Global Crisis

1. A "Bechdel-Wallace" Test for the Disability Community (Al Jazeera America, 8/30/15)
2. Westworld: The Robots Are Coming! (Vice.com, 8/25/15)
3. Stop Politicizing Down Syndrome and Abortion (CNN.com, 8/24/15)
4. The Surprisingly Simple Future of Assistive Technology (Al Jazeera America, 8/17/15)
5. The Outrage of Handcuffing Children in Schools (CNN.com, 8/5/15)
6. I am a Working Dad (Father's Day 2015) (Al Jazeera America, 6/21/15)
7. US schools must stop excluding children with disabilities (Al Jazeera America, 6/16/15)
8. The Controversies and Success of Season 5 of Game of Thrones (Vice.com, 6/12/15)
9. What Kids Learn When Adults Aren't Inclusive (Washington Post, 6/11/15)
10. Where Have All the Good Bad Guys Gone? (Vice.com, 6/10/15)
11. Speaking Out Against Autism Speaks (NYTimes.com, 6/4/15)
12. Inspiration Porn Disables the Disabled (Al Jazeera America, 6/3/15)
13. Jon Snow: The Only Hero of Game of Thrones? (Vice.com, 6/1/15)
14. The World's Reserves of Game of Thrones are Running Dangerously Low (Vice.com, 5/28/15)
15. Low Cost College Isn't Enough (CNN.com, 5/20/15)
16. 'Mad Max: Fury Road' Is the Feminist Action Flick You've Been Waiting For (Vice.com, 5/13/15)
17. Zoo Camp for All (Belt Magazine, 5/12/15)
18. A Medievalist on Savage Love (Chronicle of Higher Education, 5/12/15)
19. Save Academic Conferences! (Chronicle.com, 5/6/2015)
20. DC Super Hero Girls - My Daughter Wants Heroes That Look Like Her (Salon.com, 5/1/2015)
21. The Corrosive Cult of Compliance in Our Schools (Al Jazeera America, 4/22/15)
22. Daredevil and Scenes of Ordinary Disability (Vice.com, 4/20/15)
23. "The Net is the Meat:" Bruce Holsinger's Medieval Fiction (Tor.com, 4/20/15)
24. RFK Jr. owes a lot of people an apology for his comments on autism (CNN.com, 4/16/15)
25. The Telescoping History of Game of Thrones (Vice.com, 4/14/15)
26. Sheehan vs SF: A Chance to Reduce Police Killings of People with Disabilities (Al Jazeera America, 3/22/15)
27. Bruce Rauner: Picking on Society's Most Vulnerable (CNN.com, 3/18/15)
28. "Daddy, What's Down Syndrome?" (Yahoo! Parenting, 3/17/15)
29. Dear Student? How about Dear Provost? (Chronicle Vitae, 3/11/15)
30. Why Write a Book? (Chronicle Vitae, 3/3/15)
31. To assess LAPD shooting, look past the moment of gunfire. (CNN.com, 3/2/15)
32. Information, Not Inspiration: How to work against the fear of Down syndrome (CNN.com, 2/18/15)
33. From Grad School to the Atlantic (Chronicle.com, 2/11/15)
34. Conservatives want to rewrite the history of the Crusades (The Guardian, 2/7/15)
35. Kristiana Coignard Did Not Have to Die (CNN.com, 2/2/15)
36. Airlines Break Too Many Wheelchairs - But We can Fix It (Al Jazeera America, 1/31/15)
37. Associate Dean of What? (Chronicle.com, 1/26/15)
38. Anti-Choice Legislators Try to Force Wedge Between Reproductive, Disability Rights Activists(Reproductive Health Reality Check, 1/16/15)
39. Who Will Teach All the Free Community College Students? (Chronicle.com, 1/15/15)
40. Harsh Critics in Public Spaces, Judging Only What They See (NYTimes.com, 1/12/15)

It’s three weeks after Hurricane Katrina has hit New Orleans and Claudia Gordon is worried. From her perch at the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the Department of Homeland Security in Washington, she and her colleagues are working frantically to coordinate the emergency response for people with disabilities who were in the path of the brutal hurricane. But on the ground in Louisiana, there’s just too much one-size-fits-all thinking. People with disabilities are being abandoned, forgotten, or isolated from their families.

So Gordon -- who is Deaf -- and her sign-language interpreter, is deployed to Baton Rouge to spend approximately the next three months working with the response and recovery team out of the Joint Field Office. For Gordon, it’s all about making sure that people with disabilities have access to the same services as everyone else. She insists that contractors, NGOs, and local officials understand that people with disabilities “aren’t asking for favors, they’re asking for the same thing as people without disabilities.”

