Wake of Echoes

Dear Hiring Manager: This is  Autism Awareness Month , and one of the areas where "awareness" is most lacking is probably in your human resources department. If you have spent any time at all interviewing candidates for positions at your company, you have encountered some with autism. You might have seen them come and go without even knowing that AUTISM was the reason they talked a little different, struggled with their words or failed to look you in the eye. Why am I so sure you have already interviewed someone with autism? Because roughly one percent of the population has autism . Most of those, you probably rejected immediately. In fact, employment rates for people with autism -- even autistic  college graduates -- is discouragingly  low . Lower than those in any other disabled group.   And yet, research also shows that people on the autism spectrum make great employees . They are honest, dedicated and punctual. In addition, many autistic people have...

Back in January, when I wrote about why I love Millennials , I mentioned that Millennials are media cynics who neither watch nor trust what the mainstream media has to say about politics. It's true, and I respect that. Truly. But I know what some of you were thinking: Yeah, but whether they watch the mainstream media or not, Millennials are still overwhelmingly liberal. Yep, that's true too. There are lots of explanations for that, just like there are lots of explanations for why senior citizens are mostly conservative. Some are detailed, some are vague. Some are logical, some are just insulting. Some go back hundreds of years, like the one below, which I've heard in one form or another for most of my life ( For more information on the origin of this saying, visit:  Quote Investigator ). We could talk for a long time about the influence of teachers, parents and peers on the political and ideological outlook of Millennials (okay, and everyone else too), but to...