Re: OT: The Geek defense



"Clark F Morris" <cfmpublic@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:q32cs3hb6h1me1utmgsr5qm5c4rd4lg8ju@xxxxxxxxxx
On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 11:43:17 +1300, "Pete Dashwood"
<dashwood@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 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."


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