The problems she encounters are many. For example, Deaf people in the shelters can’t hear announcements, such as those telling them where to go to register for disaster-relief benefits. The travel trailers being transported in aren’t physically accessible for individuals who use wheelchairs or who might use walkers. For example, some are being installed on gravel, or are too narrow for someone in a wheelchair to turn around in, or have steps that are not wide enough for someone who uses a walker. They need ramps, larger mobile homes instead of the compact trailers, accessible sites on level ground, visual smoke alarms for Deaf individuals and audio alarms for the blind, and so much more.

So Gordon gets to work. If a contractor promises to work 24/7 to build accessible mobile home sites, she makes a surprise visit to the work-site at 1 am. She explains the need for key accommodations. She uses diplomacy, data, reason, and, most of all, personal anecdotes to explain what has to happen and why. It’s the stories of specific families, rather than the abstract discussions of disabilities and needs, that persuades and motivates the relief workers.

The effort required for those 1 am visits to the job sites and the ruffling of feathers pays off. Gordon watches as the first five families in need leave the shelters for newly accessible mobile homes. A little girl in a wheelchair rolls up to an accessible sink, turns on the water, and smiles. Remembering that day, Gordon says, “We celebrated small victories as an indicator of progress.”

There’s no gear shift knob in your center console. That gives you more room, providing an airy cabin and open, flowing design. Designers put the transmission controls in a vertical series of ergonomic buttons on the center instrument panel. MKC also provides the fun and and control of a manual transmission. Press the “S” button to activate the Sport mode. This lets you shift gears using the paddle shifters located on the steering wheel without having to engage a clutch.

• Forward Collision Warning: a heads-up display, which simulates brake lights, flashes on the windshield and provides an audible warning when a car comes to close to the vehicle.

The Georgia appeals court judge, Christopher McFadden, argued that the verdict went "strongly against the weight of the evidence" because, in his judgment, the woman in question -- I'll join other writers in calling her Jane -- didn't act like a victim and the man didn't act like a rapist.
Jane has Down syndrome and the growing national outrage to this case has focused, with reason, on her disability. But Down syndrome is only part of the story.
The outrage is not only because this judge didn't understand Down syndrome, but that judges frequently impose their perceptions on cases of sexual assault, reducing sentences even for convicted rapists on the grounds that the victim didn't act "correctly." Jane's troubling case reveals the intersections between rape culture and the way we strip agency from people with disabilities.

Down syndrome may be a reason this judge decided that Jane's words carried less weight when measured against his perception, but many nondisabled women, women of all social classes, races, sexual orientations, and levels of ability, have experienced precisely the same kind of dismissal.

Here are a few examples that do not involve disability.

Last year in Montana, a judge reduced a former teacher's rape conviction to 31 days because the victim, a 14-year-old girl, was "as much in control of the situation" as her rapist and, in his opinion, "older than her chronological age."

In California, a judge reduced a sentence of a convicted rapist because the woman didn't fight hard enough. The judge said, "If someone doesn't want to have sexual intercourse, the body shuts down. The body will not permit that to happen unless a lot of damage is inflicted, and we heard nothing about that in this case. That tells me that the victim in this case, although she wasn't necessarily willing, she didn't put up a fight."

In Arizona, a judge reduced a sentence of a police officer convicted of sexual abuse to community service and probation, instead blaming the victim for being in a bar. The judge said, "If you wouldn't have been there that night, none of this would have happened to you. ... When you blame others, you give up your power to change."

In Alabama, a judge structured a 40-year sentence for rape so the rapist would serve two years in a community program for nonviolent criminals and three years of probation at home. The judge, much like McFadden, argued that the victim just didn't behave correctly. He said, "You didn't hear the evidence. The original allegation was that both of these crimes were forcible. But then you have to believe that although she was forcibly raped twice, she continued to come back and have a social relationship (with the rapist)."

Other women have been prosecuted for false reporting of rape because they didn't "act traumatized." Rape convictions have been vacated entirely because the victim didn't fight back, such as in Connecticut, when the state supreme court freed a rapist because his victim, a woman with cerebral palsy and a mental age of 3, with no ability to speak, didn't bite, kick, or scratch her attacker.

As disability blogger Sarah Levis has commented, all of these stories should push our attention to this aspect of rape culture in the courtroom. Rape culture creates the myth that victims of rape must react within a predictable set of norms or raise doubts about the legitimacy of the rape. All of these women, including Jane, behaved in a way that judges didn't understand, so they overturned convictions or reduced sentences.

