Good for Rep. Mike Doyle…

The United Nations has designated April 2 as World Autism Awareness Day. To mark this historic occasion, the Autism Society of America, the World Autism Organization and the Co-Chairs of the bipartisan Congressional Coalition for Autism Research and Education (C.A.R.E.), Rep. Chris Smith and Rep. Mike Doyle, will hold a press conference on the Cannon Terrace to build support for critical legislation that would provide needed autism services in the U.S. and around the world.

In February 2008, a bi-partisan group of legislators joined Congressmen Smith and Doyle in introducing the Global Autism Assistance Act, (HR 5446). This landmark legislation will establish a global health and education grant program related to autism spectrum disorders and provide support to families, educational institutions, clinics and medical centers in developing nations…read on

Related: Above shows L.A. Skyline by Stephen Wiltshire, who is diagnosed with autism. Click image for larger and read more about him and his work here. The PRI program Studio 360 had an excellent show this past weekend on Art and Autism which can be streamed and/or downloaded for free.

It looks like we’re going to have John Cusack and his writing partner come on C&L next week to do a live chat about his new movie called “War Inc.” Here’s the My Space page. You may remember this wonderful post he wrote back in ‘05

Bush 2. How depressing, corrupt, unlawful and tragically absurd the administration’s world view actually is…how low the moral bar has been lowered…and (though I know I’m capable of intellectually lazy notions of collective guilt) how complicit our silence as citizens is…Nixon, a true fiend, looks like a paragon of virtue next to the criminally incompetent robber barons now raiding the present and future. But where are the Dems? American foreign policy is in chaos. We are now left in the surreal position of having to condemn American-sponsored torture as official policy while a deranged President Bush orders his staff to attend ethics briefings — a “refresher course” — from the White House counsel.read on

When we set the date, I’ll let you all know…

What we love most at the Open Thread is good writing. When I saw a THIRD well-written review of the Led Zeppelin London concert, reviews that were clearly labors of literary love, I had to share. It’s a thing to behold when fine art, in this case an amazing musical career and arguably the concert of the year, leads and inspires another kind of artist, the journalist, to greatness as well.

Instances by…

Salman Ahmed and Mark Levine at Al Jazeera,

Sasha Frere-Jones at The New Yorker,

and Ben Ratliff at The New York [effin] Times…

Open thread below…

Found within this must-read post at Group News Blog.

You’ve got to see Chris Jordan’s work.

Image above shows detail of blocks made of blocks indicating the number of US children without health insurance.

From Running the Numbers, an American Self-Portrait:

This new series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 426,000 cell phones retired every day. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. My underlying desire is to affirm and sanctify the crucial role of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming.

Chris promises to add pieces as they are completed; well worth the bookmark.