What's been rattlin' 'round this old head o'mine:

1. A thought experiment, with the same premise as Jane Elliott's "eye-color racism experiment, to illustrate how society's ableism bias creates disability out of difference:
   
   ( I elaborate behind here )
   
   
   
2. A startling thinky-think sentence from the introduction to Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a world of Strangers:*
   
   "The population of classical Athens when Socrates died, at the end of the fifth century BC, could have lived in a few large skyscrapers."
   
   
3. Remember my entry, here, about how "Monster" comes from a Latin word for offspring born with missing, or extra, limbs? I wonder if that's why so many 'monsters' have "Fish Tails." Where normal two hind legs would be, you have the two fused together, instead...
   
   
4. I love Geeks. I even enjoy, for the most part, hanging out with geeks who have a different flavor of geekiness than I do -- math geeks, or comic book geeks, for example. I think what makes someone geeky, and what makes geeky people so much fun, is that they refuse to develop a vaneer of cool cynicism: They remain enthusiastic about the things they love, and want to share it with others, regardless of whether or not others will think them silly for it. In this sense, I think, Geek is a better word than "nerd" because "geek" originally meant "village idiot" -- someone who knows a lot about their favorite subject, but doesn't really care for the fads and fashions valued by her fellow villagers.
   
   
5. This last weekend, I lost contact with the Internet, and so I resorted to reading an actually printed book to pass the time (the one I quote from above). And I realized one reason why I prefer to read from the computer screen. When I'm reading from a paper book, I have to hold it horizontally, so the light will shine on the pages, and that means, to read the pages, I have to bend my neck to look down at them, and that leads to strain, after a while... either that, or I have to hold the book up in front of my face, and that leads to arm strain. Whereas, when I'm reading on my monitor, my hands are resting on my desk, and my back and neck are straight, and I'm looking straight ahead. So my body's attention span doesn't give out before my mind's does. I think that's why an e-reader doesn't (yet) (fully) appeal to me: a computer that you have to handle like a book misses the point. ... or, at least, my point.

*(Well-written and engaging -- mostly, until the casual ableism slips out at random spots. Still, I'm enjoying the general flow of it, regardless of ocassional winces)