And here is where disability comes back into play. Because of her Down syndrome, Jane is relatively immune to the kinds of victim-blaming endured by other women who are assaulted or abused...All of the myths about false reporting of rape don't apply to Jane because of her disability, and for that at least we can be thankful. Jane's experience points to the offensive way women's behaviors are interrogated when they seek justice.

Do not focus on Jane because she is a woman with Down syndrome. Focus on Jane because she is a woman who says that she was raped. Focus on Jane because she's joined the ranks of other women, women of all races, classes, sexual orientations, and levels of ability who have said that they were raped and then had their testimony disregarded by a judge on the basis of not acting enough like a victim.

There is no one correct way to respond to being violated, but there are so many ways that our justice system can make it worse.

There is now a manifest discrepancy between the large number of students who request that we address their love of Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, and medieval-themed video and computer games on the one hand, and the decreasing number of medievalists hired to replace retiring colleagues on the other. We are no longer protected by our involvement in preserving European heritages, an involvement often joined up with primordialist, jingoist, and colonialist mentalities discredited in the Western world by the 1970s. And we are as endangered as the rest of our humanities colleagues by the advent of new areas of scholarship, the intimidating popularity of the STEM disciplines, and politically motivated cuts to the liberal arts.
What can we do?
Perhaps we should begin by admitting that in enjoying the splendid isolation that allowed us to learn a lot about medieval culture, we have failed to share that knowledge with the public. As a result, a single 178-minute movie, Braveheart, could wipe out what 150 years of scholarship had established about the Right of the Lord’s First Night (a feudal lord’s rumored right to take the virginity of his serfs’ newlywed daughters). Meticulous source study since the Enlightenment about the horrific crimes committed during the medieval crusades hasn’t stopped schools from naming their teams Crusaders. And tens of thousands of learned books and articles about medieval knighthood have had no influence on white supremacists’ appropriation of allegedly chivalric virtues. It is clearly time to lower the drawbridge from the ivory tower and reconnect with the public.

The Middle Ages is popular. Our classes tend to enroll well. It's vastly easier to fill a "medieval" class than one on the "long 18th century" or even the "early modern" era (though Shakespeare still beats Chaucer, and the Renaissance is doing fine). Medieval conjures images in our students' minds and we must, and I think we largely are, capitalize on that. In fact, everyone should capitalize on these kinds of things. Do 17th-century historians get pressured to invoke the Three Musketeers?

Disney's Cinderella Castle

"But beliefs in abortion rights and disability rights are not mutually exclusive. David Perry, a journalist in Chicago who has a child with Down syndrome, says he can't stand to see pro-lifers co opt the cause. "As a father of a boy with Down syndrome, I do not want my son being used as a wedge issue in the abortion wars," he told Mic. "Politicizing births just helps the radical anti-choice fanatics play divide and conquer with the disability rights movement."

David Perry, a freelance writer and father of a son with Down Syndrome, accused Ohio Republicans of using children like his son as "a wedge issue." A "blanket ban isn't going to help at all, but even if it's enforced somehow, it could just lead women to lie about the reasons they aborted, or make Down syndrome code for poverty, when only poor people are forced to give birth after a diagnosis," writes Perry. He argues that "the best way to get people to choose to carry a fetus with Down syndrome to term is to make the words 'Down syndrome' less scary" and "get to work building a more inclusive society." But, "that's hard. It's not politically useful. So instead, we've got bills like HB 131 in Ohio."

Other parents of children with Down syndrome, like journalist David Perry, think of the proposed ban as a “wedge issue” and a disingenuous attempt on the part of the pro-life movement to “garner sympathy from moderates.”

If you want to help people with Down syndrome, don't politicize their births,” Perry wrote for CNN. “Instead, get to work building a more inclusive society.”

Advocates like Perry prefer a strictly “pro-information” approach, in which women receive updated and less stigmatizing data about Down syndrome in the event of a prenatal diagnosis. The Ohio legislature unanimously passed a pro-information law in 2014, the seventh such law passed since 2012.

But, as Perry noted in a January RH Reality Check op-ed, pro-information laws have also become politicized by anti-abortion groups. Passed in 2014, Louisiana’spro-information law requires that any information given to women “does not engage in discrimination based on disability or genetic variation by explicitly or implicitly presenting pregnancy termination as a neutral or acceptable option.”

In other words, instead of presenting women with all options and allowing them to choose, the Louisiana law mandates that abortion cannot be discussed at all in the event of a diagnosis unless it is presented as unacceptable.

