INTENSITY²
Politics, Mature and taboo => Political Pundits => Topic started by: Small Penis on June 20, 2009, 11:53:13 PM
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How long has the US army or the military in general been accepting people with autism or asperger's to join? I honestly didn't think someone with autism or asperger's was stupid enough to join the US military, but I guess I was way off on that one.
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my grandfather fought during the Korean war, He is suspected to be on the autism spectrum and is probably where I got my autism from.
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I got my autism from the autism fairy :belly:
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How long has the US army or the military in general been accepting people with autism or asperger's to join? I honestly didn't think someone with autism or asperger's was stupid enough to join the US military, but I guess I was way off on that one.
Now you're getting a little closer to good trolling. Subtle. Much better.
Also: Cool story, bro. :thumbup:
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Uncle Sam Doesn't Need You!
After the war the army was scraping the bottom of the barrel to get the
guys for the occupation forces in Germany. Up until then the army deferred
people for some reason other than physical first (I was deferred because I
was working on the bomb), but now they reversed that and gave everybody a
physical first.
That summer I was working for Hans Bethe at General Electric in
Schenectady, New York, and I remember that I had to go some distance -- I
think it was to Albany -- to take the physical.
I get to the draft place, and I'm handed a lot of forms to fill out,
and then I start going around to all these different booths. They check your
vision at one, your hearing at another, they take your blood sample at
another, and so forth.
Anyway, finally you come to booth number thirteen: psychiatrist. There
you wait, sitting on one of the benches, and while I'm waiting I can see
what is happening. There are three desks, with a psychiatrist behind each
one, and the "culprit" sits across from the psychiatrist in his BVDs and
answers various questions.
At that time there were a lot of movies about psychiatrists. For
example, there was Spellbound, in which a woman who used to be a great piano
player has her hands stuck in some awkward position and she can't move them,
and her family calls in a psychiatrist to try to help her, and the
psychiatrist goes upstairs into a room with her, and you see the door close
behind them, and downstairs the family is discussing what's going to happen,
and then she comes out of the room, hands still stuck in the horrible
position, walks dramatically down the stairs over to the piano and sits
down, lifts her hands over the keyboard, and suddenly -- dum diddle dum
diddle dum, dum, dum -- she can play again. Well, I can't stand this kind of
baloney, and I had decided that psychiatrists are fakers, and I'll have
nothing to do with them. So that was the mood I was in when it was my turn
to talk to the psychiatrist.
I sit down at the desk, and the psychiatrist starts looking through my
papers. "Hello, Dick!" he says in a cheerful voice. "Where do you work?"
I'm thinking, "Who does he think he is, calling me by my first name?"
and I say coldly, "Schenectady."
"Who do you work for, Dick?" says the psychiatrist, smiling again.
"General Electric."
"Do you like your work, Dick?" he says, with that same big smile on his
face.
"So-so." I just wasn't going to have anything to do with him.
Three nice questions, and then the fourth one is completely different.
"Do you think people talk about you?" he asks, in a low, serious tone.
I light up and say, "Sure! When I go home, my mother often tells me how
she was telling her friends about me." He isn't listening to the
explanation; instead, he's writing something down on my paper.
Then again, in a low, serious tone, he says, "Do you think people stare
at you?"
I'm all ready to say no, when he says, ''For instance, do you think any
of the boys waiting on the benches are staring at you now?"
While I had been waiting to talk to the psychiatrist, I had noticed
there were about twelve guys on the benches waiting for the three
psychiatrists, and they've got nothing else to look at, so I divide twelve
by three -- that makes four each -- but I'm conservative, so I say, "Yeah,
maybe two of them are looking at us."
He says, "Well just turn around and look" -- and he's not even
bothering to look himself!
So I turn around, and sure enough, two guys are looking. So I point to
them and I say, "Yeah -- there's that guy, and that guy over there looking
at us." Of course, when I'm turned around and pointing like that, other guys
start to look at us, so I say, "Now him, and those two over there -- and now
the whole bunch." He still doesn't look up to check. He's busy writing more
things on my paper.
Then he says, "Do you ever hear voices in your head?"
"Very rarely," and I'm about to describe the two occasions on which it
happened when he says, "Do you talk to yourself?"
"Yeah, sometimes when I'm shaving, or thinking; once in a while." He's
writing down more stuff.
