Tinfoil Hats And Disability Cont’d

 Disability, Politics  No Responses »
Dec 042012
 

As expected, the Senate failed to ratify the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. While some Republicans voted for ratification (we’ll miss you, Senator Lugar!), the majority of the GOP delegation decided that the treaty posed an existential threat to American sovereignty and, for reasons only the far right can grasp, homeschoolers.

It’s a sad moment for the Senate and the disability rights movement. As I wrote previously, it’s unfortunate that the deepening collective psychosis afflicting the Republican party claimed this hard-fought treaty as a victim. I remain hopeful that the next Senate will eventually vote for ratification and restore the United States’ credibility as a world leader on disability rights.

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The Universe And Everything

 Science  No Responses »
Dec 032012
 

Neil deGrasse Tyson ponders whether the universe has a purpose:

Although he can be a little smug at times, Tyson is probably one of the most genial skeptics in popular culture. He isn’t as acerbic as Hitchens or as confrontational as Dawkins. And I like his collection of geek-themed ties. The video above is a charming primer on rationalism and I hope we get to see more like this.

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Tinfoil Hats And Disability

 Disability, Wonkery  1 Response »
Nov 302012
 

Ken Blackwell joins other conservatives opposing ratification of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Because freedom! Or something. Blackwell doesn’t give any substantive explanation for opposing the treaty. Instead, he just natters on about sovereignty and abortion. The only thing missing from his diatribe is mention of black helicopters. Meanwhile, former presidential candidate Rick Santorum calls the Convention an assault on families of children with disabilities.

I get that this opposition has little to do with people with disabilities and everything to do with right-wing paranoia, but it’s still disappointing. The Convention won’t end discrimination against people with disabilities anytime soon, but it’s the most significant declaration of disability rights to come from the international community. For the United States to refuse to ratify the treaty is an insult to every American who has advocated for those rights both here at home and around the world.

I’m hopeful that a more progressive Senate will ratify the treaty next year. Santorum and Blackwell are welcome to retreat to their underground bunkers for as long as they like.

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The Nerd Advantage

 Politics, Tech  No Responses »
Nov 292012
 

Nate Silver observes that political contributions from employees at tech companies like Google and Apple overwhelmingly favored Obama in the most recent election cycle. He goes on to make a reasonable assumption that tech professionals willing to donate to a campaign are more likely to volunteer or work for that campaign. That’s not to say that nobody in tech votes Republican, but Democrats likely have a deeper bench of geek talent from which to draw upon when campaign season rolls around again.

If Republicans hope to stay competitive in the long term, they’d better figure out how to close this talent gap. They might start with rediscovering science and silencing the truly stupid know-nothings in their ranks. And while Democrats have established themselves as the masters of the data-driven campaign, they need to demonstrate that they can bring their geek fu to bear in mid-term elections.

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Don’t Cry For Me, Hollywood

 Disability, Movies, Pop Culture  1 Response »
Nov 282012
 

Over at ThinkProgress, Alyssa Rosenberg takes issue with a reviewer of the movie The Sessions, a sex comedy based on the life of Mark O’Brien. O’Brien spent most of his life in an iron lung as a result of polio; the movie depicts O’Brien’s efforts to lose his virginity with the assistance of a sex surrogate. The reviewer in question wishes that the movie would have focused more on the fragility and despair that must be inherent in O’Brien’s life. Rosenberg disagrees:

But I don’t think The Sessions is a movie about a man learning to cope with a disability—in fact, it’s a movie about a man who’s coped very well with the limitations in his mobility for years. The film explains those arrangements because it assumes that an able-bodied audience will be interested in how Mark gets around and makes a living. But it’s emphatically not about him coming to terms with the fact that he has to use an iron lung, or hire an aide, or even that in a power outage, Mark could be in considerable danger. Instead, The Sessions is a sex comedy with Mark’s experience with polio as the reason he never lost his virginity.

