases, like hackers.

The one constant is that we’re all handed challenges in life. If the mind works, what matters from there are the choices we make and the lengths we’re willing to travel to rise above.

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Human Tourniquets And Freaks Who Love Them

I originally wrote this three years ago. Looking at it again, it’s an important post describing a time when not even best friends were safe from my insanity. I’ve updated it for the present. 

Mood music:

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You know the type. They hang  out with people who act more like abusive spouses than friends. They are human tourniquets. They absorb the pain of their tormentor daily and without complaint.

This is the story of the man who used to be my tourniquet.

I met Aaron Lewis in 1985, my freshman year of high school. He was the kid with really bad acne. But nothing ever seemed to bother him. I’m sure a lot of things bothered him, but he was very good at hiding his feelings.

That made him the perfect target for a creep like me.

Don’t get me wrong. He was a true friend. One of my best friends. We shared a love of heavy metal. We both got picked on, though unlike me, he didn’t take it out on other, weaker classmates.

We hung out constantly. He practically lived in my Revere basement at times. I let him borrow my car regularly. And if I drank, that was OK, because he almost never drank. He could be the driver.

Except for the time I encouraged him to drink a bottle of vodka. He had just eaten a bag of McDonald’s and I told him I was sick of him trying to get buzzed off of wine coolers. This night, I told him, he was going to do it right. He got smashed, and proceeded to puke all over my basement — on the bed, the carpets, the couch, the dresser. That was some strange vomit. It looked like brown confetti.

I sat on the floor, drunk myself, writing in my journal. I wrote about how drunk Aaron was and prayed to God that he wouldn’t die. Man, would I love to find that journal.

We saw a lot of movies together. We watched a lot of MTV.

He was the perfect counterweight to Sean Marley. Marley was essentially my older brother and I spent a lot of time trying to earn his approval. I didn’t have to do that with Aaron. He didn’t criticize. He didn’t judge. He just took all my mood swings on the chin.

I would sling verbal bombs at him and he’d take it.

I would slap him on the back of the neck and he’d take it.

I was evil. And he took it.

That’s a true friend.

Aaron got married, moved to California and has a growing family. He’s doing some wonderful things with his life. I cleaned up from my compulsive binge eating, found my Faith and untangled the coarse, jagged wiring in my brain that eventually became an OCD diagnosis.

If he’s reading this, I apologize for all the times I was an asshole. I hope somewhere in there, I was a good friend, too.

Buddies
Left: Aaron Lewis. Right: His asshole friend
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‘This Post Is Escapism and Blame’

A dear friend hated the post I wrote yesterday on how we’re all lousy parents. He found something in every paragraph to disagree with and found the opening particularly offensive.

He told me: “Not all of us were raised by lousy parents. Not all of us ARE lousy parents. No matter how one was raised at a certain point your life becomes your own responsibility. Not your parents. Not your genes. Not your phobias. This post, to me, is escapism and blame. I choose to fix the problem and not the blame.”

Those sentiments were not what I was going for, so let’s clarify a few things.

Let’s start with the opening:

I’ve had conversations with other parents recently that highlight a fear we all share: Despite our best efforts, we’ll scar our children anyway.

I’m thinking my friend took this as me saying all parents suck, period. Not true. I was saying that among those parents I’ve had the conversation with, all of us share the fear of damaging our kids. That doesn’t mean we will. It’s simply something we worry about. He took the title in the fullest literal sense, which is unfortunate because I was being partly facetious. Since those of us who had the conversation are convinced we are imperfect parents, I was lightheartedly saying, “OK, but let’s try not to suck too much.”

The escapism and blame he frowned upon comes from this passage, I assume:

My father could be a brutal teaser and taskmaster when it came to things like yard work and working in the family warehouse. It always seemed like my best was never good enough. Even as a grownup, I would tell him about promotions and raises at work, and when I told him what I was earning, he’d deliver these stinging words: “That’s it?” Dad also doesn’t have a verbal filter. If you put on weight, he’ll look at you, smile, and tell you you’re getting fat. Yet here I am, teasing my kids all the time.

