Thursday, March 27, 2014


News Clips For The Day



MH370: Thai Satellite Spots 300 Objects Near Suspected Crash Site – NBC

By Henry Austin


More than 300 floating objects have been spotted close to the spot where investigators believe Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 crashed, the owner of a Thai satellite said Thursday.

The objects were spotted by the Thaichote - or Thailand Earth Observation Satellite, the executive director of the Geo Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency (Gistda) told NBC News.

"Our satellites have located numerous amounts of floating objects at the area about 1700 miles southwest of Perth and those objects have been identified as real and not just a silhouette or fish or anything else," Anond Snidvongs said. "It’s probably manmade but we cannot identify or confirm its origin."

He added: "The area is within the general area that we were notified to look in. There are 300 objects or even more. One of the satellites has seen about 175 square miles."

The images have been forwarded to Malaysian authorities for further analysis, according to Snidvongs.

Gistda is a state-owned company that reports to Thailand's defense ministry, a company representative told NBC News.

The company posted the images on its website, saying they had been taken on Monday - the day after a French satellite saw 122 potential objects floating in the southern Indian Ocean.

The images put the objects about 125 miles southwest of the suspected crash site, Snidvongs told the Straits Times.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority, which is coordinating the international air and sea search of the southern Indian Ocean, referred questions about the images to Thailand.

There was no immediate word from Malaysian investigators, who earlier cancelled their daily news briefing in Kuala Lumpur.




The Thaichote - or Thailand Earth Observation Satellite, of Thailand has spotted around 300 pieces of debris about 125 miles southwest of the suspected crash site. Earlier in the week 122 pieces was captured by a French satellite. They are some 1700 miles southwest of Perth and have been verified as being solid objects rather than silhouettes or large fish. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority is coordinating the search, but referred questions to Thailand.

This summary from the news article still has plenty of questions left to answer. Ships or smaller boats will have to be dispatched to the area, where hopefully they will be able to locate some of the debris. Finding the objects floating in miles and miles of what is reported to be very rough seas, which can hide the objects from the view of a surface craft, is going to be a long and chance based attempt. Finding where the “black boxes” are will be much harder, because the boxes can't be heard from farther away than five miles and these satellite images cover 175 square miles. Then there is the fact that they are moving around in the water and probably won't be exactly where the satellite spotted them.

Nonetheless, this is the most hopeful news yet. If some debris can be located by boat and identified as definitely being a part of the airplane wreckage it will help the families of the deceased to come to terms with their death. What happened in the cockpit may never be known, of course. In this age of suicide bombers and alQaeda's fascination with crashing planes, there will always be the suspicion that this is another case like the Egyptian plane of a number of years ago, whose pilot ditched the plane in the sea, shouting “Allahu Akbar.” The simple fact that the plane was taken off its original flight plan and flown to the remote location where the objects have been spotted does show that something other than merely running out of fuel or some other disaster did occur. If the searchers find wreckage, maybe it will show burn marks and smoke or some other evidence of what happened. I hope some future articles will indicate more clear-cut information.





FBI Investigates FEMA Flood Map Changes After NBC News Report – NBC

By Bill Dedman

First published March 27 2014


FBI agents are interviewing employees at FEMA in an investigation of unusual changes in federal flood insurance maps that benefited oceanfront condo buildings with a history of flooding, according to sources familiar with the investigation.

The investigation follows a report by NBC News documenting more than 500 instances in which FEMA has remapped waterfront properties from the highest-risk flood zone, saving the owners as much as 97 percent on the premiums they pay into the financially strained National Flood Insurance Program.

FBI agents have conducted interviews in Washington over the past 10 days with employees of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which oversees the flood insurance program. Others outside the government also have been interviewed and have voluntarily provided documents, including employees at contractors that evaluate the map change applications for FEMA, according to two people interviewed by the FBI.
Sitting in on the FBI interviews are investigators from the Office of the Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, according to the sources. FEMA, which has said it would review the flood map changes identified by NBC, is an agency within the DHS .

Asked about the FBI investigation, a FEMA official referred all questions to the Office of the Inspector General, whose spokesman said, "As a matter of policy, the Office of Inspector General does not discuss investigative matters." The FBI also declined to comment.

