Category: Uncategorized

I wonder how much money the Bush Administration spent on inventing the term Islamofascist.  It entered our language some time in 2006 and people who buy into the president’s form of intellectual vacancy use it frequently.  The complete lack of philosophic, historical or linguistic consistency in the design of this word simply boggles the mind of any thinking individual and everyone should question its use as it exists for the soul purpose of deriding people of a particular faith without resorting to ugly terms like camel jockey, sand nigger or towel head.

Let’s deconstruct the term Islamofascist.  The first half, Islamo, obviously takes a new spin on the words, Islam and Islamic.  Islamist, also a word invented in the past few years, did not catch on so, I would guess that the administration hired a corporate branding firm and, through focus groups learned that “Islamo” prior to a word people believe to be a synonym for “bad” would work.

The second part of the word demonstrates the intellectual vacancy on a grander scale.  While, in my opinion, fascism is a bad form of government and a discredited political philosophy, it is a poor term to describe what theocrats are, in fact, Fascism is a word for a very specific political philosophy which bases its foundation on the triumph of human will.  Islamic fundamentalists, like Christian fundamentalists and sincere believers of many religious faiths, believe in the triumph of God’s will.  Fascists, like the Nazi party in the first half of the twentieth century, shunned God’s will in favor of human will and believed that humans alone could control the destiny of both the species and the world.  Fascists strongly accept evolutionary science and, under Hitler, took human evolution so seriously that they chose to exterminate people who did not meet their ideal racial profile.  Islamic fundamentalists, like Osama Ben Laden, share the belief with Christian fundamentalists that humans were created in God’s image by God himself and that God, the intelligent designer, planned human development because that is what is written in the Bible and the Koran and both books, according to the subscribers to one of these fundamentalist beliefs, are infallible in the eyes of its readers.

Thus, the Bush people, trying to avoid associating Islamic fundamentalists with Christian fundamentalists chose to find a new word to describe an Islamic flavor of tyranny.  They didn’t want to use the word theocracy as Israel and other allies are such and many of the president’s followers believe in ending the separation of church and state in the United States and wish our nation to become a Christian theocracy.  So, they chose to call a philosophy which is undoubtedly not fascist, fascism as words like “dictator,” “tyrant,” or good old “thug,” didn’t quite sound right.  Thus, Hitler and Mussolini were not Cathlofascists but, rather, plain old fascists who, while nasty buggers, did not accept any form of theocracy.

William Safire, perhaps my all time favorite conservative writer, retired from the New York Times a year or two ago.  Every Sunday, from my junior high days until well into adulthood, I eagerly looked forward to and enjoyed reading his “On Language” column in the Times Magazine.  I wonder what such a brilliant social critic, with whom I rarely shared a political stance and tremendous observer of our language, would have to say about the word Islamofascist.  I doubt Bill Safire reads Blind Confidential but, if any of our readers know how to reach him, please send him this article and ask him to provide a comment on this peculiar combination of syllables.

Growing up (remember, I am and have always been a nerd and, even more strongly, I am a word nerd), I enjoyed the great debates between the good friends but political foes, William F. Buckley, a great conservative from Yale, and John Kenneth Galbraith, the Brilliant Harvard liberal.  Galbraith died last year but I wonder what Buckley, a man I typically disagreed with politically but always held in high intellectual regard, would say about a term as ridiculous as Islamofascist.

Today, we have come to accept lots of new words.  Some, like cyberspace, blog and webcast have grown organically out of new technology.  Others, however, come from corporate branding experts.  As far as I know, the first company name specifically chosen for the way it would sound to the American ear and carry no meaning in any known language was Kodak.  Eastman decided that his photography business should have a new name that did not derive from anything else.  When Philippe Kahn named Borland he chose the word because, “it sounds American.”  

Pharmaceutical companies tend to use non-words more liberally than most industries and have brought new words into our language like Prozac, Xanax, Wellbutrin and others.  While many people think Viagra was an invented non-word, it is not, in Sanskrit, Viagra means Tiger.  Which would mean that, if one were to try to sell a Macintosh into a Sanskrit speaking community, its operating system would need to be called Viagra, it certainly seems to give my buddy Gabe an erection and, if it lasts more than four hours, I recommend immediate medical attention.

Using a corporate branding strategy to invent a new word that means, “our current enemy” is a bold faced attempt to repackage and resell a war that grows increasingly unpopular.  It kind of feels like “New Coke” but in a more, let’s find a way to make the loss of human life, American, Iraqi, Lebanese , Islamic, Christian, Jew, black, white, brown, elder, adult and child more palatable to the American consumer.  Sadly, the steady deterioration of education in the United States, the sad decrease in our national vocabulary skills and the general lack of understanding of history and the meaning of a political philosophy like fascism allows the president and his cronies to invent a nonsense word that, if taken literally, means the opposite of Islamic Fundamentalist.

I suppose they tested other words which, sadly, Americans think are synonyms for “bad” but, in fact, have far broader definitions and learned they didn’t work well with the focus groups.  I’d assume IslamaTyrant, Moslotator, MosloNasty and IslamoBadGuys didn’t fly.  Clearly, we couldn’t equate Osama and his gang of theocratic Islamic terrorist thugs with communism as that might confuse the public as regards the good communist friends of ours in China and our evil communist enemies in Cuba.  Wal-Mart grows its organic canned beans in China so we can make our vegetarian chili at a bargain so how bad can the Chinese communist autocracy be?

Of course, we couldn’t use the term, “socialist” which, although it carries a bad connotation, most Americans have trouble distinguishing it from communism and the Bush people would have to explain the difference between our nice socialist friends in Norway, Sweden and Denmark and the mean socialist bad guys like Hugo Chavez and Bernie Sanders.  Of course, even if Senor Chavez calls us the great evil of North America (using language more sophisticated than that of President Bush but, oddly reminiscent of a recent State of the Union address where our president referred to an axis of evil) he would need to explain why the United States accepted his gift of one million barrels of oil to help sure up our national reserves after Katrina.  The administration would also need to explain to the poor people in New York, Massachusetts, Wisconsin and Illinois why he is associating Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president who sells discount heating oil to low income Americans, why he is just like Osama Ben Laden.

It must be hard trying to come up with appropriate words to describe our enemies.  I wouldn’t want the job of “head word inventor” for the GOP.  I would likely have come up with something boring like Islamic Theocrats and have angered our friends in Israel.

Other presidents have added new words and phrases to our vocabulary.  If I remember correctly, it was President Hoover, the only engineer to become president and, as head of the Army Corp of Engineers reached national fame by arriving in New Orleans less than 8 hours after the rain stopped to start the rescue operation in a nasty flood, who coined the word “normalcy” when said that “America needs to return to normalcy…”  President Eisenhower, one of a few genius caliber presidents, warned us of, “the military industrial complex,” then strong supporters of Vice President Elect President Johnson and the primary recipients of Bush the younger’s wild spending.  In fact, last night on Hanedy, G. Gordon Liddy, used the term, “military industrial complex” in a short rant about the failure of the Republican Congress and President to stop spending like, “a drunken sailor on a Saturday night.”  I really miss those whacko liberal Nixon people having power.

Thus, I conclude, that Islamofascist is a stupid word designed by clever people to fool an undereducated and gullible public.  I think I’ll play with my new Sanskrit Macintosh and write with a bigger grin later.

Afterward

I know that Sanskrit is a dead language and that there are no Sanskrit speaking colonies nor is there a Sanskrit edition of the Macintosh Viagra OS.

I had expected to get some hate mail about the “Termination of Contract” piece I wrote earlier this week.  Instead, I received a single anonymously posted comment from a whack job that associated my satirical bit about intelligent design and the many really nasty behaviors humans demonstrate with the thought that I was speaking out against diversity.  If one reads Blind Confidential and its frequent celebration of diversity with any regularity, they will realize that this comment is entirely baseless.

As regards the intelligent design versus evolution debate, I obviously subscribe to the generally accepted scientific principles of the evolution side of the discussion.  At the same time, I have some very good friends who accept the intelligent design argument.  These are smart people for whom I have a very high level of respect.  We have our philosophic disagreements but we also find a huge amount of common ground in our personal friendships.