If I had stopped there, it would have been about blame. But I continued:

Like most moms and dads, I always swore I’d do better than my parents did. But the older I get, the more I realize I haven’t been entirely fair to my mom and dad. They made their share of mistakes, but they did a lot right, too. With the help of excellent doctors, they kept me from dying of childhood illnesses. They got me through school and made my college education possible. My father has helped me out of more than a few financial jams. Yeah, bad things happened when I was a kid, but they were often things beyond my parents’ control. They tried to keep my older brother healthy, but he died anyway. They tried to keep their marriage together, but it wasn’t meant to be.

The point is that I blamed them for a lot of things earlier on, but being an imperfect parent has made me realize they didn’t deserve my scorn. My own challenges have given me a better understanding of what they did right despite all bad cards they were dealt along the way. Bitterness and blame were long ago replaced by forgiveness and gratitude. True, my relationship with Mom and Dad could be better today, but I attribute that more to the differences we struggle with together as adults.

My friend ended his comment with this: “I choose to fix the problem and not the blame.”

So do I.

As imperfect as I am, my boys are growing up with love and encouragement. I’m a constant presence in their lives, and when I see myself screwing up, I work to correct it. I’m also as honest as I can be with my children. If I’m in the wrong, I acknowledge it. And every day I tell them I’m proud of them, no matter how badly they’ve tested my patience. That’s progress.

I point out the lousy parts of my parenting because in acknowledging it, I can improve. And in sharing, my hope is that other parents can do the same.
Bad Parent Alarm

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Middle School Principal Was Wrong to Cancel Honors Night

David Fabrizio, principal of Ipswich (Massachusetts) Middle School, canceled his school’s Honors Night because he believes it could be “devastating” to students who work hard but fall short.

A lot of parents are understandably angry.

Mood music:

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Fabrizio has been widely quoted in the press as saying: “The Honors Night, which can be a great sense of pride for the recipients’ families, can also be devastating to a child who has worked extremely hard in a difficult class but who, despite growth, has not been able to maintain a high grade-point average.”

I get it. I have a son who has a hard time losing. A lot of us do. To this day, I turn to mush when my work has been nominated for an award because I’m so afraid of getting beaten. Few things make you feel rejected and unloved as badly as losing. So I admire Fabrizio’s intent. He clearly loves all of his students and doesn’t want any of them to feel alienated.

But he’s wrong.

We’re all going to suffer defeats in life. It’s a pain that can make us wiser and kinder or angry and mean. If we never taste defeat, we can’t identify with those who struggle. To put it another way, we become assholes who have no problem kicking the losers when they’re down — or kicking the winners when they’re up. We also need those defeats so we can learn how to do things better. Competition is a critical part of learning.

Read another story of adults depriving children of the lesson of losing gracefully in “When ‘Helicopter Parents’ Get Easter Egg on Their Faces.”

I suffered my share of defeats growing up. I could never seem to come close to making the honor roll, and it hurt, because despite the perception of some teachers, I worked hard for better grades. My brother died when I was in the seventh grade, and I missed a lot of school that year. As a result, I didn’t make it into the B group in eighth grade; I remained in the C group, despite studying hard. I’ve also been the kid who played baseball but didn’t get a trophy because my team lost too many games.

I’m not scarred by those losses. I thank God for them, because they helped me learn two critical lessons. One was that there is life after losing and that it’s never too late for a comeback. The other is that losing can help you identify and fix shortcomings.

This isn’t rocket science. It’s Humanity 101.

Proceed with Honors Night and let some kids walk away in tears. They’ll be better for it later.

Fox News Screen Capture

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Hey, Tom Duggan: You’re Doing It Wrong

I like Tom Duggan, editor of one of my local newspapers, The Valley Patriot. Against heavy odds, he started his paper nine years ago to compete with The Eagle-Tribune, the dominant daily of the Merrimack Valley region, and it’s been a big success.

Mood music:

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As a former Eagle-Tribune editor, I’ve enjoyed Duggan’s effort. I have bad memories from my days there, much of the grief self-inflicted, some of it the byproduct of spending too long in the viper pit that is the typical daily newsroom. I couldn’t help but take joy in the fact that my old bosses had a fight on their hands.