Where the McDonald's used to be
NBC News reported on Feb. 18 that FEMA has moved the lines on its flood maps to benefit hundreds of oceanfront condo buildings and million-dollar homes. According to an analysis of federal records by NBC News, the changes shift the financial burden for the next destructive hurricane, tsunami or tropical storm onto the neighbors of these wealthy beach-dwellers — and ultimately onto all American taxpayers.

See a map from NBC News linking to public records for the 533 rezoned properties along the U.S. coast.

Examples of map changes were found from the Gulf of Alaska to Bar Harbor, Maine. One hotspot of map changes was on Alabama's Gulf Coast, in the twin resort towns of Gulf Shores and Orange Beach, where 70 coastal buildings have benefited, costing the flood insurance program at least $5 million a year in premiums.

On a single day -– Oct. 25, 2012, as agency officials were closely monitoring Hurricane Sandy as it barreled toward the Atlantic Coast -- FEMA remapped more than a mile of the oceanfront in Gulf Shores, including condos on the spot where a Holiday Inn and a McDonald's were destroyed by Hurricane Ivan in 2004. The document that made that change, issued by a FEMA manager, redrew the lines to exclude 25 condo buildings from the highest-risk flood zone, and was one of just 533 cases found nationwide by NBC News.

Among the buildings excluded was this beachfront condo, the Island Tower, which collected $11,562 for its damage from Katrina in 2005, and more than $250,000 from Ivan.

The Island Tower condominium building, right, and the Phoenix All Suites Hotel, left, rise above the beach in Gulf Shores. FEMA remapped both into lower-risk flood zones.
The Island Tower's condo association was paying $143,190 a year into the National Flood Insurance Program. Now that it's been reclassified into a lower-risk flood zone, its premium is $8,457 a year, a saving of 94 percent, according to records examined by NBC News.

Just down the beach is the Royal Palms, which collected $58,230 for damages during Katrina, and $889,730 from Ivan. The Royal Palms was paying $218,484 a year, but after being changed to a lower-risk flood zone, now pays $6,845, saving 97 percent.
See a map from NBC News with details of the condominium projects in Gulf Shores and Ocean Beach. Some of the condo projects have multiple buildings, making more than 60 buildings in all.

NBC News found that FEMA has redrawn maps even for properties that have repeatedly filed claims for flood losses from previous storms. At least some of the properties are on the secret "repetitive loss list" that FEMA sends to communities to alert them to problem properties. FEMA says that it does not factor in previous losses into its decisions on applications to redraw the flood zones.

And FEMA has given property owners a break even when the changes are opposed by the town hall official in charge of flood control. Although FEMA asks the local official to sign off on the map changes, FEMA officials told NBC that its policy is to consider the applications just the same, even if the local expert opposes the change.
The flood map 'Robin Hood'

In a second report on Feb. 19, NBC News reported that many of the map changes were obtained by a South Florida company called Flood Zone Correction. It filed successful applications for map changes on behalf of more than 100 coastal condo developers in Alabama, Florida, Texas, South Carolina and Georgia, the company president said. The company, in West Palm Beach, works only for commercial real estate companies,not private homeowners.

The company's founder and president, Dan Freudenthal, said this week, "I have not been contacted by the FBI, but I will gladly cooperate with their investigation into the map change cases because all of those cases are legitimate." In an earlier interview, Freudenthal said he was a "Robin Hood," saving property owners money by correcting inaccurate federal flood maps. After the NBC articles included that self-description, Freudenthal issued a press release: "Just yesterday NBC News started a series of investigative stories about flood insurance, where Flood Zone Correction Inc., (FZC) receives a well-deserved 'Robin Hood' title." The release said NBC News had discovered the company's "heroic achievements."

Do you have information on FEMA's changes to flood maps, or the companies that apply for or evaluate these applications? Send an email to investigative reporter Bill Dedman at NBC News.