–End

I sit, out of touch with most of the world for a few days, in a spot from where I had no intention of writing blog entries.  I had thought anything from the satire to human rights treaties to my more random entries could wait until I got home.  Then, I received the email, pasted in below from my friend, colleague and well known expert in blindness issues, Dena Shumila.  

A little background on Dena for those who want an idea of her qualifications as a spokesperson for us blinks.  Dena has worked in the disability groups at companies ranging from Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems and SAP to Earle Harrison’s dealership to Serotek (author’s of Freedom Box) to DeWitt and Associates.  She has participated in the Access Forum and numerous other organizations on blindness and pan-disability groups.  She is also a close friend of mine and someone whom I trust implicitly and for whom I would provide a reference on her outstanding skills and even more outstanding character.  Dena currently lives in the suburbs of Minneapolis with her fiancé and guide dog but is often spotted elsewhere working for her numerous consulting clients.

In the email below, Dena describes a bizarre situation involving an unlicensed “guide dog school” based in Madison, Wisconsin.  As is typical for one as well educated and thorough as Dena, her open letter includes citations to sources that you can confirm yourself.

In Dena’s letter, pasted in its entirety below, she describes the highly unethical practices of the OccuPaws Guide Dog Association.  As far as I could find in my search this morning, OccuPaws has no licensed guide dog trainers on staff.  They also seem to train their animals in attack tactics and other non-standard practices for a guide dog school.  I could not find references to them in other more mainstream guide dog web sites and, as far as I can tell, they will, as Dena asserts, place trusting blinks in danger if they continue with their incredibly peculiar and unethical practices.

The mother of one of OccuPaws’ co-founders has, according to a quote from her in Dena’s letter, threatened to “contact “the DA and her personal attorney” to take action against Dena personally and search engines (google, Yahoo, etc.) for “defamation of character.”  Dena, to my knowledge, has no non-disparagement contract with OccuPaws, a non-profit organization based in Wisconsin.  I didn’t look up the OccuPaws tax status but I will assume they carry a 501(c)3public charity designation, the operative term being the adjective “public” modifying the word charity.  As a “public” institution which gathers tax exempt contributions from members of the public, they are not exempt from public criticism in the manner that a private individual might be so a case of libel or slander is ridiculous in this matter.  Next, all such “defamation,” slander or libel suits are matters of civil law, hence, a district attorney would only find a letter from said organization expressing a complaint annoying and, of course, frivolous.  Furthermore, if anyone should take legal action in this matter, I think Dena, on behalf of potential guide dog users who may be fooled by the dangerous claims made by OccuPaws, should take her information to the Office of the Wisconsin Attorney General, Consumer Protection Division to report an organization which may be placing its consumers into a highly dangerous situation.

If OccuPaws, its founders, board of directors or the individuals cited in Dena’s letter want to take legal action against me, they can have their lawyer write to me, Christian D. Hofstader, C/o  Disability Law Center, 11 Beacon Street, Suite 925
Boston, Massachusetts, 02108.  Please send such correspondence in both print and accessible formats so I can read it independently but also have a copy I can fax to the Internal Revenue Service, along with a number of other documents regarding the misleading statements made by OccuPaws on their web site, challenging their tax exempt status as public charities are held to a higher standard than typical corporations and I feel quite confident that OccuPaws doesn’t want to lose its 501(c)3status.

Finally, if they continue with a lawsuit against Dena, no matter how frivolous it may be, I will place a PayPal link on www.hofstader.com so people can contribute to her legal defense fund.  As such funds are difficult to set up in an official manner, it will not be a tax exempt charity but, rather, any donations will need to be “gifts” from those who choose to contribute so neither Dena nor I need to pay taxes on such monies.

As I describe in my article titled “August 2005,” I know exactly what it feels like to try to try to defend oneself against law suits while not in a financial position to afford high quality lawyers.  My personal situation was one of the most stressful of my life and I will not let any such frivolities be perpetrated on my friends or other blinks without helping out in some manner in the future.  So, if you know Dena, please send her a note to help cheer her up and, please, if OccuPaws, its founders, “staff,” board or any individuals associated with it do take legal action, send a gift that we can use to help defray the costs of defending Dena as, although I am 100% certain that she bears no liability, hiring an attorney to handle a defense in even the most frivolous cases can be very expensive.

Everything that follows is Dena’s letter:

To Whom It May Concern
 I would like to provide the community of guide dog users with additional information about a newly formed non-profit organization. The agency, known as
the OccuPaws Guide Dog Association is located in Madison, Wisconsin. My hope is that a national organization for guide dog users will assist me in making
OccuPaws accountable for its inconsistencies and lack of qualifications (described below). I am deeply fearful that a prospective guide dog handler, with
Little knowledge about how guide dogs are safely trained will be physically or emotionally harmed if they are matched with an improperly trained dog.
I am also concerned about the generous individuals who might be persuaded to support an organization that does not employ the standards of quality and
Safety that characterizes a reputable dog guide school. 
 As one of OccuPaws’ original founders, I can attest to its lack of both organizational infrastructure and qualified training personnel. I have been a guide
Dog user for more than a decade, and am aware of the tremendous skill required to train such an animal safely. I also understand the unbelievable amount
Of time, effort, money, expertise and commitment it takes to run a successful guide dog training program. When it became clear that my co-founder did not
Wish to develop OccuPaws with the ethical and professional standards that are the foundation of well-established training programs, I ended my affiliation
With the organization. I could not, in good conscience, continue to support an agency that possessed such an unrealistic and cavalier attitude about the
Process of training a guide dog. I was nearly killed by a dog that should never have been given the responsibility of guiding a blind person, and I could
Not have lived with myself if my actions had caused someone else to experience that kind of terror and emotional devastation. 
 In late June of 2006, I published a letter that warned prospective students and donors about the unethical practices of the OccuPaws organization. This
Document appeared on several guide dog-related list serves, but can be viewed in the archives of the Yahoogroup that belongs to the National Association
of Guide Dog Users. Its content was based on excerpts from the OccuPaws Web site, as well as my own first-hand knowledge of the organization’s practices.
Today, however, even though it has been more than 90 days since this posting, I received an email from Patricia Schenck, an OccuPaws board member, and
The mother of the organization’s founder, Nicole Meadowcroft. This email threatens to sue me for defamation of character, unless I remove my statements
About OccuPaws from all public forums. When I reviewed the OccuPaws Web site, I discovered that much of the incriminating material that had been referenced
In my original statement had vanished. Clearly, the strategy of the OccuPaws organization was to read the letter outlining my concerns, attempt to erase
All record of their validity from the OccuPaws Web site, and then threaten to sue me (thinking that all proof to substantiate my claims had disappeared).
Fortunately, much of the original content from the OccuPaws Web site was cached by the various search engines, and it also appears in their organic search
result listings. In addition, many of the Web pages I reference, as well as emails from OccuPaws’ personnel, have been archived on the hard drive of my
Computer. I am happy to provide this documentation upon request.  
 Regardless of the motives that have been attributed to my public expression of concern regarding the practices of OccuPaws, and my questions about their
intentions, the facts are indisputable, and the facts are these. 

