Blog maintenance (mostly) complete

Back in January I started the process of remodeling 29 Marbles, and today I announce the completion of that remodeling (to the extent that any blog is ever really complete). A couple of things you will likely notice:

• 29 Marbles has moved from its home on Blogger its own address at http://autism.gbrettmiller.com, and I've switched from Blogger to WordPress. I did this for several reasons, but mostly I was taking my own advice to "own my data".
  
• The feed for 29 Marbles is still http://feeds.feedburner.com/29Marbles, so you should not lose your subscription. (I think you may have received a feed "refresh" of the last few posts, but that should be OK.)
  
• The left hand column is for information related directly to 29 Marbles, such as the search function, feed subscription, and category lists.
• The right hand column includes feeds from and links to other autism related resources. Although I definitely have my own opinion about certain things, I also think it is important to see others' views. That's why I've included feeds to the Autism Hub and Age of Autism, along with links to blogs by parents and autistics from I expect that this side will continue to grow.

I hope you'll continue to read 29 Marbles and offer the great comments and discussions that arise from the very important topic of autism, what it means, and where we're going. See you on April 2.

Blind faith

When was the last time you changed your mind about something related to autism? If you read back through my nearly three years of posts here you'll see that my own thoughts on the matter have fluctuated quite a bit. (Good thing I'm not a politician!). It's not that I have trouble making up my mind, it's just that I seem to learn something new everyday that influences my opinions.

In a post entitled Nestor Lopez-Duran Ph.D on Autism, Science and Faith-Based Advocacy, Autism dad Harold Doherty, author of Facing Autism in New Brunswick, references the following comments from Lopez-Duran:

what I believe doesn’t really matter, because “beliefs” rapidly turn into blind faith, even amongst scientists. Instead, good science only occurs when positions are flexible and reflective only of the status of the research (data) at any given time

Nestor L. Lopez-Duran Ph.D., Translating Autism, About Science and faith-based advocacy

Doherty goes on to provide his own thoughts:

Many issues such as the mercury-autism, vaccine-autism, genetics-environment arguments in autism discussions purport to revolve around science but often depart from the science and embrace the faith-based advocacy referenced by Dr. Lopez-Duran. To the great detriment of anyone with an interest in understanding the nature and causes of autism.

It is very difficult to maintain this kind of cold objectivity when the subject in question is your own child. But if we, as a society, ever want to get anywhere on these questions (assuming there is somewhere to get to), this is an important lesson to keep in mind.

On a completely separate note, I will be taking a short break from posting here. You may still, however, see my name pop up in comments of other blogs. I plan to return on April 2, not coincidentally World Autism Awareness Day.

Blog business

It has been way too long since I've updated the appearance and performance of this site, and it is time to do some remodeling. I intend to keep posting, so if you read the actual site instead of a feed, please excuse the mess.

On the subject of feeds, I'm also going to convert over to a feedburner feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/29Marbles. I'll have both available for a while to give folks a chance to switch over (if they are interested enough to go to the trouble), and then in about a month kill the blogger feed.

On the subject of blogger and remodeling, does anyone know of any good 3 column templates?

The power of blogs

Last July, US Army MAJ Andy Olmstead wrote a blog entry to be published in the event of his death. MAJ Olmstead died in Iraq last week, you can read his final post here.

I have several items in my “to blog” basket, but I was thinking about this story most of the weekend and just couldn’t write about anything else. I’ve been trying to think of something to say, but in the end I think it speaks for itself and shows just how powerful blogs can be. (Others have been able to write a bit more on the subject, check out this page on the Rocky Mountain News for links.)

Action FOR Autism

Mike? Hmm, that's a new person leaving comments. Good comments. I wonder what his blog looks like. Action For Autism, nice name. Wow, this is good stuff. He's been blogging for how long, over a year? Over 27,000 hits? And he's written some autism books? Have I been sleeping, or what?

That was my train of thought as I, well you can tell what I was doing.

It never ceases to amaze me that there is so much good stuff out there on autism, and I am continually frustrated that I'll never be able to find it all (and even if I did I'd never get to read it all).

If you've not seen Mike Stanton's blog Action for Autism, do yourself a favor and check it out.