Read part one, "Why Taxpayers Will Bail Out the Rich When the Next Storm Hits," http://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/why-taxpayers-will-bail-out-rich-when-next-storm-hits-n25901

Read part two, "Meet the Flood Insurance 'Robin Hood' Who Saves Condo Owners Millions," http://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/meet-flood-insurance-robin-hood-who-saves-condo-owners-millions-n26711

Read part three, "For Average Joes, Fighting FEMA Flood Maps Isn't Easy or Cheap," http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/average-joes-fighting-fema-flood-maps-isnt-easy-or-cheap-n23871




On October 25, 2012 a document was issued by “a FEMA manager” to exclude 25 condo buildings from the highest-risk flood zone, and was one of just 533 cases found nationwide by NBC News. These changes lowered the premium on the high value buildings and shifted the financial burden of premium shortfalls to the neighboring buildings. “The Island Tower's condo association was paying $143,190 a year into the National Flood Insurance Program. Now that it's been reclassified into a lower-risk flood zone, its premium is $8,457 a year, a saving of 94 percent,” according to NBC News investigators. The Royal Palms was paying $218,484 a year, but after being changed to a lower-risk flood zone, now pays $6,845, saving 97 percent.”

This is shocking in its magnitude, and makes me look for the conspiracy that appears to be behind it, not to mention running the risk of financially damaging the FEMA program when it has to pay out for damages. One South Florida company called Flood Zone Correction put through many of the changes on behalf of commercial real estate companies, not including any private dwelling owners. Dan Freudenthal the founder of the company said “I have not been contacted by the FBI, but I will gladly cooperate with their investigation into the map change cases because all of those cases are legitimate." Earlier he likened himself to Robin Hood who corrects Federal flood maps, thus saving property owners money. I would like to point out that Robin Hood stole from the rich and gave to the poor, not the other way around. Freudenthal goes on to say that his company has made “heroic achievements.”

If these changes were bogus and incorrect, NBC News deserves a Pulitzer Prize for discovering the pattern of exclusions and investigating. For their further investigation, this article asks for any new information to be sent to the writer. Hopefully the FBI and Homeland Security will find all cases of misconduct and rectify the situation. FEMA has a “secret list” of buildings that have had repetitive losses, which according to this article FEMA does not factor in when considering applications to redraw the zones. The fact that local officials dispute the request to redraw the map doesn't stop FEMA from doing so. See the BBB report below. There are many other websites on Flood Zone Correction Inc, including this from BBB and another from www.bizjournals.com which features Flood Zone's self promotion and description.

http://www.bbb.org/south-east-florida/business-reviews/real-estate-consultants/flood-zone-correction-in-west-palm-beach-fl-26002208

BBB Business Review
What is a BBB Business Review?
This Business is not BBB Accredited
Flood Zone Correction, Inc
Phone: (561) 616-8443Fax: (561) 616-8859 View Additional Phone Numbers1601 Belvedere Rd, #110-E, West Palm Beach, FL 33406 http://www.floodzonecorrection.com

NR
On a scale of A+ to F Reason for RatingBBB Ratings System Overview


http://www.bizjournals.com/southflorida/stories/2004/09/20/daily50.html

Sep 24, 2004, 8:05am EDT Updated: Sep 24, 2004, 8:05am EDT
FZC and Willis partner up

West Palm Beach-based Flood Zone Correction said it has allied with New York-based Willis Group (NYSE: WSH), one of three global insurance brokers.
For two years, FZC said it will provide its flood zone correction services to U.S. real estate assets owned and operated by Willis clients.

"Flood insurance requirements imposed by mortgage companies are the basis for the vast majority of these policies and premiums," FZC said. "The process of flood zone correction increases property values of residential and commercial buildings by eliminating unwarranted flood insurance requirements to reduce insurance costs."

Dan Freudenthal, FZC president, said the partnership is another example of Willis' leadership in the risk management and insurance brokerage industry.
"Together, we will help Willis clients to more clearly define the true flood risk of their facilities, to correct flood zone classifications that are wrong, to reduce insurance premiums and to reduce exposure to flood losses," Freudenthal said.




So are mortgage companies the real villains, then, because they assigned incorrect values to begin with? Why does FEMA cave in to the requests for the lowering of risks – have they scientifically analyzed the map to see what is correct? Why doesn't FEMA factor in heavy losses in the past due to hurricanes? What other sources are there for the applications for risk relief besides this company's recommendations? Is someone at FEMA paid off financially to change its findings? If the FBI is investigating, there is strong suspicion of misdeeds at FEMA and at one or more companies representing their real estate customers. I await more articles “with bated breath.”




President Barack Obama, Pope Francis Meet for First Time – NBC
Alastair Jamieson, Chuck Todd, Claudio Lavanga and Stacey Klein
First published March 27 2014

President Barack Obama met with Pope Francis for the first time Thursday in a 52-minute private audience as part of his jam-packed tour of Europe and the Middle East.

