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"FOR a brief, heady period in the history of autism spectrum diagnosis, in the late '90s, I had Asperger syndrome. There's an educational video from that time, called "Understanding Asperger's," in which I appear. I am the affected 20-year-old in the wannabe-hipster vintage polo shirt talking about how keen his understanding of literature is and how misunderstood he was in fifth grade. The film was a research project directed by my mother, a psychology professor and Asperger specialist, and another expert in her department. It presents me as a young man living a full, meaningful life, despite his mental abnormality. "Understanding Asperger's" was no act of fraud. Both my mother and her colleague believed I met the diagnostic criteria laid out in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition. The manual, still the authoritative text for American therapists, hospitals and insurers, listed the symptoms exhibited by people with Asperger disorder, and, when I was 17, I was judged to fit the bill. I exhibited a "qualified impairment in social interaction," specifically "failure to develop peer relationships appropriate to developmental level" (I had few friends) and a "lack of spontaneous seeking to share enjoyment, interests, or achievements with other people" (I spent a lot of time by myself in my room reading novels and listening to music, and when I did hang out with other kids I often tried to speak like an E. M. Forster narrator, annoying them). I exhibited an "encompassing preoccupation with one or more stereotyped and restricted patterns of interest that is abnormal either in intensity or focus" (I memorized poems and spent a lot of time playing the guitar and writing terrible poems and novels). The general idea with a psychological diagnosis is that it applies when the tendencies involved inhibit a person's ability to experience a happy, normal life. And in my c

"The races will continue in the Aquatics Center for Michael Phelps this week but, in one sense, the race is already over. Phelps has now won more medals than any Olympian: summer or winter, spring or fall. But if you think that must make Phelps, by acclamation, the greatest Olympian in history, it is not that simple. "

"I. MISTAKING BEAUTY FOR TRUTH It's hard to believe now, but not long ago economists were congratulating themselves over the success of their field. Those successes - or so they believed - were both theoretical and practical, leading to a golden era for the profession. On the theoretical side, they thought that they had resolved their internal disputes. Thus, in a 2008 paper titled "The State of Macro" (that is, macroeconomics, the study of big-picture issues like recessions), Olivier Blanchard of M.I.T., now the chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, declared that "the state of macro is good." The battles of yesteryear, he said, were over, and there had been a "broad convergence of vision." And in the real world, economists believed they had things under control: the "central problem of depression-prevention has been solved," declared Robert Lucas of the University of Chicago in his 2003 presidential address to the American Economic Association. In 2004, Ben Bernanke, a former Princeton professor who is now the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, celebrated the Great Moderation in economic performance over the previous two decades, which he attributed in part to improved economic policy making. Last year, everything came apart. Few economists saw our current crisis coming, but this predictive failure was the least of the field's problems. More important was the profession's blindness to the very possibility of catastrophic failures in a market economy. During the golden years, financial economists came to believe that markets were inherently stable - indeed, that stocks and other assets were always priced just right. There was nothing in the prevailing models suggesting the possibility of the kind of collapse that happened last year. Meanwhile, macroeconomists were divided in their views. But the main division was between those who insisted that free-market economies never go astray and those who believed that economie

Parenting sites indicate many New York City parents want caregivers to teach their children a language.

Some interesting questions as to whether parents can "know" it's a good thing or a bad thing to have their children learn a second language. There are clearly cognitive and social costs and benefits that must be weighed.

Researchers want to build a meter that can measure consciousness as easily as body temperature.

The idea that your mother tongue shapes your experience of the world may be true after all.

Standardized tests don't truly measure the qualities of well-educated children.

Parents of girls are 5 percent more likely to divorce than parents of boys. Economists first analyzed the data that way in 2003, when Gordon Dahl at the University of Rochester and Enrico Moretti at U.C.L.A., identified that gap, and noted that it widened as you added boys or girls to a family. Parents of three girls, for instance, are 10 percent more likely to split than are parents of three boys. And, they found, an unmarried couple is more likely to marry if they learn their unborn child will be a boy than a girl.

Fascinating.

People who think more about whether they are right have more cells in an area of the brain known as the frontal lobes.

"World-changing theories and big breakthroughs are what every scientist yearns for. But the pressure to get results - and glory - means that feuds come thick and fast"

"Seeing the world as black and white, in which choices seem clear, or shades of gray can affect people's path in life, from jobs and relationships to which political candidate they vote for, researchers say. People who often have conflicting feelings about situations-the shades-of-gray thinkers-have more of what psychologists call ambivalence, while those who tend toward unequivocal views have less ambivalence.\n\nHigh ambivalence may be useful in some situations, and low ambivalence in others, researchers say. And although people don't fall neatly into one camp or the other, in general, individuals who tend toward ambivalence do so fairly consistently across different areas of their lives. "

"Our ability to recall events seems to sharpen as we get older but can it be trusted"

"The controversial website WikiLeaks collects and posts highly classified documents and video. Founder Julian Assange, who's reportedly being sought for questioning by US authorities, talks to TED's Chris Anderson about how the site operates, what it has accomplished -- and what drives him. The interview includes graphic footage of a recent US airstrike in Baghdad."

Is Wikileaks a force for good? Should some information remain classified or should everything be made available to everyone? Are secrets unethical?

"Can men and women ever compete fairly in a sport like running? Yes, but it requires a little bit of maths know-how."