list of 7 items
• No member of the OccuPaws organization is a certified guide dog instructor.
• No OccuPaws associate (including its founder) has ever trained a guide dog from start to finish.
• In spite of this lack of experience, the founder of OccuPaws has publicly advertised herself as a guide dog trainer.
• In spite of statements to the contrary, the founder of OccuPaws has publicly stated that the organization intends to graduate its first guide dog in
the
spring of 2007.
• The founder’s current “guide dog” is an in-tact male, who doubles as both a breeding stud and a personal protection dog.
• The founder of OccuPaws conducted formal harness training with a 9 month old puppy. This puppy was also kept in-tact, and was being trained in the practice
of bite work.
• In an attempt to keep me from asking difficult questions, a family member of OccuPaws’ founder has threatened me with legal action.
List end 
 NOTE: Because of the threats I have received regarding a defamation of character law suit, I have included a Reference section at the bottom of this document.
This Reference section includes Web page and email excerpts that support each of the above claims. 
 Without the assistance of other members of the guide dog community, I will be unable to continue with my efforts to prevent this organization from hurting
Someone. My hope is that other concerned individuals will assist me in asking the difficult questions that need to be asked, and expose the inconsistencies
that exist. I also hope that such intervention will either compel the OccuPaws organization to provide proof of its legitimacy, or require its personnel
to implement practices that are ethical, realistic, and safe.   
 If you have any questions about the references I have listed below my signature, or require additional documentation, please contact me at your convenience. 
 Regards, 
 Dena 
 Reference Section 
 Reference 1 
 Claim: 
No member of the OccuPaws organization is a certified guide dog instructor, and none of its associates has ever trained a guide dog from start to finish. 
 Explanation and Proof: 
When I recently challenged one of OccuPaws’ associates about the agency’s overall lack of guide dog training experience, and the absence of qualified personnel,
I was informed that the organization’s trainers would be attending a 2 day seminar with a “certified guide dog instructor” who “comes from a school in
California.” Apparently, after this brief exposure to training practices, these individuals, who have no additional guide dog training experience, plan
to begin training guide dogs on their own. The OccuPaws website also alludes to collaboration with a “certified guide dog instructor.” My intention is
to contact the 3 California-based guide dog schools, to see if, in fact, any of them has allowed one of their trainers to conduct such a seminar. My suspicion,
however, is that they have not. My speculation is that the “certified guide dog instructor” being referred to is an extremely accomplished and respected
trainer in the area of Schutzhund, but I believe that it has been over a decade since he formally trained a guide dog. 
 Email excerpts: 
(Email from Marlene Morga, September 27, 2006.) 
“We have a Certified Guide Dog Trainer coming Monday & Tuesday to work with us,  give advice and check out the dogs we have.     The Lab is almost 2 yrs 
old, and who will be working him is still in the air until after the Trainer talks to us and shows us what must be done.    He wants us to train several
dogs each as demos.    So nothing we have now will be put out with anyone.    Several years down the road……” 
 In the same email message, the following statement is made about the 2-year-old Lab mentioned above.  
“I found a lady that donated a young male that might just turn out to be the very first graduate …..” 
 Reference 2 
 Claim: 
The founder of OccuPaws has publicly advertised herself as a guide dog trainer. 
 Explanation and Proof: 
The following 2 excerpts were taken from an article, which appeared in the DeForest Times Tribune, on August 22, 2006) 
 Article Excerpt 1: 
“Meadowcroft, a dog trainer, decided to train her own 3-year-old German shepherd to be her guide Dog…She was so successful with training her own guide dog
that she started her own company last fall.” 
 NOTE: I witnessed Admiral’s training first hand. Virtually all of it was done by another visually impaired guide dog user, and not by the founder, as she
claims.  
 Article Excerpt 2: 
After a year in a puppy raising home, “the OccuPaws guide dog is then turned 
over to Meadowcroft and her instruction for final training…” 
 NOTE: It seems presumptuous that an individual with minimal guide dog training experience is publicly advertising herself as a guide dog trainer. 
 Reference 3 
 Claim: 
The founder of OccuPaws has publicly stated that the organization intends to graduate its first guide dog in the spring of 2007. 
 Explanation and Proof: 
The following excerpt was taken from the same article, which was published by the DeForest Times Tribune, on August 22, 2006). 
 Article Excerpt 3: 
OccuPaws “hopes to start recruiting students for the graduating class of guide dogs by spring.” 
 NOTE: Alarmingly, in spite of the fact that it takes guide dog instructors an average of 3 years to gain the knowledge they need to train a guide dog,
this article indicates that OccuPaws intends to issue a dog to a blind handler in spring (when the organization will be approximately a year and a half
old).  
 Reference 4 
 Claim: 
As the above excerpt establishes, in spite of its very recent statements to the contrary, the organization was actively recruiting students, even though
it employed no qualified instructors, and had no training methodology in place.  
 Web Excerpt 1:  
The following quotation appears as part of YAHOO!’s organic search result listings when the phrase “OccuPaws, if you are in need of guide dog assistance”
is queried. 
“If you are in need of guide dog assistance, please contact us 
today. …” 
 Web Excerpt 2: 
A copy of the OccuPaws Student Application was also cached by Google, on May 12, 2006. It can be found by searching “OccuPaws, Student Application.” 
 Web Excerpt 3: 
Interestingly, now that I have been threatened with the defamation of character suit, the Student Information page reads as follows. 
“At this time, the OccuPaws Guide Dog Association is developing a customized training curriculum for our guide dogs and our future students.  We are not 
actively recruiting students at this time.” 
 Reference 5 
 Claim: 
The founder’s current “guide dog” is an in-tact male, who doubles as both a breeding stud and a personal protection dog. 
 Explanation and Proof: 
Web Excerpt 1: 
The Web site for the founder’s breeding kennel (
WWW.VOMSCHENCK.COM

) contains a link to the OccuPaws Web site, announcements about Admiral’s latest litters, and photos of his progeny. The Web page (
WWW.VOMSCHENCK.COM/MALES.HTM

) describes Admiral and his various titles as follows. 
“Admiral vom Schenck…BH, AD, WH, FO, OB1, Guide Dog.” 
 Web Excerpt 2: 
The description below appears on several Web sites when the phrase “UKC titles, WH” is searched with Google. 
 “WH” is “a working title,” which refers to “Watch Hund (watch dog in English).” It is a “Schutzhund type title, related to protection work.” 
 Reference 6 
 Claim: 
The founder of OccuPaws conducted formal harness training with a 9 month old puppy. This puppy was also kept in-tact, and was being trained in the practice
of bitework. 
 Explanation and Proof: 
I expressed concern when the founder of OccuPaws placed her personal “guide dog in training. I also witnessed her bitework training sessions. 
 Web Excerpt: 
The following excerpt was taken from the Google’s organic search engine listings, and appears when “OccuPaws, Halo” is searched. This quotation was included
in my original statement of concern. At the time my original letter was written, and the quote was retrieved from the OccuPaws Web site, Halo was only
9 months old. 
“Halo is currently practicing formal service / guide dog tasks and excelling with an A+. Halo will also be an asset to the OccuPaws ‘ breeding program.” 
 However, again, since I received the threat about the defamation suit, all reference to Halo has been removed from the Our Dogs in Training page of the
OccuPaws Web site. 
 Reference 7 
 Claim: 
In an attempt to keep me from asking difficult questions, and exposing undesirable practices, a family member of OccuPaws’ founder has threatened me with
legal action. 
 Explanation and Proof: 
The following excerpts were taken from emails sent to me by Patricia Schenck, on October 4, 2006. 
 Email Excerpt 1: 
“Nicole was only practicing on Admiral and Halo.  It was never her intention of using these dogs as guide dogs.” 
NOTE: See the above references that outline proof to the contrary. 
 Excerpt 2: 
“I am giving you one week to remove your comments regarding OccuPaws and my daughter Nicole from the website, otherwise I will be forwarding your comments
to the District Attorney’s office and my lawyer for defamation of character, etc.” 
NOTE: The Web site being referred to is the list serve archive for the National Association of Guide Dog Users’. 
 Excerpt 3: 
“You have 10 days to have this information removed or I will be taking additional steps to hold you and the search engines liable for defamation of character
and accusations of fraud.” 
NOTE: The word “fraud” appears nowhere in my NAGDU message.  
 Reference 8 
 Miscellaneous Excerpts of Concern: 
The following excerpts were taken from the same series of emails, which were sent by Patricia Schenck, on October 4, 2006. 
Email Excerpt 1: 
“OccuPaws will only require two experienced dog guide trainers, no facility, and no administrators.” 
NOTE: A guide dog school with no administrators and no facility? And, where will these 2 “experienced dog guide trainers” come from? Especially in time
for the advertised spring 2007 graduation.  
 Email Excerpt 2: 
“OccuPaws dogs will have more one on one training with the guide dog trainer than the dogs receive at guide dog schools.  The trainers at the schools handle
15 dogs and are limited to the number of hours they can work with a dog each day.  Nicole will have one fully trained Labrador guide dog that has gone
through the complete process by a certified guide dog trainer.” 
NOTE: Again, which certified guide dog trainer? And, it seems unbelievable to me that it has been implied that the dogs produced by OccuPaws will somehow
be superior to ones issued by well-established schools, who have strict quality and safety measures in place.   

