#reading the books simultaneously is leading to some minor observations

[dontbotherwiththepronunciation]

Characters/dynamics in ASOIAF that were confirmed by GRRM to be partly inspired by I, Claudius

Stannis —> Tiberius

Admittedly, not the later post-coronation Tiberius who becomes a perverted tyrant, but the pitiable Tiberius who desperately wishes to be loved and is extremely vexed and miserable by the awareness he isn’t. Every time l remember Stannis being based of Tiberius, I can't help but cackle and then I want to cry. That is such a mean thing to do.

The Cressen POV chapter makes it abundantly clear too, specially when Cressen compares him to his brothers.

Also,

"They will not love me, you say? When have they ever loved me? How can I lose something I have never owned?"

"Well, don't bother on my account! I'm sick of it! The gods know I've done my best! He never liked me. Never!"

Tyrion —> Claudius

Tyrion & Jaime —> Claudius & Germanicus

Tyrion & Cersei —> Claudius & Livilla

This one is very obvious if seen through the familial relationships. Cruel parent who hates them and openly despises them, a brother who loves them dearly, a sister who makes their life miserable. Both of them suffer through the populations ableism, both end up in positions of power where they exceed all expectations. Claudius is though much less vile than Tyrion manages to become over time.

Characters/dynamics in ASOIAF I think have a few uncanny parallels to characters/dynamics in I, Claudius.

Genna —> Julia (Is far more intelligent than people assume, more politically savvy than their husbands, “was beautiful but became fat”, the aunt who was loving and kind to their disabled nephews who suffered greatly at the hands of their families)

Joffrey, Tyrion & Sansa (and maybe Ramsay, Theon & Jeyne if you squint) —> Caligula (Unhinged evilness mocking the disabled and diminished characters + forcing them into sexual acts with younger and very scared girls), Claudius (disabled character taking a protector type of role towards the girl while continuing to be subjugated by their mutual abuser) & Messalina (younger girl forced into marriage by their abuser)

Robb, Jon, Theon—> Germanicus (Golden boy of the world, a prodigy at councils and battles, close relationship with mother and sibling hated by mother, has the loyalty of many even after death, wife continues condemning the murderers of her husband), Claudius (looked down upon by the rest of the world, the family’s shame, rises above the expectations of the world into a position of power), Herod (libertine, smiling immigrant living in a foreign place with politically superior family since childhood, misses his home but is practically a stranger there (although he is the heir), family is crazy, ultimately betrays best friend and is “punished” for it)

Jaime, Cersei & Joanna —> Caligula, Drusilla & Agrippina (“what do you mean my kids are being incestuous? They are just very close and loving, but there’s nothing wrong with- oh. Oh. OH.”)

Targaryen dynasty —> Claudian family (

)

Petyr & Lysa (and if you squint Sansa) —> Sejanus & Livilla (Rose to power through carefully working through rulers, always aspires for more, seduces noble woman into poisoning her husband for his political gain (and if you squint Helen (was seen as a romantic threat by the women that were supposed to protect them and thus almost killed) )

Bran —> Claudius (I know that GRRM has openly said he based Tyrion on Claudius, but right now (probably tainted by the fact my legs aren’t working properly either), I think he might have unconsciously based Bran on Claudius more than he thought.)

Both of them are prophesied to become important characters in history, both of them deny and defy that destiny, both of them initially actively dislike the idea of becoming such figures (Bran wanted to be a knight, not the Three-eyed Raven, and Claudius wanted to reinstall the Republic instead of becoming Emperor himself) and both of them end up accepting it when adviced by very dear and trusted friends

The connection to their respective wolf cubs.

Disability and ableist aliases (“Claudius the Cripple” “Bran the Broken”)

Being lovingly referred as or compared to monkeys by friends

Surviving a lot of stuff most people wouldn’t survive

Their childhood love interests/crushes are young, friendly, joyous, agile and adventurous girls. I find it also a little remarkable that Meera is a huntress while Camilla is the Etruscan name for the Greco-Roman goddess of the hunt.

And well, if going by GOT both of them are unexpected rulers who never had that ambition for themselves, but somehow ended up as Emperor/King

Probably a stretch, but I think there might be something there (but it’s still a huge stretch)

Ramsay & Roose —> Nero (flamboyant, ugly but fashionable, brutish heir with a flair for the dramatics) & Agrippinilla (brains behind the death of the former ruler, despises their son but uses them as a tool and sets them as heir (and if going by GOT both of them are also ultimately killed by their sons) ). If going by non-canon I, Claudius, but instead simply by Roman history, another detail that could add to Ramsay=Nero, could be the existence of Sporus (Theon), Nero’s third wife. A young handsome boy who caught Nero’s attention, something very tragic. Nero “fell in love” with Sporus and thus, raped him, castrated him, married him (yes. He was emperor. This is not the craziest stuff to happen in Rome), forced him to behave and be perceived as female and referred to him by the name of Popea Sabina (Reek-Heke), his former wife and a gift from his (adopted) father. Basically, he forced Sporus into taking the identity of a deceased person and built them to become that person….sounds awfully familiar if you asked me…

Not a stretch, but the similitude is simply very superficial: The Tyrion/Sansa wedding and the Claudius/Urgulanilla wedding have some obvious resemblances too. The height difference, the public mockery and humiliation, non of the people in these weddings being particularly excited about the wedding night (although for different reasons. (Urgulanilla is a lesbian (Although, who knows, Maybe Sansa is one too...))

Also if Tiberius=Stannis, then here is a complicate done Melisandre=Thrasyllus position + Livia's ambitions. We love two messy prophetic divas who can't make clear visions about the future and are working for some very disagreeable men because the even more disagreeable women in those men's lives asked them for it. On the other hand, Melisandre is much more ominous than Thrasyllus, if anything her perseverance and her belief in Stannis as the prince who was promised is more reminiscing to Livia's never-fading ambitions for Tiberius to become emperor, mixed with her "prophetic chickens". Davos acts as an opposite. His position of advicer and hand is closer to that of Livia's, but his personality is much closer to Thrasyllus' anxious, "I just want peace", and affable personality.

[taule]

Maul, part I: Broken Boys - early life trauma, survival & Ben Solo parallels

This is going to be an evolving meta that will be posted in a series of installments as I make my way through the various sources piecing the picture together and also attempt to tackle the various themes that pull at my heartstrings. I haven’t attempted to write anything in quite this way before, so there will be inevitable cross-referencing happening and it’s likely that I will come back to certain things later on.

There is something that stood out to me right away, as I started reading The Wrath of Darth Maul, and those are Ben Solo parallels. That doesn’t mean that I equate them in any way, but it does point to certain circumstantial factors that shaped their lives and I believe that what we know about them individually can inform us about the other. 

In both of them we see the effects of what it means to be a victim of the Dark side. The destruction of an innocent, impressionable mind being subjected to unimaginable, systematic cruelty with no protection and no hope of escape. Being taught that everything happening to them is their own doing, and a just punishment. They are the Lost Boys. Both their lives could have been very different and neither went down a path they laid for themselves through choice. And in Maul, especially, the connection to the Dark side is not an inherent one, and was about his environment and matter of birth, more so than something he manifested independently, in contrast to what we know of Ben, whose internal conflict had been apparent from the beginning. 

My interest and inspiration here is to look at how the loss, trauma, deprivation, enduring compassion and capacity for love come together and fit into place in the making of this man. I don’t plan to descend into proper psychoanalysis, but to try and open Maul’s path and mind through some of what we know about Ben, who has been presented as a much more sympathetic character. In fact, hardly as a villain at all. And although I already said that I don’t equate them, I hope to show that the patterns and psychology of it is very similar, even if circumstances differ.

A major difference between Maul and Ben though, is the age at which they began their training, and the fact that Maul was trained to use the Force as a darksider from the start. But the way that the Dark side methods and cruelty in his training contrast with his curious and accepting nature shows that while Darth Sidious took him for his strength in the Force, the same way that Snoke singled out Ben, the darkness wasn’t inherently dominating over the potential for Light in either of them. The question of age definitely plays into this matter, because Ben started training unusually late, and Maul on the other hand very early, and so he wasn’t old enough to have yet started manifesting the imbalance or struggle between Light and Dark the way Ben did.

Unfortunately a lot of the material that has provided information on Maul’s early life has been pushed to the Legends with the Disney acquisition. Which is a shame. Because that material was a source for a lot of insight. I’m not going to shy away from using it as a source here though, because it still shows the original intention in his depiction. And there is very little material that has come later that has overwritten any of what came before. It has mostly just left a hole.

But there are some inconsistencies that derive from the rebranding and restructuring because of later-established sources that no longer had to be consistent with published material. To me, one of the most important ones is the circumstance of his birth. 

The earlier information ( Darth Plagueis, 2012 ) reveals that Maul was born on Iridonia, as one of two male twins to Kycina, a human Nightsister mother from Talzin’s clan, and a Dathomirian Zabrak father that by Dathomirian tradition was killed soon after she became pregnant. Kycina was desperate to find a way to give at least one of her sons a life of freedom. Thinking Talzin was only aware of one of her twins, she offered Maul to Sidious to take as an apprentice, hoping that this would at least give her son a chance of a life free of the fate that awaited him on Dathomir.

The later version goes into no such detail of the circumstance of his birth that I have been able to discern, and it is merely established that Talzin was mother to all three boys (including Savage). And that Sidious had formed an alliance with Talzin, having promised to take her as his apprentice in return for her knowledge. It is when Sidious met Maul and sensed his strength in the Force that he not only broke his promise to Talzin, but also kidnapped her “son”. 

