DSM - Dumb Stupid Manual

From a Crooked Timber post,

I appreciate that "the population with a diagnosis of autism" is diverse, but I can't see that the present article gets us much further, accepting as it does that there is a single condition that is autism. 
Given, as we appear to agree, that there is little necessarily in common between the people who have the diagnosis, the most probable explanations would seem to be that the name covers several conditions with overlapping symptoms or that the definition is terminally vague and just consists of the constituent elements of human behavior prefaced by the words "too much" or "too little".
It's certainly true that in the US at least the DSM-IV definition makes diversity inevitable, involving as it does a Chinese menu approach to diagnosis - "(I) A total of six (or more) items from (A), (B), and (C), with at least two from (A), and one each from (B) and (C)" - which leads by perms and combs to thousands of different presentations. This diagnostic approach would tend to lead to the conditions-with-overlapping-symptoms problem; the vaguer DSM-V approach approaches the second "too much of things"  problem.
At the very least, talk about 'the autisms'; ideally, drop the term altogether and talk in terms of actual describable problems of communication, behavior, and the like. 'Autism' is incurable; problems with communication suggest trials of AAC.

Incidentally, do American Chinese restaurants still have menus like that?  I've never seen one in my visits.

Glassholes - Comment on a post at Stross's Antipope

Just to add a few disruptors, I can't imagine that google glasses will have any difficulty reading cards and remembering them, thus giving any oik the ability to win at blackjack in casinos. Plainly casinos won't let them in while they can recognise them, but I can't think that'll be long.
and it shouldn't be too hard to break roulette by working out the speed of the ball and the speed of the wheel; Claude Shannon, the information theorist, worked on that for a while - see The First Wearable Computer (http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/thorp.pdf) -- and did quite well even with the technology of the time.
The only gambling operations that can really survive google glasses are the purely random ones, like poker machines.

Historicity

Interesting article on historicity in TV historidramas, flagged here so I can find it later.

WORDS you can't say on the internet

Daily Mail ad on Daily mail site - "Put down that phone, you p**t!" - referring to someone tweeting during Benn's funeral, but of interest for its asterisks.  The full article gives 'prat', unredacted; but why would one ever bowdlerise the word, which isn't even from an obscene root - or am I the naive one, with pratting being featured in the aristocrats joke?
Checks:

prat

Line breaks: prat

Pronunciation: /prat

noun

• informal

• 1British An incompetent or stupid person; an idiot.

  More example sentences

• 2A person’s buttocks.

Origin

mid 16th century (in sense 2): of unknown origin. sense 1 dates from the 1960s.

I never knew that.

Yes, well, but we don't say b*tt*cks, or even b*m.  Yet?

Heavy Irony

Bentley, who spent his life correcting corruptions in classical manuscripts, has his correspondence placed on line by Google: so --

P. S. Out of love, which I have for Suidas, I must 
add an article about it. 1 see. Sir, that the others 
booksellers here, and chiefli the company, are jealous, 20 
that the Wetsteins (who, for to tell the truth, are 
not much beloved amongst the others booksellers) 
have Suidas alone, et commands the price therof. 
Therefore they have resolved amongst them, not to 
take any of them from Wetstein ; which hindereth 25 
the sale of it migthely. I know that the others want 
it ; but, as I have told, out of jealousie, they wil not 
take them of Wetstein, but will treat rather with the 
University, if they can agree. Therefore one of them, 
whoes name is Wolters, hath given me this present 30 
note in dutch, which Dr. Sike can interpret to you. 
T think, Sir, there can be no bether way to sell the 

There doesn't seem to be a facility to edit it, either, such as the Australian Trove newspaper site offers.  Poor man.

P. S. Out of love, which I have for Suidas, I must 
add an article about it. I see, Sir, that the other 
booksellers here, and chiefly the company, are jealous, 20 
that the Wetsteins (who, for to tell the truth, are 
not much beloved amongst the other booksellers) 
have Suidas alone, et commands the price therof. 
Therefore they have resolved amongst them, not to 
take any of them from Wetstein ; which hindereth 25 
the sale of it mightily. I know that the others want 
it ; but, as I have told, out of jealousie, they wil not 
take them of Wetstein, but will treat rather with the 
University, if they can agree. Therefore one of them, 
who's name is Wolters, hath given me this present 30 
note in dutch, which Dr. Sike can interpret to you. 
I think, Sir, there can be no better way to sell the  

I notice he uses apostrophes where we have dropped them, in words like who's, her's, etc.   A change in the English language across time appropriate to a scholar who traced so carefully changes across time in Greek.

Age bin

The new honours list will be making a fine start
With Sir Andrew Bolt and with Dame Gina Rinehart,
Australian orders can only demean us;
Get ready to bow to Sir Art Sinodinos.

But this small reform can be only a starter,
The orders of Michael and George and the Garter
Still stand as a goal for LNP benefactors
(With some for the church, and a couple of actors);

And once we've got that, then what's wrong with a peerage?
A real divide from those yobs in the steerage,
With Viscounts and Earls and the occasional Baronet-
If we're born to rule we need robes and a coronet.

Age bin

Bryan Keon-Cohen objects to priests invoking the secrecy of the confessional.  Well, good, because if he objects to professional secrecy he can do something about it. As a barrister, he can renounce legal professional privilege, under which any of his clients who happen to be paedophiles or a murderers or tax evaders can tell him they did it without him having to report the confession to the authorities. Should Australian secular society in the 21st century, that accepts the rule of law, allow such practices to remain outside national legislative standards and professional requirements?  It’s true that under such circumstances confessions would more or less cease, the clients would lie, and the advice that Mr. Keon-Cohen would give would in consequence be pretty useless, but given his expressed principles anything less would be sheer hypocrisy.