"I see you have a deceased wife -- do you talk to her?"
This question really annoyed me, but I contained myself and said,
"Sometimes, when I go up on a mountain and I'm thinking about her."
More writing. Then he asks, "Is anyone in your family in a mental
institution?"
"Yeah, I have an aunt in an insane asylum."
"Why do you call it an insane asylum?" he says, resentfully. "Why don't
you call it a mental institution?"
"I thought it was the same thing."
"Just what do you think insanity is?" he says, angrily.
"It's a strange and peculiar disease in human beings," I say honestly.
"There's nothing any more strange or peculiar about it than
appendicitis!" he retorts.
"I don't think so. In appendicitis we understand the causes better, and
something about the mechanism of it, whereas with insanity it's much more
complicated and mysterious." I won't go through the whole debate; the point
is that I meant insanity is physiologically peculiar, and he thought I meant
it was socially peculiar.
Up until this time, although I had been unfriendly to the psychiatrist,
I had nevertheless been honest in everything I said. But when he asked me to
put out my hands, I couldn't resist pulling a trick a guy in the
"bloodsucking line" had told me about. I figured nobody was ever going to
get a chance to do this, and as long as I was halfway under water, I would
do it. So I put out my hands with one palm up and the other one down.
The psychiatrist doesn't notice. He says, "Turn them over."
I turn them over. The one that was up goes down, and the one that was
down goes up, and he still doesn't notice, because he's always looking very
closely at one hand to see if it is shaking. So the trick had no effect.
Finally, at the end of all these questions, he becomes friendly again.
He lights up and says, "I see you have a Ph.D., Dick. Where did you study?"
"MIT and Princeton. And where did you study?"
"Yale and London. And what did you study, Dick?"
"Physics. And what did you study?"
"Medicine."
"And this is medicine?"
"Well, yes. What do you think it is? You go and sit down over there and
wait a few minutes!"
So I sit on the bench again, and one of the other guys waiting sidles
up to me and says, "Gee! You were in there twenty-five minutes! The other
guys were in there only five minutes!"
"Yeah."
"Hey," he says. "You wanna know how to fool the psychiatrist? All you
have to do is pick your nails, like this."
"Then why don't you pick your nails like that?"
"Oh," he says, "I wanna get in the army!"
"You wanna fool the psychiatrist?" I say. "You just tell him that!"
After a while I was called over to a different desk to see another
psychiatrist. While the first psychiatrist had been rather young and
innocent-looking, this one was gray-haired and distinguished-looking --
obviously the superior psychiatrist. I figure all of this is now going to
get straightened out, but no matter what happens, I'm not going to become
friendly.
The new psychiatrist looks at my papers, puts a big smile on his face,
and says, "Hello, Dick. I see you worked at Los Alamos during the war."
"Yeah."
"There used to be a boys' school there, didn't there?"
"That's right."
"Were there a lot of buildings in the school?"
"Only a few."
Three questions -- same technique -- and the next question is
completely different. "You said you hear voices in your head. Describe that,
please."
"It happens very rarely, when I've been paying attention to a person
with a foreign accent. As I'm falling asleep I can hear his voice very
clearly. The first time it happened was while I was a student at MIT. I
could hear old Professor Vallarta say, 'Dee-a dee-a electric field-a.' And
the other time was in Chicago during the war, when Professor Teller was
explaining to me how the bomb worked. Since I'm interested in all kinds of
phenomena, I wondered how I could hear these voices with accents so
precisely, when I couldn't imitate them that well... Doesn't everybody have
something like that happen once in a while?"
The psychiatrist put his hand over his face, and I could see through
his fingers a little smile (he wouldn't answer the question).
Then the psychiatrist checked into something else. "You said that you
talk to your deceased wife. What do you say to her?"
I got angry. I figure it's none of his damn business, and I say, "I
tell her I love her, if it's all right with you!"
After some more bitter exchanges he says, "Do you believe in the
supernormal?"
I say, "I don't know what the 'supernormal' is."
"What? You, a Ph.D. in physics, don't know what the supernormal is?"
"That's right."
"It's what Sir Oliver Lodge and his school believe in."
That's not much of a clue, but I knew it. "You mean the supernatural."
"You can call it that if you want."
"All right, I will."
"Do you believe in mental telepathy?"
"No. Do you?"
"Well, I'm keeping an open mind."
