The L.A. Times profiles Peter Winkler, a writer with severe rheumatoid arthritis who recently authored a biography of Dennis Hopper. Winkler does all his writing with a MacBook and a plastic stick held between his fingers. This low-tech solution seems to work well for him, although I wonder if he’s ever tried voice input. The article doesn’t indicate whether he’s plugged into the disability community and it would be a shame if he was limiting his writing output simply because aware of the accessibility options available to him.

I really should get serious about my own writing again. Aside from this blog, I haven’t done any sustained writing in a while and I’m beginning to feel the itch to resume. But I’m not sure whether I’d be able to balance both blogging and long-form writing on a daily basis. I have no plans to shutter up the blog, but perhaps it might be time to rethink how it fits with my other writing goals.

Minnesota policymakers received a bit of unexpected good news today when the latest budget forecast revealed a surplus of $876 million. As late as yesterday, most observers were predicting a deficit of as much as $1 billion. State law requires that all of the surplus be used to replenish reserve funds, so it’s unlikely that any of last summer’s budget cuts will be restored. And the good times are not back by any means. According to the forecast, Minnesota will have a deficit of at least $1.3 billion in the next biennium. I’d like to think that this surplus will give lawmakers some breathing room to consider permanent solutions to our fiscal instability, but that almost certainly won’t happen. Instead, this is a temporary cease-fire in the ongoing battle to define the scope of state government. In the meantime, the Vikings’ chances of receiving some level of public funding for a new stadium have probably improved slightly.

Over at Slate, Chris Wilson theorizes that we may not have detected any signals from extraterrestrial civilizations because of bad timing. Aliens transmissions could have reached our planet back when we were still wandering the plains of Africa. Similarly, any alien scientists situated a few hundred light-years away and pointing their radio telescopes at us right now would hear only silence. The universe is a really, really big place and there’s no guarantee that anyone will be around to listen to a whisper or a shout sent from across the stars. Perhaps civilizations across the universe have risen, flourished, and vanished over eons without ever detecting signs of other intelligence simply because they vanished just as the inhabitants of the nearest inhabited world were discovering the merits of fire. Perhaps we will have already faded into oblivion as a species by the time the denizens of Alpha Centauri broadcast their first anybody out there? into the depths of space.

I received an email from Blizzard Entertainment the other day informing me that my World of Warcraft account was hacked. After running a few different malwae scans, I discovered that a keylogger had somehow installed itself on my system. I pride myself on running a clean machine, so this hack was more of personal affront than a cause for alarm. The keylogger is now eradicated and I’ve changed my most critical passwords (email, banking, etc), so this mischief shouldn’t inflict any lasting harm. But I’ll be more diligent about running weekly system scans. I suppose I should also be more selective about the fishnet-related sites I visit.

Like a lot of Community fans, I was saddened to  learn that the series is being placed on hiatus and will likely be cancelled. The show’s geeky and borderline absurdist sense of humor strokes this nerd’s funny bone just right, but I’ll concede that it probably won’t appeal to the vast majority of American viewers. Any broadcast sitcom that devotes whole episodes to riffs on alternate universes, Dungeons & Dragons, and stop-motion Christmas specials is probably not long for this world. Perhaps it will find a home on cable or even Netflix. And there’s still Parks and Recreation. But at least give me a series finale that ends with Troy singing the Reading Rainbow theme song. Or have Annie and Britta make out. One of the two.