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There’s a fine line here.Let’s agree that parents whose children hit, bite, smear their feces, or severely self-injure are having a hard time of it. Meltdowns are hard to take for everyone, even from low-support autistics. Someone who loves a child with limited communications skills is going to worry that he’s in existential torment with no way to seek or accept the comfort a loving parent wants to give.Parents sign on for a lifetime of helping their children develop and grow into adulthood. When the process is very slow, sometimes regressing, that’s a failure of what they reasonably hoped for. The death of a hope is a loss to be mourned.On the other hand, if you grieve, there is a choice of what you make of it. Compare:A pool of families who have been encouraged to believe there’s a poster child, and poster parents, in every one of their homes.A pool of families who can rely on allies in getting the support services they need — possibly to the extent of taking those allies for granted.Suppose you ran a charity that admits to spending a large share of its revenues on fundraising; well over half if you recognize that “education” budgets for such charities go mostly into poster-child brochures attached to pledge forms.Which pool would you prefer?I hate to be a cynic, but AS’s track record rarely disappoints.The thing is, we can deprecate Autism Speaks without being cruel to the parents.Practically every parent who allies with Autism Speaks is a tireless advocate for her child. Even the ones who enrich hucksters that may even poison or starve their children are making difficult (if futile) sacrifices. All of them need and seek mutual support. They learn from each other how they can cope and what services they can find.If that (informal) support structure was catalyzed by Autism Speaks, fine. You don’t have to trust it at the headquarters level to believe that families deserve support any way they can find it.

Q. I don't stand for the pledge of allegiance at my school, Is there a good reason to really stand even though I don't wanna pledge my "allegiance"? I’m a 14 year old who doesn’t wanna stand for the pledge of allegiance as I’m not sure that i really wanna pledge myself to America. I feel like America does a lot of things wrong and i don’t want to blindly align myself. My teacher told me i was disrespecting the lives of people who died for me.I was asked to answer this. So, answering as an American, a veteran, a child growing up during World War II, an educated man, an alter cocker, and a patriot:As a child in wartime with a brother and other relatives in combat, I proudly stood and said the Pledge of Allegiance each morning in school. In those days it did not include the odious phrase “under god.”Having lived through the Red Scares and McCarthyism of the 1950s with its various Loyalty Oaths, I now think of the Pledge of Allegiance as at best unncessary, and at worst a government intrusion, not unlike the mandatory (and ultimately unconstitutional) prayer and Bible-reading in the public schools of Pennsylvania when I was a boy. The only places I can recall saying the Pledge of Allegiance were in school and at Kiwanis meetings during the year I was a member. To the best of my knowledge, adults in the United States, other than public school teachers, do not say the Pledge of Allegiance.The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that no one may be compelled to recite the Pledge of Allegiance or face reprisals for not taking part. (Tell that to school bullies, including teachers.)Now for a digression about symbolism.The Pledge of Allegiance, like the National Anthem, focuses on the flag of the United States of America, as not only the symbol of the nation, but as a symbol of what we, its citizens, hope and dream for our nation. Perhaps one of the reasons adults do not routinely say the Pledge of Allegiance is that we are all aware of instances where the nation has fallen short of our hopes and dreams.I love the flag. I have proudly stood at attention, saluting when in uniform, as the flag was raised or lowered, or went passing by. I also love America, warts and all, even though my country has not always been in the right. I love America because Americans as a people do try to do the right thing, even when our government doesn’t do things our way. I love America because the people are better than their government. It is this that makes our form of a democratic republic effective. The people will eventually put the government back on the right track, after it wanders off, with a peaceful exchange of power.In my granddaughter’s classroom last year they said the Pledge of Allegiance followed by singing the chorus of the George M. Cohan song:You're a grand old flag,You're a high-flying flag,And forever in peace may you wave.You're the emblem of the land I love,The home of the free and the brave.Ev'ry heart beats true'Neath the Red, White and Blue,Where there's never a boast or brag.But should auld acquaintance be forgot,Keep your eye on the grand old flag.So, as you are deciding what you wish to do about the Pledge at school. keep in mind that it is about the flag, and the flag is as much about our hopes and dreams as it is about the past actions of government.Now to your specific question.No, you do not have to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance in class. The Supreme Court of the United States has affirmed that right. Nor do you have to give a reason.Your teacher is wrong, as teachers often are. Failing to stand with hand over heart and mouth a sentence said every morning by school children is not showing “disrespect for the lives of people who died for (you).” Indeed, in the greater scheme of things, those people died so that you would continue to have the right to abstain from a loyalty oath or pledge. Had we lost World War II, you would have no right not to face the Nazi flag and shout “Sieg heil!”As a veteran, I support dissent, even when I strongly disagree with it. On several occasions I have taken an oath as a naval officer to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. And the first right in the Bill of Rights of the Constitution is the right to say what you believe, and the right not to say what some government person tells you to say.I hope that I have given you good reasons to make an intelligent choice regarding the Pledge of Allegiance.It’s your call.

With luck it will skip coal and go with a mixture of gas generation, wind energy, solar PV and desert hydroelectricity.The continent has a fair amount of oil and typically where there’s oil there’s gas. I just assessed Angola’s potential energy mix and it has both, although far more than enough hydro, solar and wind resources to ignore all fossil fuel generation. Gas isn’t great from a CO2 and pollution perspective, but it’s not nearly as bad as coal.Wind and solar are capital intensive while gas defers costs to a higher operating cost. As a result, gas is attractive for relatively poor countries compared to renewables for utility-scale generation. They can afford to build gas plants and pay for fuel out of revenues. Getting financing for larger capital projects is often difficult. Developed nations have typically found ways to do this. Hopefully, little gas generation will be built and it will drop in capacity factor rapidly asMany locations remain off-grid or are connected to sketchy grids however. Micro-grids with lots of smaller scale solar and wind can make a big difference to more rural areas. The overall energy mix won’t be as stable as we are used to in the developed world, but it’s a lot better than no electricity.Hydro power is low carbon only when it’s not submerging a lot of biomass. In tropical rain forests, CO2 emissions are high for 60 years due to anaerobic decomposition of biomass under the reservoir.While wind and solar prices have dropped precipitously, they are still capital intensive forms of generation. With luck, just as the World Bank pledged to limit financing for coal plants it will pledge to ensure financing for renewables. That said, it’s track record since the 2013 pledge isn’t that great.Like my content? Help it spread via Patreon. Get confidential consulting via OnFrontiers. Email me if you’d like me to write for you.