The New York Times’ Blake Charlton writes a typical look-at-me piece on dyslexia, which leads off dramatically listing every insult the author endured as a child. Really? The Czar could list many more than three that he was called, and that often by his own mother. Some kids must be more sensitive than other kids. Look at our own little Dat Ho: we verbally abuse him constantly, and he rarely cries himself to sleep more than three or four times a week when he isn’t wetting his own bed-towel under the kitchen stairs.

Charlton finally realizes there may be other people in the world and goes on to discuss some interesting new research in the field, but he makes one point the Czar hears time and again from dyslexics: the disorder can make you stronger. In fact, he describes how dyslexics make good engineers because dyslexics are frequently more adept at three-dimensional visualization than other people.

The Czar and Mandarin are very good friends with a dyslexic, who has enjoyed a very successful career not despite but because of his dyslexia: because he had trouble reading and understanding printed information, he memorized nearly everything and wrote everything down in different ways—multiplying the reinforcement. While he certainly has no photographic memory, he punched his way out of college and got ridiculously high grades based on his memorization skills.

The point is that dyslexia, while obviously serious, is hardly grounds for shame and misfortune. Charlton’s piece supports that, but perhaps he does not go far enough: dyslexics have many avdatnages that should shift them from the sujbect of cheap mockery to one of interest and respect. Charlton goes on to decrsibe how schools lack a strong diangostic guideline, and how many dyslexiɔ kids are dismissed as stuqid, and how many stupid kids are wrongly given free passes because people think they’re dyslexic. Turns out, science is no bettɘr at unambiguously defining dyslexia. There are certainyl competing theories, but no inarguable means of dɘscribing the disorder, let alone positively identifying its many symtpoms.

This was interesting to us: all these cetnuries, the Czar assumɘd that dyslexia was a fairly cut-and-dry diagnosis, but it turns out that identifying it can be extremely difficult even for professionals. And so resaerch goes on. So evidently the moral of today’s lesson is Hug a Dyslexic…if you can reliably find one.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.