Daily Archives: 1 January, 2010

Chatterday! Open Thread.

yellow labrador puppy running toward the cameraThis is our weekly Chatterday! open thread. Use this open thread to talk amongst yourselves: feel free to share a link, have a vent, or spread some joy.

What have you been reading or watching lately (remembering spoiler warnings)? What are you proud of this week? What’s made your teeth itch? What’s going on in your part of the world? Feel free to add your own images. (Anna insists that these should only be of ponies, but I insist that very small primates, camelids, critters from the weasel family, smooching giraffes, and cupcakes are also acceptable.) Just whack in a bare link to a webpage, please – admin needs to deal with the HTML code side of things.

Today’s chatterday backcloth comes via -=RoBeE=- on flickr. I realised something was missing from this blog, and that something is puppies. There are never enough puppies.

Recommended Reading for January 1st

Warning: Offsite links are not safe spaces. Articles and comments in the links may contain ableist, sexist, and other -ist language of varying intensity. Opinions expressed in the articles may not reflect the opinions held by the compiler of the post.

The Deal with Disability: Letter to Invacare

When I called to discuss this matter and get an email of someone in customer service, I was informed that you don’t have a customer service or email and the only way to file a complaint was verbally. This is impossible because my disability renders me NON-VERBAL.

UPI.com: College appeals ruling on disabled student

Oakland University in suburban Detroit says it’s appealing a court ruling that it must allow a cognitively impaired, non-degree student to live on campus. The Rochester, Mich., school says student Micah Fialka-Feldman can live on campus during the appeals process.

“The issue is a bigger issue than just Micah,” university spokesman Ted Montgomery told the Detroit Free Press. In a statement Wednesday, the university said the judge’s ruling “does not satisfy the legitimate interests of the university’s matriculated, degree-seeking students.”

ABS-CBN News: Senate OKs bill empowering persons with disabilities

MANILA, Philippines – Sen. Pia S. Cayetano has welcomed the passage by the Senate of a proposed measure that seeks to give a voice in local governance to the country’s estimated 9.7 million persons with disabilities (PWDs).

Senate Bill No.3560, otherwise known as “An Act establishing the institutional mechanism to ensure the implementation of programs and services for persons with disabilities in every province, city and municipality,” was approved unanimously on second reading by the Senate on December 16 before going on a four-week recess.

New York Times: Seeking a Cure for Optimism

Recently, a number of writers and researchers have questioned the notion that looking on the bright side — often through conscious effort — makes much of a difference. […]

A study published in the November-December issue of Australasian Science found that people in a negative mood are more critical of, and pay more attention to, their surroundings than happier people, who are more likely to believe anything they are told.

“Whereas positive mood seems to promote creativity, flexibility, cooperation and reliance on mental shortcuts, negative moods trigger more attentive, careful thinking, paying greater attention to the external world,” Joseph P. Forgas, a professor of social psychology at the University of New South Wales in Australia, wrote in the study. […]

[Barbara L. Fredrickson, a psychology professor at UNC] cautions that the idea of “fake it till you make it” can actually be harmful to one’s health. “What my research shows is that those insincere positive emotions — telling yourself ‘I feel good’ when you don’t — is toxic and actually more harmful than negative emotions.

The Washington Post: Military helps families find care for special-needs kids

The Poway Unified School District near San Diego offered Driscoll’s 11-year-old, Paul, the support of an aide for 10 hours a week — fewer than half the 21 hours Fairfax County had provided and said he deserved under federal law.

“They slashed his services in half and said, ‘We believe this is comparable,’ ” Driscoll said.

Pink News: HIV experts call for declassification of transgenderism as mental illness

An international meeting of experts on HIV has called for transgenderism to be reclassified as a medical condition, rather than a mental illness. […] It argues that trans people would then escape the stigma of mental illness that is frequently attached to them.

[editor’s note: Wouldn’t it be nice for there to be no stigma associated with mental illness? And for being transgender just being another way of being, with all management options accessible to people who need them, without having to wrangle verbosely about whether it’s ‘abnormal’ or not?]


[Re-edit Jan 2: This post is absolutely not an invitation to desultory debate on whether or not you think being trans really is a disability. I had thought my previous note made that clear, but apparently not.]

Question Time: Disability and the New Year

Question Time is a series in which we open up the floor to you, commenters. We invite you to share as you feel comfortable.

Well, it’s Gregorian New Year today, and I wish you a very happy new year if you use that calendar system, and a very happy next twelve months in any case!

This year, as in every year, disabled people are going to be having a tough time of things. So, in what respects would you like society to improve its treatment of PWD this year? What concrete things would you like to be done? What nebulous dreams fulfilled?

(Alternatively, as I put it when I threw the idea for this post out to meloukhia: ‘like, what are your wishes for society to improve stuff for PWD this year or something’. Sophistication: I have it.)