As for the Ohio bill, Democrats and other abortion rights supporters are questioning the stated intent behind the bill. Ohio Democrats attempted to attach several amendments to H.B. 135 that would increase special education funding, paid parental leave, and sick leave—amendments that were ruled as not being germane to the bill, and probably appropriately so, legally speaking.
But still, the bluff has been called: Do abortion opponents care about Down syndrome or does the debate merely suit their purposes?

But these aren’t policies that help marginalized communities. Instead, they’re part of a larger effort to chip away at abortion rights by making the procedure more difficult to obtain by putting up hurdles like waiting periods and mandating ultrasounds. They are also perverting causes around the very real issues of racism, sexism and ableism.

David Perry, a freelance journalist whose son has Down syndrome, wrote in CNNthat bills like the one in Ohio run counter to the work that disability rights advocates have been doing.

“Around the country, we’ve been making real progress in attacking the misconceptions built within the prenatal testing regime. When people receive a prenatal diagnosis, they are often told things that aren’t true, and this misinformation can naturally shape their choice of whether to terminate a pregnancy.”

Perry says instead of trying to force women to carry pregnancies, we need to focus on a “pro-information” movement that ensures women who undergo genetic testing while pregnant have access to all of the facts they need to make their own decision. But to the anti-choice movement, women aren’t capable of making decisions - they need the government to do that for them - and available information should be limited or just plain false.

“As technology disrupts the auto industry much like it changed the rules for the music and film industries, its critical to learn from key innovators like Lyft’s John Zimmer,” said Lisa Kaz, President and CEO of the Los Angeles Auto Show and Connected Car Expo. “The future direction of the Auto Industry is being determined by a multitude of players and the LA Auto Show’s Connected Car Expo brings together this new auto industry ecosystem to responsibly map the way.”

Because Westworld is set in an amusement park, the movie deliberately invokes clichés. You might roll your eyes if a show presented a duel at high noon or a tavern brawl replete with a body sliding down the bar, but that's precisely the point here. The tourists want to participate within those clichés: stabbing Caesar, playing poker with Wild Bill Hickok, or commanding armies in a great medieval siege. HBO, via Rome, Deadwood, and Game of Thrones has been providing its own takes on these archetypal events and settings, so Westworld has the chance to get very meta.

I'm the father of a boy with Down syndrome. I spend much of my life trying to make the world a better place for him. In doing so, I find common cause with liberals and conservatives from around the country, as we focus on issues like education, employment, and fighting stigma.

Here's the most frustrating thing for me: There is so much to complain about regarding our prenatal testing regime, the way we talk about Down syndrome, stigma against all kinds of people with disabilities, the lack of educational and employment opportunities for people with disabilities, and more. There's lots of work to do. The best way to get people to choose to carry a fetus with Down syndrome to term is to make the words "Down syndrome" less scary. That's hard. It's not politically useful. So instead, we've got bills like HB 131 in Ohio.

Right now, people with Down syndrome are shattering our biases. It's not just high-profile feel-good stories about models, or superficial inspirational stories about prom queens and athletes "allowed" to score goals. Every day, I'm seeing people with Down syndrome learn, work, form relationships, perform service to others, set goals and surpass them, and generally accomplish things that 20 years ago would have seemed impossible.

That's where our energy should be going. If you want to help people with Down syndrome, don't politicize their births. Instead, get to work building a more inclusive society.

A snapshot of today’s sci-fi publishing industry – as opposed to the fandom that ultimately underwrites the industry’s business – does not show a diverse picture. Both bookshelves and cinema screens are currently dominated by the Matt Damon/Andy Weir vehicle The Martian and its archaically old-fashioned (and vastly overrated) SF.

I enjoyed *The Martian* too! We don't have to choose between *The Martian* and *Ancillary Sword* and The Kingdoms Trilogy; I can read Andy Weir and Ann Leckie and N K Jemison all in the same year. The Puppies don't seem to get that; I'm surprised to see this writer falling into the same mistake from the other side, as it were.

With increased national attention on violent encounters between law enforcement and people with mental, intellectual, or psychiatric disabilities, as exemplified by the tragic deaths of Ethan Saylor, Ezell Ford, Tanisha Anderson, and many others, as well as the City and County of San Francisco v. Sheehan case, there are many opportunities and directions for legal advocacy and social justice activism. An ideal policy strategy to reduce lethal outcomes is two-pronged: advocacy for improved crisis response, as well as for increasing the availability and accessibility of community-based crisis prevention and recovery services. While increasing funding for Crisis Intervention Training (CIT) for police is the most commonly cited policy recommendation, the evidence remains unclear as to whether CIT training actually changes law enforcement officers' behavior and there are additional significant drawbacks to a CIT-only policy approach. Mobile crisis teams (MCTs) are a promising alternative to help reduce the need for involvement of law enforcement in crisis situations, but there are other drawbacks in terms of variable availability and accessibility of MCTs depending on locale. Panelists will discuss the root causes of increased law enforcement encounters with people with psychiatric and other disabilities -- underfunded, under-resourced, community-based systems, and a lack of a social safety net -- underlining advocacy strategies to address the problem upstream.

