Salon has a sobering itemized list of the wreckage left in the wake of the Bush administration. A few of the most egregious examples:

• Number of manufacturing jobs lost since 2000: 3.78 million

• Increase in number of unemployed workers from 2001 to 2008: 4 million, a jump of 2.7 percent in the unemployment rate
• Cost to conduct the Iraq war per month: $12 billion
• Amount the Bush administration estimated the war would cost from start to finish: $60 billion
• Increase in the amount that the average employee pays toward employer-provided healthcare since 2000: 120 percent

And over at the New York Times, both Frank Rich and Dahlia Lithwick deliver a couple great op-ed pieces urging the country not to simply turn the page on the Bush years and move on. I have to admit that I haven’t had much patience for those who advocated trying administration officials on war crimes. After reading these articles, I’m a little less certain of my position. We Americans like to think of ourselves as eternal optimists who can shrug off our past failures; we aren’t inclined to sit around and deconstruct our fuck-ups. And in some ways, that’s probably a pretty healthy component for a national psyche to possess. But the last eight years have been bad; probably worse than we realize in our current shellshocked state. This administration has buried a lot of secrets that need to have a light shined on them, even as we look forward to a new political era.

I just passed the 100-friend milepost on Facebook. I’m expecting a suitable-for-framing certificate to arrive shortly in the mail. You know, the one that says “Congratulations! At least 100 people in this world are willing to admit they know you. Now do you feel validated?”

Many of my new Facebook friends ask me about my profile picture, which happens to be the one of me and then-Senator Obama. And every time, I’m tempted to make up some story about how the photo was taken after my job interview with the President-Elect for the position of Undersecretary of Gimp Affairs, but I just can’t bring myself to do it.

Shortly after I started my new position, I realized that my colleagues might be wondering about the strange beeping noises sometimes emanating from my office. The co-workers in my former division had grown largely accustomed to my vent’s assorted alarms in the seven years I had worked there, but my new associates are still getting to know me and my many quirks. I sent out a brief e-mail explaining my vent beeps when the tube is disconnected from me and is usually no cause for concern. I also pointed out that disconnecting me from the vent is a quick and efficient way to silence me, should they feel so inclined.

In time, I might teach a few of them to drive my wheelchair. My standard response to people who get nervous about crashing me or similarly unjustified fears: “Take a good look at me. You’re going to have to try really hard to mess me up any further.”

Ian Rankin, the Scottish mystery author, is pushing to have more books published in Braille. Incidentally, this week marks the 200th birthday of Braille’s inventor, Louis Braille.

It’s great that high-profile authors like Rankin are bringing attention to the woeful shortage of books printed in Braille, but I wonder if the format will still exist in a couple decades. With a few more interface tweaks, devices like the Kindle could read text to the user at any desired speed. Smartphones could also be modified to the task, when they aren’t reading street signs or serving as GPS locators. I could be missing something, but Braille doesn’t have a whole cultural milieu built around it, as we see with American Sign Language. Braille exists as a purely written form of communication developed within the confines of 19th-century technology. Once technology makes print universally accessible via optical character recognition and speech output, will Braille still have a following? We should also ask where the deafblind community stands on this.

The BBC just announced the identity of the actor who will play the eleventh incarnation of the good Doctor. I’ve never heard of him and, apparently, neither have most Brits. I was kind of hoping they’d pick Chiwetel Ejiofor, the guy who played the badass assassin in Serenity, but I’m sure this new guy will work out fine. After all, I had never heard of David Tennant before he took over the role.

On a related note, fans of Battlestar Galactica might want to check out the series of mini-episodes running here as a prelude to the final batch of full episodes. It’s got all kinds of interesting themes. Drug abuse. Bisexuality. And yes, even disability. The only thing missing is Six in a smoking red dress.