I spent the weekend attending a conference and, at least for a couple hours, playing tourist. Here I am at one landmark:

The dashing figure next to me is Franklin Roosevelt at the FDR Memorial near the Mall in Washington D.C. It’s a serene little area with a waterfall and several FDR quotes carved into the store walls. I found this one particularly resonant:

In these days of difficulty, we Americans everywhere must and shall choose the path of social justice, the path of faith, the path of hope and the path of love toward our fellow men.

Since the weather on my previous trips to Washington never allowed for much lingering on the Mall, I also paid a visit to the Lincoln Memorial, which offers a spectacular view of the Reflecting Pool and Washington Monument.

Here I am at the top of the Lincoln Memorial, with the Reflecting Pool behind me. DC is always an attractive city, but I was fortunate enough to be there when the cherry blossoms were in full bloom. Canopies of delicate pinks and whites line the area around the Washington Monument, where locals and tourists alike lounge in the grass and fly kites.

I’m home now and getting my information fix after a couple days of being off-line. So, back to your regularly scheduled blogging.

Conservatives live in constant fear that the United States is becoming more like that haven for socialists and layabouts known as Europe. But a quick glance at the news reveals that Europeans have a more sanguine reaction to the recession compared to the fear and panic keeping many Americans awake at night. As Ezra Klein points out, the social safety nets found in most developed European nations are softening the recession’s blow for their citizens. A job loss doesn’t deprive them of basic health care, education, and food. Americans, lacking such guarantees, tend to keep a wary eye on neighbors and colleagues during tight economic times and sharply pull back their spending when they see that the family down the street lost their home or several close friends lost their jobs. And this kind of massive spending curb only makes recessions worse.

We Americans may have arrived at one of those critical decision points that comes along once in a generation. Do we sacrifice a little economic growth for quite a bit of peace of mind? Or do we countenance the shantytowns springing up in American cities as the price to pay for the next boom?

Genetic researchers in Japan have developed an innovative method for treating Duchenne’s Muscular Dystrophy in dogs. The treatment involves a genetic “patch” that inhibits a portion of the DMD gene, causing the remainder of the gene to express itself as the milder Becker muscular dystrophy. Video of treated and untreated dogs shows noticeable improvements in the treated dogs, but it will be some time before this method can be tested on humans.

It will probably take decades before congenital disabilities can be completely erased from an individual’s DNA, but treatments like this–that trade a severe condition for a milder form–might be much closer to being realized.

Some families have bad luck. And some families fall victim to such horrendous, cruel, cosmically unjust twists of fate that they believe they’re cursed. In the opening pages of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, the reader is introduced to the concept of fuku: the family curse that casts its shadow across generations and brings woe and misfortune to everyone it touches. The book bears witness to the capricious whims of fuku that befall Oscar de Leon (“Wao” turns out to be a nickname) and his forebears.

Oscar is, according to his best friend and the book’s chief narrator, an overweight Dominican ghetto nerd living in Jersey who is absolutely hopeless around girls. The book abounds with references to Lord of the Rings, Watchmen, Planet of the Apes, Dune, and other major and minor works in the geek canon. Oscar fancies himself a writer and spends countless lonely hours in front of his computer, cranking out page after page of what he hopes will be the next space opera masterpiece. More than anything, Oscar wants a girlfriend, but his all-consuming crushes (on women with significant flaws of their own) usually end in disappointment and heartbreak.

The novel isn’t just about Oscar, though. We are transported back in time to the Dominican Republic of Oscar’s parents and grandparents, a place where beauty and terror exist in close proximity. Trujillo, the country’s psychotic fascist dictator for much of the twentieth century, looms over events like a modern-day Sauron. Trujillo’s murderous rule leads to the downfall of Oscar’s grandfather, a familial calamity that sets a tragic chain of events in motion that have implications even for Oscar.

This is an enthralling book narrated in several distinctive voices. The prose is beautiful, funny, and generally a pleasure to hear in my own head. Oscar’s sad sack state of being is treated with empathy without elevating him to geek sainthood. Oscar is no hero, but he does the best he can.

While reading Oscar’s story, I had a nagging feeling of familiarity. Oscar reminds me of someone. I’ll figure it out who it is eventually.

Wow, so Obama is capable of saying stupid stuff. I thought we would get through at least the first six months of his administration before he made some wince-inducing remark. But unlike Sarah Palin, I’m going to keep the president’s faux pas in perspective. If the disability community wants something to get upset about, there’s the group home in Texas where the staff organized their own little fight club using the residents as gladiators.