I haven’t seen the film yet, but Rosenberg makes a key point. Not every movie featuring a person with a disability has to be a story about struggling against the odds. Those of us who have lived with disabilities for years don’t typically perceive our own lives in such terms. We’re too busy with the prosaic details of our own lives, whether it’s going to school or hanging out with friends or trying to get laid. Our disabilities are sometimes the furthest things from our minds, particularly when we enter the realm of sex. When I’m having sex, I’m not thinking about my tenuous grip on this mortal coil. I’m thinking, “Hey, I’m having sex! This is awesome!” And when my partner has to reconnect my vent tube after accidentally disconnecting it with her foot (I’ll let your imaginations run wild here), I don’t curl up into a fetal ball and bemoan my fate. I simply thank my partner and get back to whatever we were doing. Because that’s how real life works.

Most people without disabilities (including those who work in Hollywood) have difficulty grasping how a disability can be anything other than an epic struggle that is by turns both tragic and inspirational. But there’s no reason why people with disabilities can’t be featured in sex comedies or science fiction thrillers or crime capers. We can be just another feature of the pop culture landscape rather than the go-to source for feel-good tearjerkers. Perhaps The Sessions is a signpost on the road to the movies I’m imagining.

 

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Adaptation

 Disability, Tech  No Responses »
Nov 272012
 

News stories about advances in prosthetics have become commonplace in the last several years as soldiers with amputated limbs returned from Iraq and Afghanistan. But those stories often ignore the challenges associated with using those devices. The Times profiles Sebastian Gallegos, a Marine struggling to learn how to use a sophisticated prosthetic arm. Despite having surgery to amplify nerve signals in his arm that control the device, he still experiences plenty of frustration as he tries to control the prosthetic.

Gallegos’ trials are familiar to anyone with a disability who has learned to use a piece of assistive technology. While some AT is more user-friendly than others, they usually require patience to master. Whenever I finally get my implanted brain-computer interface, I expect that some practice will be necessary to make the device do my bidding.

 

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Critic At Large: Lincoln

 Movies  No Responses »
Nov 262012
 

Lincoln is likely the most epic cinematic treatment of the American legislative process that moviegoers will ever see. Director Steven Spielberg and writer Tony Kushner eschew the standard biopic formula and instead choose to focus on Lincoln’s efforts to pass the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery in the final months of his presidency. Much of the movie is devoted to Lincoln’s efforts to round up enough Democratic votes to pass the amendment through the Republican-led House. To accomplish his goal, Lincoln—the closest thing to a deity in American history–is not above resorting to the venal: political patronage and obfuscation of the truth. Some of the movie’s most watchable moments are those featuring two hired political guns (James Spader and John Hawkes) trying to coax votes from cowardly and/or greedy lame duck representatives.

Daniel Day-Lewis is folksy yet mercurial as Lincoln, yet it’s Tommy Lee Jones who gives a much more compelling performance as the abolitionist congressman Thaddeus Stevens, leader of the radical Republicans in the House. In a private moment with Lincoln, Stevens goes on at length about his uncompromising commitment to racial equality while making clear his contempt for the vast majority of the American electorate, whom he regards as irredeemably racist. It’s an important scene; Lincoln is often portrayed as the Great Emancipator, but he arrived late to a cause that had much more committed champions.

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Holiday Fun

 Tech  No Responses »
Nov 232012
 

I didn’t venture anywhere near a store today. Instead, I spent a couple hours cleaning up a computer virus that may or may not have been triggered when my dad used Internet Explorer this morning. Everything seems back to normal now, but perhaps I need to make the Chrome icon a little more obvious.

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Evangelizing Obamacare

 Health Care, Wonkery  No Responses »
Nov 212012
 

If health care reform is to be a success, the Obama administration must find a way to educate people about how the law affects them. As Sarah Kliff notes in another typically smart article, those who stand to benefit most from the Affordable Care Act have no idea how the law affects them. They don’t know that they may be eligible for insurance subsidies or Medicaid. They don’t know that they will be able to purchase insurance even if they have preexisting conditions.

A massive public education effort will be needed to spread the word about the law’s benefits before open enrollment begins in the exchanges next October. The administration has a clear interest in ensuring a successful kickoff, but so does another critical stakeholder group—the insurance companies. They need lots of people to enroll in their plans to cover the costs of covering people with more chronic health care conditions. That gives me some confidence that we’ll see a coordinated and effective public outreach campaign. The last thing the administration wants to see at this time next year is news headlines proclaiming the lack of interest in Obamacare.

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