MEMORANDUM

From John D. Human, Spokesman, Human Species
To: God, Manufacturer Human Beings
Re: Termination of Contract

Dear God,

I regret to inform you that the human species has elected to seek designs for and bids on the manufacturing of human bodies, a contract to which you have been the soul provider for quite some time.  It is a difficult decision to make, given the very long relationship between yourself and our species but the number of complaints we have received, the vast number of bug reports and the overwhelmingly large number of defects resulting in the death and dismemberment of members of our species forces us, after the numerous requests we have made through prayers to correct these problems that have gone unresolved, to seek alternatives.

To wit:

• An independent group of our own engineers have reviewed your design and have concluded that said design, although nearly infinitely improbable, is massively over complicated.  In the RFP for a new design, one major aspect of the specification is that the Homo Sapiens 2.0 use far less complicated parts and be easier to repair in the field.
• One requirement will be that the human reproductive system in the female version of the body will be better suited to a biped and cause far fewer deaths and injuries when in use.  We have sent you; via prayer (the form of communication you suggested as your preference) numerous requests for such an engineering change for tens of thousands of years now but your lack of responsiveness in this matter disturbs us greatly.
• We also will insist in the RFP that Homo Sapiens 2.0 be dramatically less fragile than the current design.  While we can admire the design of the human body for its sheer beauty and have, for most of our history, celebrated its form in art, word and song, the actual units require such tremendous maintenance and have such a huge field failure rate that such must be remedied in the next revision as our global costs in this area is starting to bankrupt a number of our societies, not to mention causing great discomfort for many members of our species.
• The human mind, including my own, is also ridden with bugs that cause tremendous failures.  The RFP for Homo Sapiens 2.0 will require that the next revision not include:

• The tendency for white men to enter classrooms and murder grade school students of our species.
• The tendency of humans who rise to leadership positions to order the killing of individuals, groups or other classes of humans.  In this case, one of your rules delivered to Moses, “Thou shall not kill,” is disregarded by both individuals and leaders with such great frequency that it has grown to be regarded as part of the nature of humans.  Your own son taught us to love and pray for and not kill our enemies, that we should “judge not, lest we be judged,” that we should turn the other cheek and that only those without sin should cast a stone at another human whom we perceived to have sinned in a manner we, as a society, find less acceptable than the sins we forgive, but, nonetheless, with these lessons and those sent through other peacemakers who, according to your own word are blessed, humans continue to kill each other on a minute by minute basis.  
• Humans have, in complete disregard to your son’s story about Samaritans, a tendency toward xenophobia.  The result being that virtually every self designed group on Earth feels it is superior to all other groups and even to subgroups within each group have this tendency toward superiority which, those with greater power have, throughout history, as described in item B, enforced through violence.  This tendency to fear and hate other members of the species will not be permitted under the new specification.
• Humans allow, with great disregard, others to starve to death.  While your son told us that the poor will be among us forever, he did not suggest that we should ignore poverty nor did he suggest that we should permit huge numbers of children (also considered blessed according to your own word) to die from starvation as part of an inequitable distribution of resources largely enforced through violence (see item B).  Thus, the RFP for 2.0 will insist on a greater propensity toward altruism while also (as in item B) a dramatically lowered tendency toward violence perpetrated against other humans.
• Homo Sapiens 2.0 must also have a dramatically reduced tendency toward suicidal behaviors, including but not limited to avoidance of poisoning the beautiful planet which your own grace and design provided us with as an outstanding well designed home.
• The RFP will also include an appendix listing the tens of thousands of bugs reported in different units of human minds which we feel should be remedied in the upgrade.
• Many other forms of what we describe as “human suffering” must also be eradicated from the new design.  This will be listed specifically in the RFP.

While we are officially discontinuing your contract on the design and manufacture of human beings, we will welcome a proposal from you that meets with the requirements designed in the RFP to be publicly distributed within the upcoming weeks.  We will, of course, continue using your services until we have chosen to either select a replacement or to continue under your new design.

We will also take this opportunity to remind you that you have a 25,000 year agreement not to compete with, disparage or disclose any secrets involving the design, sale, manufacturing, behavior or virtually anything else involving humans.  Thus, if we elect to go with another designer/manufacturer we will assume that you will follow the terms of this contract and will not, in any way, do anything that violates it lest we will need to take action in the appropriate venue.

Sincerely,
John D. Human
Spokesman

In August 2006, the first human rights treaty of the 21st Century entered the books of the United Nations.  The treaty, signed by a nearly unanimous collection of member nations, addressed the rights of people with disabilities and is the first international treaty of its kind.  The United States, the only notable nation who refused to join as a signatory, claimed that it already has ADA and, therefore, didn’t need to join.

Perhaps, the Bush Administration and its UN pit bull, John Bolton, actually realized that the new human rights treaty for people like us reached further and afforded far greater rights, rather than just laws and regulations under ADA, than those provided by the very ambiguous language in ADA.  Our law, which surely should be celebrated as it is the best thing we have in this country has seen much criticism when compared with similar laws and actual constitutional guarantees embedded in the laws of Canada, the European Union, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere.  

Simply put, the weakest portion of the ADA are the words “reasonable accommodations” which, without a definition for “reasonable” can mean almost anything a court may want it to.  The Supreme Court and a number of other Federal Courts have ruled that it doesn’t apply to state governments (Alabama), that it doesn’t apply to people with HIV and some, but not all, other diseases and in a decision I support, it doesn’t apply to people who can have 20/20 vision if they wear glasses or contact lenses.  Possibly the least reasonable portion of the various court rulings have decided that, although the law states that it applies to, “all places of public accommodation,” (the operative word being “all,” it does not, according to case law, require that all places of public accommodation make accessibility changes prior to a complaint being filed by a person with a qualified disability.  Thus, if a student with a vision impairment enrolls in a public school, there is no guarantee that JAWS, OpenBook, Braille or audio texts or anything be available on the day they arrive.  In some notable cases, this has meant that the student had to study without any assistive technology for months on end while, following the court rulings, the backwater school system took their sweet time finding the tools the student required, sending out for bids, finding someone cheap enough and with the knowledge of how to install such things to come to the schools and, finally, providing the student with something to use.  Then, getting the student any training on such products might take months more.  All of this is acceptable under decision of the Federal Courts.

Thus, the definition of “all” as in “all places” actually means “all places where a person with a disability and the strength and wherewithal to file complaints must provide reasonable accommodations” for as long as the person with disability doesn’t get frustrated enough to find a more accommodating situation.  Thus, “accessibility” is not a right but, rather, a legally mandated set of things that a person with a disability can force a “place of public accommodation” to perform.  You have a right to free speech but, under US Federal law, a set of regulations that you can, sometimes with great effort and expense,  employ to push an uncooperative society into providing the accommodations you, as a person with disability, need to perform activities everyone else takes for granted.

Many states have passed their own local versions of ADA and some of these reach further than the Federal law.  Massachusetts provides one of the widest reaching sets of state laws in the nation.  Massachusetts also provides the rights for its gay citizens to get married and, likely, provides basic rights considerably further reaching than most other states.  Wyoming, a state that celebrates the rights of individuals, has no provisions for the rights of people with disabilities, gay people and many other classes of human who they do not believe need such rights.  Alabama, due to a direct ruling by the US Supreme Court, is, along with any other state that chooses to behave in a backward manner, specifically exempt from requiring its state government to provide “reasonable” accommodations to its employ; hence, blinks need not apply for government jobs in the state of Rosa Parks and the Selma church bombings.  As George Wallace, prior to his reformation said as governor of Alabama, “Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!”  In Alabama, little changes over time.

