Bill Clinton is coming to Minneapolis in a couple weeks and I totally forgot to get tickets. If anyone can hook me up with two tickets, I’ll give you a year’s worth of free computer repair. I view Clinton with mixed feelings. I thought he backed down too soon on issues like health care and he too often tried to play the centrist when a bold stroke of progressivism was necessary. But I miss his ability to speak articulately and without a script, as well as his encyclopedic knowledge of policy issues both prominent and obscure.
Ugh, it’s late. I had to teach a Civics class tonight and was planning on being home by 8. But then I joined the class for beers afterwards and traffic coming home on I-94 was a bear. Long story short, it’s now 11:30 and I should stop dallying and get to bed.

Today’s All Things Considered featured a story on a college degree program in Seattle for students with intellectual disabilities. The program’s founder rightly points out that special education has focused exclusively on K-12 with little attention paid to post-secondary education. But I think that reflects broader attitudes on education in this country. Since the 19th century, K-12 education had been a quasi-fundamental right for American children. The same can’t be said for higher education. A college degree is not seen as an entitlement, even though volumes of research support the notion that college graduates have higher-paying jobs. Perhaps programs like the one discussed on ATC will be part of a growing trend to provide more universal access to higher education at a time when global competition demands a more skilled workforce.

Spent much of today painting my condo. And I must say, it’s looking good. Tomorrow, we do the bedroom and that should be a wrap. Pictures forthcoming.

I’m taking bets on when we’ll hear the first reports of someone getting fired because they were caught in their cubicle watching porn on their video iPod. While watching movies on a tiny screen doesn’t interest me much, the ability to download television episodes for a small fee is likely to be far more groundbreaking in the long run. It will be interesting to see how many content producers get on board with this concept and license their stuff to Apple. Could Apple risk becoming a monopoly in its own right as the dominant purveyor of digital entertainment? Such a scenario would be deliciously ironic.
Speaking of irony, my brother is due to get a now-outdated audio-only iPod as a belated birthday gift. I wonder if he’ll be pissed.

I listen to the Nightline podcast from time to time and they recently did a show on adults with autism. I give Nightline credit for doing a story on adults with any kind of disability. Every local news station in the country probably has an entire shelf in their archive labeled “Cute Handicapped Kid Stories.” But adults with disabilities aren’t as cuddly, at least not according to the media. (I happen to be very cuddly, but that’s another entry.) The story discussed the enormously important role that parents play in the lives of their grown children with autism, and how the transition to adult services can be quite jarring for these families. School is the bedrock in the lives of a lot of kids with disabilities. School gets them out of the house and is often their only forum for making friends and building social skills. When that familiar setting is gone (and a lot of people with developmental disabilities crave routine), it takes a lot of effort to replace it with something else that gets them out into the community.
And where the hell are the disability podcasts? I just did a quick Google search and the results were disappointing. There are podcasts out there featuring people talking about, I shit you not, their bowel movements and we can’t come up with a disability-themed podcast? Don’t make me do it myself. The disability community must have a bunch of better-sounding people than me who could do a weekly podcast. So where are you?