Learning Goals and Objectives:

1. Attain familiarity with the current cases and legal debates regarding law enforcement and persons with disabilities.
2. Understand the limitations of Crisis Intervention Training (CIT) and CIT-only policy responses.
3. Learn about a range of strategies to address crisis and alternatives to prevent and reduce the need for encounters between law enforcement and persons with disabilities.
4. Describe an ideal policy response to prevent violent and tragic encounters between law enforcement and persons with disabilities.

Tarpley deleted the images and deleted his Twitter account, but defended the hunt to the Daily Mail, saying critics "don't understand it."
"They don't care about human beings and babies being slaughtered and body parts being sold for Planned Parenthood but they care about one animal," he told the website. "There was no media hype about Planned Parenthood selling baby parts but one lion gets killed and everyone goes crazy."
He also said that his family has given up hunting as they can no longer afford it.

Have you heard about the Christian bakers who refused to make wedding cakes for gay couples? Of course you have. But I’ll bet you didn’t hear about the dance studio that refused service to a little girl with Down syndrome.

You’ve heard of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. Both died after interactions with law enforcement went tragically wrong. You’ve probably never heard of Robert Ethan Saylor.

I don’t mean to single out News4, WIVB. I really know nothing about it. But in refusing to broadcast the name of the dance studio that turned away a little girl with Down syndrome, it is not being journalistically neutral, it is playing the same old liberal media game of granting special privileges to preferred classes. All lives matter, but some evidently matter more than others.

Self-important, open-minded fellow who speaks in jibberish about intersections refuses to link directly to my piece https://t.co/aui47FcVOb

— Hennessey (@MattHennessey) August 18, 2015

@UHennessey @MattHennessey Now that's a story worth telling. Here's my piece on that - http://t.co/aMr5VzCeDA. Maryland is doing great work.

— David M. Perry (@Lollardfish) August 18, 2015

@Lollardfish @UHennessey Save the lectures for your students.

— Hennessey (@MattHennessey) August 18, 2015 

.@MattHennessey But if you'd like to have a conversation about your piece and other ways to conceive of the issues you raise, let me know.

— David M. Perry (@Lollardfish) August 18, 2015

@MattHennessey I just think there are better ways. I'd be happy to discuss them.

— David M. Perry (@Lollardfish) August 18, 2015

As the case now goes to trial it is becoming clear that Mike's former partner will be using his disability against him in an effort to prevent him from gaining access and any custody. A number of her court filings contain factual inaccuracies and gross misrepresentations, including her statement that Mike is too disabled to parent his son without full-time assistance, and that his disability limits his son's life.

• Versa Note SV adds content of the previous SV Convenience Package as standard equipment, including: NissanConnect with Mobile Apps, 5.0-inch color display, Streaming audio via Bluetooth®, Hands-free Text Messaging Assistant and SiriusXM Satellite Radio (SiriusXM subscription required, sold separately), RearView Monitor and Divide-N-Hide® Adjustable Floor
• 370Z Coupe and 370Z NISMO add a new available Bose® audio system incorporating Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) and Active Sound Enhancement (ASE)
• JUKE adds two new Personal Package options, Solar Yellow on the SV grade and Super Black on the SL grade, along with the addition of standard Siri™ Eyes Free
• Pathfinder features new high-contrast Almond interior, and a Cold Package is now available with the SV grade
• Quest adds a standard Dual Panel Moonroof on Platinum grade
• Rogue adds Forward Emergency Braking (FEB) to Rogue SL Premium Package; Rear Cross Traffic Alert (RCTA) added to Rogue SV and SL Premium Packages; Motion-Activated Power Liftgate and NissanConnect Services telematics added to Rogue SL; Siri™ Eyes Free added to Rogue SV Premium Package and Rogue SL
• NV Cargo adds 1st row side- and roof-mounted curtain supplemental side-impact air bags with rollover sensor for front outboard occupant head protection as standard equipment
• And Xterra, one of the boldly designed vehicles that helped reinvigorate the Nissan brand at the beginning of the century, will go out of production after a highly successful 15-year run