In recent years I’ve mellowed. I wasn’t the most pleasant guy to work with, and I’m grateful for enduring friendships I made despite that. I’ve also enjoyed a fair amount of career success since then, so dwelling on the past lost its luster. Still, I’ve continued to enjoy Duggan’s effort.

But there’s something in his approach that annoys me as well. He’s an over-the-top gloater, and it hurts people who don’t deserve it.

Yesterday, Duggan was on Facebook delighting in a shakeup in the Eagle-Tribune newsroom. Publisher Al Getler was fired, and Salem News Editor Karen Andreas was apparently brought in to replace him. Duggan referred to Getler as “puppetboy” (Getler is a ventriloquist as well as newspaper publisher) and celebrated the man’s downfall with child-like glee.

In the past Duggan has picked on E-T reporters, some by name, and boasted mightily over scoops he has had enjoyed. He’ll usually go on about all the news he broke while E-T reporters and editors were asleep at their desks. He often frames E-T staff as clueless and plays up how great he is by comparison.

The more grownup thing to do would be for Duggan to keep his wins to himself. Die-hard newspaper readers know when one paper beats another, and gloating comes off as childish.

Duggan should also check his facts; the gloating he does isn’t always true. I’ve watched him brag about scoops only to go to the E-T website and find the same story covered, often at more depth.

Boasting about scoops these days is especially childish because it’s become all but impossible to tell who is really first in this age of Facebook and Twitter. A private citizen can hear something on a police scanner and tweet the news, and suddenly they’re the one with the scoop.

I also know as a veteran journalist that it’s not always better to be first. Many stories need to be covered more slowly, more deliberately and with greater sensitivity, especially after a terrible tragedy.

As imperfect as The Eagle-Tribune is, the staff are far from clueless. I’ve seen them in action and have been part of it. Two Pulitzer Prizes testify to the paper’s dedication and endurance.

Congratulations on your success, Tom. But don’t let the need for bluster cheapen your victory.

Tom Duggan

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Horse Platitudes

PLATITUDE: A banal, trite, or stale remark —Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary

CNN online has an article about “instant outrage,” something that has reached absurd levels in this age of social networking.

In such moments of outrage, we’re dropping platitudes all over the place. A good example came after the Sandy Hook massacre, when the debate about gun control was re-ignited. Those against more gun control trotted out the old, tired, “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.”

Mood music:

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We’ve become addicted to platitudes. Platitudes about politics, religion, parenting, education and, most annoyingly, celebrities who show their humanity.

The political stuff has been loudest this past year because of the presidential election and President Obama winning a second term. My conservative friends litter Facebook with grand statements about how the president is a freedom-hating, baby-killing, money-stealing dictator. My liberal friends make big statements about Republicans as wealth-obsessed, war-obsessed, mean-spirited bastards who are happy to crash the nation’s economy in an act of spite.

Both sides overreact, but don’t ever try to tell them that. They’ll just drop more platitudes on you.

There are some well-meaning platitudes, and I appreciate the attempt at good feelings. But they still annoy.

For example, there are the countless sayings and cartoons about depression not being about weakness but about being strong for too long. My fight against my own depression and that of others is well known here, but really, people, is the overbearing mush really going to save any lives? I think not.

The same goes for the online platitudes comparing cancer patients to Klingon warriors defeating the evil disease in glorious battle. That one doesn’t bother me quite as much. If it gives the many cancer patients I know the moral boost to fight on, so be it.

Overall, though, the lack of restraint in the proclamations we make has become a problem. They make us feel better about ourselves, and thinking oneself better than others can lead to unfortunate side effects, like being an asshole.

If we don’t rein it in, evolution is going to retaliate by giving us new, larger mouths with larger tongues and teeth. In a few generations, we’ll all resemble Mr. Ed.

What I just said might be interpreted as a hatred of horses because of their big mouths. In no time, there will be pictures of me on the Internet killing horses and putting them in burgers.

It won’t ring true, but it’ll be re-posted often. Because in our addiction to platitudes, we won’t be able to help ourselves.

Horse

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A Revere Kid Celebrates National Grammar Day. Punk-uation, Anyone?

