One of my frustrations with disability writing is that it’s often perceived as a niche, and a small one at that. Instead, it’s us. All of us. Not all of us at once. Not all of us now. But disability is a fundamental component of the human condition. And of course disability is also diversity,…
Yesterday, CNN published a piece of mine on the death of Kristiana Coignard. Here’s how she died [warning – the video is very disturbing, so follow the link with caution]: In late January, Kristiana Coignard, a seventeen-year-old woman with bipolar disorder and depression, walked into the police department in Longwood, Texas, with “I have a…
@Lollardfish I kept saying, “Show a gun. Show a gun. Show a gun.” Then I was mad they wussed out. — Jess Banks (@ProfBanks) February 2, 2015 Nationwide wants us to be afraid of the wrong things. This tweet was in reference to the nasty Nationwide ad that showed cute kids saying they never got…
It started when Rowan’s father posted her letter to Facebook and encouraged people to share it. I said, “how viral do you want to go? Like, I know an editor at The Mary Sue, and other places.” He replied, “Do it.” So I posted it to the blog and made this tweet below. Then I…
The Australian author Colleen McCullough died at age 77. The obituary in The Australian begins as follows: COLLEEN McCullough, Australia’s best selling author, was a charmer. Plain of feature, and certainly overweight, she was, nevertheless, a woman of wit and warmth. In one interview, she said: “I’ve never been into clothes or figure and the interesting…
Marvel comics made a movie about a talking tree and a raccoon awesome, but you haven’t made a movie with Wonder Woman. Girls read comics too and they care. Rowan is an 11 year old girl. I know her and her parents and am posting this with all of their permission (especially Rowan’s). She loves…
Last night, Georgia executed Warren Hill. Hill was clearly intellectually disabled as judged by pretty much every standard, except the ones used by the most bloodthirsty states. It’s a gross violation of universal human rights. Here’s a statement from The Arc. “Georgia’s ability to ignore experts and cross the line drawn by a more than…
Over the border from me, the Scott Walker experiment to dismantle the state of Wisconsin continues. He wants to create Kansas-North. Conservatives are loving it, and he’s just the kind of boring white guy with an allegedly criminal past that the GOP establishment might nominate for president. Not long after President Obama unveiled his ideas for…
Austen Heinz is the typical silicon valley disruptor superstar. Edgy. Controversial. Disruptive. He was profiled for his DNA Startup which allows you to “create life.” In Austen Heinz’s vision of the future, customers tinker with the genetic codes of plants and animals and even design new creatures on a computer. Then his startup, Cambrian Genomics, prints…
Usually I post my roundup on Sunday, but just so much is going on that I wrote a post instead. And I should have an article going up later today. Here are my recent posts. Seattle Museum and How to Write/Program for Disability: Seattle has a neat program for “autistic kids.” I laud the program,…