"What? You, a psychiatrist, keeping an open mind? Ha!" It went on like
this for quite a while.
Then at some point near the end he says, "How much do you value life?"
"Sixty-four."
"Why did you say 'sixty-four'?"
"How are you supposed to measure the value of life?"
"No! I mean, why did you say 'sixty-four,' and not 'seventy-three,' for
instance?"
"If I had said 'seventy-three,' you would have asked me the same
question!"
The psychiatrist finished with three friendly questions, just as the
other psychiatrist had done, handed me my papers, and I went off to the next
booth.
While I'm waiting in the line, I look at the paper which has the
summary of all the tests I've taken so far. And just for the hell of it I
show my paper to the guy next to me, and I ask him in a rather
stupid-sounding voice, "Hey! What did you get in 'Psychiatric'? Oh! You got
an 'N.' I got an 'N' in everything else, but I got a 'D' in 'Psychiatric.'
What does that mean?" I knew what it meant: "N" is normal, "D" is deficient.
The guy pats me on the shoulder and says, "Buddy, it's perfectly all
right. It doesn't mean anything. Don't worry about it!" Then he walks way
over to the other corner of the room, frightened: It's a lunatic!
I started looking at the papers the psychiatrists had written, and it
looked pretty serious! The first guy wrote: Thinks people talk about him.
Thinks people stare at him.
Auditory hypnogogic hallucinations.
Talks to self.
Talks to deceased wife.
Maternal aunt in mental institution.
Very peculiar stare. (I knew what that was -- that was when I said,
"And this is medicine?")
The second psychiatrist was obviously more important, because his
scribble was harder to read. His notes said things like "auditory hypnogogic
hallucinations confirmed." ("Hypnogogic" means you get them while you're
falling asleep.)
He wrote a lot of other technical-sounding notes, and I looked them
over, and they looked pretty bad. I figured I'd have to get all of this
straightened out with the army somehow.
At the end of the whole physical examination there's an army officer
who decides whether you're in or you're out. For instance, if there's
something the matter with your hearing, he has to decide if it's serious
enough to keep you out of the army. And because the army was scraping the
bottom of the barrel for new recruits, this officer wasn't going to take
anything from anybody. He was tough as nails. For instance, the fellow ahead
of me had two bones sticking out from the back of his neck -- some kind of
displaced vertebra, or something -- and this army officer had to get up from
his desk and feel them -- he had to make sure they were real!
I figure this is the place I'll get this whole misunderstanding
straightened out. When it's my turn, I hand my papers to the officer, and
I'm ready to explain everything, but the officer doesn't look up. He sees
the "D" next to "Psychiatric," immediately reaches for the rejection stamp,
doesn't ask me any questions, doesn't say anything; he just stamps my papers
"REJECTED," and hands me my 4-F paper, still looking at his desk.
So I went out and got on the bus for Schenectady, and while I was
riding on the bus I thought about the crazy thing that had happened, and I
started to laugh -- out loud -- and I said to myself, "My God! If they saw
me now, they would be sure!"
When I finally got back to Schenectady I went in to see Harts Bethe. He
was sitting behind his desk, and he said to me in a joking voice, "Well,
Dick, did you pass?"
I made a long face and shook my head slowly. "No."
Then he suddenly felt terrible, thinking that they had discovered some
serious medical problem with me, so he said in a concerned voice, "What's
the matter, Dick?"
I touched my finger to my forehead.
He said, "No!"
"Yes!"
He cried, "No-o-o-o-o-o-o!!!" and he laughed so hard that the roof of
the General Electric Company nearly came off.
I told the story to many other people, and everybody laughed, with a
few exceptions.
When I got back to New York, my father, mother, and sister called for
me at the airport, and on the way home in the car I told them all the story.
At the end of it my mother said, "Well, what should we do, Mel?"
My father said, "Don't be ridiculous, Lucille. It's absurd!"
So that was that, but my sister told me later that when we got home and
they were alone, my father said, "Now, Lucille, you shouldn't have said
anything in front of him. Now what should we do?"
By that time my mother had sobered up, and she said, "Don't be
ridiculous, Mel!"
One other person was bothered by the story. It was at a Physical
Society meeting dinner, and Professor Slater, my old professor at MIT, said,
"Hey, Feynman! Tell us that story about the draft I heard."