Tomorrow is National Grammar Day. For writers and copyeditors (my wife is both), this is kind of like St. Patrick’s Day and Easter rolled into one. Erin plans to stay glued to her desk all day, weighing in on all the conversation that comes rolling off the Twitter tongue. Given her job, she has no choice, really.

Mood music:

Being a writer and editor myself, I should be just as excited. But I’m from Revere, Mass., where destroying grammar is a rite of passage. And since I write more often than edit, I’ve developed a rather cantankerous relationship with the copyeditors I work with. Sure, I love ’em and all, but sometimes I can’t help but slip in deliberately bad grammar for fun.

Split infinitives? Love ’em. One-line paragraphs? Love ’em. Saying “love ’em” instead of “I love them”? Love that, too.

Coming from Revere, I usually speak without the use of the letter r at the end of a word when it’s supposed to be there. I also use things like killa and pissa at random.

There was a time when I tried to conform. Once I realized I wanted to write, I chose English as a major and communications as a minor. I buried myself in the art and law of sentence structure, punctuation and even speech. I took a public speaking class specifically to work on saying the r at the end of the right words.

You could say I was turning my back on my Revere heritage.

As I hit middle age, my rebellious streak re-asserted itself.

All that said, I am grateful for the editors in my life, especially my wife, for trying to keep me on the write path. (You see what I did there?)

Happy National Grammar Day, y’all.

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If You Saw It on Facebook, It’s Probably a Lie

People on Facebook love to get all self-righteous. That’s fine by me, as long as the emotion is based on truth. The problem these days is that people are increasingly gullible, accepting memes as gospel when they are in fact bullshit.

Mood music:

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One example is a picture of a letter reported to be written by a U.S. service man claiming, essentially, that Starbucks hates soldiers and won’t let them have their coffee. The letter reads:

Dear everyone: Please pass this along to anyone you know, this needs to get out in the open. Recently Marines over in Iraq supporting this country in OIF wrote to Starbucks because they wanted to let them know how much they liked their coffee and try to score some free coffee grounds. Starbucks wrote back telling the Marines thanks for their support in their business, but that they don’t support the War and anyone in it and that they won’t send them the Coffee.

So as not to offend them we should not support in buying any Starbucks products. As a War vet and writing to you patriots I feel we should get this out in the open. I know this War might not be very popular with some folks, but that doesn’t mean we don’t support the boys on the ground fighting street to street and house to house for what they and I believe is right. If you feel the same as I do then pass this along, or you can discard it and I’ll never know. Thanks very much for your support to me, and I know you’ll all be there again here soon when I deploy once more.

Semper Fidelis, Sgt Howard C. Wright
1st Force Recon Co
1st Plt PLT RTO

The letter is actually not new; Sgt. Wright wrote it in 2004. But I’ve seen it on Facebook a few times in the past week alone, and people are posting it to their profiles with comments about how evil Starbucks is and how they won’t ever buy coffee there. I knew it was bullshit straightaway. I’ve bought a lot of coffee from Starbucks, and I clearly remember its campaign to send coffee to the troops. Customers were given the option of buying coffee by the pound that would then be sent to the front lines.

Back when Sgt. Wright wrote the letter, Starbucks contacted him to clarify its position. He then sent out another email, retracting his above statement:

Dear Readers,
Almost 5 months ago I sent an email to you my faithful friends. I did a wrong thing that needs to be cleared up. I heard by word of mouth about how Starbucks said they didn’t support the war and all. I was having enough of that kind of talk and didn’t do my research properly like I should have. This is not true. Starbucks supports men and women in uniform. They have personally contacted me and I have been sent many copies of their company’s policy on this issue. So I apologize for this quick and wrong letter that I sent out to you. Now I ask that you all pass this email around to everyone you passed the last one to. Thank you very much for understanding about this.

Howard C. Wright, Sgt USMC

The Facebook meme is someone’s rewrite of the letter, with facts changed and no mention of Sgt. Wright’s later retraction:

Facebook meme

This whole thing illustrates a larger problem with Facebook: In our rush to show how morally upright we are, we users fall for just about anything we see. We essentially do what Sgt. Wright did back in 2004, acting on rumors without doing our homework first.