Personally, I remain loyal to the original version. Not only does it answer more questions, but I believe that it offers us valuable insight. I’m sure it was no small amount of consideration that went into giving such an iconic character a backstory. And for it to be imagined in this way tells us quite a bit about how the creators wanted him to be perceived, at least by those who would seek that understanding.

Not to mention the fact that there is no plausible child-parent relationship depicted between Maul and Talzin. And to insist that he’s her son would also mean to accept that this mother did nothing to aid this son of hers who was withering away on Lotho Minor... not before it became convenient and useful for her at least.

And as it is a certain development that Im trying to observe here, chronology is relevant to it. So in the following I’m going to look at the backstory that The Wrath of Darth Maul paints us, starting from his early years in captivity on Mustafar. 

Maul was only 3 or even two at the time, considering that he has already been on Mustafar for a while by the time the book starts. Page 1 of chapter I describes where, and importantly how he is being kept. In a small, featureless room, made of metal. With a single polarized viewport overlooking a river of lava leading to a sea of fire. He was completely isolated and left without any meaningful social interaction. A single droid looked after him, simultaneously serving the functions of his caretaker, teacher and punisher. The very second page in chapter I establishes how little Maul wishes he could escape this place.

He was left in complete emotional and social deprivation. Fed bits of raw meat through a slot in the door that remained shut. Then, forced to exercise until point of collapse. Let’snot forget that this is a toddler that we are talking about. Windham repeatedly emphasizes how small he is. For example, how his feet “only extend a few centimeters over the edge of a seat”.

We are introduced to the circumstance through a frightened child’s eyes. Trying to figure out how to behave in the right way that does not grant punishment. He is being actively conditioned in the most awful, cruel ways. Something that has been (with less written evidence) noted about Ben and the way in which it shaped his thinking for years to come, leaving behind marks that he may never entirely recover from.

“Maul hated the Man even more than he hated the droid. The Man frightened him.”

The book doesn’t describe the first few times that Maul met Sidious, but only that his fear of him was greater than that he felt for the droid that routinely hurt him. 

“Usually, the droid brought pain. Once, the droid had delivered a bright green and yellow snake that wasted no time in attacking Maul, sinking its venomous fangs deep into the boy’s arm.”

“One of the first things he learned was not to cry. Crying never made anything better. Crying only made things worse.”

So these two quotes above should give an adequate idea about what his early childhood boiled down to. Not that we can really call this a childhood. Mind you, this is only from the first pages of chapter one so far, and his training, which is in reality conditioning, only became crueler as he grew. The objective was quite clearly to break him down completely, so he could be put back together in ways that served the abuser’s intended purpose. But there’s nothing vague about all the abuse he’s been described to go through. I wont be including the most graphic depictions of abuse here, but let me tell you it wasn’t easy to read.

I feel it’s been somewhat acknowledged that Maul has a backstory, and that there’s certain tragedy to it. But I’m just not sure in what depth it’s been looked at. And there’s the inevitable difference between how the origin story of the hero vs the villain is looked upon. Regardless of whether the dichotomy is really carved into stone in such a way, as long as it is perceived, it is also applied. 

That also extends to the sympathy with which their lives are viewed. I think we have an interesting case in Ben, because people obviously can’t agree on it. We’ve been sent mixed signals, and we can see how that has changed our perception of his becoming, and our willingness to see him as a victim. Because on one hand there’s the way that he has been initially presented as a villain (even though not explicitly defining him that way) and then there’s his ever-expanding backstory that explains how things ended up that way. And it’s the how that has the power to change... everything. Because it has the power to bring understanding which in turn inspires sympathy, that enables a shift in responsibility. Which can change how we view something to the very core.

“More than ever, Maul wished he were the free-floating boy who appeared to exist beyond the window in his own room. He tried very hard not to tremble as he slowly turned and looked up to face the Man.”

His wish to escape has been mentioned multiple times. And it’s more than about setting the tone, the feeling. It’s confirming over and over that this child didn’t choose this path or fate. Depending on whether we follow the original or the later version, he was either given up by his mother in hopes that this would be better than what awaited on Dathomir, or he was kidnapped. In either case, not there by any choice of his own.

“But he survived.”

And I think this is quite clearly establishes that it’s mightily unfair to talk about choices here. What we’re talking about is survival. Once it becomes about survival, it’s what reframes everything else involved, because we’ve stopped talking about choices. I guess what I’m arguing here is that if we can agree that Ben Solo was a victim of the Dark side, of abuse, conditioning and manipulation, Maul most definitely is. Not only were his circumstances likely far more severe, but he had not known a life outside of it. He had no point of reference for what the alternative could even be and no moral framework outside of avoiding cruel punishment. 

[gplusbfics]

Real Life update from Wendy, aka @gplusbfics.

I'm the kind of person who always has a LOT going on, but since the inauguration of Führer Trump, things have been especially overwhelming. Not only have had all my simultaneous creative, personal endeavors, plus adult responsibilities like a demanding job and serving on a homeowners association, but then there's a rising tide of fascism and horrible news every day, and activities to counter that.

So, in I confess random order, here are a "few" things I've been doing lately, including fun stuff because ugh, more than ever, I need it!

Just booked a trip to Berlin for late May - early June. Going for 10 days with my best friend. I’ve been to Germany probably a dozen times, every major city I think, but never Berlin. My Berlin friends say I probably won’t want to leave. Anyway, looking forward to thank.

Currently reading the early Feb. issue of Der Spiegel -- the one with the illustration of Trump having decapitated the Statue of Liberty. In addition to reading excellent reporting, much better than the American, because it’s not pussyfooting around, I’m boning up on my German. (I was a German minor, speak it, and read all Harry Potter exclusively in German.)

I have a domestic trip coming up in May when my mom comes down to Georgia from Massachusetts. Yay! She’ll be in Atlanta for a few days but we’re also going up to Asheville for 3-4. Biltmore Estate and driving around in the mountains are on the agenda.

I’ve been involved in multiple anti-fascist, Trump-resistance and civil rights advocacy efforts. Some are social media, some are volunteering my time (doing social media for an anti-fascist org), and soon I’ll be volunteering for the ACLU to be a “neutral observer” at public protests. I attended “Freedom School” workshop a week or so ago and run by ACLU Georgia and basically they are building a state-wide, grassroots, ground-level army of people to step up and demand things be done to protect established civil liberties and rights. This is ACLU’s national strategy -- people power!

I’ve also been reading some books on fascism and first-person accounts of people who lived in Germany in the 30s and 40s and saw it building, then piece by piece coming into place, then going into full force.

This past weekend, it was my best friend’s husband’s birthday and there was a party. Chocolate cake, chocolate ice cream, and amaro. Then Caleb (the best friend) brought out absinthe, this really lovely French sort he’s had for years, and offered it around. The 2-3 people who tried didn’t like it, so I drank theirs. I got pretty loopy for a while (absinthe is my favorite, but does strange things) and everyone laughed.

I’m still writing my Garashir fic “Outside Chance” and just posted Chapter 10 a few days ago. The whole fic is over 30,000 words now. Yesterday I updated my outline and decided I needed another chapter, so there are four more to go. I probably won’t finish until sometime in April.

I’m thinking of doing a podfic for “Exile for Two,” if I grab a couple of hours. Maybe soon!

I have a job, I work at Emory University, and it’s really busy. It’s basically digital communications for health sciences, dominated by medical research. So I manage web sites, blogs, social media, posting of academic news releases, online magazines, YouTube, etc. about medicine, public health, nursing, all kinds of research. A couple of weeks ago I hit my 10 year anniversary. I’ve never stayed anywhere that long but my job is awesome.

I live in a 104-year old neo-Gothic skyscraper, called The Healey, and it’s absolutely gorgeous, lobby like a European church. Next week I’ll be leading to tours of the building and block as part of a city-wide event called Phoenix Flies run by the Atlanta Preservation Center. It’s two weeks of free historic preservation events, like tours, lectures, etc. This is the fourth time I’ve led the tours. I start with a lecture, then do a tour, answer lots of questions. I’ve lived in my building 16 years and love it. (I’m a historic preservation nut and an aesthete.)

My cats are both wonderful and crazy, as cats are. My Maine Coon Harry’s favorite things are cuddling, eating, and having me comb out his (ridiculously long) fur. Also, for the past three weeks, playing with a big heart-shaped Mylar “I Love You” balloon I bought and weighted down with a piece of cardboard. He chases it all around. As for my shorthaired tabby Luckie, very different personality, her favorite things are lying right next to me on the bed for pets and security, hiding in the closet for hours, and catching sunbeams.

There’s more, I’m sure there is, but that’s enough.

Wendy

[paulisweeabootrash]

First Impression: Hometown Rebuilding: Folktales from Japan

I was poking around VRV a while back, looking for whatever would be highest on the "weeb" scale.  And I think I've found a candidate that's simultaneously high and low because of its subject matter: let’s dive into some fairy tales with Hometown Rebuilding: Folktales from Japan (2012).

Episodes watched: 3 ( = 9 self-contained shorts)

Platform: VRV

On March 11th, 2011, one of the most severe earthquakes ever recorded shook the northeastern half of Japan. Tens of thousands were killed, injured, or missing; over a million lost electricity; tsunamis scoured coasts as far away as South America; and the unprecedented tsunami that hit the Japanese coast infamously caused the Fukushima nuclear disaster. In the wake of this, claims MyAnimeList, Hometown Rebuilding: Folktales from Japan was conceived of as a way to cheer people up and highlight the regional culture of Tohoku, which was hit hardest.

