In the fullness of time, you can get used to anything. And you don’t realize it until it’s brought to your attention. Last week, I tried out a new ventilator that is both smaller and lighter than the decades-old model I’ve been using and that hasn’t changed much since Reagan was president. The new vent felt…different. It’s hard to explain. The airflow created by the new vent is subtly different from the old vent, but it was enough to make my body say, “Hey, hey, what the hell is this? This won’t do at all.”

A little tweaking of the new vent’s settings helped me feel a little more comfortable and I’m sure that I would eventually adapt. I have fuzzy memories of how strange breathing felt when I first started using this vent, but I adapted without much trouble. I’m like the guy who’s been driving the same Ford Escort for the last 23 years and is now test-driving a Prius. From every technological aspect, the Prius is far superior, but it doesn’t have the familiar hum and rattle of the Escort.

I’ll probably give the new vent another try after the manufacturer modifies a few things; it would be nice to do away with much of the bulk that sits on the back of my wheelchair. And I don’t want to be one of these middle-aged cripples who resists change out of habit and caution. My current vent has served me well, but it’s only a machine.

Here’s why the Japanese are still on track to rule the world. While GM and Chrysler are subsisting on government cheese and figuring out how to make cars that don’t burn through a quarter tank of gas on a trip to the grocery store, Toyota is developing thought-controlled wheelchairs. Toyota’s brain control interface appears to be one of the most advanced yet, capable of analyzing and interpreting brain waves in less than a second. The user still has to wear the obligatory goofy-looking skullcap that seems to come standard with any sort of thought-controlled device, but it’s still cooler than anything that has come out of Detroit in the last couple decades. Companies like Toyota and Honda understand that all those billions of dollars in R&D can be invested in products other than yet another sports sedan–products that might also have higher profit margins. Meanwhile, GM is still struggling to bring a working electric car to market. Yawn.

I patiently await delivery of Toyota’s next generation of transportation devices for people with disabilities: giant thought-controlled robots built to look like samurai warriors.

I can count on a couple fingers the number of times I’ve been crossed the threshold of an Abecrombie & Fitch store. I’ll happily shell out $70 for a pair of pants, but I prefer to do it in a place that doesn’t assault my ears with horrible Europop and the clothes don’t make me look like a douchebag-in-training. I don’t need another reason to avoid shopping there, but A&F’s corporate masters gave me one anyway. A sales clerk at the London store was banned from the sales floor and forced to work in the stockroom because her prosthetic arm didn’t comply with the company’s “Look Policy”. The clerk, also a law student, is now suing the company for discrimination. My guess is that the case will settle quickly and a few middle managers will get sent to diversity training.

Stores have the right to enforce a dress code, but A&F’s actions in this case border on the absurd. Are A&F customers so phobic of physical imperfections that they would be driven away by an attractive clerk with a prosthetic arm? If that is the case, perhaps the company should change its logo to something more fitting, like a swastika.

I don’t have much to add regarding the news of Michael Jackson’s death. I stopped listening to him when I was 16 or 17, but his songs dominated the charts when I first started paying attention to pop music as a kid. I remember lying in a hospital room in 1984 and listening to Thriller. I remember grade school classmates reciting the lyrics to “P.Y.T.”

This is shaping up to be a really weird week in current events.

The Supreme Court issued a big decision yesterday that has special education advocates cheering and school districts breaking out in cold sweats. The court ruled that school districts may be required to pay private-school tuition for some students with disabilities, even if they never received special education services in a public school previously. Some kids are undoubtedly better off in private settings, particularly when the school district lacks the expertise or resources to serve a particular student’s needs. But private-school tuition is expensive and public school districts aren’t getting any richer. I’m not sure that this will lead to substantially higher numbers of kids being placed in private schools, but parents may now feel more empowered to demand that public school officials do more to assure that their children are being provided a free and appropriate public education. Not necessarily a bad result.