Re: OT: The Geek defense

"Clark F Morris" <cfmpublic@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
news:q32cs3hb6h1me1utmgsr5qm5c4rd4lg8ju@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 11:43:17 +1300, "Pete Dashwood"
> <dashwood@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
>>> much snipped including the poster for the incidence of autism in 
>>> children of Microsoft employees
>>
>>>For
>>> example, the incidence of autism in the children of Microsoft
employees 
>>> is
>>> so high that MSFT has a special program for autistic children (geeks
>>> breeding with geeks).
>>
>>Please cite a source for such an appalling claim. It may be that the
>>incidence of autism amongst the children of MS employees is no higher
than
>>it is amongst IBM employees or any other company, but MS have applied 
>>their
>>substantial resorces to the welfare of their staff, better than some
other
>>companies.
>
> The statement about children of Microsoft employees came from a Wired
> magazine article (that was available online) on autism and Aspbergers.
> As someone who poured over train schedules to the point of effectively
> memorizing quite a few of the train times, I related to the whole
> article.  I also scored borderline Aspberger on the Wired test.

Thanks for the cite, Clark.

I found and read the article, and scored 22 in the test (you need 32 to be

"in the zone")

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aspergers_pr.html

The article does NOT show credible statistics for MicroSoft alone. It DOES

show a general rise in autism "around the world", and it does cite 
statistics for California generally. Certainly it gives interesting 
background on what is a serious problem but it doesn't address "geeks 
breeding with geeks" other than by innuendo and implication.

Pete.
-- 
"I used to write COBOL...now I can do anything."