Asperger glasses

I had a judge accuse me of possibly having Aspergers, even those all of the eight court psychologists said that I did not. I think that it is not a disorder anyway, and it is being eliminated from the DSM-5.

Nonetheless, it is amusing to track popular misconception about this alleged syndrome. The NY Times reports on new technology:

She has been working for more than two decades to translate emotions into 1’s and 0’s, the language of machines. One early project, with a collaborator, Rana el Kaliouby, was to design glasses for people with Asperger syndrome, a mild variant of autism, that warned them when they were boring someone. People with Asperger’s often fixate on particular topics and find it hard to read the social cues, like yawning, fidgeting and looking away, that indicate the listener is bored.

The prototype included a tiny traffic light, visible only to the wearer, that flashed yellow when the conversation was starting to drag and red when facial cues suggested the listener had completely tuned out.

I have a simpler idea -- just make a small box with a button on it, and a label that says, "Press button when bored."

When Adam is talking to Beth, and Beth has difficulty communicating her boredom to Adam, why would anyone conclude that Adam is the one with the disorder? This shows how shrinks are profoundly bigoted against certain cognitive styles. I say that Beth is the one with the disorder if she is unable to express herself to Adam.

Of course I like this blog because I can babble on with my opinionated rants, and my bored readers cannot interrupt me. If you think that means that I have a disorder, go ahead and say so in the comments, where I can ignore you.

If those ridiculous Asperger glasses ever reach the market, some judge will probably order me to wear them on supervised visits to my kids. My last supervisor did not allow me to talk math to my kids, even when one kid wanted to talk about math. I always taught my kids to tell me when they want to change the subject. They would never rely on boorish behavior "like yawning, fidgeting and looking away". Not to me, anyway. But maybe I am an emotional abuser for teaching them that.