The pair shook hands and smiled warmly in front of cameras inside the Apostolic Palace. "Thank you, it's so nice to see you, good to see ya," Obama repeated. "I'm a great admirer."

The two leaders sat either side of a desk in the papal library where the pontiff quietly said, "Welcome, Mr. President" in English before switching to Italian.
Obama is the ninth president to make an official visit to the Vatican. His audience was a change of pace after three days of high-level talks with European leaders aimed at creating a unified Western response to Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region.

It was not entirely a meeting of minds. The Vatican has made clear its concern at the Affordable Care Act, which mandates employers to provide health insurance coverage for contraception.

But although Obama and Pope Francis have differing views on contraception, abortion rights and gay marriage, they have common ground on poverty and social justice – themes at the heart of the president’s 2008 election campaign.

After their meeting, the president presented the pontiff with a custom-made seed chest containing a variety of fruit and vegetable seeds used in the White House garden - a nod to the pope's decision to open the gardens of his summer residence to the public later this year.The chest was custom-made of leather and reclaimed wood from the Baltimore Basilica, one of the oldest Catholic cathedrals in the U.S.

The pope offered Obama two medallions and a copy of his apostolic exhortation "The Joy of the Gospel," in which he denounced the global economic system that excludes the poor. “And this, for when you are bored,” the pope said in Spanish as he handed over the book.

"You know, I actually will probably read this when I'm in the Oval Office, when I am deeply frustrated and I am sure it will give me strength and will calm me down," Obama replied.

"I hope," the pope responded.
The presidential motorcade swept into St Peter's Square at the Vatican at 10:15 a.m. local time (5:15 a.m. ET), from where Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry walked slowly towards the papal studio, escorted by the distinctive Swiss Guards.
The private meeting began at 10:27 a.m. (5:27 a.m. ET) and lasted until 11:19 a.m. (6:19 a.m.).

Later, Obama was then due to meet Pietro Parolin, secretary of state for the Holy See, and tour Rome’s famous Coliseum before heading to Saudi Arabia for a meeting on Friday with King Abdullah.




“The presidential motorcade swept into St Peter's Square at the Vatican at 10:15 a.m. local time (5:15 a.m. ET), from where Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry walked slowly towards the papal studio, escorted by the distinctive Swiss Guards.” I have a number of times seen the presidential motorcade when I lived in Washington, DC. It really is stirring. First come the police on motor cycles and then the black limousines, some of which have flags attached to the front. One day I could see the President waving through the darkened glass and several of us who were watching them waved back. It was Ronald Reagan that time. Another time I was at my job when they came by and two of us leaned out the window to see better. We immediately had secret service rifles trained in our direction. We withdrew quickly.

The “pomp and circumstance” on both sides of this meeting between Obama and the Pope must have been great to see. It's all symbolic, of course. I thought the nature of the gifts they gave each other was interesting – nothing expensive, just representative of their personal lives. I am very much interested in the personal lives of powerful people. Their very importance sets them apart from “the people,” and isolates them somewhat. Both of these two men have made noticeable efforts to reach out to the public on a personal basis. I really like that. It shows some humility and warmth.




Drought Spurs Mini-Gold Rush in California's Sierra Nevadas – NBC
The Associated Press
First published March 27 2014

There's gold in them dry hills!

Or gold seekers anyway. And they see a historic opportunity in California's historic drought.

Low water levels have led to a mini gold rush in the same Sierra Nevada foothills that drew legions of fortune seekers from around the world in the mid-1800s, as amateur prospectors dig for riverbed riches in spots that have been out of reach for decades.

"With the drought going on, we're able to dig in more locations that wouldn't be accessible at later times," said Tim Amavisca, who wore waterproof overalls as he panned in the Bear River near Colfax with his teenage daughter on a recent Friday afternoon.

Amavisca, a 38-year-old from Sacramento who recently left the military, has been prospecting several times a week this winter — a time when it's usually raining and river levels are too high for gold panning.

One of the worst droughts in California history has prompted the state and federal governments to severely cut water supplies to farms and cities. It's also left rivers and streams at dangerously low levels, imperiling fish and wildlife.