I include myself in this group; I’ve fallen for fraudulent memes in the past as well. It’s a human trait to take shortcuts, and memes are a shortcut. The lesson is that if you see statements of outrage on Facebook, you should research the matter before opining, because what you see is probably a lie.

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My Current State of Mind

Please indulge me as I share my current state of mind with you. Oh, yes, I have all kinds of things floating around in this brain of mine this morning.

Mood music:

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  • I’ve often been asked if the anti-depressants I take have any unpleasant side effects. Not really, but I’ve discovered the hard way that if you don’t chase the pills down with enough liquid and they get stuck in your throat, the result is the worst heartburn you’ll ever experience.
  • Today’s my mother’s birthday, and while we haven’t talked in a long time, I’d like to wish her a happy birthday. Happy birthday, Ma.
  • I loved winter and cold weather as a kid. As I get older, I appreciate the freezing temperatures less and less. March 21 can’t come fast enough, though around here, the cold will last well beyond that. As it stands, I’m having quite a fist-fight with Winter Bill, and I’m getting sore and bloody. All the same, I expect to finish winter still standing.
  • I’m getting increasingly addicted to playing guitar, and I’m not the least bit sorry for it. Truth be told, there are days when guitar practice is the only think keeping me sane. Last night I learned the fine art of hammer ons and pull offs and the intro to Van Halen’s “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love.” My head is still spinning. But it beats the hell out of drinking, binge eating and OCD overdrive.

Overall, I’d say I’m doing fine this Friday. Off to face the busy day.

Big Cup of Coffee

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Stop Whining and Learn From Your Pain

In my early 20s, I adored the Pretty Hate Machine and Broken albums from Nine Inch Nails. I still listen to them on occasion, but for the most part I grew tired of them because all Trent Reznor’s screaming about pain, loneliness, depression and rage got old. He never told us how to go from hopelessness to wisdom and personal growth.

Mood music:

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That’s how Kerry Cohen, an author I’ve come to admire, feels about Elizabeth Wurtzel, author of Prozac Nation. In her latest Huffington Post blog entry, Cohen explains how important that Wurtzel book was to her at a fragile time in her life:

Wurtzel named a truth for us that psychology wouldn’t touch. We were a generation of depressives, of borderlines, of personality disorders. We were Generation Empty. I loved Wurtzel for how she made me feel less alone, seen.

But Cohen reached an impasse with Wurtzel:

My editor for Loose Girl summed it up when she said, “America loves a redemption story.” We wouldn’t settle anymore for emptiness that goes nowhere. People wanted to know how to get better. … There are times I wish I could call Wurtzel on the phone and tell her how much her work meant to me. … But until she has something new to say, something that is still truly about our generation, I wish she would stop.

I’ve never read Prozac Nation. I haven’t read Cohen’s books in their entirety, either, though I’ve dug into parts of Loose Girl and Seeing Ezra. I’ve mostly become a fan of her work through her blog posts and  what she shares on Facebook and Twitter. This latest post hits my core.

In my early 20s, I reveled in my depression. I filled notebooks full of poetry about my emptiness. I somehow thought it made me cool. I hit upon something that I felt “normal” people couldn’t experience. This somehow made me smarter, better. I was just stupid. I’ve searched everywhere for those notebooks. Not because I think I’ll find some brilliant spark from the past to feed my creativity today, but because I think I’d get some cheap laughs from it.

I remember going on a date in 1989 and spending the whole dinner telling the young lady about how bitter I was toward my parents and how dark I saw the world. That relationship didn’t survive the first date.

Eventually, I realized that the pain wasn’t going to send me anywhere in life unless I used it to gain a better understanding of who I was and what kind of good I was capable of. The ancient Greek scribe Aeschylus described the need to use suffering for personal growth this way:

In our sleep, pain which cannot forget

falls drop by drop upon the heart

until, in our own despair, against our will,

comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.

Robert F. Kennedy, who recited that poem to a shocked and angry crowd the day MLK was assassinated, understood all too well.  I’ve tried hard to take those words to heart. In this blog, I’ve tried to always explain how, in my personal experience, things get better. If all I did here was complain, this blog would go nowhere. I must always remember that.

Thanks for the reminder, Kerry.

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