This show is an anthology of shorts, adapting three folk tales per episode which, like other cultures' folklore, are often rooted in comedic misunderstandings and/or a healthy dose of magic, and simple enough to be geared toward children and impart specific values and lessons. The stories here aren't quite as blatant in those lessons as some of the folklore that we in European and European-influenced cultures are familiar with, which often come with explicitly-stated lessons at the end, but they do communicate clear ideas of proper behavior and consequences. The very first story, "The Old Man Who Made the Dead Trees Bloom", for example, seems to imply the lesson that being grateful, humble, and honest will cause spirits and other people to reward you, while being exploitative or greedy will not, and you know what?  Good.  People in real life do not tend to appreciate you being obviously self-serving toward them.  That story also starts off what quickly becomes a recurring theme (especially in “The Love Potion”) that chance encounters or events may cause good things for you, but trying to cause such events will backfire — an interesting outlook strongly in opposition to the American myth that just trying hard enough will make things work out well.  I'm also happy to note that the particular ones I've watched so far are willing to depict what Americans today would call “family-unfriendly” topics like death, alcohol, and corruption within religion, but are not willing to go in the family-unfriendly direction of terrifying children into obedience.

Which leads to what I mean by high and low on the Weeb scale. Any folklore is embedded deeply in the cultural assumptions of the culture that passes it on, but since it also communicates those cultural assumptions, it is still accessible to outsiders. It's not like children come pre-loaded with culture.  They get it from somewhere. I think that these are therefore almost as easy to "get" as the fairy tales Western audiences will be more familiar with.  But there's also the occasional element specific to the time and place, such as samurai and nobility being depicted as gracious and helpful to commoners, which strains credulity to the cynical modern audience, or how some stories like "The Rat Sutra" and "The Rolling Rice Ball" depict practices and assumptions of specific Buddhist denominations.  I wonder if even some Japanese audiences might find that unusual Buddhists are a large minority, but still a minority, especially when you’re talking specific denominations, but I honestly don’t know the degree to which the broader public is familiar with these beliefs and practices.  After all, the vast majority of Americans are Christians, yet we still fall into weird traps of poorly understanding even the largest denominations of that.

It's hard to review the show much further without going through and breaking down individual stories, so instead, I think I'll cut it here, and recommend this show if you have an interest in folklore or traditional Japanese culture in general.  Or you're looking for something mostly-child-friendly outside of the familiar European fairy tales.  Or if you want some simple cheering up, because all of these stories so far are funny or heartwarming, so I guess it’s doing its job.

-----

W/A/S: 3–9? / 0 / pass

Weeb: There’s the occasional explicitly-Buddhist tale, which may still require extra explanation to those of us from countries where that's an uncommon religion, and the presence of oni, which differ from the similar ogres, trolls, and demons of the English-speaking world’s folklore by being sometimes benign or friendly.  But the lessons and assumptions of the stories will largely seem at least intelligible, if not downright familiar. Still, the abundance of traditionally Japanese food, clothing, technology, architecture, pre-Meiji class structure, and daily life customs may seem even more foreign than those in the early modern European settings American audiences encounter more frequently.

Ass: Absolutely not.

Shit (writing): Judging the writing quality of folklore seems downright mean, but I will say I thought it was strange that "Little One Inch" was resolved with a wish-granting mallet that it seems like the audience is expected to have heard of before.  Is it from another well-known story?

Shit (other): Very sparse animation throughout, most obviously in "The Cow's Marriage", which is nearly a slideshow.  Or maybe more like a picture book being read to you with a little bit of motion added.  I think it's fine, though, out of a blatant personal bias for this calmer style of children's programming, and the watercolor-esque background art reinforces that.

Content: Not particularly.

-----

Stray observation:

- Am I the only person who thinks it's really weird that tiny people and talking animals show up in stories from all over the world? Maybe they're just really obvious things for people to think of when coming up with stories.

[harryandmeghan0-blog]

The Number One Question You Must Ask for Quantum Mechanics

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The Number One Question You Must Ask for Quantum Mechanics

The Number One Question You Must Ask for Quantum Mechanics

http://wac.colostate.edu/books/informedwriter/chapter10.pdf

Among the curiosities of general relativity is the fact that it appears to allow time travel. Which is also among the coldest things in the entire universe. The book isn’t an easy read, but it’s worthwhile to wrap your physical mind around it for a moment.

Needless to say, you knew that. If gravity doesn’t exist, there’s no Earth’s atmosphere, it means there isn’t any life at the Earth. You will discover that there are specific times of the day when you truly feel full of ideas, prepared to go and brimming with energy.

The Quantum Mechanics Cover Up

You’re going to want a more compact spacecraft. If two photons arrived at the very same time they’d be entangled, causing the electrons being entangled too. Furthermore, entangled particles can not have the identical state.

As a result, like time, it’s a beneficial illusion. Actually, you are likely to bet on it. The laws of physics appear to enable the chance of time travel to happen.

For https://essay-online.com/ instance you can earn a spin up particle spin down. Now here is the point where the wizardry happens. The observer has some kind of influence on the behavior of the particle.

Against all intuition, both particles can be in a single place at the identical time, but only as long as they aren’t identical. Unique causes lead to distinct consequences. Actually, the result is additional to the conventional procedure for cooling.

Whatever you imagine should be consistent with the current evidence. As your understanding of position grows more precise, your understanding of momentum gets much less so. The issue is the efficiency of such a procedure.

So to attain holography, it’s always pleasant to have complex numbers available. In QKD, information concerning the key is sent via photons which have been randomly polarized. The fantastic difference between a traditional probability distribution and quantum mechanical superpositions, is that the sum of superpositioni.e.

Things You Should Know About Quantum Mechanics

There’s one obvious rule we must follow. You obtain a deeper comprehension of the material If you opt to only do a couple of problems from the conclusion of a chapter, it’s quite easy to choose problems on the concepts you understood the very best. The more controversial area of the experiment is when we start looking in the problem inside out.

The main reason for this is that the general topic of quantum physics also has quantum field theory, which is a much more advanced subject and past the range of this post. Feasible mathematics treats computational complexity in line with the absolute difficulty of issues. The issue is that quantum mechanics must thesis help be derived from abstract mathematical ideas that have little if any meaning in real life.

Quantum Mechanics for Dummies

A little minority disagree. Distinct sorts of energies and various sorts of matter must have some type of origin, some type of source. Perhaps another component that’s more attributed to how scientists are extremely knowledgeable mind.

The paradox is straightforward to state. Contrary to what most people think, science has its limitations, and we must be aware of them. The character of consciousness is just one of the thorniest questions in philosophy, and it has confounded scientists and philosophers for generations.

Utilizing quantum physics, you can create a computer that operates with quantum bits in place of bits. Many algorithms in a quantum world will just provide the appropriate answer with a specific probability. Graph Theory has turned out to be a helpful tool to spell out a discrete time-evolution of a particular state in a system.

The Foolproof Quantum Mechanics Strategy

In that case, there’s a big a-hamoment here. To figure out about this, you may want to look elsewhere. Not because it was hard to understand or believe.

Let’s get to the nitty-gritty and inspect the black hole information paradox for ourselves. Over the span of the undertaking, there were a whole group of further ideas floating about. The point is that what seems to be black, empty space is actually not.

The Hidden Treasure of Quantum Mechanics

The scientific way is only one way of knowing. Basically, the concept is that, when you have a look at a system (such as an electron that’s spinning in two directions at exactly the same time) the electron is going to be made to quit spinning in two directions simultaneously, pick one particular direction and stay with it. Quantum computing revolves around the thought of doing many things simultaneously with the identical computer, in the time span of only 1 operation.

The Upside to Quantum Mechanics

The equations that are related to subatomic physics are usually not related to massive, astronomical phenomena. Classical physics does not have any notion of entanglement. So they have invented a way to deal with infinities called renormalisation.

Entanglement arises whenever there is a rich diversity of interacting parts. There’s no apparent causality involved. An individual should consider superposition for a probability distribution.

Quantum Mechanics at a Glance

To begin with, the system has to be in a position to store and process considerable amounts of information. You have to realize the genuine price and learn by researching their whitepaper and should you do enough research you will have the ability to decide for yourself. To improve that, outside of a couple of core science subjects, a great deal of the research is comparatively weak.

Quantum states are somewhat more uncertain and can encode more details. Specifically, it is going to be in a position to break the public key cryptographic scheme that currently keeps a great deal of encrypted data safe. Data classification Let us go back to the issue of credit scoring.

[fitnesswomenshealth-blog]

Courageous Caitie's Parents Write a Book on Loss, Love, and Faith

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Courageous Caitie's Parents Write a Book on Loss, Love, and Faith

&#13

Who could forget about the heartbreaking story of Caitlin Lucas, the 3-yr-aged woman who handed away after bravely battling a uncommon case of leukemia? Brave Caitie, as she was fondly identified as by household, pals, and supporters, was identified with juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia — what started off as insect-like bites on her skin led to a sequence of various blood exam, biopsies, and blood transfusion. Then on March 31, 2016, her parents Feliz and Jay Jay built the unfortunate announcement of her passing.

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Almost a calendar year afterwards, on February 14, 2017, the pair welcomed their 3rd youngster, Calea, whose time of birth, 11:26 a.m., occurred to be the same time Caitie passed absent.

And two years soon after Caitie, Feliz and Jay Jay have arrive out with a guide identified as Additional Than Most, a collection of passages and learnings by means of their journey of enjoy and decline. The reserve is revealed by OMF Literature and introduced these days, September 16, at the Manila Intercontinental Ebook Honest 2018.

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In an email interview, we asked Feliz what she hopes audience would learn from reading through the book: “I want any person who would read through the e-book to have an understanding of that we are all hurting in just one way or a further. At times it is not just grief. But grief has a way of unearthing your difficulties and the condition of your heart. It’s frightening but welcome it,” she said.

