Year: 2011

"In 2000, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were born from the Millennium Declaration, which was an unprecedented global consensus to improve the condition of humanity throughout the world. 
Today the MDGs are seen as the centrepiece of the development agenda. 
Notwithstanding the breadth and the scope of the MDGs, persons with disabilities continue to experience inequalities that are closely intertwined to all the development challenges linked to the MDGs. Disability remains as both a cause and consequence of poverty. Reaching the Millennium Development Goals is unlikely to be achieved unless the rights and needs of persons with disabilities are considered in the process of development."

 

See full article at the Swazi Observer: http://www.observer.org.sz/index.php?news=33264

"A new study shows that it is more difficult to "move up" in America than other developed countries. In America, kids are more likely to stay at the bottom of the economic ladder if their parents had low socio- economic status. Weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz talks with Erin Currier, manager of the Economic Mobility Project of the Pew Charitable Trusts, about why the U.S. ranked worst for economic mobility among the countries in the study."

See the full story at NPR: http://www.npr.org/2011/12/10/143509344/moving-on-up-more-difficult-in-america

They are the cliche’s cliche, the alimentary canal’s exohpthalmic archetype, the bug-eyed hairy unmentionable, and the friend of Hollywood–which is a matter only explainable by the leisure class’ fascination with infanticide. Don’t kid yourself. Fatty Arbuckle was the Platonic model for the entire werewolf industry but nowadays you will have to look him up, which tells you how decadent the whole thing has gotten. I say bleep the werewolves with their industrial reaction formations and their vomit which smells of Thorstein Veblen and Carl Jung. Me? I give a shit about the polar bears. The polar bears are going extinct while America goes to the movies. A tinsel moon floats over Fatty Arbuckle’s bungalow and the screenwriter who lives there takes another Ritalin. Werewolves for everybody. There’s plenty of ersatz offal to go around.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

How beautiful to see we are still funny. Five people and no one is selling anything. Though one of us who has lost a lot of weight lifts up his shirt and I say if he keeps this kind of display up, a piano will fall on him. The dog walks into the room with her dish clutched in her teeth. A five point buck looks in the window. Any moment now, Dr. Doolittle will drop by for coffee. We are just laughing animals. Save the human textbook for tomorrow.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

My wife has purchased a product called a "Happy Light" which comes in a box with a picture of a twenty something woman doing a yoga exultation, arms out, broad smile on her face, seated before her lamp of Luxor. I remember that when I was twenty I had that same look most of the time. I'm excited because obviously this lamp is going to make me into a twenty year old woman. The box doesn't reveal whether the yogic girl is wise or curious or shrewd. Yoga is, in America, a semiotic signifier of eastern wisdom, but in the east, they know that any idiot can stand on one leg. I'm just saying. I'm going to approach this lamp with great care.  

Each morning the dream recedes like retractable claws. In the 19th century they believed it was always the same dream. You were afflicted all night long by the cruel father or voracious mother.  

The more enlightened among us see that you can dream of a library. 

Last night I dreamt something having to do with the Dead Sea scrolls. There were lots of badly dressed, vatic people who were vaguely happy. They were beside the water and believed they were loved by the divine. They had plenty of words to support this. 

There wasn’t a cruel mother in sight. Unless she was offstage somewhere. Perhaps dear old mum was the dead sea itself, but that’s so Vienna, don’t you think?  ƒ

 

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/newt-gingrich-half-sister-candace-gingrich-jones-rips-sibling-gay-marriage-i-ll-vote-obama-article-1.988526?localLinksEnabled=false

 

For the blind: this is a federal style brick house surrounded by fake trees which are filled with mechanical birds and piercing strobe lights. The entire scene is under a fourteen story tall glass roof. The little brick house has a picture of a ginger bread man named “Gingy” who also walks the atrium during happy hour I’m told…

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

This is the atrium of the Gaylord Hotel and resort in National Harbor, Maryland where I have been holed up at a conference on wireless accessibility for people with disabilities. I confess that the entire complex makes me feel as if I’m inside a micro-chip.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad