August Rambling II: Smart is sexy and stupid is not

The New York Times’ prophetic 1983 warning about the NSA, which naturally leads to Glenn Greenwald killed the internet.

My Feelings About the Harriet Tubman Sex Tape in 10 GIFs.

Invisible Disabilities Day is October 24. I have this friend with rather constant neck pain, but she doesn’t LOOK sick, and therefore feels diminished by those who actually don’t believe her. Conversely, The Complexities of Giving: People with Disabilities as Help Objects.

Photos of the worldly goods of inmates at the Willard Asylum. I backed the Kickstarter for this and wrote about it a couple years ago.

“Each week, TIME Magazine designs covers for four markets: the U.S., Europe, Asia and the South Pacific.” Often, America’s cover is quite, well – different. I had noticed this before. I don’t know that it’s “stunning,” but it IS telling.

The Peanuts gang meets The Smiths, in which This Charming Charlie masterfully blends Charles Schulz’ comics with lyrics by The Smiths.

The Disability QUESTION

The Americans with Disabilities Act turned 20 this week, as I wrote about. Let me tell you one of those disability things that really infuriated me, still infuriates me and it was five or six years ago.

A blind man was crossing the street heading for the local Bruegger’s bakery (at Madison and South Allen, for you locals). I had the sense that he’d made this trip a number of times before. But on this day, some yahoo decided to park his car across the crosswalk. I’m thinking that the driver figured that he’d “only be there a few minutes”. But the blind man was terribly disoriented walking into the car, and I was too far away from him to help. The kicker is that – lazy jerk! – there was a parking space three car lengths away.

I’ve seen other cars park there subsequently and it never fails to irritate. It’s particularly problematic when there is snow on the ground, and those folks with walkers and canes have to maneuver around these turkeys. Ditto to those people who park a second car so that it blocks the sidewalk.