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“I eventually realized that I have been carrying a entire lot of problems I have concealed under a rug. Difficulties of emotion worthless and concerns of pleasure in seeking to get control since of the items that have occurred in my everyday living. Grief can develop into a pal to expose to you what you seriously will need to confront and take care of,” she adds.

In accordance to Feliz, the full approach of composing and creating the ebook has aided her and her spouse and children to recover, expressing, “Telling your story is a way of therapeutic. It is a fantastic way to debrief. It became closure. I attempted to fully grasp what happened, the place I am, and who I want to be.”

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Transferring on following Caitie

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She presented some suggestions, much too, on how grieving mothers (and dads) can arrive to conditions with the realities of reduction. “I did not prevent asking [why it happened], but I manufactured guaranteed I was looking for the answers at the ideal spots. Confronting discomfort authorized me to see my faults and explore the actual affliction of my heart — who I really was and if this is who I genuinely want to be. Our feelings define our latest, state but it doesn’t outline who we are,” she shared.

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“I believe when you approach and debrief you with what has happened — explain in detail what really happened, what I couldn’t control, it uncovered the reality that God was sovereign. That He may well have authorized the discomfort but He didn’t induce it,” she reported.

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“I recognized that lifetime just isn’t about levels, but it is a simultaneous advancement about loving Him to start with and obedience to what He wants me to do. The days that I lose are the times that I’m so total of myself and dwell on my circumstances and the days that I gain are all those when I reside beyond myself. The reply to therapeutic isn’t a a single problem 1 remedy variety of scenario. Healing desires consistency of getting the answers in the ideal destinations.”

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Here’s an excerpt from the ebook Extra Than Most, terms by Feliz Lucas:

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It has been two decades since Caitie died. I nevertheless, in the course of unguarded moments, experience like I am becoming tossed again and forth, in danger of questioning God’s judgments. At times, I determine additional with what I have dropped than with the goodness and grace He has introduced forth in the daily life that I have now.

I am grateful for the depth of my suffering. Listed here, I see the genuine ailment of my coronary heart. It is in my place of pain that I sacrificially devote my heart to the Lord — each individual day. This pain is a space where by Jesus and I fulfill consistently. I simply cannot pretend my responses there. In that area I am actual, and I can choose to arrive out of that place possibly defeated or victorious.

In the midst of my soreness, I still hope to attain out to other individuals and remind them — remind you — that all of us are not by yourself. Our heartaches can convey us on a journey closer to the heart of Jesus. That is the place we can encounter renewal.

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Now, our house lifestyle — Jay and Jay and mine — is made up of developing routines, devotions, spontaneous trips, and character-creating exercise routines. I have decided to homeschool my kids and be a comprehensive-time housewife (I nevertheless take some little projects, but seldom). We are boosting a powerful-willed boy in Ethan, and starting up to teach the basic principles to our minor fluff bear, Calea. House life comes with its possess joys and difficulties. Ethan gets together with Calea one particular minute, then fights with her the subsequent. I come across it incredible and humbling how we are all mastering how to be a family members that methods processing when we make mistakes, praises achievements, respects a single an additional, and is speedy to talk to for forgiveness. Jay Jay has bodily playtime with the kids every early morning to assistance expend their power, and he does devotions with them. I manage performing workbooks with Ethan and other simple activities. As a loved ones, we like investing on core reminiscences by going on rapid getaways, like picnics and the beach front. We see how the young children thrive in the outdoors and really like observing them operate all over and take a look at freely.

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Jay Jay and I talked about no matter if or not our parenting type has altered after Caitie’s passing we recognized that it has not. We nonetheless do the similar factors we did with Caitie with Ethan and Calea now although, we have turn into a lot more sensitive to God’s leading and shell out interest to what we need to change in ourselves in purchase to be much better parents. Our wish is to be genuine mom and dad who embrace being imperfect and forgive each individual other when we or the young ones make problems. We increase for and with them. Do we even now cry? Of program. Grief in no way leaves you. You just find out to are living all over it.

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For everyone who has guilt, depression, grief, and other fears of the heart, Feliz is starting up a compact aid team starting September 17, from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at The Group Kitchen in Libis, totally free of charge. You can e mail her at todaywiththelucas@gmail.com or mail a immediate information by using Instagram @FelizLucas. Additional than Most wil be obtainable at bookstores quickly. 

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Ana Leah dela Cruz  is a net articles author with fantastic babysitting capabilities and a knack for generating mug cakes. She spends her free of charge time feeding stray cats and badgering her mommy mates for report concepts.

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Ron Amundson & Shari Tresky, On a Bioethical Challenge to Disability Rights, 32 J Med & Phil 541 (2007)

Abstract

Tensions exist between the disability rights movement and the work of many bioethicists. These reveal themselves in a major recent book on bioethics and genetics, From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice. This book defends certain genetic policies against criticisms from disability rights advocates, in part by arguing that it is possible to accept both the genetic policies and the rights of people with impairments. However, a close reading of the book reveals a series of direct moral criticisms of the disability rights movement. The criticisms go beyond a defense of genetic policies from the criticisms of disability rights advocates. The disability rights movement is said not to have the same moral legitimacy as other civil rights movements, such as those for women or “racial” minorities. This paper documents, and in some cases shows the flaws within, these challenges to the disability rights movement.

I. Introduction

Thirty years ago the field of bioethics and the disability rights movement were in their formative stages. In many ways, people within these two groups had similar attitudes: skepticism about the power and paternalism of the medical establishment, and a strong desire to protect the medical consumer and the autonomy of the patient (Asch, 2001).

In other ways they diverged and the divergence has continued. As far back as 1989, a disability rights advocate and scholar observed that bioethicists' interests in physical disability were limited to the conditions under which it was morally right or permissible to end or to prevent disabled lives (Wendell, 1989).

Advances in molecular genetics led to broader applications of what has become the standard medical policy to encourage prenatal testing and the abortion of fetuses that have molecular markers associated with impairments (henceforth the “prenatal policy”). This became a special target of criticism from disability rights (henceforth DR) advocates.

The DR arguments were all but invisible at first. Few of the advocates held academic posts or had access to scholarly journals. But the arguments of the DR community slowly began to be noticed by bioethicists and the disagreements became more apparent.

From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice (Buchanan, Brock, Daniels, & Wikler, 2000]), addresses modern genetic technology and the justice implications that arise out of it. The book is coauthored by four bioethicists who are unquestioned leaders in their field.

The criticisms of the prenatal policy brought forth by DR advocates are an important topic in the book. One of these criticisms is that the prenatal policy is based on disrespect for the lives and the civil rights of people with impairments. In response, the authors of From Chance to Choice (henceforth FCC) claim that it is perfectly possible to simultaneously endorse the civil rights of people with impairments and the prenatal policy.

In addition, the authors analyze and criticize several other positions that they attribute to DR advocates. Some of these positions are narrowly focused on the prenatal policy, but others are more broadly related to the civil rights claims of the DR movement. The book's attention to the DR arguments is mentioned by most reviewers of FCC, often with approval for the book's refutation of those arguments.

The discussion of the DR movement is such a prominent aspect of the book that it seems to have become a selling point; bioethicists who are unfamiliar with DR arguments can use FCC to gain a perspective. The prominence of the book and its authors, especially in comparison to the lack of such prominence among DR advocates and their publishing venues, means that DR advocates must take these criticisms seriously.

This article will examine FCC's presentation and critique of a number of positions advanced by the DR movement. We are not particularly concerned with the prenatal policy, but rather with FCC's characterization of the DR movement and the flaws it claims to detect in the general arguments of the DR advocates. The book combines a sophisticated understanding of the theoretical basis of the movement with a number of very strong criticisms.

At best, FCC supports a much-attenuated version of civil rights for people with impairments. This is true even though the authors claim that their bioethical conclusions are consistent with a respect for disability rights.

Our primary purpose is to identify the basis of the conflicts that persist between the two fields. FCC's conclusions regarding the moral legitimacy of DR must be analyzed before we can understand the complex and strained relations between DR advocates and practitioners of bioethics.

II. Conceptual Basis of the Disability Rights Movement

Disability is socially constructed. This claim is at the core of the DR movement and it is one of the primary grounds on which the movement has been criticized. However, FCC accepts the DR concept of social construction and bases its critique on more subtle grounds.

Social construction is traditionally expressed by use of a certain dichotomy regarding the etiology of disability. The dichotomy distinguishes a biomedical categorization from the social disadvantages that can accompany such a categorization.

Impairment: a biomedical categorization of an individual (or a feature of an individual) as abnormal.

Disability: the disadvantage that accrues to individuals with impairments due to environmental (social and physical) barriers that limit the participation of such people.

Disability is seen as an interaction between biomedical condition (impairment) and social environment, rather than a straightforward property of an individual. The movement stresses the importance of the social environment in creating disability. The exact terminology is not crucial, but the distinction is. The initial source of this innovation is unclear, but it may have originated with “The Fundamental Principles of Disability,” a 1976 manifesto published in the UK by the Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS 1976 ). 1 Other early sources include the World Health Organization (1980)) and Beatrice Wright (1983); see discussion in Amundson, 1992; Wendell, 1996; Wasserman, 2001). The distinction has been termed “the leading theoretical achievement of the disability rights movement” (Wasserman, Bickenbach, & Wachbroit, 2005, p. 13). 22. The authors of FCC recognize this distinction, but (remarkably) document it by citing three of their own publications (p. 20). It is unclear whether they believe that it is their own innovation. Except for Wikler's early recognition that mental competence is determined in part by social environment (Wikler, 1979), the cited works are all after 1990—far too late to count as innovation.

