Is The 5-Second Rule True?

I’ll go ahead and spoil the answer to that question and tell you no, it is not true.

But you won’t believe just how interesting the world of touching, not touching, and the shake-rattle-and-roll of molecular interactions can be. And when you find out how many little bacterial bugs are living on the things that you touch every day, you might decide to live in a plastic bubble for 2013. Great video from Vsauce.

Source: youtube.com

Touch: Why Are We Obsessed With Autistic Kids Having Superpowers? Kiefer Sutherland’s new show Touch premieres this week, and the plot hinges on the “superpowers” of a non-neurotypical child Jake. Jake can predict the future, which is of course not only impossible, but dangerously stereotypical of autism spectrum disorders. Actually, “stereotypical” is the wrong word. “Bullshit” or “insulting” are closer to the word I am looking for. I am sure there will be plenty of the terrorist ass-kicking and 1,000-yard stare neo-MacGuyverism that Kiefer Sutherland has come to be known for, but is this really how we should portray autism on television, or anywhere? From io9: The danger here is that the autistic character could be akin to the “magical negro” or the “noble savage” in popular culture, says Steve Silberman, a frequent contributor to Wired who’s writing a book about autism to be published in 2013. Silberman explains that these are “… characters that were significantly disabled in a social sense, but who had a kind of innocence and purity that enabled them to play their central role in the narrative: that of redeeming the hero, who wasn’t disabled and was only temporarily an outcast. Those characters usually faded offscreen when the hero attained his rightfully high status in society; they were only valuable for what they could render unto the mainstream characters — very much like the gay “best friend” in a million TV shows who coaches the female lead on her romantic problems but never has a sex life of his own (“gross!”), or the fat girl who’s “like a sister” to the geeky-but-hot male lead.” (via io9)
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Touch: Why Are We Obsessed With Autistic Kids Having Superpowers?

Kiefer Sutherland’s new show Touch premieres this week, and the plot hinges on the “superpowers” of a non-neurotypical child Jake. Jake can predict the future, which is of course not only impossible, but dangerously stereotypical of autism spectrum disorders. Actually, “stereotypical” is the wrong word. “Bullshit” or “insulting” are closer to the word I am looking for.

I am sure there will be plenty of the terrorist ass-kicking and 1,000-yard stare neo-MacGuyverism that Kiefer Sutherland has come to be known for, but is this really how we should portray autism on television, or anywhere? From io9:

The danger here is that the autistic character could be akin to the “magical negro” or the “noble savage” in popular culture, says Steve Silberman, a frequent contributor to Wired who’s writing a book about autism to be published in 2013. Silberman explains that these are

“… characters that were significantly disabled in a social sense, but who had a kind of innocence and purity that enabled them to play their central role in the narrative: that of redeeming the hero, who wasn’t disabled and was only temporarily an outcast. Those characters usually faded offscreen when the hero attained his rightfully high status in society; they were only valuable for what they could render unto the mainstream characters — very much like the gay “best friend” in a million TV shows who coaches the female lead on her romantic problems but never has a sex life of his own (“gross!”), or the fat girl who’s “like a sister” to the geeky-but-hot male lead.”

(via io9)

Source: io9.com