Ever since we got our first Macintosh computer in 1989 our family has been quite devoted to Apple products (currently our household boasts four Macs, an iPhone, five or six iPods, and an Apple TV). Peter and I even regularly read blogs devoted to Apple news and commentary. One of things these sorts of blogs …
Category Archive: Reads
Mar
25
Smartasses and Doorstops
I’ve recently been introduced1 to a scathingly funny blog called “Smartass Cripple”, by Chicago writer Mike Ervin, a quadriplegic who is, yes, very much a smartass. He is not one to get sanctimonious when writing about disability issues: He’s just as likely to take wickedly nasty potshots at himself and his “fellow cripples” as he …
Dec
13
Vision issues
Terry Pratchett, the fantasy writer, wrote a clear-headed and deeply personal article about having been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. The type of dementia he has is called posterior cortical atrophy (PCA), apparently the “best” form of Alzheimer’s to have: memory and coherency are largely left unaffected (at least at the beginning), but visual acuity and skilled …
Mar
15
Photon’s no Hoover
We always joked that one of the reasons we got a dog was so we wouldn’t have to vacuum as often. As it turned out, Photon does her share of mooching in the park and at the dinner table, but that’s about it. And other than a couple of puppy teething mishaps she’s never really …
Oct
06
The Boy in the Moon, revisited
A couple of years ago we posted (here and here) about Globe and Mail writer Ian Brown’s heartbreaking series of articles about his severely disabled son, Walker. Although most of Walker’s disabilities are much more profound than anything we’ve encountered, Brown wrote about issues, feelings, and thoughts that had an eerie resonance with us. Brown …
Jul
29
The battle for chiropractic
A month or two ago in his column in the Guardian, noted science-writer Simon Singh (who wrote a favourite of mine, The Code Book) laid a broadside against the chiropractic industry in Britain, as well as chiropractic in general. Based on the dubious history of chiropractic and the damning evidence of recent studies and key …
May
07
Of Cane Toads, Rabbits, Ants and Wolfpigeons
I like juxtaposition. Recently, Britain’s The Guardian had an article on the past and present fun of environmental intervention in Australia, including the cane toad. Photo by Jiggs Images’, under the Creative Commons The toads were intentionally introduced to Oz in 1935 to fight a beetle that had been accidentally introduced, and have since become …