I missed earlier reports that SCOTUS nominee Sonia Sotomayor has diabetes, although it certainly doesn’t change my opinion that she is eminently qualified for the job. I do find it interesting that her disability (diabetes constitutes an impairment under the ADA) is receiving such scrutiny. Other justices came onto the job with chronic health conditions, but the press was less inclined to disclose those facts to the public. Perhaps the unrestrained public discussion on Sotomayor’s diabetes shows that we can openly acknowledge the disabilities of public figures instead of politely ignoring them. Or we are simply witnessing the consequences of living in the age of Facebook and Twitter, where full disclosure is the behavioral norm.

Incidentally, Sotomayor has presided over some major disability discrimination cases and her written opinions illustrate an admirable resistance to the Rehnquist Court’s efforts to dilute the intent of the ADA.

In addition to being Memorial Day, today is also Towel Day. As geeks around the world already know, a towel is one of the most useful multi-purpose tools ever created by sentient hands. According to the seminal Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

[Y]ou can wrap [a towel] around you for warmth as you bound across the cold
moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble sanded
beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep
under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of
Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth;
wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward
off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast
of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t
see it, it can’t see you — daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can
wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry
yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

So before you leave for the beach, barbecue, or anywhere else, be sure to grab a towel. Mine doubles as a seat cover and a coded map to the secret stash where I keep my fake passports, hard currency, and old love letters. And remember: don’t panic!

Once the weather improves, the space shuttle Atlantis will return to Earth after successfully completing its mission to repair the Hubble telescope. Let’s take a moment to marvel at the mind-boggling coolness of this accomplishment. A group of people blasted off on a rocket, orchestrated a carefully calculated ballet of physics to chase down an object moving at thousands of miles per hour, plucked it out of space with a robotic arm, gave it a tune-up while working in the vacuum of space, and then returned said object to its usual orbit. A million things could have gone wrong, but somehow, everything went as planned.

Humans can fuck up on a grand scale, but sometimes we don’t give ourselves enough credit.

By nature, I’m a pretty self-deprecating person. I’m constantly poking fun at myself, both in the confines of this blog and in the presence of friends and strangers alike. And I’ve tried to use it as a means to make myself seem more attractive to women. It usually seemed like an effective way to acknowledge all my oddities while also communicating that I’m generally comfortable with who I am. A new study on self-deprecatory humor confirms that it can enhance one’s attractiveness, but there’s a catch. It only works if the person mocking himself or herself already has a high social status. Here’s the conclusion of the study’s authors:

Thus, the the use of self-deprecating humor by low-status individuals
may be counter-productive, suggesting depression, defeatism,
subordination, low self-esteem, and/or low mate value. On the other
hand, if an individual has achieved high social status, they are
unlikely to have truly low conscientiousness, extraversion, or
emotional stability, and they must show reasonable agreeableness often
enough to make friends and win support. Thus, self-deprecating humor
may be a way of transiently faking inferior personally traits, to
highlight the discrepancy between the faked traits (e.g., introversion,
neuroticism) and the traits actually required to win high status.

Well, that explains why my charm offensive hasn’t met with much success over the years. I haven’t achieved a sufficient level of coolness to counteract all my self-mocking. Instead, I’ve only succeeded in confirming everyone’s impression that I am, without a doubt, a huge dork.

This calls for drastic measures. Maybe I should try emulating the strong, silent type.

Well, without the whole “strong” part.

Aaargh, there I go again. I can’t help myself.

Plenty of local political pundits are trying to predict how the failure of the Legislature and governor to agree on a budget (Doug Grow has a terrific article in MinnPost describing the end-of-session collapse) will affect the next round of state elections. Probably not much. November 2010 is in the distant future, politically speaking, and most voters have short memories. As long as kids aren’t packed into classrooms like tuna fish and people aren’t dying en masse in emergency rooms, the vast majority of people won’t give much thought to the deep cuts that Pawlenty plans on making in the next few weeks. And even if they do notice, it won’t be Pawlenty’s problem. He’s burnishing his conservative credentials for a presidential run.

The DFL got outplayed. They were planning on doing the hard negotiating during a special session, but the governor changed the rules, making them look irrelevant and confused. There’s still a chance they might be able to undo some of the cuts during the next session, but for right now, it’s Tim Pawlenty’s world and we’re just living in it.

And so ends my last entry on the 2009 legislative session. Time to shift my blogging attentions to the more pleasant things in life, like comic books and women in summer dresses.