The drought has exposed old roads, bridges, railway lines and junked cars that are usually submerged in lakes and reservoirs. At the Folsom Lake reservoir, the water's retreat revealed the remnants of a Gold Rush mining town called Mormon Island, which was flooded when the dam was built in the 1950s.

In mountain rivers and streams, the record-low flows have uncovered new chances to earn some extra money, especially with gold selling for more than $1,300 an ounce.




I expect archaeologists, too, to be looking for relics of the past in the same areas. Even junked cars from 1950 would be interesting, and maybe saleable to collectors if they aren't too rusty. This is just one happy circumstance in an otherwise tragic situation, though. I'm just hoping for a rainy season soon.




Has Russia painted itself into a financial corner? – CBS
By Bruce Kennedy Money Watch March 27, 2014

Moscow now controls Crimea, following its de facto land grab from Ukraine. But according to some experts, that gain in real estate might come at the cost of serious damage to Russia's economy.

The U.S. and European Union responded to the crisis last week by imposing sanctions against Russia; freezing assets, black-listing a major Russian bank, and banning certain Russian officials and business executives from traveling in the west.
Russian President Vladimir Putin mocked those actions, and ordered his own limited sanctions. This tit-for-tat approach has raised concerns the EU, which is dependent on Russian oil and gas, could find its energy supplies squeezed-off in retaliation for any further sanctions.

"We recognize that if we take action against major sectors of the Russian economy, the financial sector, the energy sector, that that could have some impact on the global economy," David Cohen, who oversees the U.S. Treasury Department's Terrorism and Financial Intelligence unit, recently told CBS News.

But an analyst at the research firm IHS Global Insight believes Putin's actions in Crimea could backfire economically and end up hurting Russia by undermining investor confidence in Russian companies and projects.

IHS Russia and Caspian Energy expert Julia Nanay noted in a research note that the Russian economy is stagnating, with its economic growth down from 3.4 percent in 2012 to just 1.3 percent last year.

"Attracting investments has been prioritized as the principal driver of the country's future economic growth in order to create more capacity and improve efficiency," Nanay wrote.

But in the wake of the Ukraine crisis and the ensuing sanctions several major credit rating agencies, including Fitch Ratings and Standard & Poor's, have downgraded Russia's credit rating

As Fitch said in its announcement last week, U.S and EU banks and investors "may well be reluctant to lend to Russia under the current circumstances." That reluctance may lead to the Russian economy slowing even further.

The Ukrainian crisis is also weakening the ruble, which Nanay notes "can spell trouble for Russian industrial producers geared towards domestic markets," while also affecting consumer confidence and domestic demand.

The current sanctions don't directly impose any restrictions on Russia's energy sector, whose oil, gas and petroleum products account for more than two-thirds of the nation's total export earnings.

But Nanay believes dwindling investor confidence will "impact the cost and availability of capital just when the Russian companies are launching major new upstream, midstream (LNG and new pipelines), and downstream initiatives." That, in turn, could negatively affect a vital source of Russia's export revenue.




IHS expert Julia Nanay in this article states that the Russian economy is down from 3.4% in 2012 to 1.3% in 2013. Since the Russian adventure in Crimea, “Fitch Ratings and Standard & Poor's, as well as other major rating agencies, have downgraded Russia's credit rating. The ruble has also been weakened.

This article mentions that Russia's energy sector has not been threatened yet. One article recently was about the fact that many EU countries don't want to disturb their deal with Russia for gas and oil, as the US isn't yet ready to take its place in providing fuel, so we may not be in a position to attack them on that front. Until we do, however, they may remain relatively strong economically, since energy exports account for 2/3 of their total earnings. Still, this article points to some success already from our sanctions, and I hope the US energy industry and the government will try to prepare us to provide oil and gas to Europe in future years. One other news article pointed toward 2015 before we will be able to export enough oil and gas to do that.




­ Brain Changes Suggest Autism Starts In The Womb – NPR
by Jon Hamilton
March 26, 2014

­ The symptoms of autism may not be obvious until a child is a toddler, but the disorder itself appears to begin well before birth.

Brain tissue taken from children who died and also happened to have autism revealed patches of disorganization in the cortex, a thin sheet of cells that's critical for learning and memory, researchers report in the New England Journal of Medicine. Tissue samples from children without autism didn't have those characteristic patches.
Organization of the cortex begins in the second trimester of pregnancy. "So something must have gone wrong at or before that time," says Eric Courchesne, an author of the paper and director of the Autism Center of Excellence at the University of California, San Diego.