If the United States, the “freest nation in the world,” according to our leaders, chose to sign the treaty, it would, like other treaties (except perhaps the Geneva Conventions) have to follow the language within the treaty.  Thus, when the WTO ruled that US law banning the import of fish that was caught using nets that cause the death of sea turtles, the US had to abdicate some of its sovereignty to the WTO because its environmental laws were trumped by the treaty.  In the case of the Human Rights for People with Disabilities Treaty, it would have to force Alabama, Wyoming and other piss ant backwaters to provide rights for people with disabilities.  As the US has roughly 25 “blue” and 25 “red” states, one can use the electoral map to find the states without local laws providing protections to people with disabilities.  Can you guess which color wins?

To really hammer this point home, one should take a look at the list of nations that did sign the treaty.  They include nations so poor that most people still need to gather water from wells and carry it home on their heads, countries where the average income is roughly $100 per day, countries where electricity is considered a “big city” luxury, dictatorships of all sorts, nations which have no right to free speech or laws against torture, nations which, when we hear them mentioned on the news, we need to go to wikipedia to find out on which continent they reside.

So, now that international lawyers in and outside of the US have started pouring over the treaty, what might it mean to people with vision impairments in and out of the US, the technology we use and access thereto?  Everything I can say here comes from conjecture on my part, that of various international law experts to whom I have spoken and of a handful of CEO types from AT companies to whom I’ve spoken in the past couple of weeks about this topic.

First, one thing that the lawyers and some of the AT CEOs and, to some extent, my brief reading of a synopsis of the treaty caused me to believe is that mainstream products may be required to include accessibility in some native form “out-of-the-box” at no extra charge to its consumers.  Today, the automobile industry cannot charge extra for a version of a vehicle that would work better for blacks or woman as, effectively, such a version of the automobile would be no different from that sold to the majority of the population.  A vehicle adapted for use by a person without legs, the controls mounted on the steering wheel, etc., may now be something that the motor vehicle manufacturers will need to eat as part of the cost of doing business rather than charging extra – in all countries that signed the treaty and not, however, in the US.

This kind of universally accessible feature set will likely apply to computers and operating systems as well.  Companies like Microsoft and Apple, especially, and Sun to some extent will be asked by signatory nations why they cannot provide truly accessible solutions and, more aptly, why these big companies point to little ones with expensive adaptive products to solve their big time accessibility issues.  Sun and IBM are both working on their open source screen readers for gnome but neither has gotten too far and gnopernicus, the only precedent in this arena, turned into such a failure that Sun had to scrap it outright and start over so this model has no real history of success.  Microsoft and Apple now include no cost “screen readers” in their operating system distributions but the XP version of Narrator, according to its own documentation, cannot truly function as a replacement for a “real” ” screen reader but, word around the campfire says that the Vista version demonstrates profound improvements.  I’ve written before about the fraud Apple perpetrates by calling VoiceOver, its pathetic excuse for a screen reader, a truly accessible solution (come on Gabe, post your comment defending the poison fruit but do so with a feature matrix comparing it to JAWS or Window-Eyes or even the alpha of the IBM GNU/Linux screen reader and see what real accessibility means)..

So, if presented with, “You can’t sell your operating system in this country unless it provides a no cost universally accessible solution,” how will Microsoft and Apple respond?  Apple will state that VoiceOver does such and the very tech savvy European accessibility experts will laugh them off of their shores.  Microsoft, generally more politically smart than Apple, will probably respond in any number of ways.  They could acquire Freedom Scientific or GW Micro, which would make those of us who own stock (or options to) in those companies very happy.  They could release Narrator as an open source product, letting the community of hackers take responsibility for its future while also subsidizing universities and blind consultants to ensure further developments of the software.  Finally, Microsoft could hire an army of attorneys to fight accessibility in world governing bodies but this would probably buy very bad press and cost more than either of the other solutions.

We must also consider countries like Brazil, which choose to use GNU/Linux systems for national security and cost reasons.  In this case, the open source programs from IBM and Sun have a leg up in that, while tragically incomplete at this late point in time, do have something that consultants can start pounding on if subsidized by wealthy nations, corporations and other groups if they grow frustrated with a lack of progress from Microsoft or Apple.

All of this remains purely conjecture and I hope to spend a little time in the coming weeks reading the treaty in its entirety, calling friends in government roles in nations who actually signed the document, read the email from friends who will respond to this item and comments posted here and likely reform my own opinion on the matter a few times.

As I have written here before, I think the optimal results come today from the AT companies.  I truly believe that JAWS is the best screen reader in history and that Window-Eyes is also very, very good, especially when compared to the sad excuses provided on the GNU/Linux and Macintosh graphical desktops.  Some theorists in this area will argue that the text based GNU/Linux screen readers provide the best accessibility and that, instead of trying to square peg a blind friendly user interface into a graphical world, programmers should take graphical programs and create a text interface for them and, consequently, provide 100% accessibility to all of the features in all of the programs; this idea is probably the best but I don’t believe that, outside of a perfect world, this will actually ever be able to provide a collection of applications as broad as that in the mainstream.

So, what do you think?

Afterward

Blind Confidential declares that the day this treaty language found agreement (August 25) to be a new holiday.  I will suggest the name, Helen Keller Day, as, to my knowledge, she is probably the most well known advocate for people with disabilities in history.  Franklin Roosevelt already has an international award named for him and he did his best to hide his disability.  I must admit, that I can’t think of too many advocates for people with disabilities outside of the US but I am fairly sure that most people with any sort of education around the world have probably heard of Ms Keller.  To celebrate this holiday, I suggest that all people with a disability take a day off with pay from their job and do something to celebrate our rights as human beings as described in this treaty.  People with disabilities in the US should take the day off in protest and, if their employers refuse to pay them for the day, make sure they spend a day at work shirking so they get paid for a day in which their cheap bastard employers refuse to acknowledge their rights as human beings as now recognized in the rest of the world.  Yes, folks, I am suggesting a general strike among people with disabilities beginning on August 25, 2007 and continuing on every August 25 until Helen Keller Day (or something with a different name but same intent) is officially acknowledged by all employers in all states in all nations.  Yes, I know that inciting a general strike is officially illegal under United States Federal laws and is probably illegal under Florida Labor laws as well so, to quote President Bush, “Bring it on!”  I dare any employer or agent of a government, domestic or foreign, to take action against me for calling for this strike.  I double dog dare any AT company on Earth not to start celebrating this holiday when they publish their holiday calendars for 2007 without removing a single other holiday.  It is, now and forever, a holiday because Blind Confidential declared it so.

I ask that that our readers forward this edition of BC to all of their friends and so on.  I will ask my friend Daryl how to start an online petition like he did in the google case to demand that the United States join the treaty and, a second one, to demand that all nations add August 25 as a holiday celebrating the human rights of people with disabilities.  In nations where, for some reason, August 25 is already a holiday, another day should be chosen for this purpose.  

According to United Nations there are more than 635 million people with a disability worldwide.  We represent the world’s largest minority.  Bush and Bolton may work against our interests but we can work for our own revolution.  As the BPP says, “Blinks of the World Unite, You Have Nothing to Lose but Your Canes!”

To any of you weenies who want to criticize me for bashing the soft portions of ADA, the state of Alabama or President Bush (whose Justice Department has taken the side against the person with disability in every case that reached the Supreme Court during his administration) please do so with an explanation of why most of our proud veterans who have returned from Iraq have found gainful employment but less than 10% of those with a qualified disability (VA statistic, not mine) has not.  This means that our patriotic soldiers who sacrificed part of their body fighting for our nation at President Bush’s bequest is less likely to be employed than all other people with disabilities, let alone people without, in this nation.  This statistic, in and of itself, should make all Americans feel tremendous shame.

–End

I have a tremendously bad headache this afternoon, the kind that feels like someone is jabbing an ice pick into my frontal lobe about an inch above my left eye so I really do not feel like writing right now.  The staccato sound of JAWS echoing my keystrokes through my Logitech headphones definitely does not help the headache so, do to my current discomfort, this item will be short.

