Global Crisis

Last December, I finished teaching and went on sabbatical. Tomorrow, I go back in the classroom again. I worked very hard, and these last nine months mark a major career transition for me. I suspect I produced well over 100,000 words, and it could be a LOT more if you count each blog post, talk, the book proposal, and more. I woke, I addressed the...

I have a new piece up at Al Jazeera America today on disability and upcoming television shows that have, in the past, done a good job with disability issues. None are perfect shows, but it's ok to admire the good even while criticizing the bad:Since the emergence of the newly renamed Bechdel-Wallace Test, which is used to judge women’s representation...

One of the great pleasures of my summer was meeting and interviewing Claudia Gordon. She works for the labor department now, but ten years ago she was at the Office of Homeland Security, her attention focused on people with disabilities in the aftermath of Katrina.Her video, shared below, talks about her development in the wake of the ADA in developing...

Lincoln is continuously raising the bar. Do you want to be able to see the invisible? In the 2016 Lincoln MKX you will be able to upgrade your field of vision, from every angle. Four cameras on the front, rear and sides merge to provide a seamless bird’s-eye view all around the...

The 2015 Lincoln MKC Crossover Black Label edition sets the standard for luxury. This vehicle is jammed packed with state of the art technology, stylish interior design and an impeccable drive. Let me introduce you to the Black Label Experience customers that choose this option can...

Content Note: This post does not describe rape, but does describe the way our justice system embodies rape culture. In March, 2013 - I wrote about a rape case involving a woman with Down syndrome. Her rapist was convicted, but the judge threw out the case because "she didn't act enough like a victim." The Down syndrome community reacted as if...

Richard Utz has a great piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the ways that medievalist can more intentionally link what they do to popular expressions of ideas about the Middle Ages.There is now a manifest discrepancy between the large number of students who request that...

I wrote a piece for CNN opposing the Ohio Down Syndrome Abortion Ban. Read it here. It's been picked up and quoted by some interesting folks. I like to track impact of my writing on other journalists.I gave this quote to Mic directly:"But beliefs in abortion rights and disability rights are not mutually exclusive. David Perry, a journalist in...

Connected Car Expo® (CCE), the auto industry’s most authoritative gathering of automotive and technology leaders, announced today that Lyft, Inc. Co-Founder and President John Zimmer will keynote the Nov. 17 auto-tech conference and exhibition held at JW Marriott L.A. Live.  CCE...

I have a new piece on Vice about Westworld. It's a new show coming from HBO and could be pretty awesome. Or, it could just re-tread the "robots become sentient" stuff from Battlestar Galactica and Humans and Ex Machina and whatever.Here's my hope:Because Westworld is set in an amusement park, the movie deliberately invokes clichés....

Over the weekend, the New York Times had a front-page story on the Ohio GOP's plan to pass a ban on abortions based on prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome. It got a ton of social media play and was the top story on Huffington Post for some hours yesterday, in part because John Kasich, Ohio's governor, is the "moderate" running for the GOP...

From Damien Walter at The Guardian on The Hugos: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...

Still blogging. But mostly - I am writing a book: Disability Is Not A CrimeI'm home from DC. Amazing time at the NARPA Conference: Beyond CIT Training session I helped run, but mostly honored to meet so many advocates and experts doing the work in the trenches. Special thanks to the folks at Bazelon who co-presented with me (and for...

I am flying to DC today for the annual NARPA - National Association for Rights Protection and Advocacy - Conference.I'll be speaking about police violence and disability, along with two people from the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law. They will focus on policy and law. I'm going to tell stories about deaths, discuss the cult of compliance, and...

Thesis: If you genuinely want to increase coverage of an issue, start with your own community and work outward. Anything else is just an attempt to play one group off another.This will be a little rambling, as I'm working through my ideas. That's why this is on my blog and not formalized and submitted somewhere. Also, I need to get back to other work...

This is just news from yesterday.SFPD were filmed abusing a man with a prosthetic leg and crutches. Initially, the claim was that he was "waving sticks around like weapons" outside Twitter's hq. Since that claim has been debunked (notice a lack of sticks in the video), they are now claiming they were "helping" him through his mental health crisis.In...

Yesterday I announced that I am writing a book about the criminalization of disability in American society. Disability is not a crime, but it's treated like a crime throughout our society. I'm going to talk about policing, but also the way this mentality emerges in other aspects of society.Here's one: Parenting while disabled.Disabled parents are often...

Leading the way for 2016 are two more all-new models – the eighth-generation Nissan Maxima "4-Door Sports Car" and the category redefining, Cummins diesel-powered Nissan TITAN XD pickup. The stunning new Maxima arrived at Nissan dealerships nationwide in June and will be followed...