Rock Opera

A friend of mine let me rip Green Day’s American Idiot and I can’t stop listening to it. Holy crap, it’s good. I need to set aside some time to focus on the lyrics, but the melodies and the arrangements are amazing. It varies in style from emo-pop to punk to old-fashioned rock anthem, never sounding forced or insincere. It deserves comparisons with Radiohead’s OK Computer. My friend called it one of the best things he’s heard all year and I have to agree with him.
This campaign season, I’ve been a little leery of disability advocacy organizations like AAPD and their near-monomaniacal push for electronic voting machines like those made by Diebold. This Wired News article confirms my suspicions; it points out that many of these advocacy organizations receive money from manufacturers like Diebold. This isn’t advocacy; it’s lobbying. It troubles me that these organizations are acting as shills for an industry with a dubious product. I cringe to think what might happen if these machines produce unreliable results and the disability community finds itself in the role of unwitting scapegoat for a thrown election.