I thank reader and commenter Stephen for correcting my history of scan and read machines for people with vision impairments.  As I’ve stated before in these pages, I write off the top of my head and do not fact check my articles.  I do not consider myself to be a journalist but, an author of creative non-fiction as well as the occasional short story.  Thus, I wrote from memory about the history of scan and read machines and will admit that my personal relationship with Jim clearly influenced my opinion of the history of scan and read products.  Ray Kurzweil, , whom I do not know personally, and regrettably I slighted his contributions and wrote an inaccurate correction to Stephen’s comment.

I did not wish to denigrate Ray’s contribution in any way but, rather, celebrate the lesser known contributions that Jim has made throughout his long and distinguished career.  As far as I know, ray Kurzweil is a great guy and, clearly, I got my history wrong.

I apologize for slighting Stephen by dismissing his remarks out of hand and using my memory, informed mostly by stories people have told me about the history of AT as I was just 14 in 1974, could see well then and scan and read machines didn’t cross my pot smoking, heavy metal kid head at that point in my life.

I stand corrected and am sorry for unintentionally denigrating Kurzweil’s contributions in favor of what I honestly believed to have been the truth.  

I do believe still that everything I wrote about Jim, his career at CalTech and fft based OCR technology is true.  I had not known that he, as well as Kurzweil, had sold OCR systems based on different algorithms before fft made it into the mainstream.

I, of course, still consider Jim to be one of a very small group of people I have known who have made profound contributions in this industry and to promoting access for people with disabilities in general.  

Now, I’m going to put a hot pack back onto my eyes and pray this headache goes away soon.

— End

The weirdness of Florida never ceases to amaze me.  People in the US tend to talk about the nutcases in California, the freaks in New York, the snobbery of Boston and the stupidity of Arkansas but no place in our great nation even comes close to the downright bizarre nature of Florida.  

Florida is so strange that I feel that Karl Hiaasen, John MacDonald and Dave Barry must have the finest creative minds in America as they write compelling fictional works that exploit Florida Weird without sounding too much like our daily newspapers.  Barry and Hiaasen both have day jobs at the Miami Herald where they spend their days immersed in the non-fiction weirdness of Florida but still manage to find ways to write great stories without just copying them from the news.

I’ve written about this throughout the history of BC and have discussed weird blind related Florida stories, weird Nazi stories and other general strangeness that goes on around us.  Thus, when I read the headline, “Crime: Blind Man Robbed Of Clothes, Cane by 4 armed men,” in Blind News, it came as no surprise that the event occurred in Florida.

I first wondered where the men with four arms came from but then started pondering other, more normal, places.
When I lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a city known for its extremely left of center attitudes, celebration of diversity and a collection of an oddball spectrum of humanity that all get along well together in a low crime city, I would, on a near daily basis, walk through a housing project to get from my bus stop to my favorite bar.  When people asked me if I ever felt fear in the PJs, I didn’t understand why I should.  The toughest gangster kids, in their Raiders and Kings colors treated me kind of like a local celebrity.  If a little kid played in the sidewalk, obstructing my path, the gangsters would yell to “Look out for the blind man, get out of his way.”  If a trash can or some other object stood in my path, one of the gangster kids would run over and say, “Lemme help you blind man, some motherfucker left a garbage can in the sidewalk,” and would guide me around the obstacle.  These kids joined the toughest gangs in the Boston area; they dealt drugs, shot at each other and, undoubtedly, involved themselves in all sorts of crimes.  They protected old people and people with a disability, though, as victimizing us would cause a loss of honor.  No gang banger got points for hurting one perceived as weak but, rather, they got badges from scars and violence against other tough guys.

As regular readers would know, I grew up in New Jersey.  I went to school with the children of prominent Italian mobsters.  Like the gangsters I would meet in Cambridge, these guys never hurt anyone without a reason.  Plain and simply, random violence and victimizing old or handicapped people was bad for business and would only bring on bad press.

Florida, however, has no rules and very little honor.  I am not as creative as Hiaasen or Barry so, I will end by pasting in the article intact from Blind News:

Local6.com, Florida
Monday, September 25, 2006

Crime: Blind Man Robbed Of Clothes, Cane by 4 armed men

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Police are looking for the men who robbed a blind man in Riverside, stripped him of his clothes and took his cane, according to WJXT-TV.

The victim told police he was walking home on Stockton Street about 8 p.m. Friday when four armed men pulled up beside him in a car.

The man said the men took his money, his clothes, and his walking stick before driving off.

Anyone with information about this armed robbery is asked to call Crimestoppers at 866-845-TIPS. Callers don’t have give their names and could be eligible for a cash reward.

Afterward

I received a comment on my item celebrating Jim Fruchterman’s MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship that stated that Ray Kurzweil built a reading machine for the blind before Jim did.  In fact, Jim built his first talking scan and read device while a student at CalTech and, in the process, invented using fast forier transform algorithms for optical character recognition.  

Jim studied Aero/Astro Engineering at CalTech and worked on using fft algorithms for pattern recognition for use in smart bombs.  These explosives had cameras in them and the project intended to create software that could accept a photograph as input and the missile would find its target on the fly by recognizing the patterns in the photo.  Jim, a very decent person, saw that the same technology could find a beneficial application and he proceeded to prove his point by building the first truly high quality OCR engine and the first scan and read machine for blind people.

Ray Kurzweil did create the first commercial scan and read product used by blinks.  It contained an OCR engine that used Jim’s algorithm and, in many ways, demonstrated a lot of similarities with Fruchterman’s college project.  Jim has had great success with commercial OCR but he set up Arkenstone and Benetech as non-profits and, unlike Ray, hasn’t profited personally (except in the sense of the esteem he has received from the community) from his efforts in the blindness biz.

I do not object to profit making AT ventures at all.  I worked for the largest one for six years and, sometime in the future, I might make for profit AT software again.  Fruchterman, however, has enjoyed the luxury of making his fortune by selling products unrelated to disability and has chosen to do the work on blindness, learning disabilities, landmine detection, human rights and all of his other altruistic interests in a non-profit manner which, like the Bill and Melinda Foundation, should receive lots of applause.

–End

Yesterday afternoon, I received a phone call from my friend Joe Simparosa.  He had called to deliver the sad news of the death of Susan Mallison, former Director of Documentation and Training at Henter-Joyce and, later, Freedom Scientific.  I have no details about the situation other than she had been attending work as recently as a month ago and that she died in a local hospital.

For those of you “old timers” who remember when the JAWS Basic Training Tapes were really more like the “Eric and Ted Show,” that sounded like they were recorded on a boom box and would include passages where Eric would show the user how to change their Windows color scheme and Ted would ask why a blind person would care to do so, you will undoubtedly remember when Susan joined HJ and started turning the giant ship of documentation and training around.

Her efforts and the solid team she kept moving forward took what was a very amateur, albeit entertaining, set of text and tapes and turned them into the best documentation any AT product has in the world.  Not only did Susan turn the JAWS documentation around but she also got the entire FS product line in shape as far as the documentation and training was included.  Susan’s group also took responsibility for translating the technical support notices from the odd English dialect spoken and written by programmers, testers and technical support specialists into the English spoken by most people.

In her tenure at HJ/FS, Susan also brought many intangibles and helped mentor younger managers and offered a lot of ideas in many areas outside of her department.  I’m sure the FS people will miss her tremendously.

On a more personal note, I remember Susan being someone with whom one could always share a joke, who could always help you find the silver lining in the dark cloud and who could carry on a conversation about many, many things.  Susan was an avid golfer and even went so far as to buy the Tiger Woods edition of the car she drove.  She would often talk about playing 36 or more holes in a weekend and was a regular in local women’s tournaments.

Lastly, on my last day at FS, Susan gave me the tightest hug and promised me that everything would turn out for the best.  I last talked to her about a year ago while I was working on a chapter for a book on AT and had some questions for her, I wished I had spent more time with Susan as she was a terrific teacher and great person.