FCC accepts the dichotomy, the vocabulary, and (at least provisionally) the social construction of disability that follows from that reconceptualization (pp. 284 ff.; unless otherwise noted all page citations are to FCC).

The impairment/disability distinction is widely used for conceptualizing the social construction of disability, but it has shortcomings. One problem is that it assigns a technical, stipulative meaning to a term of ordinary language (disability).

Another problem is the asymmetrical contrast between impairment and disability: impairment is a biomedical category whereas disability is a certain kind of disadvantage. We offer a simpler dichotomy to express the social construction of disability, one that distinguishes between two kinds of disadvantages. Some disadvantages result directly from impairments themselves and other disadvantages result from the social conditions in which people with impairments live. 33. Our expression “from impairments themselves” should be read as “from impairments together with their non-social contexts.” We mean to distinguish between socially-caused disadvantages and disadvantages that are not socially caused. See the discussion in note #4.

Conditional Disadvantages of Impairment (CDIs): Disadvantages that are experienced by people with impairments, but which are produced by the social context in which those people live.

Unconditional Disadvantages of Impairment (UDIs): Disadvantages that are experienced by people with impairments, but which are produced irrespective of their social context.

The expression CDI, rather than the technical, stipulative term disability, will carry the theoretical weight in our discussion. The social construction of disability is the claim that the disadvantages experienced by people with impairments are predominantly CDIs. The term UDI will designate a category of disadvantage that has heretofore gone unnamed: disadvantages that flow directly from impairments, without significant social contribution.

On the traditional view, almost all disadvantages of impairment are UDIs. Removal of UDIs can only be accomplished by removal of the impairment itself. Because impairments are properties of individuals (not societies or social contexts), the problem of disability is seen as a problem of individuals, to be dealt with (if at all) by medical cures and rehabilitations. DR advocates have labeled this view the medical model of disability.

The least contentious examples of UDIs are the tautological ones: people who are blind cannot see; people with paraplegia cannot walk. Blindness and paralysis are diagnostic categories of impairment; the inability to see and walk are (tautological) UDIs that are associated with those categories. Traditional thinkers have mistakenly assumed that blindness and paralysis entail all sorts of other inabilities—non-walkers cannot move through town on their own or use public transportation; blind people similarly cannot navigate on their own or read in libraries. Until late in the 20th century it was commonly assumed that neither paraplegic nor blind people were eligible for a free public education and their lack of education was a direct product of their impairments.

The DR movement has amply demonstrated that the inabilities just listed (except the tautologies) are CDIs—they are conditioned by the inaccessible environments that people who have impairments now live in. The DR movement sees the problem of disability as the CDIs. Impairments and UDIs are taken as brute facts of human variation. They are simply not a topic of direct DR interest.

The assumption that impairment inevitably involves extensive disadvantages (UDIs) is, according to the DR movement, merely an expression of the stigma that society has always placed on impairment. By assuming that almost all disadvantages of impairment are UDIs, innate to the impairments themselves, members of the majority (nonimpaired) society are freed from the responsibility to remedy those harms.

When non-DR thinkers imagine living with an impairment, they dwell on vague intuitions of dread, pity and the social discredit that constitutes the stigma of disability (Goffman, 1963Goffman, I. 1963. Stigma, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. [Google Scholar]). This stigma itself constitutes a higher order social condition for disadvantage, because it draws attention away from more direct social causes of disadvantage.

A person who unconsciously accepts the stigmatizing assumption that people with paraplegia are “home-bound” may fail to recognize that such people's isolation is caused by inaccessible buildings and transportation. The DR movement concentrates on identifying disadvantages that are socially constructed (CDIs such as environmental barriers) and finding ways to eliminate them. 44. Both the impairment/disability distinction and our CDI/UDI distinction are pragmatic tools, meant to elucidate the issues of political debate. Their metaphysical status can be challenged. For example, some authors have argued that the impairment category itself is socially constructed: impairment should not be treated as an objective scientific category in the way the impairment/disability distinction may be taken to imply (Amundson, 2000]; Tremain, 2001, 2002). In a different approach, Anita Silvers urges the creation of a “neutral conception of disability” that does not presuppose disadvantage. She claims that no impairment is disadvantageous in itself; disadvantages can only happen in environmental contexts (Silvers, 2003). The point is correct. Nevertheless, our concern is to distinguish social contexts, for which society can be deemed responsible, from, e.g., physical contexts (such as the law of gravity) for which society has no responsibility.

Philosophers of the analytic tradition are often leery of the concept of social construction because it is associated with a kind of relativism that seems to ignore the objective world (Hacking, 1999). Such worries are irrelevant to this discussion. The social construction of disability from impairment very often refers to objective, literal, material construction. Examples are buildings with stairway entrances that are barriers to wheelchairs and libraries that lack Braille or electronically readable texts.

Other barriers are matters of social behavior (e.g. discrimination in hiring) and so are less literally constructed than these examples. But barriers are real things; the fact that they are socially constructed does not detract from their material reality. The choice to construct barriers is a choice to segregate our population, privileging the groups that can pass beyond the barriers and penalizing those that cannot.

III. The Civil Rights Context of the Moment

DR activists see their movement as strongly analogous to the movements for racial civil rights, women's rights, and other similar movements (gay rights, immigrant rights). Those who fail to appreciate the civil rights nature of the DR movement tend to patronize and trivialize it as a mere variant of the disease- and impairment-based charities that have dominated the twentieth-century public image of disability.

The DR movement's self-conscious alignment with other civil rights movements is crucial for understanding its arguments. Without it—with only the perspective of the medical model—the arguments are incoherent. The civil rights status of the DR movement is often criticized by use of a simple disanalogy. It is said that there is nothing innately disadvantageous about race and sex, but impairments are innately disadvantageous. Some early critics considered this to prove the blatant futility of the DR movement. Because social remedies cannot make a blind person see or a paralyzed person walk, disabled people should just face facts and get on with their lives (Wendell, 1996Wendell, S. 1996. The rejected body: Feminist philosophical reflections on disability, New York: Routledge. [Google Scholar], p. 55). 55. The expression ”disabled people” is currently disfavored in much of North America because “disability” is used as a biomedical category, equivalent to what we term “impairment.” Our version of the impairment/disability dichotomy, just introduced, follows the British usage. Disabled people are people who are disadvantaged by social barriers, not people who receive a particular biomedical diagnosis of disabled. The objectionable implications of disabled person do not apply.View all notes

The disanalogy does pick out a general feature of impairment that is not shared with race or sex. But the disanalogy ignores the distinction between CDIs and UDIs. The DR movement is directed only towards the remediation of CDIs, disadvantages that are socially mediated. So the fact that UDIs cannot be socially remedied is irrelevant to the DR claim for justice.

The same distinction can be hypothetically applied to other civil rights movements. Suppose there really were innate biological grounds for disadvantage of a particular race or sex—for example, diseases for which the disadvantaged group was susceptible. Would that fact reduce the legitimacy of a group's claim for remediation of the remaining disadvantages that were socially (not biologically) maintained? Surely not.

The political ideology used to justify racism, sexism, and oppression of people with impairments is the assertion that disadvantages of these groups are not socially mediated, but are biological and innate and therefore unavoidable. This view has been rejected within the academy with respect to race and sex. 66. We do not deny that racism and sexism exist in the academy, only that they are openly endorsed.

As we will see, it has yet to fall in the case of impairment. Disadvantages are often still assumed to be innate and the DR movement is seen to be asking for the impossible (i.e., social cures of UDIs). But just as the cures of sickle cell disease and breast cancer were not goals of the civil rights movements for African-Americans and women, the removal of UDIs is not a goal of the DR movement. 77. Claims for proportional medical attention to diseases that are disproportionately suffered by disadvantaged groups (sickle cell disease, breast cancer) are quite a different kind of argument from claims that those diseases must be cured as a condition for social justice. The latter claim has never been made, just as the DR claim for the cure of UDIs has never been made. View all notes

Although the social construction of disability is explained and endorsed in FCC, we will show that the endorsement is misleading. The authors find special reasons to challenge the justice claims of the DR movement while affirming those of other civil rights movements. In a society governed by the conception of justice urged in FCC, disabled people would be in a uniquely vulnerable position.

IV. Our Authors on the Social Construction of Disability

From page 284 to page 287 the reader of FCC is presented with an articulate and accurate account of the core distinction of the DR movement. The distinction between impairment and disability is laid out almost exactly as we did in the introductory section of this article.

Impairments are biomedical facts about individuals and disabilities are the disadvantages that are produced for people with impairments by the environment in which they live.

Whether an impairment . . . results in a disability depends on the social environment of the individual. . . . [I]t is a mistake to assume that the only way or the preferable way to prevent disabilities—and hence to achieve equal opportunity—is by preventing the physical or mental impairments that result in disabilities. Instead, we can break the connection between having an impairment and being disabled—if we are willing to make sufficient changes in our social environment. (p. 287)

The DR advocate who reads this passage will feel quite at home. Disabilities are the socially conditioned disadvantages of impairment. These disadvantages can be removed without removing impairments, simply by changing the environment.

What more could the DR advocate ask for? We will consider two additional expectations. The first is the generality expectation: Do the authors acknowledge the social construction of disability whenever it is relevant throughout the book and not only in this single discussion? If disability is truly conceived as socially constructed, then social influences on disadvantage should be acknowledged when they are relevant.

The second expectation is the parity expectation: Do the authors of FCC infer the same justice consequences from the social construction of disability that are inferred for other civil rights movements? The authors affirm their support for the justice claims of other civil rights movements (pp. 16, 172, 188, 220–221, 283). Social responsibility for removing the barriers should apply equally to the socially constructed disadvantages of disabled people.