The finding should bolster efforts to understand how genes control brain development and lead to autism. It also suggests that treatment should start early in childhood, when the brain is capable of rewiring to work around damaged areas.

The study grew out of research by Courchesne on development of the cortex in children with autism. In typical kids, the cortex is "like a layer cake," he says. "There are six layers, one on top of the other, and in each layer there are different types of brain cells."

Courchesne suspected that these layers might be altered in the brains of children with autism. So he and a team of researchers studied samples of cortex from 11 children with autism and an equal number of typical kids. The cortex came from areas known to be associated with the symptoms of autism.

In the brain tissue from typical children, the cortex had six distinct layers, each made up of a specific type of cell. But in the children with autism, "there are patches in which specific cells in specific layers seem to be missing," Courchesne says. So instead of distinct layers, there are disorganized collections of brain cells.

These patches of disorganized cortex would have different effects on the brain depending on where they occur and how many there are, Courchesne says. That could help explain why the symptoms of autism vary so much.

And finding that the damage isn't everywhere suggests how a child's brain might compensate by rewiring to avoid the trouble spots, Courchesne says. "That's one of our guesses about how it is that autistic children, with treatment, very commonly get better," he says.

The new study appears to confirm research from the University of California, Los Angeles showing that people with autism tend to have genetic changes that could disturb the formation of layers in the cortex.

And it adds to the already considerable evidence that autism starts in the womb, says Dr. Stanley Nelson, a geneticist at UCLA. "The overwhelming set of data is that the problems are existing during brain development, probably as an embryo or fetus," he says.

But some of the new study's findings are surprising and even a bit perplexing, Nelson says. For example, it's odd that only certain bits of brain tissue contain these disorganized cells. "Why is the whole cortex not disorganized?" he says.

It's also odd that 10 of the 11 children with autism had the same sort of disorganized patches of cortex, Nelson says. That's not what you would expect with a disorder known to involve many different genes, presumably affecting many different aspects of brain development.

So he'd like to know what researchers would find if they looked at hundreds of brains instead of just a few. "What fraction of all the kids with autism are going to have these small patches?" he says. "I think the jury's out on that."

Nelson is right that there's no clear answer yet, says Ed Lein, one of the paper's authors and an investigator at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle. But it's possible that many different combinations of genes involved in autism could lead to the same patches of disorganization in the layers of cortex.

Finding out whether that's the case will be difficult because there is a shortage of brains from children available to researchers. Parents of children who die — with and without autism — rarely agree to donate their child's brain to science.

Scientific and advocacy groups are trying to change that with a program that informs families about tissue donation and a website that encourages people with autism and their families to get involved in research projects.




To enable the brain to grow around the disturbed patches, ”treatment should start early in childhood, when the brain is capable of rewiring to work around damaged areas ....” The cortex should be “like a six layer cake” with certain cells in predictable places. But in the children with autism, "there are patches in which specific cells in specific layers seem to be missing." Where the patches of disorganized cells occur determines the symptoms in the autistic person. Those symptoms can improve with treatment, so Courchesne thinks their brains may be “rewiring” with treatment and growth to find new neural paths around the disorganized areas.

In ten out of eleven children with autism, the same type of changes had occurred, which the scientist considered to be odd, since there are “many” genes involved in autism. Why not a greater variety of symptoms and brain development problems? He wants to do a larger study to see whether, in larger numbers of cases, the same disorganized patches would occur again; and questions why the whole cortex is not disorganized rather than just the few spots. The problem with brain research like this is that there are too few appropriate cases available for observation.

There is an attempt being made to encourage more parents whose autistic children have died to give their brains up for scientific research. This study does tend to prove in a concrete way whether the symptoms of autism, which can be numerous and obscure, are hard wired in the brain and not merely a product of the environment or parental “handling” of the child. A child who devolves into a loud and embarrassing case of “the screaming-meemies” may be thought to be merely “spoiled.” There are so many things that parents should know if they are going to bring up children in the best way possible. In past generations many children with mental disorders were likely to be “whipped,” as beating used to be termed. Thank goodness we have psychology today.