–End

This morning, I found an item in my Inbox from Blind News telling me that Jim Fruchterman received a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship.  I’ve pasted in the item from Bill Trippe’s blog where it had originally run below.  

I cannot think of anyone more deserving of this award than Jim.  His contributions to technology that we blinks use (including inventing the first scan and read machine, years before Ray Kurzweil thought of doing it) and fft based OCR, the basis for all modern character recognition software are incredible enough but, then, he moved on to creating his latest non-profit and spread out from projects for blind and otherwise print disabled people into a panoply of really cool projects.

Knowing Jim personally a little, I can say, without reservation, that the word “genius” may be an understatement when describing him.  When Jim enters a room, he brings his enthusiasm and seemingly infinite energy to the space.  It always seems as though everyone else gets smarter when he’s around.

Jim is on the PPO advisory Board and helped us with our incorporation.  He is also the man behind Bookshare and lots of other really cool things.

So, please join me in congratulating Jim on winning the award and, more importantly, for his lifetime of invention and contribution to society at large.

Original article:

BillTrippe.com (Blog)
Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Bookshare.org Founder Awarded Genius Grant

By Bill Trippe

Jim Fruchterman, CEO of The Benetech Initiative, has been awarded a 2006 MacArthur Fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Each of this year’s 25 MacArthur Fellows learned this week that they will receive $500,000 in “no strings attached” funding over the next five years.

Jim Fruchterman, 47, is an electrical engineer turned social entrepreneur who adapts cutting-edge technology into affordable tools for the visually impaired and other underserved communities. In 1989, Fruchterman founded the nonprofit company Arkenstone to develop and manufacture a reading machine for the blind using optical character recognition technology. He delivered the reading tool in a dozen languages to 35,000 people in 60 countries.

In 2000, Fruchterman founded another nonprofit company, The Benetech Initiative, to create innovative technology solutions that address social needs. Benetech’s first project, Bookshare.org created the world’s largest accessible library of scanned books and periodicals providing people with visual or print disabilities access to a dramatically increased volume of print materials.

Posted by Bill Trippe at September 19, 2006 07:45 PM


http://www.billtrippe.com/archives/2006/09/bookshareorg_fo.html

I read a press release in the Blind News (link above) distribution this morning that informed me that AI^2 got swept up in the merger and acquisition mania hitting the AT industry and that founder and president, Ben Weiss will leave the company in the middle of October.  The new owners, identified by a very generic sounding group called, The Investment Capital Corporation (TICC) and an unnamed private investor claim they will keep the current AI staff and management team (sans Ben) up and running in Vermont and will leverage its great success into the future.

Over the years, I got to know Ben Weiss as an industry leader and a colleague.  He and I co-chaired the ATIA AT/AT compatibility committee and worked together on a number of other ATIA related activities.  Ben, as an individual, is one of the brightest and most eloquent people on the AT circuit today.  He has also led the top low vision business in the industry for fifteen years.

Making a screen reader is a lot easier than making a magnifier.  Most blind people have similar needs: speech and/or Braille output from the screen.  Software for people with low vision related disabilities needs to address a huge array of different visual acuities, many of which are completely incompatible.  Ben Weiss and his team at AI^2 have solved many divergent problems for many different types of vision disability and have commanded an enormous share of the market by making ZoomText, their flagship product, the de facto standard in the low vision industry.

Unlike some businesses who, when they reach a commanding market share with one product, AI^2 did not “milk” the estimated 90% market share held by ZoomText while spending their loyal consumers money on new initiatives but, rather, fed their evergreen and kept it very healthy.  The end result is that, although Ben was in the position to sell his business, he did so with an ethical approach that did not cause him to lay off a bunch of his guys or stop ZoomText development to show an increased profit line and, therefore, an increased selling price for his business.  Ted Henter acted the same way with HJ which is the likely reason that FS has continued to do so well with its software product line since the merger.

One sad thing, industry wide, though, is that with Ted Henter, Dean Blazie, Jim Fruchterman, Russell Smith, Gil Papin, the Alva guys and now Ben Weiss, the trend toward diminishing influence from those who created this industry continues to drop.  Relative newcomers, Eduard Sanchez of Code Factory and Mike Calvo of Serotek remain the only founders with a major public presence and influence over the future of their products.  FS made a promising move by putting Jonathon on the payroll but his efficacy has yet to be noticed.

So, Blind Confidential and I on a personal basis would like to thank Ben Weiss for his more than fifteen years of service to our community, for his leadership in innovation in the area of technology for low vision users and for his unfailing dedication to quality software for people with disabilities.  I will add him to the Blind Confidential Hall of Fame, a membership that currently includes only Ted Henter so now Ted has someone to chat with during hall-of-famer meetings.

I hope that, in some capacity, we continue to see and hear Ben Weiss in our industry and that his genius and focus remain part of our community for a long time to come.

–End

I listened to Terry Gross’ “Fresh Air” for Thursday September 7.  She had two guests, the first was the multiple award winning executive producers of the highly acclaimed PBS documentary series “Frontline” and the second was the new head of the FCC.  They discussed the new decency drive from within the FCC and the huge jump in fines for an investigation the FCC performs that determines that a complaint made by any random person watching television or listening to the radio shows that a program contained “indecent” material.

Frontline held back broadcast of an “on the ground” documentary that included real life combat scenes from Iraq until the FCC ruled on the decency of the language in the uneditted version of “Saving Private Ryan” shown on a commercial network.  When the FCC said that Tom Hanks, in the heat of a ficticious battle, could say, “Fuck” so PBS went ahead and broadcast their documentary containing real life soldiers, in a real fire fight, with real bullets and real people dying using the same words.

Many years ago, when I still drank regularly, I shared a set of season tickets to the Boston Red Sox with a handful of friends.  Dave, one of my best friends who died in 2004 at age 43 to a sudden heart attack, and I sat in our seats on the first base line for a late season 1989 game against the Cleveland Indians.  Dave and I got fairly primed before the game started at a local watering hole and continued our beer swilling after arriving at Fenway Park.  A business owned six consecutive seats behind us and, on that night, whoever working there who had the tickets sold them to a terrific bunch of very gay women from Cleveland out to root hard for their Indians and drink hard with their new friends, Dave and me.

A new guy to our section sat in the row in front of us with his son.  Most others in our section, including a couple of celebrity authors, all knew each other pretty well.  We all drank and used “adult” language through out our description of the goings on in the game before us as well as discussions of politics or anything else we jabbered about.  All of us tended toward suspicion when regarding new people in our section.

Dave and I got into a conversation with the gang of Cleveland lesbians about which Red Sox had the nicest butt.  I went hard and heavy for Ellis Burks, a sentiment shared by Steven King, a couple rows ahead of us.  Dave went for Dwight Evans and various people in the section chose different butts to admire.  

Neither Dave nor I went for men in a romantic sense but admiring a butt formed on a man isn’t a whole lot different than doing the same with a woman.  We had no interest in touching the butts but any man who fears saying something nice about another man’s appearance is definitely some kind of closet case who worries far too much about what others think than about his own identity.  Women do it all of the time without being gay and gay men and women admire the physique of people of both genders without any sexual attraction. So, guys, it is fine to admire Evander Holyfield’s cut form and doesn’t mean you are queer if you do.

Back to my story, our new lesbian friends from Cleveland, Dave and I and the long timers in our section continued to eat, drink, act merrily and use profanity in a manner that wove a tapestry of collective indecency that still hangs over Boston harbor as a monument to Dave’s life, the camaraderie shared by the people who sat together for so many games in our section and to Jean Shepard from whom I stole this simile.

After a while, the August heat, the Cleveland Indians 15 run lead and the constant jabbering of Dave and I, our lesbian friends and the regulars in our section created an irritation in the new guy in front of us who, as his teenaged son turned red, jumped up and started yelling at Dave and I and those around us for using such disgusting language.  We collectively and politely used Dick Chaney’s favorite phrase and told him to “go fuck himself,” and carried on as he stormed out of the ballpark.

