I ordered a bunch of Blu-ray movies earlier tonight and decided to give Amazon’s Prime service a try. The video streaming included with Prime membership doesn’t interest me much, but I’m a bit intrigued by the ability to borrow Kindle books. I’m guessing that the Prime service will continue to grow as a platform for the Kindle Fire tablet. If Amazon adds music streaming and an expanded video library, Apple and Netflix could have some real competition. Even at twice the $79 membership fee, it could be an attractive deal for media junkies like me.

The Onion reminds us that U2’s Achtung Baby album is twenty years old now. A few thoughts:

• I’m getting fucking old. 
• Achtung got all the hype when it came out, but Zooropa is still the better and more rewarding album.
• I remember being really disappointed that I didn’t have anyone to take me to the ZooTV concert in Madison. 
• I had just purchased a fancy 5-disc CD bookshelf system shortly before this album was released. I don’t think it left my CD player for at least six months after I bought it.
• This album served as something of an introduction for me to the world of electronic music.
• I’m getting really fucking old.

Halloween is a pretty quiet affair at my building. Not many kids live here, which is probably for the best. Some of the grumpier residents may not respond kindly to the knocks of children seeking a sugar high. And unlike previous years, I have not run into any fishnet-garbed nurses on their way to a party. Perhaps I need to remedy that next year by throwing a Halloween party where everyone is required to come dressed as a fishnet-garbed nurse.

The Star Tribune reports on the rippling consequences of last summer’s budget cuts to health care. A group of people with disabilities and their families are suing the state to block a wage cut to family members who work as personal care attendants. In another development, cuts to Medical Assistance for noncitizens may force some severely disabled individuals out of nursing homes. The article’s headline characterizes these events as “unforeseen”, but that’s letting the Legislature off the hook much too easily. Anyone with a good grasp of these programs could have predicted the fallout of those cuts. Unfortunately, many legislators are either too new or too disinterested to possess that working knowledge. And let’s not forget that the final budget was passed in a flurry to end a three-week state government shutdown, leaving little time for debate. The resulting bad policy mires the state in legal action that could diminish any planned savings those policies were designed to achieve.

The notion of citizen legislators who govern for a few months and then return to their other jobs is a fine and noble one, but perhaps the job of setting policy for a 21st-century state is becoming too complicated to be left to part-timers.

As a companion to its Steve Jobs retrospective, last Sunday’s 60 Minutes aired a segment on the iPad and its usefulness to some people with autism. The segment profiles kids with autism who interact with the iPad with an enthusiasm that can’t be matched by more low-tech stimuli. It also introduces us to a young man with autism who uses his iPad to effectively communicate despite being nonverbal. The piece does a good job of emphasizing that the iPad isn’t going to suit the needs of every person with autism; an important point that can sometimes be neglected in gee-whiz human interest stories about technology. It also demonstrates that the consumerization of technology–particularly portable technology–is a real boon for people with disabilities.