Neither the generality nor the parity expectation is fulfilled. The failure of the generality expectation can be covered briefly. The parity expectation is a more complex topic, and will be addressed in the following sections.

Is the social construction of disability acknowledged in appropriate contexts throughout the book? No. Except in the core discussion of social construction, the terms disability and impairment are used as synonyms throughout the book. Only once is the social construction of disability again mentioned in its full, material sense (p. 319)

The concept of social construction is mentioned in two other places, but is given a trivialized interpretation that has no impact on social policy. Social construction is said to be a mere social convention about what names to use, such as when to call an impairment a disability (p. 117, n. 2) or an abnormality an impairment (p. 150). Elsewhere in the book the disadvantages of disabled people are blamed directly on biological conditions, with scarcely a thought given to social mediation.

For example, one of the authors' major conclusions is that genetic interventions to prevent disabilities (for example the prenatal policy) are not only permissible but are required by justice. Their summary of the grounds for this conclusion is this: “Justice includes a commitment to equal opportunity, and genetically based disabilities, like other disabilities, impair opportunity” (p. 270). The term “disability” in this passage clearly means “impairment” (simply because social mediation cannot be “genetically based”). Disadvantages are attributed directly to the biomedical condition, without social mediation. As in almost all of the book, this passage ignores the social construction of disability.

V. Radical Slogans and Pseudoslogans

The core discussion of DR occurs in Chapter 7, beginning with a section entitled “Challenging the Rhetoric: The Radical Disabilities Rights Advocate's Complaints” (p. 264). The significance of the term “radical” is somewhat unclear. At first it appears that radical views are those that criticize the prenatal policy. But the term is later used of a more general position that is not associated with genetics (the “change society not people” slogan to be discussed shortly).

The contrast between radical and moderate DR opinions is never explained. We are not told which DR principles the authors accept, but only the ones they reject. On careful reading, the criticisms imply a very broad rejection of DR principles and not merely a defense of the prenatal policy against the DR critiques.

One problem with interpreting the arguments put forth in FCC is the extremely poor documentation of what they take to be the DR position. Other topics receive numerous citations. The discussions of theoretical ethics are well cited throughout the book, and the history of eugenics in Chapter 2 is richly documented.

The DR challenges, comprising four distinct categories of argument and covering twenty-two pages, are documented by only two citations from DR sources. One is to a forty-three-page position paper internally published by a non-governmental organization entitled Just Technology (International League of Societies for Persons with Mental Handicap, 1994) and the other a five-page journal article that happened to have appeared in a bioethics anthology (Asch, 1989).

Two of the categories of DR arguments are reasonably similar to arguments in DR literature, the so-called expressivist argument and the argument from diminished support (see Parens & Asch, 2000, for a balanced discussion). However, two other alleged DR arguments were so unfamiliar that we decided to look into them further.)

The first of these is a small issue, but it indicates a distressing lack of care regarding the DR literature. We include it because it is one of the very few attributions that are documented by a citation.

DR advocates are said to use what is called the “justice trumps beneficence argument.” This argument is said to claim that when considerations of beneficence (welfare) conflict with justice, justice always wins regardless of how large the benefit or how small the injustice. “[O]bligations of justice are the weightiest obligation in all circumstances” (p. 271).

The authors refute the principle with no difficulty; it is a foolish principle. We checked the cited source, Just Technology. Although no page was given, it was easy to find “the principle of justice” in the short document. However, Just Technology simply does not state that justice always wins over beneficence. It only states that justice is always relevant (besides beneficence) to a government decision. Beneficence cannot be “the sole basis of governmental obligation” (International League of Societies for Persons with Mental Handicap, 1994, p. 24).

A much more important attribution is derived from the alleged slogan “change society not people.” This slogan is discussed, off and on, from page 261 to page 294. Like the justice slogan, this was unknown to us. The slogan embodies an obviously false dichotomy. Why should the desire to change society be coupled with the requirement that we not change people? We were puzzled that the authors did not point out the false dichotomy.

But they do not. Instead they take the slogan “at face value” (absurdity and all) and draw implications from it which they then attribute to the DR movement: “Taken at face value, this critique condemns any effort to eliminate disabilities . . . For if taken literally the slogan would require accommodating those with impairments rather thanusing medical science to prevent or correct impairments” (p. 265, emphasis in original).

The authors proceed to “take the slogan literally . . . at face value” and attribute those implications to radicals of the DR movement. We are given no evidence that anyone ever intended the slogan to be interpreted in this way. The slogan shapes the treatment of social construction for the rest of the chapter.

For example, the authors declare that they “still need an account of why our society should, as the slogan says, prevent disabilities by modifying social arrangements rather than by modifying people” (p. 287). The absurd implication that impairments should never be cured or removed is presented as a central contention of the DR movement (or at least of its radical wing).

As usual, no citation was provided for the attribution. So we searched for the source. The results were surprising. In a Google Internet search performed during October of 2005, we found only four hits for the slogan “change society not people” (with or without a comma). The very first hit was an Internet site containing the chapter of FCC that discusses the slogan.

The second was an accidental use of the four words in a sentence with another meaning. The last two were web pages created by social conservatives who quoted the slogan as a way to discredit progressive social movements. Absolutely no web site, DR or not, used the slogan affirmatively.

As far as we can tell “change society not people” is not a slogan of the DR movement, or of any other movement. It is a pseudoslogan used as a stalking horse by conservatives who falsely attribute it to progressive groups because it is so easy to ridicule. We know of only one other use of the pseudoslogan: an earlier paper by one of the authors contains the same refutations of the DR movement as Chapter 7, including the pseudoslogan (Buchanan, 1996).

As a control we did a Google search on a genuine slogan of the DR movement, “nothing about us without us.” This slogan received 63,300 hits. DR slogans are out there, but “change society not people” is not. In conclusion, about half of the arguments attributed to the DR movement in FCC are straw men. They are easy to refute, but they do not represent the views of DR advocates.

We insist that it is not hard to find sophisticated expressions of the goals of the DR movement. 88. We have included in the References a few easily available sources prior to publication of FCC (Eisenberg, Griggins, & Duval, 1982; Oliver, 1990, 1996; Shapiro, 1993; Linton, 1998). Problems for the DR movement do not end with its mischaracterization, however. The authors of FCC proceed to directly challenge the parity expectation. They offer a series of arguments that the DR movement does not share the legitimacy of other civil rights movements; morally important asymmetries exist between the DR movement and other movements.

VI. Critique #1: DR Threatens the Basic Cooperative Framework

The authors acknowledge that the barriers that segregate people with impairments are socially constructed. The DR movement proceeds to argue that these barriers are unjust and should be removed. Does FCC agree? No.

Their account of social construction is followed by a series of arguments supporting the claim that the duty to remove barriers for people with impairments is weaker than the duty to remove barriers for other groups that are disadvantaged in the same way (i.e. by social construction). Nondisabled members of society are said to have a legitimate interest in maintaining the barriers that segregate people with impairments. The interests of other dominant groups (men, Caucasian Americans, heterosexuals) to maintain the barriers that privilege them over other disadvantaged groups (women, African Americans, homosexuals) are said to be illegitimate. In other words, an asymmetry is said to exist between the DR claims and other civil rights claims. This has the potential to alienate advocates of other civil rights movements from the DR movement.

The first argument alleges that, unlike the other movements, the DR movement implies unacceptably radical changes to the economic system. The argument appears in a section entitled “Options for Eliminating Disabilities.” This section begins with a chart of four different ways in which (the authors say) equality of opportunity could be created for people with impairments (p. 288). The first two ways involve changing people with impairments, using medical or educational means, so that they can access the benefits of society. The next two ways involve changing society, the DR approach.

Number three is to increase access by “removing barriers in the physical infrastructure of social interaction.” This would include creation of accessible buildings and sidewalks, Braille reading materials and captioned television broadcasts.

Number four is described as being more “far-reaching” because it goes beyond the physical infrastructure to change the institutional infrastructure of social interaction. This last category is said to entail major changes in the fundamental socioeconomic structures of society—what the authors call the “basic cooperative framework.”

The final two approaches collapse two distinctions. The first distinguishes physical from institutional infrastructure. The second distinguishes degrees of change, moderate versus extreme. The authors consider physical infrastructure (approach #3) to involve minor modifications, but institutional changes (approach #4) to affect the “basic cooperative framework,” the very core of our social and economic system. This produces the illusion that physical change is never radical but institutional change is always radical.

With no more argument than this, the authors proceed to allege that the DR movement is committed to radical and fundamental economic change, because that is the only kind of world in which disabled people can be integrated. Nowhere do the authors document or argue that this is an implication of the DR movement. 99. Perhaps they take this to follow from the slogan “change society not people.” As we have shown, this slogan is itself specious.

Some DR advocates, like some advocates of other civil rights movements, do claim that capitalism is the source of repression (Russell, 1998). This is a minority opinion within the movement and not at all a defining feature. The assertion that the DR movement requires a full economic restructuring of society is unsupported.

VII. Critique #2: Disadvantages Remain

Two more arguments for the asymmetry between DR and other civil rights movements begin with the following passage, which explains why civil rights for blacks and gays are more legitimate than those for disabled people:

The limitations a gay or black person suffers are injustices in a quite uncontroversial sense: they are forms of discrimination. While deaf people and others with disabilities certainly do continue to experience discrimination, they would continue to suffer limited opportunities even if there were no discrimination against them . . . . The fact that it is costly to remove barriers of discrimination against blacks or gays has no moral weight because no one can have a morally legitimate interest in preserving unjust arrangements . . . . the costs of changing society so that having a major impairment such as deafness imposes no limitations on individuals' opportunities are not so easily dismissed. Those costs count from a moral point of view, because there is a morally legitimate interest in avoiding them [i.e. avoiding the costs].” (pp. 283–284, emphases added)

The first argument is based on the fact that limitations would still remain for disabled people after discrimination is removed. This will be addressed in the present section. The second, that there is a “morally legitimate interest” in avoiding the costs of accommodation, will be discussed in the following section.

