Xeni Jardin, one of the editors of the vital BoingBoing blog, was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. Her moving account of receiving her diagnosis can be found here. Several years ago, Xeni and her colleague Susannah Breslin took an interest in my blog and linked to it from BoingBoing. If not for Xeni, the 19th Floor might never have enjoyed such a long run. My thoughts are with her and I hope you’ll send a little good karma her way.
The unemployment rate for people with disabilities has remained persistently high for years and the weak economy makes it even more difficult for people with disabilities to lift themselves out of poverty. The federal government hopes to improve matters by issuing a proposed rule that would require federal contractors to establish goals to hire people with disabilities. No specific hiring quotas are imposed, which means any goals are aspirational. As might be expected, conservatives are complaining that is yet another regulatory burden for the private sector. But federal contractors are already required to establish hiring goals regarding race and gender. Incorporating disability into those goals shouldn’t be terribly burdensome.
Whether this policy will actually improve employment opportunities for people with disabilities is difficult to determine. Contractors may excuse themselves for meeting hiring goals by stating that they can’t find enough qualified applicants. Future budget austerity measures may also reduce the number of positions that contractors can fill. Still, it’s good to see that the Obama administration is giving more than lip service to the notion of hiring people with disabilities.
Director Ridley Scott comments on the state of streaming movies and how streaming is still no substitute for physical media (and Blu-ray in particular). While I certainly enjoy the convenience of streaming, I can’t disagree with Scott’s argument. Nearly every film I’ve streamed on Netflix has suffered from pixelization and blurry camera sweeps. It’s great for old television shows, but I still prefer to watch movies in Blu-ray format. I’ve even begun purchasing more Blu-rays recently because I think the format will be a standard for at least another decade before streaming can begin to compete.
As an aside, I highly recommend The Lord of the Rings Blu-ray set. It looks and sounds spectacular.
Are Republicans seriously considering nominating Newt Gingrich as their presidential candidate? The latest polls seem to indicate just that. The conservative GOP base, in such a froth over Romney’s Mormonism and moderate tendencies, seems oddly eager to throw away the election by throwing its support behind an egomaniac with a history of ethics investigations and who has spent the last decade lobbying on behalf of various corporate interests. Obama is certainly vulnerable next year, but Gingrich is not the candidate to exploit those vulnerabilities. The man’s towering narcissism and raging dickishness will undo his candidacy by next summer, but by then it could be too late for Republicans. If nothing else, a Gingrich candidacy could be the bitter medicine that will force Republicans to rediscover reality and start acting like grownups once again.
If you’re curious about how the health insurance exchanges required under the Affordable Care Act will actually function, Minnesota has released some prototype exchanges for the public to sample. Some are a little flashier than others, but they all seem designed to make shopping for health insurance akin to shopping on Amazon. My work duties will focus exclusively on health care reform for the foreseeable future, so I’ll likely be playing with these modules and their successors. The exchange will likely be responsible for determining Medicaid eligibility, which will require some truly nimble programming skills. All you tech consulting firms are about to become very busy.
The L.A. Times profiles Peter Winkler, a writer with severe rheumatoid arthritis who recently authored a biography of Dennis Hopper. Winkler does all his writing with a MacBook and a plastic stick held between his fingers. This low-tech solution seems to work well for him, although I wonder if he’s ever tried voice input. The article doesn’t indicate whether he’s plugged into the disability community and it would be a shame if he was limiting his writing output simply because aware of the accessibility options available to him.
I really should get serious about my own writing again. Aside from this blog, I haven’t done any sustained writing in a while and I’m beginning to feel the itch to resume. But I’m not sure whether I’d be able to balance both blogging and long-form writing on a daily basis. I have no plans to shutter up the blog, but perhaps it might be time to rethink how it fits with my other writing goals.
For most law students, finals week is quickly approaching. Every field of study has its own peculiar method of flogging students’ minds and spirits, but law school finals require the stamina of a marathon runner, the calm of a Zen master, the recall of a Jeopardy! champion, and the bullshitting skills of a 19th century snake oil vendor. The entire semester’s grade hinges on how quickly and cogently you can apply sixteen weeks of material to an obscure fact pattern involving widgets and easements. It’s a stressful time when students inhabit the library day and night, often forgetting to bathe, eat, or blink.
Recognizing that finals week can be detrimental to one’s mental health, some schools try to give students a brief respite from the stresses of studying. George Mason University throws a puppy party for its law students. For a short while, students get to cuddle with a shelter puppy and forget all about the elements of negligence. The students seem to welcome the distraction, although it’s unclear what the puppies think of the whole business.
Back in my day, all I had to get me through finals was a couple of aspirin, caffeine pills, and late-night television. I didn’t have a puppy to lick my face and tell me everything would be okay. No sir, I studied for 16 hours each day, approached each final with stoic resolve, and then went home afterwards to have myself a good cry. Just like a real man should. Law students these days are way too coddled, what with their puppy parties and their fancy student lounges with free wi-fi and fancy coffee bars. What’s next? Milk and cookies in every classroom? Supervised naptime in between Contracts and Torts? I fear for the future of legal education.
Minnesota policymakers received a bit of unexpected good news today when the latest budget forecast revealed a surplus of $876 million. As late as yesterday, most observers were predicting a deficit of as much as $1 billion. State law requires that all of the surplus be used to replenish reserve funds, so it’s unlikely that any of last summer’s budget cuts will be restored. And the good times are not back by any means. According to the forecast, Minnesota will have a deficit of at least $1.3 billion in the next biennium. I’d like to think that this surplus will give lawmakers some breathing room to consider permanent solutions to our fiscal instability, but that almost certainly won’t happen. Instead, this is a temporary cease-fire in the ongoing battle to define the scope of state government. In the meantime, the Vikings’ chances of receiving some level of public funding for a new stadium have probably improved slightly.
I usually don’t pay much attention to commentary tracks on DVDs. They generally interfere with my willing suspension of disbelief and they typically don’t contribute to my appreciation of the movie. But I may have to pick up a copy of Total Recall after watching this highlight reel of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s commentary. It’s a commentary track as performance art. It’s almost post-modern in its use of super-obvious narration. It’s as if Arnie is trying to make a point about the vapidity of Hollywood blockbusters by giving us the most vapid DVD commentary ever. The man is a genius.
Over at Slate, Chris Wilson theorizes that we may not have detected any signals from extraterrestrial civilizations because of bad timing. Aliens transmissions could have reached our planet back when we were still wandering the plains of Africa. Similarly, any alien scientists situated a few hundred light-years away and pointing their radio telescopes at us right now would hear only silence. The universe is a really, really big place and there’s no guarantee that anyone will be around to listen to a whisper or a shout sent from across the stars. Perhaps civilizations across the universe have risen, flourished, and vanished over eons without ever detecting signs of other intelligence simply because they vanished just as the inhabitants of the nearest inhabited world were discovering the merits of fire. Perhaps we will have already faded into oblivion as a species by the time the denizens of Alpha Centauri broadcast their first anybody out there? into the depths of space.