I blogged a few months ago about Gary McKinnon, the British man who faced extradition to the U.S. for breaking into American defense networks in 2002 in a quest to find evidence of a government cover-up on U.F.O.s. McKinnon’s case had drawn considerable media attention because he has Asperger’s Syndrome and his family is deeply concerned that the American prison system is not equipped to handle his mental health needs. Over the Thanksgiving holiday, the British Home Secretary rejected a final appeal from McKinnon and ruled that he must be extradited to the U.S. “forthwith”.

The secretary cited as supporting documentation a letter from the U.S. Justice Department stating our government would assure McKinnon receives the necessary treatment and medical care. I’m not sure how much credibility I would give those assurances. The American penal system doesn’t have a sterling record of caring for inmates with mental health needs. McKinnon may still be able to serve his sentence in the U.K., but the Americans seem determined to make an example of McKinnon as a warning to other hackers who might attempt similar mischief. That’s not great news for McKinnon.

My dad called me today for some tech support on his iMac (I’m the only PC in a family of Macs). Having not used a Mac since the 80’s, I could do little more than do some basic Google searches and offer the most rudimentary suggestions. When my best suggestion is “turn it off and on”, you know I’m grasping at straws. He figured out the solution himself after a few minutes. It almost made me nostalgic for the days when I would spend forty-five minutes on the phone helping him install a printer driver.

I posted a couple days ago about Rom Houben, the Belgian man who was misdiagnosed as being in a coma for the last couple decades. Since then, the story has taken another interesting turn. Hauben described his experience to German magazine Der Spiegel using a method called “facilitated communication”, a method by which an assistant holds the individual’s hand and helps the individual type out messages on a keyboard. His recounting is quite vivid:

I became the witness to my own suffering, as doctors and nurses tried to speak to me and eventually gave up.

Facilitated communication is viewed with skepticism by many because it’s difficult to determine whether the assistant is simply assisting or actually typing out the messages for the individual. Most controlled studies have found facilitated communication to be unreliable and subject to the assistant conscious or unconscious influence. That isn’t to say that Houben isn’t self-aware. But it seems reasonable to wonder how articulate any of us would be after having no social interaction for the better part of a lifetime.

A lot of what we know about the brain is still wrong. We’re discovering more every day about the inner workings of mind and consciousness, but that’s of little consolation to someone like Rom Houben. After being seriously injured in a car accident twenty-three years ago, Houben’s doctors misdiagnosed him as being in a coma even though he continued to be completely self-aware. The misdiagnosis came to light only after a neurologist conducted a comprehensive reassessment that revealed his brain ccontinued to function normally.

I can’t even imagine the frustration and despair that this man must have felt as the years marched on. I can’t imagine all the times he must have been in discomfort or pain and unable to communicate the fact to anyone. I’d be very interested to know what coping mechanisms he developed to deal with such long-term isolation. Once neural implants are perfected, Houben should be first in line to receive one.

Some of you know that I’m a Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan. It’s one of the better-scripted series to have appeared on television with plenty of wit, depth, and cute women talking smack and kicking ass. It deserves a lot of credit for kicking off the modern pop culture fascination with all things vampire. Which brings me to the Twilight series. Now, I haven’t read any of the books or seen any of the movies, but from all the reviews I’ve read of Meyers’ oeuvre, it seems like pretty weak tea compared to the Buffy series. A bunch of mopey vampires and a heroine who doesn’t really do anything heroic making googly eyes at each other.

A brilliant mashup of the Buffy and Twilight franchises lays bare the stark differences in how these two fictional universes regard women. Take a guess as to which one takes a more patriarchal view and seems to imply that stalking is perfectly acceptable behavior for hysterically emo guys. And don’t even get me started on a comparison of the dialog. Ick. Just…ick.