The passage states that when discrimination is removed from black or gay people, all of the problems related to their condition (being black or gay) are solved.

This is not so in the case of people with impairments. When discrimination is removed, other disadvantages remain—those caused directly and immediately by the impairments. This is true of course; the UDIs remain. But if discrimination is removed, then the CDIs will be removed. Keeping this distinction in mind, the alleged asymmetry can be restated as follows:

Although people with impairments do experience discrimination that produces CDIs, (“disabilities” in the social construction sense) they would continue to suffer limited opportunities (namely UDIs) even if there were no discrimination against them.

This is true but irrelevant. UDIs are not a part of the argument. Why should the existence of UDIs weaken the civil rights argument against the CDIs? Suddenly the authors appear to assume that the movement demands that all limitations of impairment must be remedied—as they put it, “. . . changing society so that having a major impairment such as deafness imposes no limitations on individuals' opportunities.”

But no DR advocate has ever claimed that justice requires the removal of all disadvantages of impairment. Like other civil rights movements, DR advocates demand only the removal of discriminatory treatment and remedies for its past effects. The fact that other disadvantages would remain is irrelevant to the justice of the DR claim. If it were proven that women or African-Americans had innate biological disadvantages beyond those of discrimination, would that weaken their claim to equal treatment? We assume the answer is no. The same holds true for the DR movement. If the authors believe that it does not, they owe us an explanation of the difference.

We do not mean to imply that the distinction between UDIs and CDIs is an easy line to draw. It is not. Disadvantages do not come brightly stamped with labels of “Socially Caused” and “No One's Fault.” Social policy regarding these issues must be determined by serious moral, factual, and political debate.

But the same is true of every other civil rights movement. Differences of opinion about social responsibility for the effects of racial discrimination are reflected in conflicts over affirmative action. Opinions also differ regarding social responsibility for the loss of income that may be connected to a women's biological role in childbearing. Mandatory paid maternity leave and government-subsidized childcare are examples of solutions that address these concerns, but are currently controversial.

Similar debates must take place on the specific policies related to disability. Disadvantages might still remain even after it is decided that unjust social barriers are removed. The fact that “disadvantages will still remain” for people with impairments is no reason to single out the DR movement as uniquely unjustified. The recognition that some (not all) disadvantages of disability were socially caused was the entire point of the social construction of disability.

VIII. Critique #3: The Maximizing Interest and “Go Fish

The third argument for a moral asymmetry concerns the special nature of the interest that a nondisabled member of society has in opposing the civil rights demands of DR advocates. As previously quoted, the authors claim that no one can have a morally legitimate interest in preserving discriminatory barriers against blacks or gays (p. 283).

They say that this does not apply to discrimination against disabled people because their integration into a nondisabled workforce (for example) violates the “maximizing interest,” a very important moral interest that is not violated by the integration of blacks and gays: “Each individual has an important and morally legitimate interest [the maximizing interest] in having access to a cooperative scheme that is the most productive and rewarding form of interaction in which he or she can participate effectively” (p. 292).

This ideal scheme is later described as the most “enriching” and “fulfilling” (p. 294). How could anyone challenge this worthy goal? According to the authors, the DR movement challenges it. The authors claim that a world in which disabled and nondisabled people were fully integrated would be less productive, rewarding, enriching, and fulfilling for nondisabled people.

Discussion of the maximizing interest begins with an analogy that is meant to depict the true relationship between nondisabled and disabled people.

Suppose we wish to play a card game in which everyone in a mixed group of individuals from 5 to 50 can successfully participate. . . . Choosing an institutional infrastructure [for society] means choosing which game, defined by which set of rules, will be played. If the game chosen is contract bridge, then some individuals in the group—namely, the 5 year olds—will not be able to participate effectively. . . . A simpler game (a less demanding infrastructure for social interaction) can be chosen so that everyone will be able to participate successfully. We can play “go fish.” (p. 288)

Nondisabled people are like adults. Disabled people are like five-year-olds. A card game that integrates five-year-olds is not the most rewarding and enriching for adults. Likewise a society that integrates disabled people is not the most rewarding and enriching for nondisabled people. The authors go on to say:

As the example of the very young children attempting to play contract bridge shows, participation by “disabled” individuals can cause “discoordination” and reduce the benefits that the “abled” might otherwise reap from complex forms of cooperation. The abled—those whose capacities can meet the demands of the more complex scheme of cooperation—have an interest in having that scheme chosen. Let us call this the “maximizing interest” . . . (p. 290)

We assume the authors are unaware of how aggressive this analogy will seem to a disabled person who reads their book. The analogy likens disabled people to children and nondisabled people to adults. Disabled people are not the first to have been labeled (and treated) as girls and boys. African-Americans and women were both infantilized during their long histories of discrimination.

The go-fish analogy is central to the authors' critique of the DR movement. It is said to illustrate flaws in the movement and it is repeatedly cited as having demonstrated those flaws. It is assumed to be transparent in its implications, with no argumentation needed.

We are not shown, for example, that wheelchair-accessible sidewalks are less enriching to walk on for nondisabled people, or that television broadcasts with captions are less fulfilling than noncaptioned broadcasts to those that can hear, or that libraries with large collections of computer-readable texts are less rewarding than those that are accessible only to people who can read visual print.

The “go-fish world,” in which disabled people are integrated but nondisabled people live unfulfilled lives, is never described in detail. In particular, no reasons are given for why an integrated world must be a simpler world.

The authors offer no grounds for their assumption that disability rights require that the entire society must be structured so that every citizen must be able to do every job. Legitimate job requirements are not discriminatory and the DR movement has never argued against them.

The DR movement would like to see much more attention paid to identifying jobs that can be accomplished by individuals with various impairments, removing artificial barriers to those jobs (such as inaccessible workplaces and tools), and matching the jobs to those who can do them. The laws that now prohibit discrimination in hiring are unequal to the task of producing equality in employment of many groups that have been historically discriminated against, such as women and African Americans. This is dramatically true of people with impairments (35% of such people are employed fulltime as compared to 78% of nondisabled people).

But the policy that every single job must be designed so that every single human being could accomplish it is no part of the DR movement. The go-fish world has no resemblance to a world that treats disabled people with justice.

A truly integrated society would not be simpler, as the go-fish analogy alleges. It would be more complex and more flexible. Alternate accessible means would be available for individuals to accomplish any goal that was inaccessible to them. The moderate accommodations that already exist show the value of this flexibility. Curb ramps are used by people with mobility impairments, but also by parents with strollers and workers with hand carts.

Captioned television programs accommodate people with hearing impairments, but also assist in learning to read, in learning a second language, and in enjoying television in the same room as others who do not want the disturbance of the audio program. These examples illustrate that improvements in access increase everyone's choices, not only those who absolutely need them.

The go-fish analogy, with its least-common-denominator concept of integration, is a false depiction of the goals of the DR movement. The discussion of the maximizing interest together with the demeaning go-fish analogy grossly misrepresent the goals of the DR movement.

IX. Do Accommodations Harm the Normals?

The authors of FCC have a persistent anxiety that the nondisabled majority will be unjustly harmed if disabled people are granted the kind of civil rights that are granted to women and minorities. This anxiety can be seen even in passages that seem intended to be conciliatory.

For example, “Our society has learned through its efforts to accommodate people with disabilities that in many cases lowering the barriers to participation need not be unduly burdensome to others” (p. 320). This may sound innocuous to people who are not familiar with the DR movement.

But FCC's talk about lowering barriers is subtly different from the DR movement's talk of removing barriers. It suggests that the barriers are there for a reason—that barriers somehow improve the quality of an institution rather than (as the DR movement has it) arbitrarily prohibiting the participation of citizens with disabilities. This was the message of the go-fish analogy; the barrier to children's participation (the complexities of the rules of contract bridge) was exactly what made the game rewarding for adults. The analogy implies that the integration of disabled people should be expected to spoil things for nondisabled people—and that it is a surprise that “in many cases” it does not!

The claim that civil rights for disabled people “need not be unduly burdensome” sounds like a very grudging endorsement to us. Are we being too picky about the authors' words in this passage? Do they really intend to question the legitimacy of DR? Yes, they do. The passage continues as follows:

Still, many accommodations involve losses as well as gains. Tax codes and forms that might be fully comprehended by the cognitively impaired, for example, might be insufficiently detailed for efficient and fair allocation of tax burdens, and the gains for the few would not justify these losses. (p. 320)

The case sounds convincing, until we look into it. Have intellectually impaired people requested easier tax forms? Would the provision of such accommodations force the country into badly allocated tax burdens?

Here are the facts. In 2003 only thirteen percent of the U.S. population prepared their own taxes by hand. Sixty-two percent went to professional tax-preparers and twenty-five percent used computer assistance (Guyton, Korobow, Lee, & Toder, 2005Guyton, J., Korobow, A., Lee, P., & Toder, E. (2005). The effects of tax software and paid preparers on compliance costs. Washington DC: Urban–Brookings Tax Policy Center. Eighty-seven percent of the country appears to be tax-preparation-impaired. Tax assistance is like curb cuts: it accommodates the “normals” just as much it accommodates those who are labeled cognitively impaired.

Like the go-fish scenario, the tax form scenario is a manufactured worry. It is a fantasy that serves only to fan the fears of integrating disabled people into the “normal” world. The imaginations of the authors caused this problem, not the DR movement. Historians of racism and sexism can tell similar tales about the overheated imaginations of earlier civil rights opponents.

