The 19th Floor

Gray Market

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 20:31:27 -0600

I just made my first deal with a Craigslist ticket...er...purveyor. Of course, I got taken for a ride, but I did manage to talk the seller down a bit from the original asking price. I'm only paying 100% markup instead of 150%, so yay me and my semi-competent negotiating skills. But I'll soon have tickets to the sold-out Passion Pit concert at First Avenue (assuming I didn't get totally ripped off). Now, how badly do I want to go the sold-out Yeasayer show?

Notes From A Master

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 17:25:33 -0600

Frederik Pohl is one of the few surviving members of science fiction's Golden Age elite and the only one to maintain a blog. I spent some time perusing it today and it's filled with wonderful stories about his friendship with Isaac Asimov, the rapid rise of the science fiction publishing scene, and his own career as a writer and futurist. Pohl is 90 years old and still writes with clarity and verve. Some SF writers are cranks and misanthropes, but Pohl's blogging has the same compassion and wit that made Gateway one of my favorite books. I hope he continues posting for a good long while.

Up Or Down

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 17:35:25 -0600

The tea leaves are foretelling a final vote on the health care bill in the House of Representatives by the end of next week. Guess who will be glued to C-SPAN late on Friday or Saturday night when the vote finally occurs? For extra uber-nerd points, I might even liveblog the floor debate. Because you know the House members do one thing extremely well: say batshit crazy things on live television without any sense of shame or irony. And the vote itself is likely to be extremely close. To borrow a phrase from the kids, this is going to be epic.

Initiation

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 12:42:05 -0600

I'm posting early today because I'll probably be away from my computer for much of the evening. I'm training in a new nurse and I'm trying to come up with a plan for covering everything she needs to know. It will probably look something like this:

- Mark's Hair: Care & Maintenance
- Mark's Ventilator: What The Hell Are All These Dials For?
- Mark's Hair: Advanced Care & Maintenance
- Mark's Remote Control: Unraveling Its Secrets
- Mark's Wheelchair: Taming Its Inner Beast
- OMG, Mark's Turning Blue!: Keeping Cool in an Emergency

Predictable, But Sad

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:42:53 -0600

Dennis Kucinich, allegedly liberal congressman and confirmed weirdo, is planning on voting against the health care bill because it lacks a public option plan. He represents a noisy but fringe element who believes that anything short of a single-payer system is selling out to insurance companies. Never mind that the Senate bill would give millions of people access to Medicaid, a public health care program. Never mind that the vast majority of MoveOn members (hardly a bastion of moderate centrism) support the bill's passage.

Kucinich is free to vote his conscience, but most of us progressives are interested in, you know, making some actual progress on the issue. Thumbing one's nose at a sensible solution for the sake of making a dubious ideological point is the worst kind of egotism. I found it repulsive when Lieberman did it and I'm not any more sympathetic to Kucinich.

Retro Look

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:53:58 -0600

You know what my wheelchair is missing? A vodka-cranberry juice dispenser. And a smokestack. And brass control levers. And sound effects. In other words, pretty much everything found on this steampunk-themed wheelchair. The guy who designed this chair doesn't say whether he does work for hire, but I wonder if my savings are sufficient to pay for a similar custom job. I'll pay extra if he can come up with copper ventilator tubing that coordinates well with my ascot and goggles.

Thanks to William for the link.

Flynn's Return

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:24:04 -0600

Disney just released another trailer for Tron: Legacy. It's not quite as eye-poppingly cool as the first one featuring the racing lightcycles, but I approve of the updated look. Namely, the several very attractive women inhabiting the world of Tron are no longer forced to wear those ridiculous head-to-toe costumes. Apparently, the Master Control Program developed a sense of style that didn't exist online or offline in the early 80s.

This Era's Model-T

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:40:45 -0600

It had to happen sooner or later. The first commercially available brain-computer interface has just hit the market. The Intendix (a horribly bland name for such a cool technology) comes with a skullcap and a little netbook computer that displays a grid of letters. Users type by focusing when the desired letter is highlighted on the screen. And it can be yours for the low price of $12,250.

This kind of exorbitant pricing is de rigeur in the world of assistive technology, so I'm not particularly surprised or even outraged. But this technology is different; it's not inherently limited to people with disabilities. Sure, we'll be the early adopters out of necessity, but these interfaces should gradually improve. People without disabilities will eventually want brain-controlled computers and that should foster competition and lower prices. At least, that's my hope.

