Ignorance and what Aspergians have done about it

[Guest guest]

I said in a different post (under the Travolta thread):

"So you are not alone . And rest assured, when I draft the podcasts, it's people like your mother and my mother that I keep in mind as a target audience when I write. I usually address their core superstitions, their core misbeliefs, and their core sources of misinformation and trounce them or combat them with recognized research."

Just wanted to add:

In the beginning, there was Aspergia forum.

Due to the extensive degreee of trolling and foolery which is now best seen on WrongPlanet.net, Edan shut the Aspergia forum down because getting them all to behave was too stressful for him, but not before a bunch of websites could be set up by old members. These sites were:

1) Aspergian Island

2) Aspergian Pride

3) Aspergian Writers' Forum

4) Aspies for Freedom

5) Asperger's Syndrome World Community

6) Fellowship of the Aspergian Miracle

Currently, of all those forums, only AFF and these FAM forums remain, and the Aspergia website is now a single page long with the Aspergia symbol on it:

http://www.aspergia.com/

Aspies For Freedom, in attempt to bind websites around the world together to combat ignorance, created the Autism Assembly. This is what it looks like now:

http://www.autism-assembly.com/

It's gone in other words.

There was also the Autism Hub, which now looks like this:

http://autismhub.co.uk/

It's gone, in other words.

And Aspergian Pride created the Cure for Ignorance Campaign, which has a paltry 203 sites after four years of existence. http://www.aspergianpride.com/

Here is the entry explaining the closure of its forums:

http://www.aspergianpride.com/blog/2008/11/23/aspergian-pride-forum-closure/

By contrast, Midnight In Chicago has been in existense for less than three years, and we have over 500 health or autism organizations and/or people linking to its 14 (and counting) Autism Spectrum Podcasts in an effort to educate people on autism spectrum disorders and Asperger Syndrome, Tony Attwood being one of these people, and he is not listed as supporting the Cure for Ignorance Campaign. Why? Because none of the people in the Cure for Ignorance Campaign have actually done anything to cure ignorance except to put a page up on their site which says that they are part of the campaign. And the campaign itself has not done anything either.

Further, AFF and CFIC is not listed on most of the sites we are listed on. Why? Because we are responsible, have integrity, and promote facts and research rather than opinions and bravado.

On one podcasting venue alone www.mic.mypodcast.com, we have 3,200 downloads of the MIC Podcasts. From that venue, and as of the day of this writing 47 people have listened to our Autism Speaks News Update on the www.mic.mypodcast.com website with over 60 downloading it on YouTube since December 27, 2008.

In the time we have been in existence, we have gotten some autism organizations to excise the Autism Speaks link from their websites.

And then of course, there is our "Mad Hatter" video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8fm46b3Z68 which promotes autism awareness. Over 460 downloads on one venue alone since Christmas when we put it up. We have reason to believe that it has been downloaded just as many times from each of the other many venues where it has been put up.

There are are our fundraisers and awareness campaigns, and we have two CDs out as well as a plethera of greeting cards/art cards and prints to buy, proceeds of which all fund REPUTABLE autism organizations.

Raven and I have been in the newspapers in both the US and Canada, and she and I have been on TV and her on radio. All in the interest of promoting autism awareness.

Just wanted to point out what a difference it can make when two people work together and stay on target and how amazing it is that ignorance still exists in the world regardless.

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