I told the whole story to all these physicists -- I didn't know any of
them except Slater -- and they were all laughing throughout, but at the end
one guy said, "Well, maybe the psychiatrist had something in mind."
I said resolutely, "And what profession are you, sir?" Of course, that
was a dumb question, because we were all physicists at a professional
meeting. But I was surprised that a physicist would say something like that.
He said, "Well, uh, I'm really not supposed to be here, but I came as
the guest of my brother, who's a physicist. I'm a psychiatrist." I smoked
him right out!
After a while I began to worry. Here's a guy who's been deferred all
during the war because he's working on the bomb, and the draft board gets
letters saying he's important, and now he gets a "D" in "Psychiatric" -- it
turns out he's a nut! Obviously he isn't a nut; he's just trying to make us
believe he's a nut -- we'll get him!
The situation didn't look good to me, so I had to find a way out. After
a few days, I figured out a solution. I wrote a letter to the draft board
that went something like this:
Dear Sirs:
I do not think I should be drafted because I am teaching science
students, and it is partly in the strength of our future scientists that the
national welfare lies. Nevertheless, you may decide that I should be
deferred because of the result of my medical report, namely, that I am
psychiatrically unfit. I feel that no weight whatsoever should be attached
to this report because I consider it to be a gross error.
I am calling this error to your attention because I am insane enough
not to wish to take advantage of it.
Sincerely,
R. P. Feynman
Result: "Deferred. 4F. Medical Reasons."
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Feynman is awesome.
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How long has the US army or the military in general been accepting people with autism or asperger's to join? I honestly didn't think someone with autism or asperger's was stupid enough to join the US military, but I guess I was way off on that one.
You mean they should fight for the third world armies in Africa?
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How long has the US army or the military in general been accepting people with autism or asperger's to join? I honestly didn't think someone with autism or asperger's was stupid enough to join the US military, but I guess I was way off on that one.
I served 4 years USN as an Airdale. I'm sure those who haven't served know all about it. :finger:
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"Airdale"? ???
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That's the term used to describe Ratings that are involved with troubleshooting, repair and preventative maintenance of US Naval aircraft. I was an Aviation Electricians Mate Third Class until I fucked up and the CO knocked me back down to Airman.
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Where did you serve?
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My first 13 months or so were in training. RTC (boot camp) Sep 77 - November 77 San Diego CA, AE Class A(1) Scool and prerequisites November77 to June 78 Memphis Tenn, FRAMP School June 78 to October 78 Norfolk Va and then Permanent Duty @ Rota Spain Oct. 78 to Sep 81. That was great, I loved being in Spain.
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The Spaniards are BRAVE! :arrr:
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My first 13 months or so were in training. RTC (boot camp) 19 Sep 77 - 17 November 77 San Diego CA, AE Class A(1) Scool and prerequisites 28 November77 to 29 June 78 Memphis Tenn, FRAMP School 30 June 78 to 5 October 78 Norfolk Va and then Permanent Duty @ Rota Spain in VQ2 28 Oct. 78 to 9 Sep 81. That was great, I loved being in Spain.
I like Spain, too. I've only been there once but I've been spending time learning Spanish cos it got to be one of my obsessions for some strange reason.
Sorry but I had to laugh cos only an Aspie would include exact dates. :)
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They are pretty good people to live among THeoK.
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My first 13 months or so were in training. RTC (boot camp) 19 Sep 77 - 17 November 77 San Diego CA, AE Class A(1) Scool and prerequisites 28 November77 to 29 June 78 Memphis Tenn, FRAMP School 30 June 78 to 5 October 78 Norfolk Va and then Permanent Duty @ Rota Spain in VQ2 28 Oct. 78 to 9 Sep 81. That was great, I loved being in Spain.
I like Spain, too. I've only been there once but I've been spending time learning Spanish cos it got to be one of my obsessions for some strange reason.
Sorry but I had to laugh cos only an Aspie would include exact dates. :)
:asthing: Didn't even think about that till you pointed it out.
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That's the term used to describe Ratings that are involved with troubleshooting, repair and preventative maintenance of US Naval aircraft. I was an Aviation Electricians Mate Third Class until I fucked up and the CO knocked me back down to Airman.
I wonder just how many people here are involved in troubleshooting? It's my favorite thing to do as far as work goes anyway
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Does digital troubleshooting count?