Hollywood Reporter

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 14:13:29 -0600

As a blogger who frequently blogs about pop culture, I'm legally obligated to make some sort of completely uninformed Oscar predictions. So here's one: Avatar will snag Best Picture (because the Academy wants to demonstrate that it "gets" the movie-going public that made this movie such a juggernaut) while Kathryn Bigelow will take the Best Director award (because the Academy recognizes that The Hurt Locker is a better film and it wants the Monday morning news to be about how that particular David-Goliath match-up ended in a draw). And here's another: Christoph Waltz will win Best Supporting Actor for his menacing yet alluring portrayal of Colonel Hans Landa or there is no justice in this world.

Local Celebrity

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 13:41:57 -0600

Darcy Pohland, a local television reporter for WCCO who also had quadriplegia, died unexpectedly yesterday. I don't watch the local news much anymore, but I remember seeing Pohland on TV when I first moved to Minnesota and being genuinely surprised at seeing a person with such a significant and visible disability making regular appearances in front of a camera. I hesitate to use the term "role model" when describing anyone with a disability, but Pohland's regular presence in the local media landscape probably shaped some of her viewers' attitudes on disability for the better.

Pohland was 48.

Applying Some Psychic English

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 22:31:21 -0600

We all know that the coming wave of neural-computer interfaces will help people with disabilities do things like use computers, operate wheelchairs, and control robot armies. But what about the really important stuff in life? Like playing pinball?

Check.

Once this technology arrives, I'm going to start hanging out at the local pinball arcade and hustle high school truants out of their lunch money. I just have to figure out whether there are still any pinball arcades left in the Twin Cities.

Thanks to Allie for the link.

What Small Government Looks Like

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 20:09:25 -0600

Minnesota, like a lot of states, is contemplating significant budget cuts that would affect people with disabilities. But there's cutting and then there's obliterating, which is what South Carolina may do to its services for 26,000 residents with disabilities. All home and community-based services would be eliminated, leaving state funding for institutional care (which is required under federal Medicaid law). As a result of these proposed cuts, family members of of people with disabilities would be forced to quit jobs in order to serve as caregivers. Even worse, some individuals may be forced out of their homes and into nursing homes. In comparison, our own proposed cuts seem almost modest.

I'll say it again: Medicaid needs to be completely federalized to ensure that people with disabilities aren't punished for living in a poor state that is apathetic or even openly hostile to the notion of community integration. This patchwork system certainly benefits people like me who are lucky enough to live in a generous, prosperous state like Minnesota, but it does a disservice to so many others.

It's Not T.V., It's A Big Box Of Awesome

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 21:03:39 -0600

First, the good news. HBO has greenlit the Game of Thrones series based on the first book of George R.R. Martin's fantasy opus. The bad news is that it won't air until next year. It still looks as if HBO is planning to adapt one book for each season of the show, which might give Martin some incentive to hurry up and finish the long-awaited fifth volume of the series. I'll be curious to see how HBO markets the show. The books are quite dark in tone, but read more like historical fiction than fantasy. There's no bestiary of fantastic creatures (except for a few dragons) and few displays of magic. There is plenty of sex and violence, which should suit HBO just fine.

This almost makes up for the cancellation of Rome. Almost.

Vox In A Box

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 19:45:31 -0600

Film critic Roger Ebert appeared on Oprah today to talk about his battle with cancer that left him unable to speak and eat or drink by mouth. He also demonstrated his new computer-generated voice that a software company designed using previous TV and DVD recordings of his voice. It doesn't have the texture and intonation of a natural human voice, but it sounds enough like him to bring tears to his wife's eyes.

Let's hope the developers can eventually make this an iPhone app so that he doesn't have to pull out a computer every time he wants to speak. And I have no doubt that, in another five years, this artificial voice will be almost indistinguishable from his natural voice. Speech synthesis technology has been around a long time, but it looks like it's finally reached a point where it can truly replace a voice lost to illness or injury.

What Happens In Washington D.C. Matters

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 20:43:34 -0600

As I expected, the Minnesota House of Representatives failed to override Pawlenty's veto of a bill that would have restored General Assistance Medical Care, the health care program for the state's poorest citizens. Most of the House Republican moderates who participated in the only successful override of a Pawlenty veto have retired or have been defeated in the last election. And the few remaining are loathe to side with Democrats in an election cycle that strongly favors Republicans. A procedural maneuver allows Democrats to make another attempt, but it seems increasingly unlikely that GAMC will be saved before funding runs out on April 1.

It's worth noting again that almost everyone eligible for GAMC would be eligible for Medicaid under the Senate health care bill. If Minnesota took advantage of the bill's early expansion provision, these individuals could be enrolled in Medicaid in a matter of months. I'm not sure how closely our congressional delegation is paying attention to the GAMC fight, but they need to understand how a "yes" vote could almost immediately improve people's lives.