If our concern with the tax form example seems exaggerated, we must point out that it is the nearest thing to a real-world case of a harmful accommodation in the entire book. How would civil rights workers for minorities and women respond to the following comments?

“Our society has learned through its efforts to accommodate African-Americans that in many cases racial integration need not be unduly burdensome to Caucasian-Americans,”

or

“. . . we have learned through our efforts to accommodate women that in many cases sex integration need not be unduly burdensome to men.”

These are expressions of condescending opposition, not of support for the rights of women and minorities. The same is true when such statements are made about disability.

The authors of FCC repeatedly express their support for civil rights—but not for disability rights. Lists of civil rights movements are discussed in seven separate places in the book. In four of these lists, disability rights is omitted. These four lists all include race/ethnicity and sex/gender, with class and religion added to some of them (pp. 16, 172, 188, 220–221).

In a fifth list, disability is claimed to have less legitimacy than two other civil rights categories because it conflicts with the maximizing interest (the case discussed previously, from pp. 284 ff.). Only two out of the seven lists include disability rights without criticizing it. One is a historical summary of protected classes (p. 126), and the other a list of the victims of the eugenics movement (p. 110).

These final two lists, the ones that include disability rights without criticizing it, occur in factual contexts that carry no moral commendation. They are mere historical reports, not judgments of moral correctness. In contrast, the four lists that exclude disability occur in contexts that affirm the moral correctness of anti-discrimination against the listed classes. Never is discrimination against disabled people morally condemned in this way. (Incidentally, each of the universities with which the authors are affiliated has a non-discrimination policy that includes disability.)

None of the other protected classes—race, sex, religion, social class, or homosexuality—is subjected to the kinds of challenges that face disability in this book. No special majority interests are discerned that give legitimacy to people who wish to discriminate against homosexual people, people of particular races, or women. But disability must face the maximizing interest. The pseudoslogan “change society not people” could as well be (mis)attributed to the gay rights movement as to the DR movement—but the DR movement bears its brunt in this book.

For other kinds of discrimination the authors insist that “no one can have a morally legitimate interest in preserving unjust arrangements” (p. 283). But they deny that the same principle holds for discrimination against disabled people. They find ways to defend such discrimination and invent scenarios (such as the go-fish analogy and the tax-form example) that throw doubt on the legitimacy of disability rights. 1010. Eventually the authors do acknowledge that disabled peoples' interests in employment may outweigh the majority interests in segregating disabled people from the workforce in many cases (p. 301). However, the maximizing interest still hangs over the heads of disabled people. At any time, the scales of justice (of the relative importance of conflicting legitimate interests) might tip towards the nondisabled majority. No other civil rights group is forced to live with this threat.View all notes

Our purpose in examining FCC was to try to discern the basis of the continuing conflicts between the DR movement and mainstream bioethics. We have learned, in this particular case, that the conflict is much more direct than we had anticipated.

The authors endorse the social construction of disability and they claim that the prenatal policy is consistent with a belief in the legitimacy of DR. But their defense of the prenatal policy directly leads them to challenge the legitimacy of DR. This suggests (if it does not prove) that the two positions are actually inconsistent, at least in the authors' minds. The authors may honestly believe that they give disability rights all the respect that it deserves. But they do not believe that DR deserves the respect that ordinary, moderate DR advocates claim for it—namely the same respect that is granted to other civil rights movements.

From Chance to Choice was not intended to be a book about disability rights. The DR critiques were not examined for the purpose of evaluating the DR movement, but of defending the prenatal policy and other applications of genetic medicine.

But the defense of the prenatal policy smoothly segues into a challenge to the legitimacy of DR. Does this mean that bioethicists' rejection of DR is the key to the longstanding conflicts between DR and bioethics? Of course not. It would still seem to be logically possible to fully endorse disability rights and the prenatal policy simultaneously (even though these authors fail to do so).

Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that one of the very first sustained attempts by prominent bioethicists to deal with the DR critiques of the prenatal policy ended up with the bioethicists rejecting disability rights (at least as those rights are understood by their advocates).

One of FCC's coauthors has elsewhere acknowledged the tension in this combination of beliefs:

It takes considerable rhetorical agility to urge the public to support screening programs so as to prevent the conception of handicapped individuals while at the same time insisting that full respect be paid to such developmentally disabled adults as are already among us.

(Dan Wikler quoted in Reinders, 2000, p. 1. For discussion see Asch, 2003).

This rhetorical agility was not exercised in FCC—disability rights were challenged. A fuller understanding of possible relationships between bioethics and the DR movement must await the work of bioethicists who seriously study the DR literature and are willing to dialogue with its advocates. As the real DR slogan says, “Nothing about us without us.” 11

Notes

Other early sources include the World Health Organization (1980)World Health Organization. 1980. International classification of impairments, disabilities, and handicaps, Geneva: World Health Organization. [Google Scholar] and Beatrice Wright (1983)Wright, B. 1983. Physical disability: A psychosocial approach, Second, New York: Harper and Row.[CrossRef], [Google Scholar]; see discussion in Amundson, 1992Amundson, R. 1992. Disability, handicap, and the environment. Journal of Social Philosophy, 23: 105–118. [Google Scholar]; Wendell, 1996Wendell, S. 1996. The rejected body: Feminist philosophical reflections on disability, New York: Routledge. [Google Scholar]; Wasserman, 2001Wasserman, D. 2001. “Philosophical issues in the definition and social response to disability”. In Handbook of Disability Studies, Edited by: Albrecht, G. L., Seelman, K. D. and Bury, M. 219–51. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.[CrossRef], [Google Scholar].

The authors of FCC recognize this distinction, but (remarkably) document it by citing three of their own publications (p. 20). It is unclear whether they believe that it is their own innovation. Except for Wikler's early recognition that mental competence is determined in part by social environment (Wikler, 1979Wikler, D. 1979. Paternalism and the mildly retarded. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 8: 377–392. [Google Scholar]), the cited works are all after 1990—far too late to count as innovation.

Our expression “from impairments themselves” should be read as “from impairments together with their non-social contexts.” We mean to distinguish between socially-caused disadvantages and disadvantages that are not socially caused. See the discussion in note #4.

Both the impairment/disability distinction and our CDI/UDI distinction are pragmatic tools, meant to elucidate the issues of political debate. Their metaphysical status can be challenged. For example, some authors have argued that the impairment category itself is socially constructed: impairment should not be treated as an objective scientific category in the way the impairment/disability distinction may be taken to imply (Amundson, 2000Amundson, R. 2000. Against normal function. Studies in the History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 31C: 33–53. [Google Scholar]; Tremain, 2001Tremain, S. 2001. On the government of disability. Social Theory and Practice, 27: 617–636. [Google Scholar], 2002Tremain, S. 2002. “On the subject of impairment”. In Disability/Postmodernity: Embodying Political Theory, Edited by: Corker, M. and Shakespeare, T. 26–50. London: Continuum Press. [Google Scholar]). In a different approach, Anita Silvers urges the creation of a “neutral conception of disability” that does not presuppose disadvantage. She claims that no impairment is disadvantageous in itself; disadvantages can only happen in environmental contexts (Silvers, 2003Silvers, A. 2003. On the possibility and desirability of constructing a neutral conception of disability. Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, 24: 471–487.[CrossRef], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]). The point is correct. Nevertheless, our concern is to distinguish social contexts, for which society can be deemed responsible, from, e.g., physical contexts (such as the law of gravity) for which society has no responsibility.

The expression ”disabled people” is currently disfavored in much of North America because “disability” is used as a biomedical category, equivalent to what we term “impairment.” Our version of the impairment/disability dichotomy, just introduced, follows the British usage. Disabled people are people who are disadvantaged by social barriers, not people who receive a particular biomedical diagnosis of disabled. The objectionable implications of disabled person do not apply.

We do not deny that racism and sexism exist in the academy, only that they are openly endorsed.

Claims for proportional medical attention to diseases that are disproportionately suffered by disadvantaged groups (sickle cell disease, breast cancer) are quite a different kind of argument from claims that those diseases must be cured as a condition for social justice. The latter claim has never been made, just as the DR claim for the cure of UDIs has never been made.

We have included in the References a few easily available sources prior to publication of FCC (Eisenberg, Griggins, & Duval, 1982Eisenberg, M., Griggins, C. and Duval, R. 1982. Disabled people as second-class citizens, New York: Springer. [Google Scholar]; Oliver, 1990Oliver, M. 1990. The Politics of Disablement, Houndmills, , UK: The Macmillan Press Ltd.[CrossRef], [Google Scholar], 1996Oliver, M. 1996. Understanding disability: From theory to practice, Houndmills, , UK: Palgrave.[CrossRef], [Google Scholar]; Shapiro, 1993Shapiro, J. 1993. No pity: People with disabilities forging a new civil rights movement, New York: Random House. [Google Scholar]; Linton, 1998Linton, S. 1998. Claiming disability, New York: New York University Press. [Google Scholar]).

Perhaps they take this to follow from the slogan “change society not people.” As we have shown, this slogan is itself specious.

Eventually the authors do acknowledge that disabled peoples' interests in employment may outweigh the majority interests in segregating disabled people from the workforce in many cases (p. 301). However, the maximizing interest still hangs over the heads of disabled people. At any time, the scales of justice (of the relative importance of conflicting legitimate interests) might tip towards the nondisabled majority. No other civil rights group is forced to live with this threat.

This paper has greatly benefited from conversations with Adrienne Asch and Larry Heintz, and comments from Anita Silvers and two anonymous referees. RA's work was supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health (No. S06-GM08073).

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