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That's the term used to describe Ratings that are involved with troubleshooting, repair and preventative maintenance of US Naval aircraft. I was an Aviation Electricians Mate Third Class until I fucked up and the CO knocked me back down to Airman.
I wonder just how many people here are involved in troubleshooting? It's my favorite thing to do as far as work goes anyway
I do a lot of that.
My problem is that often I can't stop before I have solved the problem.
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That's the term used to describe Ratings that are involved with troubleshooting, repair and preventative maintenance of US Naval aircraft. I was an Aviation Electricians Mate Third Class until I fucked up and the CO knocked me back down to Airman.
I wonder just how many people here are involved in troubleshooting? It's my favorite thing to do as far as work goes anyway
We could set up some kind of Poll.
Does digital troubleshooting count?
It does to me. The principles of common point and knowing the system should be the same.
I do a lot of that.
My problem is that often I can't stop before I have solved the problem.
Because you need to keep the System up, or because it'll drive you nuts?
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That's the term used to describe Ratings that are involved with troubleshooting, repair and preventative maintenance of US Naval aircraft. I was an Aviation Electricians Mate Third Class until I fucked up and the CO knocked me back down to Airman.
I wonder just how many people here are involved in troubleshooting? It's my favorite thing to do as far as work goes anyway
We could set up some kind of Poll.
Does digital troubleshooting count?
It does to me. The principles of common point and knowing the system should be the same.
I do a lot of that.
My problem is that often I can't stop before I have solved the problem.
Because you need to keep the System up, or because it'll drive you nuts?
Because it would drive me nuts.
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Because you need to keep the System up, or because it'll drive you nuts?
I just straddle the steering wheel and let that drive me nuts......
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Because you need to keep the System up, or because it'll drive you nuts?
I just straddle the steering wheel and let that drive me nuts......
Shitty traffic conditions can do that to you. SF Bay Area traffic and Melbourne are probably not much different.
WTF :asthing: just got that one. :lol:
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MY niese did there tours in Iraq as an officer and got the bronze star
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Your Niece is BRAVE! My nephew is going in the Army later this year. He wants to be a Combat Engineer.
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Seems the army is a perfect place for
the kinda anti-social fucks a lotta us
are. You get to kill people, without
going to (annoyingly social) prison.
I just couldn't convince them to
take me on MY terms.
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Seems the army is a perfect place for
the kinda anti-social fucks a lotta us
are. You get to kill people, without
going to (annoyingly social) prison.
I just couldn't convince them to
take me on MY terms.
Nice excuse. I already served my time.
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No excuse. I would be pathetic as anything less than a light colonel.
From the guys associated with NSDM, I was convinced that that was
about where my minimal effective point would be.
Luckily, unlike the military, the real world does allow one to jump
over the bs "time serving".
I'm glad you enjoy chickenshit though.
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MY niese did there tours in Iraq as an officer and got the bronze star
She was attached to the 101st airborn as an advanced field medic she made Captain now she teaches school
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MY niese did there tours in Iraq as an officer and got the bronze star
She was attached to the 101st airborn as an advanced field medic she made Captain now she teaches school
That's pretty cool. The 101st is hard core.
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MY niese did there tours in Iraq as an officer and got the bronze star
She was attached to the 101st airborn as an advanced field medic she made Captain now she teaches school
That's pretty cool. The 101st is hard core.
We were worried the entire time they went to to most fucked up places last tour she didn't leave the base but that was a time when causalities were high they got mortared daily though
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MY niese did there tours in Iraq as an officer and got the bronze star
She was attached to the 101st airborn as an advanced field medic she made Captain now she teaches school
That's very cool. With a Bronze Star, and probably a CIB as well, she will be on the fast track for Promotion if she decides to make a career of it. A Bronze Star will help get jobs on the outside too, they aren't given to those who fold under pressure.
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No shit.
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MY niese did there tours in Iraq as an officer and got the bronze star
She was attached to the 101st airborn as an advanced field medic she made Captain now she teaches school
That's very cool. With a Bronze Star, and probably a CIB as well, she will be on the fast track for Promotion if she decides to make a career of it. A Bronze Star will help get jobs on the outside too, they aren't given to those who fold under pressure.
The war freaked her out as a medic she saw too much death. To the point of talking about it matter of factly "when they start oozing out of every orifice it's too late" Hopefully she'll get less freaked out as time passes