Summary
This page is an attempt at capturing all I've learned about autism and asperger's syndrome in the last few days. I hope it's as helpful to you as it is to me. Beware that some parts may not be 100% accurate. 
Asperger's describes a mutation in genes that affect the timing of specific areas brain. This alters a person's information processing and cogniton abilities. These genes have been linked to the ability to grasp complex systems (aka. "systematizer" traits). The results of the mutation are complicated; since they happen at birth, it affects development of the brain as a whole, since most of your brain is a blank slate when you are born, and undergoes a lot of development between the ages of 0 and 4.
It's natural for people with asperger's to get very involved in activities that involve organizing large, complex systems. I believe that what's changed is the ability of the person to load up a lot of detailed context into their brain at a time, and then keep it stable while working with it. By changing the timing mechanism of the brain, perhaps the information isn't flushed out as quickly, and perhaps this is why autistic people are so easy to overstimulate -- the information doesn't get flushed out, and their brain starts to go into overload as more and more neural areas are activated based on the information that keeps coming in.
Social situations are often a challenge to people with asperger's -- not because people with asperger's don't like to be social, but because they simply think differently, have a different mode of communication, enjoy different things, and can have trouble understanding facial expressions. Aspies think slower and deeper, and often have to think a bit before they speak. This can make it very hard to contribute to a normal conversation since the topic can bounce all over the place very quickly, and by the time the aspie's thought of what to say, the conversation's already moved on. Another common problem is the inability to properly recognize and create facial expressions. As you can imagine, this also leads to social problems.
Neurotypical people have a lot of trouble understanding asperger's because, for many people with asperger's, most of their behaviour seems perfectly normal. The things that make autistics different can be percieved by neurotypicals as eccentricities, or antisocial behaviour, or character flaws. Of course, on the flipside, aspies see neurotypicals as strange for wanting to spend hours yakking about nothing (aka. "socializing") while there are much more enjoyable and interesting things to do. Aspies are quite comfortable spending many hours alone by themselves completely focussed on organizing, analyzing, or understanding something complex or repetitious. This would drive a neurotypical person nuts.
Now, I'm not saying that people with asperger's don't like people. They have the same social needs as everyone else -- they need to live and laugh and love! The difference is that they don't enjoy what most people enjoy. As such, aspies usually feel isolated. But, get a bunch of them together, and they'll be jumping and laughing, talking for hours about deep and interesting subjects, adventuring, creating things, dancing, etc.
I think that the thing about asperger's which is difficult to grasp is that it adds an extra dimension to the universe of personalities. This means that there are as many different flavours of autistic people as there are neurotypical people.
Here are some common asperger's persoanlities:
Essentially, neurotypical people must understand that the variations in personality are even wider than they originally thought, and that they should listen to people with asperger's and try to open their mind to understand this dimension.
Scientific Research
THE ASSORTATIVE MATING THEORY by Simon Baron-Cohen, a well known autism researcher (not related to Ali-G)
Videos
I find these videos by people with asperger's very helpful in seeing the stubleties of this different way of thinking:
A good explanation of Asperger's from a teenage male with it
- An intelligent, charismatic-seeming girl with asperger's explains it all:
Asperger's and Me (a funny short film)
- A young british girl with asperger's talks about her expriences:
#werd
I'll bet dollars to donuts that this place is littered with aspergerites!
It acutally makes a lot of sense. A problem that's common to people whose brains are clocked differently is difficulty with face-to-face social communication, while at the same time having powerful verbal skills. What better place to be than IRC?
(I reordered the messages to make them easier to follow.)
11:54 <@_daniel> what's aspertainger
11:55 <@epitato> you don't know?
11:55 <@_daniel> ohhh i do but i want to check if you do!!!
11:55 <@epitato> it's someone who's got a gene that alters the wiring of the
brain causing some problems and some benefits
11:56 <@epitato> it can be expressed strongly or weakly
11:56 <@epitato> since many genes are gradients
11:56 <@epitato> (eg. skin colour)
11:56 <@epitato> hence it creates a spectrum of conditions
11:56 <@_daniel> mkay
11:57 <@epitato> strong expression really messes you up
11:57 <@epitato> you're very sensitive to the outside world, and you can't
understand other people... you see them as objects
11:57 <@epitato> you have strange behaviours that seem normal to you, but are
frowned on by other people
11:58 <@_daniel> :O
11:58 <@blong> INFP o/`
11:58 <@epitato> weaker expression allows you to focus for long periods of time
on special interests, usually involving structure
11:58 <@epitato> music, art, computers, math, physics
11:58 <@epitato> which is why the prevalence of autism in silicon valley is
higher than other places
11:59 <@epitato> it has a wide range of manifestations
11:59 <@epitato> it doesn't mean you talk in a monotone
11:59 <@epitato> it doesn't mean you rock all the time
11:59 <@cgm> i rock 24/8
12:00 <@mech0r> cgm works on a 8 day week
11:59 <@mech0r> i have trouble expressing myself
11:59 <@mech0r> i'm retarded
11:59 <@blong> can i be both ADD and have aspergers
11:59 <@epitato> haha
11:59 <@epitato> blong: that's a good question... i'm not sure how it alters
the wiring
12:00 <@epitato> they may be mutually exclusive
12:00 <@epitato> but a few aspergers types get diagnosed as ADD/ADHD
12:00 <@epitato> do regular people seem weird to you?
12:00 <@epitato> like, "why the hell are they doing that that way!? i wouldn't
do it that way!"
12:00 <@mech0r> regulars make me seem weird
12:01 <@epitato> well, you are. but in a good way mech0r
12:00 <@cgm> :)
12:01 <@cgm> everyone seems strange to me
12:01 <@cgm> normal ppl don't exist
12:02 <@blong> when i do things
12:02 <@blong> like evne simple things
12:02 <@blong> everyone says "why are you doing it this way"