I don’t have much time for proper blogging tonight, but via Kottke, I came across this lovely photo showing a flotilla of hot-air balloons ascending into a dawn sky over the French countryside.

The world isn’t such a bad place, is it?

Like any other group of people, those of us with disabilities are perfectly capable of pulling stunts that are really stupid, even criminal. Take, for instance, the case of the British man with autism accused of hacking into American military networks back in 2001-2002. Gary McKinnon now faces extradition to the U.S. to stand trial. McKinnon’s family and several members of parliament contend that he is too vulnerable to be sent off to America and should instead be tried in the U.K.

As an example of society’s conflicting notions about disability and criminal justice. It’s not difficult to ascribe McKinnon’s actions to naive obsession. He claims that he was only looking for evidence of a U.F.O. coverup and had no malicious intent. But British authorities argue that his disability doesn’t exempt him from equal treatment under the extradition treaty with the U.S. I’m inclined to agree. The struggle for disability rights is the struggle for equality in both the eyes of the law and in the eyes of our fellow citizens. We do ourselves little good if, in one breath, we demand equal access to employment, education and the like but then point to our frailties and beg for pity when we don’t like the full implications of said equality.

I realize that McKinnon may not care one bit about promoting the integrity of the disability rights movement. I probably wouldn’t if I was in his situation. But when a person with a disability argues that he should receive special dispensation under the law solely because of his disability, that should be cause for alarm.

Ridley Scott is on board to direct a prequel to Alien, the 1979 movie that made John Hurt’s viscera famous. Since it’s a prequel, I can only assume that every human character dies or is otherwise prevented from returning to civilized space to tell the tale (otherwise, the original movie wouldn’t make much sense). I’m not sure it’s a necessary story, but I’m intrigued nonetheless. The years have not been kind to the Alien franchise and it desperately needs to be saved from itself. Between this project and his slated adaptations of The Forever War and Brave New World, Scott could spark something of a revival for serious, well-crafted science fiction films.

Here’s what I take away from the latest NYT/CBS poll on health care: people are quite capable of holding two completely opposing beliefs simultaneously. To wit:

In one finding, 75 percent of respondents said they were concerned that the cost of their own health care would eventually go up if the government did not create a system of providing health care for all Americans. But in another finding, 77 percent said they were concerned that the cost of health care would go up if the government did create such a system.

As a whole, Americans are deeply ambivalent of government’s ability to implement any kind of complicated social program. That’s what thirty years of conservative ideologues bashing government will get you. But once those programs are up and running, they tend to be pretty popular. Nobody talks seriously about eliminating Medicare or Social Security anymore because it would be political suicide. But we have a high tolerance for putting up with intolerable situations. As intolerable as our current health care system is, it is familiar. It’s like that beater car you once had; the one that leaked oil and pulled to the right and always needed a jump when the temperature dipped below freezing. It got you from place to place, but just barely.

If Congress can pass a decent reform bill, it could go a long way towards restoring our faith in good government. I’m just worried that decades of declining expectations for civil institutions of any kind have left us incapable of imagining something better for ourselves.

My body and I are on pretty familiar terms and I’ve learned to pay attention to its early-warning system. A nagging tingling in the back of my nose is the usually first sign of a cold virus taking up residence in my body. Then comes a certain lack of focus. An e-mail that would usually take me five minutes to write suddenly takes ten or fifteen. Then the sneezing begins. That sums up how things went at the office today. A sick day is in order for tomorrow, along with plenty of fluids and next month’s book club selection. Please send vitamin C tablets and an elite unit of Scandinavian nurses clad only in fishnets and silk camisoles.