Creativity

Speaking of disablism, here's a perfect example of how its just too easy to sell disabled people short.
Google SketchUp has developed a project to allow autistic people to express themselves creatively. This is an eye-opening video:

May 4, 1970

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young - Ohio

BADD day

Shakesville points out that May 1 was Blogging Against Disablism Day --and here's another roundup of posts on the topic.
I was brought up short about my own "disablism" when a women in a wheelchair once said to me "You feel sorry for me because I am in this chair. But for me, this chair is freedom -- without it, I would be spending my life lying in bed."
She was, of course, right -- I was looking at it from the wrong perspective and I have always been grateful to her for pointing this out.
Then years later, I spent several weeks using a wheelchair at work when I had a severely broken leg -- I found it too exhausting to manage at work with crutches, so a chair was ideal for me.
It gave me a new perspective, however -- what I found most noticeable was the number of people who simply could not look at me anymore, my boss included. I never knew whether this was because I was below their sight line or they just didn't like looking at the external fixator on my leg, or they didn't like the chair, or whatever. I couldn't really criticize them, however -- maybe I would have acted the same way before I knew how useful a wheelchair could be.
Also, I found that just because somebody has slapped a "handicapped-accessible" sticker on something, like a washroom door, doesn't make it true.

Kentucky Derby

I love watching horse races like this. Down the backstretch, Mine That Bird is running last, but he makes his move at precisely the right time and threads his way through the crowd just as he comes around the clubhouse turn. All of a sudden, there he is, running next to the rail where the track isn't so soupy, all by himself as he charges for the tape.

Shorter

Shorter Obama administration "unnamed officials":

"Maybe we still need a phoney justice system for the Guantanamo prisoners. Because if we let the actual American justice system deal with them, they might get actual justice! Can't have that..."

Saturday Morning Cartoon

In honour of the hockey playoffs -- Goofy in Hockey Homicide:

WWJD

What would Jesus do?
Torture people, I guess.

This little piggy stayed home

Cam Cardow



I don't think WHO is going to be able to convince the world's media to call this the "H1N1 influenza A" -- doesn't exactly roll tripingly off the tongue.
Some of the commenters on Effect Measure have other suggestions:

"I saw a funny article from Finland that the English translation call it the TexMex Flu."
"I call the virus the "USA Capitalist Pig Virus". The stories I have read have all linked the inception to a USA Corporate owned hyper-intensive pig farm in Mexico."
"My friends and I are calling it the "Flying Piggy Flu". It's "flying" because it has avian genes. (I suppose we should have worked humans into the name somehow, but this has a nice ring to it.) Also "piggy" seems more friendly/less scary than "swine". The fact that "flying" is sometimes used in place of a more common f-word in polite company had nothing to do with it, but is a nice added bonus."

Game On!

I hadn't really been following the BC election, but today's polling news is startling. The NDP have just about caught up with the Liberals. As RossK now says,
Game On!
Here are some of the poll tidbits:

Even though their reputations seem equally sullied, people chose Campbell almost twice as often (40 per cent) as James (23 per cent) when asked who would make the best premier. . .
The poll shows a growing gender gap in the B.C. election. While nearly half of women (48 per cent) are planning on voting NDP, only 35 per cent are planning to go with the BC Liberals.
The leading party seems to sit better with male voters. Forty-eight per cent polled said they'd stay under Campbell's leadership, as opposed to the 31 per cent who said they'd go NDP.
Age is also a large factor in the party people choose to vote for. Young voters aged 18 to 34 are more likely to vote NDP (41 per cent) and Green (19 per cent). Only 32 per cent of young voters indicated they would re-elect BC Liberals.

Here is one tidbit I thought was particularly interesting. The CTV story says:

Campbell also won the contest for best dinner date. Fifty-one percent of people said they'd rather have dinner with the Liberal, beating out James by two per cent.

It would be more accurate to describe this result as a "virtual tie" and it shows that James isn't as poorly thought of as the rest of the article implies.
And sorry, but I've just got to say it -- it would probably help her public image if she would update her hairstyle -- longer, looser, and get rid of those heavy bangs!

Twisted

It sorta painful, in a metaphysical sense, watching people twist themselves into pretzels as they try to justify torturing people. TBogg quotes Andy McCarthy writing at The Corner:

The pertinent question is whether the interrogations gave us valuable information about al Qaeda that we wouldn't have gotten, in a timely manner, without it. Information about a specific imminent terrorist attack would have been nice too. In my mind, we should never resort to enhanced measures unless we believe in good faith that attacks are being planned and possibly imminent. But obtaining intelligence about a specific imminent attack would not have been necessary to validate the use of the enhanced measures. . . .
Whether the enhanced measures are validly used, moreover, has to be determined by the threat situation before the enhanced measures are employed. Sure, it's crucial to study the quality of the information the tactics yielded in making the policy decision of whether they should ever be used. Once you decide to have them in your arsenal, however, the determination of whether they were properly employed on any one occasion has to hinge on the situation that existed before you decided to use them, . . .

TBogg adds:

Did you get all that? He's against torture except not.
...and that "Information about a specific imminent terrorist attack would have been nice too" is a lovely touch. It's like a grace note for sociopaths.

Oh, and by the way, using a term "enhanced measures" instead of "torture" is like a drug addict calling heroin "my medication". George Orwell would laugh.

I love the internets

Amazing

Politics has consequences

A public health blog, Effect Measure, reports on what is going to hamper the US response to the swine flu pandemic:

There is another relevant fact that should be mentioned here. CDC [Centre for Disease Control]is an agency on organizational hold, with an Acting Director. As public health professionals they are doing a heroic job, but they depend on DHHS [Department of Health and Human Services] , of which they are a part, for building government-to-government relationships. Those relationships suffered badly during the Bush years, with the result that Mexico had a better and more comfortable connection with Canada than the US. So why hasn't the Obama administration righted the problem? Because, among other things, there is still no Secretary of DHHS. Obama's nominee, the highly capable administrator Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, has had her confirmation held up by Republican ideologues playing abortion politics.
If ever there was a time when we needed strong leadership at DHHS, this is it. Playing politics has consequences.

Stage 3

This swine flu spread is pretty scary, isn't it. I've been reading up on the WHO website and we are now considered to be at Stage 3.
Stage 4 is the kaboom stage.
Sounds like all we can really do is wash our hands lots and stay away from large public gatherings.
Some people are buying surgical masks, I guess, but unless the person wearing the mask is the infected person, I'm not sure of their utility -- with SARS, it was determined that heatlh care workers were being infected by breathing the air that was getting around the side of their surgical masks, so they might as well not have worn them.

Thanks

Thanks to everyone who voted in the Canadian F-word Blog Awards at Creative Revolution. The winner in my category was Womanist Musings -- congratulations, Renee!
And thanks, again, Alison at Creekside, for nominating me.

Memories

Considering how poor the memories of RCMP officers apparently are, its amazing they can still testify in court cases, isn't it?