Some grad students at MIT have developed a videogame that allows people with and without visual impairments to play together. The game is played with the Wii remote control and the players are cast as deejays competing against each other to get people on the dancefloor.
There aren’t many games available to those with visual impairments, much less multiplayer games, so this is a step in the right direction. Hopefully, such a game will eventually be available on the commercial market.
I’m going to make you smile. I promise. Watch this video of Matt Harding dancing (badly) in dozens of countries around the world. From Zanzibar to Los Angeles, Matt busts his unique move with enthusiastic abandon and the locals can’t resist dancing with him. Matt demonstrates that every one of us dorks has an inner core of white-hot awesomeness waiting to shine through.
Thanks to Adam for sending me the link and making me smile.
The Olympics are approaching and, once those are complete, the Paralympics will follow. The NY Times reports that Iraq, unable to field much of an Olympic team because of the ongoing violence in the country, will send a sizeable delegation to the Paralympics. Many of the Iraqi Paralympians became disabled in the same epidemic of violence that has shattered the country’s Olympic hopes. One wheelchair fencing coach notes that Iraqi Paralympic team is better than its Olympic team.
The article notes that most of these athletes were street beggars before joining the team, underscoring the fact that Iraq continues to present an overwhelmingly hostile environment for its citizens with disabilities. And once the Paralympics are over, there’s a good chance that many of them will be forced to return to that life.
Lots of familiar faces are resurfacing on other parts of the web this weekend. Yesterday, it was Mike Phillips. Today,I see that Minnesota Public Radio is running a story about Christopher Harmon. I blogged about Christopher last year after he appeared in a City Pages feature article. Christopher is a local writer with various disabilities who’s now working on turning one of his screenplays into a film.
We need more people with disabilities appearing regularly in the media, if for no other reason than it would allow me to set up a separate blog that dishes on who they’re sleeping with and which ones are charged with assaulting their attendants. I could be the Perez Hilton of the gimp world. Well, except for the whole being gay thing.
I was just scanning Ominivoracious, Amazon’s books blog, when I noticed that one of the entries contained an interview with Mike Phillips. Some of you might remember my previous entry about Mike and his appearance on This American Life. In the Amazon interview, Mike talks about his wish that more books would be released in accessible electronic formats. He also discusses his tastes in books. We seem to share a fondness for the darker side of the fiction spectrum and in particular for George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice fantasy series (that next volume can’t come out soon enough). He also heaps praise on Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. I feel like I’m one of a handful of people in the country who didn’t care for that book.
My friend Matt and I took this afternoon off to check out the Star Wars exhibit at the Minnesota Science Museum, where we both proceeded to geek out on an epic scale. And I have the pictures to prove it.
Me getting schooled by Yoda.
I wonder if C-3PO is available for private duty nursing.
Lord Vader doesn’t like having his picture taken, which is why he used his dark powers to make the camera shake.
And I’ve been meaning to tell you about this other part-time gig I started.
I was trying to look all badass, but instead I look like the galaxy’s most befuddled Sith apprentice ever.
A new Quinnipiac Poll shows that Obama has a commanding 17-point lead over McCain in Minnesota. If McCain is still giving serious thought to picking Pawlenty as his running mate, these numbers might give him pause. The race’s dynamics will need to dramatically shift to make Minnesota competitive for McCain. Pawlenty still has much to offer as a potential veep choice. He’s young, politically savvy, photogenic, and he can probably teach McCain how to play solitaire on some aide’s laptop. But our governor doesn’t have the mojo to single-handedly turn his home state into a battleground come this fall.
I was catching up on some of my TiVo’d Daily Shows and I watched John Stewart’s great interview with journalist Lara Logan. She’s clearly frustrated with the tone of most American news coverage and especially with the near total lack of coverage of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It’s difficult to find fault with her argument. Over 50 Iraqis died in a horrific bombing last week and the major networks did little more than mention it in passing.
My only beef with the interview is that Logan is bleeped out as she cheerily recounts how she greeted a group of American soldiers with “What’s up, motherfuckers!”
I just received this postcard from a friend who is visiting Amsterdam:
I love the contrast between the cute tulips logo on the bottom of the postcard and the seductive poses of the women in the windows. Once again, I find myself jealous of my wheelchair and its overnight stay in the city.
Thanks, Rosie.
I’ve been going for lots of walks lately and today I discovered a place that had somehow completely escaped my attention until now. In the St. Anthony neighborhood, there’s a path that leads to Water Power Park. This completely accessible park offers magnificent views of St. Anthony Falls and, in the background, downtown Minneapolis. I didn’t have my camera with me, but someone else was good enough to post a brief video of the falls on YouTube. However, it doesn’t include the impressive roar of the rushing water.
My neighborhood is pretty cool, no?