I broke my glasses over the weekend and I’m temporarily using an older pair with a slightly different prescription. The difference is significant enough to slightly blur everything on my computer screen. It’s tolerable, but certainly not ideal. My broken pair is being held together with tape and a Q-Tiip, which might be okay for wearing around the house over the holiday weekend. But it’s not the kind of thing I can wear in public without attracting more stares than usual.
The Minnesota Supreme Court just denied a petition from Minnesota GOP gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer to delay the recount by forcing counties to use an alternate method of reconciling votes cast with registered voters. Dayton, the Democrat, continues to hold a lead of nearly 9,000 votes and that number is unlikely to change significantly after the recount is complete. This decision (which the court delivered less than two hours after hearing oral arguments) should signal to Team Emmer that little can be gained by continued litigation. Minnesotans don’t have much patience for displays of naked political gamesmanship and I’m not sure Emmer will have the funds necessary to keep fighting. The odds are now slightly better that Dayton will take office as scheduled on January 3rd and Pawlenty will be free to get on with his next job as an also-ran presidential candidate.
I finally got around to purchasing a USB headset for my computer so that I can place calls via Google Voice. Based on the few calls I’ve placed, it seems to work pretty well. Call quality is decent on both ends and it’s easy enough to place and receive calls from within the Gmail interface. Best of all, it doesn’t cost me anything as calls placed within the U.S. are free (at least for now). It won’t replace my cell phone, but it will come in handy when I want to make a call while I’m at my computer.
The zany ideas on Medicaid cost-cutting just keep coming. State officials in Idaho are suggesting that volunteers could deliver services to people with disabilities and other Medicaid recipients. Need someone to help you get dressed every morning? Find a volunteer. Need help taking your meditations? Find a volunteer. Those volunteers may not be even minimally qualified, but they’re doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. And when you’re forced to rely on the charity of others, you can’t afford to be too picky about things like qualifications.
State officials went on to say that it would be just like the good old days of the ’50s and ’60s when people with disabilities relied on volunteers for assistance with their most basic needs. And everyone remembers how those throngs of volunteers worked tirelessly to keep people with disabilities out of institutions and in their own homes. It was a veritable golden age for us gimps. So yes, please, let’s bring back those old-timey solutions that worked so well. I’m sure Idahoans with disabilities were getting tired of their independence anyway.
The latest hotness in gaming is the Kinect, an add-on device for the Xbox 360 that allows you to play games using your entire body instead of a handheld controller. A small camera measures your body movements and translates them into in-game actions. I initially thought that this device didn’t have much potential for people with disabilities, but that was before I saw this video of a guy without the use of one arm playing Kinect. He probably be able to play with a standard controller, but this interface is perfect for him. Kinect still won’t work for most people with mobility limitations, but perhaps future versions can include a “Twitchy Eyebrows” mode so that everyone can get in on the fun.
Newly elected Republicans are already coming up with new and innovative ways to screw the poor, elderly, and people with disabilities. Texas Republicans, who now enjoy a supermajority in the state legislature, have become enamored with the idea of withdrawing from the Medicaid program. Republicans seem to think that private insurers can do a much better job of providing care to a high-cost population for a much lower sticker price. To call the idea insane is being too kind to the fanatic ideologues who thought this up. No state has the resources to provide adequate health care to this population. Any effort to shoehorn them into the private market without adequate funding would be disastrous, resulting in worse health care for the poor and disabled while raising the cost of health care for everyone else.
States have legitimate gripes about the amount of resources they must devote to Medicaid, but the solution isn’t to punish the people served by the program. Saner voices will probably prevail in this debate, but the fact that such draconian measures are already being openly discussed by lawmakers should be very worrying to health care advocates.
The computer upgrade itch is becoming more difficult to ignore and I spent an inordinate amount of time over the weekend comparing various components. My current rig is certainly no slouch, but it is beginning to stutter just a bit when I’m doing several things at once. Additional power and speed are luxuries rather than necessities, but I’m in the mood to spoil myself. I’ll do my best to future-proof the new system as much as possible so that it’s ready for the forthcoming brain interface that will allow me to take over the world.
The new trailer for alien-invasion movie Battle: Los Angeles is intriguingly awesome. A proper alien invasion movie should have plenty of military hardware and explosive mayhem; both of which are well-represented in the trailer. Of course, a corollary law of alien-invasion movie trailers is that their ultimate suck factor is inversely proportional to the trailer’s awesomeness quotient. Skyline had a great trailer, but the reviews for the actual film have been brutal. We science fiction geeks have learned to keep this corollary in mind when Hollywood dangles its latest bauble in front of our eyes.
Since today is Veterans Day, here’s news that work is beginning in on a memorial for veterans with disabilities in Washington, D.C. More information on plans for the memorial is here. Thousands of vets are coping with physical and mental disabilities acquired during their service and they often receive little support when they return home. This memorial could serve as a good reminder that our obligation to returning veterans doesn’t end when they are discharged. But construction of the memorial should also be accompanied by better access to health care and other supports that will help them succeed as civilians.
If you’re feeling stressed and harried, you might want to consider a move to the Twin Cities. Forbes selected our fair cities as the nation’s most relaxed metropolitan area based on factors like commute times, unemployment, and the rate of physical exercise among residents. While the rest of you spend your days stuck in traffic and working late, we’re up here eating hot dish and taking a stroll around one of our lovely lakes. Except in the winters, when we pretty much just eat hot dish. Many of us muse with our friends about how great it would be to live somewhere like Chicago or L.A. and we might even temporarily decamp for such distant parts, but we usually end up returning because the living is pretty good here.