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What Makes America Beautiful – Free Speech
Ronald D Ross September 24, 2021 What happens to a society that is allowed free expression? Over 250-years ago, a few brave men were willing to give their “last full measure of devotion” to find out. Over two centuries of free speech in America has demonstrated the following about what those men called “an inalienable right.” First of all, free speech accelerates the discovery of truth. A few centuries ago, many of the “smart people” claimed the potato caused leprosy, syphilis, early death, sterility, and more. So, in 1748 the French parliament banned the eating of potatoes. Do you suppose some government health official declared, “Don’t ask questions, do what we tell…
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How “A Bug’s Life” Revealed the Immorality of Socialism
June 11, 2022 Emmanuel Rincón There is no ethical or moral reason why somebody should work tirelessly to support a bunch of bureaucrats, and the 1998 Pixar hit seems to grasp this. Nowadays it is difficult to find a film that represents good ideals and lays bare the practices of totalitarianism; in recent decades, the major film producers have left aside in good proportion the stories of heroes and role models to focus on the victims and their suffering at the hands of the oppressors, without really offering any positive or hopeful message, other than to enhance the culture of victimhood. However, in A Bug’s Life this did not happen, although the…
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The hidden extra costs of living with a disability
Disability is often incorrectly assumed to be rare. However, global estimates suggest than one in seven adults has some form of disability. The term “disability” covers a number of functional limitations – physical, sensory, mental and intellectual. These can range from mild to severe and might affect someone at any time across the lifespan, from an infant born with an intellectual impairment to an older adult who becomes unable to walk or see. What is perhaps less well-known is that studies consistently show that people with disabilities are disproportionately poor. They are more likely to become poor and, when poor, are more likely to stay that way, because of barriers to getting an…
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The pandemic changed death rituals and left grieving families without a sense of closure
Natasha Mikles The unexpected death of a friend and colleague to COVID-19 in January 2021 led me to start researching how American death rituals were transforming during the pandemic. My friend was Hindu, and while watching his funeral on Zoom, I witnessed the significant transformations that had to be made to the traditional rituals to accommodate COVID-19 safety guidelines. In the spring and summer of 2021, I conducted over 70 hours of oral history interviews with people involved in the medical and funerary professions, as well as grieving families and those who worked closely with them, including grief counselors, hospice workers and even spirit mediums. As a historian of religion interested in…
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Why grammar mistakes in a short email could make some people judge you Julie Boland, Robin Queen I’m a cognitive psychologist who studies language comprehension. If I see an ad for a vacation rental that says “Your going to Hollywood!” it really bugs me. But my collaborator, Robin Queen, a sociolinguist, who studies how language use varies across social groups, is not annoyed by those errors at all. We were curious: what makes our reactions so different? We didn’t think the difference was due to our professional specialties. So we did some research to find out what makes some people more sensitive to writing mistakes than others. What prior research tells us Writing…
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Covid supercentenarian
Lucile Randon DC (French: [ly.sil ʁɑ̃.dɔ̃]; 11 February 1904 – 17 January 2023), also known as Sister André (French: Sœur André), was a French supercentenarian. Living to the age of 118 years and 340 days, she had been the world’s oldest verified living person since April 19, 2022, following the death of Kane Tanaka.[1][2] ] Randon was blind and used a wheelchair from the early 2010s.[6] In January 2021, she tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 in an outbreak at her retirement home. She was asymptomatic and tested negative days before her 117th birthday, making her the oldest known survivor of the COVID-19 pandemic.[1][3][10]
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Shoe Envy
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For Many Disabled Patients, the Doctor Is Often Not In
By Emma Yasinski November 7, 2022 Ben Salentine, associate director of health sciences managed care at the University of Illinois Hospital and Health Sciences System, hasn’t been weighed in more than a decade. His doctors “just kind of guess,” his weight, he said, because they don’t have a wheelchair-accessible scale. He’s far from alone. Many people with disabilities describe challenges in finding physicians prepared to care for them. “You would assume that medical spaces would be the most accessible places there are, and they’re not,” said Angel Miles, a rehabilitation program specialist with the Administration for Community Living, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Not only do clinics…
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Your Brain on Red Alert
In February of 2020, as a mysterious zoonotic virus winged its way across the planet, I resolved to do whatever I could to stay on top of pandemic reports. I created a coronavirus browser folder, filled it with trusted news links, and checked it multiple times a day. But as the pandemic’s finish line receded into the future, my optimism flagged and my resolve to stay informed dwindled. Soon I felt like a panic-saturated sponge, incapable of absorbing any more bad news. I descended into the numbness so many of us have experienced, but the alerts kept coming. When alarm signals bombard us from every direction, our concentration and judgment…
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Jim Abbott
Amanda J Hales April 25, 2016 Baseball is a game that requires its athletes to run and to bat, catch and pitch a ball. We know the game as America’s Pastime and it’s about as summery as you can get. Young boys and girls play as youngsters with the hopes of one day making it to the big leagues, but the big leagues are only for the elite. What happens, then, if you have a disability? Well, if you are Jim Abbott it’s no big deal. Jim Abbott was born in Flint Michigan and attended the University of Michigan. He excelled at both baseball and football, albeit without the use…