The following night, Dave and I and most of the regulars returned to our seats.  So did the prudish dad and the embarrassed son.  Dave and I could still feel the hangovers from the night before so pretty much laid off the beer and stuck to Coca Cola and those Fenway Franks, guaranteed to contain absolutely nothing that exists in nature.   Our new lesbian friends were gone, replaced by a half dozen guys from the shipping department from the Charlestown Company who owned the tickets.

In order to make up for the previous night’s offenses, Dave and I decided to replace all of our profanity with an appropriate synonym.  “Greenwell really tattooed that one,” I exclaimed when the Red Sox left fielder hit a triple in the bottom of the first.  “Yes, he really knocked the tar out of it,” responded Dave.

“There was a real heater,” I said after Roger Clemmens blew one past David Justice’s swinging bat.  “I believe I could feel the wind from up here,” added Dave.  We continued using every antiquated baseball term we could remember and a few we made up that evening.  Batters would “knock the stitching” off a ball and fielders would weild some really hot leather.  Those around us who knew Dave and me and had witnessed the scene the night before enjoyed the joke and joined in.  JD Salinger, quite the baseball fan who sat two rows behind us, tossed in a few jokes about the vision impairments of the umpire and others discussed how the effect the lard in Rich Gedman’s seat kept him from moving with much speed.

Meanwhile, the truckers from Chucktown behind us lost track of the game, had no idea why we spoke 1910 baseball language and would emit sentences like, “I couldn’t believe that fucking fat fuck when he fucked up again, the fuckhead!”  A sentence worthy of Samuel L. Jackson and a real life proof of George Carlin’s assertion that “fuck” can be used properly as nearly every form of speech.

Occasionally, Dave and I would turn around and scold the Townies for their language and they would laugh, call us “fucking assholes” or threaten violence.  So, we continued our anachronistic description of the play on the field and enjoyed the company of the other regulars as they joined in our fun.  Finally, after a particularly amusing description of an over the head catch made by Elis Burks in the center field triangle, the individual, who the night before yelled at us for our profanity, got up and yelled at us for mocking him with our clean but creative language but neglected to mention the juxtaposition with the foul mouthed townies lest he find himself involved in some real ultra violence.

Dave worked in a collectibles store called Bay State Coin on Bromfield Street in downtown Boston.  Back then, Bromfield Street was populated with used camera stores, pawn shops, buy and sell jewelry and gold places and lots of guys carrying guns who did a respectable business fencing stuff along with running their shops legally.  Andy, owner of Bay State coin, remained one of the straightest guys on the street and avoided buying anything he knew had probably been stolen.  One evening, after I had gotten off work but Dave had not, I hung out in the store waiting for him to head up to the ballgame.  The father and son, who had sat in front of us and complained about our language, profane or otherwise, came into the store to look at some collectable cards.  We said hello and they explained that they got seats in the no alcohol section at Fenway and enjoyed this season much more than the one they spent in front of us.  I could only ask, “How do things look from left field?”

One man’s profanity is another’s poetry and does profanity have anything at all to do with decency?  I can think of a number of statements I have found “indecent” on broadcast television recently and others that, due to their historical nature, get repeated often.  To wit:

“I think Brownie’s doing a heck of a job,” said vacationing President George W. Bush as Americans drowned in their safe American homes.

The Secretary of Homeland Security saying, “We haven’t heard what has been happening in the Superdome…”  Obviously, the huge budget that his huge department spends cannot include a television as Solidad looked so sexy in those hip waders on CNN and Fox had their cameras on the spot as well.  George W. Bush and Bill Clinton both used this excuse for not killing Ben Laden at a few events covered by CNN, BBC, Fox/NewsCorp and other news outlets.  I guess someone at NSA should put Wolf Blitzer on the payroll as he and the CNN gang seem to scoop our intelligence agencies pretty often.

What about the historical phrase, “Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!”  Shouted by then Alabama Governor George Wallace.  Today, this indecent phrase gets replayed on historical documentaries but, back then, when it played on live television, it was an official and very serious statement made by a sitting governor.  Meanwhile, if anyone opposing his position said, “Fuck racism!”  They would have not gotten beyond the censor.  Which statement is more indecent?

Yesterday evening on NPR, I heard the phrase, “The Pentagon has now confirmed that more Americans have died in Iraq and Afghanistan than in the terror attacks on 9 11.”  This “indecency nearly made me throw up.  Of course, if the commentator said, “War is fucked up,” the FCC would have shown up with their censors and fines.

Howard Stern, whose comedy offends many of my sensibilities gets slammed by the FCC and gets rewarded with a $500 million satellite contract.  While I find much of Howard’s humor offensive, I find him far less indecent than a president who insists that seeing more Americans die as the result of his orders than at the hands of really nasty terrorists is a preferred manner of action and that “we should stay the course.”

I find it indecent when, for the sake of “balance,” a network brings on a member of the KKK, American Nazi Party, National Front or other hate organization just to “balance” the advocate for racial, gender, religious and maybe even disability equity.  If we live and believe in the Constitution of the United States, there is no voice for hate that needs to be included for the sake of showing a “fair and balanced” bit of reporting.  The fundamental laws of our land protect the rights of the hate groups to say whatever they like but such free speech does not mean they have the right to free access to the media to spout their entirely discredited beliefs.

Also, who decided that science and experts in such fields are now open to “balance” from people who choose not to “believe” the results of work in these endeavors?  People on the left, right and center seem to have joined together in a movement against credulity, skepticism and empiricism.  My mother’s maiden name is Seiverson (the ethnically Norwegian name my grandparents chose to use when the changed from the ethnically Pollish name Sitarski).  My father’s dad was a union guy, a regular working man who installed and repaired telephones for Ma Bell.  Because my parents started dating during the fifties and because my mother’s parents went to college, my paternal grandfather would refer to them as the “Stevensons” due to his admiration for Adlai.  What happened to the days when everyone in a town would celebrate the one student, William Faulkner for instance, who would leave town to go to Harvard?  When did the working people of America stop respecting those with an education, stop trying to work three jobs to send their kids to a top university and stop believing in the truths that brought us to the moon, generated the “miracle” drugs and vaccines and brought us into the information age?

When did great conservatives like William F. Buckley, George Will, Bill Safire and others get replaced by Bill O’Reilly, Tucker Carlson and others who seem to believe that the louder one shouts, the wiser one becomes.  What became of conservatives who cite sources and debate issues with their colleagues without resorting to a single ad hominem?

The liberals and those on the left don’t do much better.  When did people like Ken Galbraith (who, sadly, died earlier this year) get replaced by the likes of Al Frankin.  Why have Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn been replaced by rap stars and gossip types?  How has Michael Moore, a fellow I sort of respect but wish he would avoid stooping to using fictional scenes without stating so in his documentaries, replaced the hard hitting documentarians that have brought us things like Frontline and all of the great work done by Cronkite, Murrow and other great journalists?

Why do we, as a nation, love to hate experts but grow to approve more authority and accept spoon fed media every day?  For those of you who haven’t read George Orwell’s “1984” recently or John Dean’s excellent, “Conservatives with a Conscience” should do so as soon as possible.  Dean, who we remember as the guy who came clean on Watergate, shows us, using very scholarly techniques how America no longer heads toward fascism but that we’ve already arrived there.  To with: let’s look at Orwell’s “Ministry of Truth” in which the employees change news and history to fit the leader’s motivations.  Now, let’s take a look at recent American history and a few more “indecent” quotes that often get repeated in documentaries and histories of the recent past:

“Osama Ben Laden is a fighter for the right of free religious expression of all of the people in the world,” President Ronald Reagan on why he sent arms to help the then “freedom fighter.”

“I have made an executive order permitting extraordinary rendition of terror suspects,” then President Clinton in the speech in which he declared that Osama Ben Laden should be taken dead or alive, thus providing the security infrastructure with a legal means to torture human beings without the oversight of US law.  

“The Taliban are important partners in the war on drugs,” Donald Rumsfeld said in April 2001 when he shipped them $40 million worth of weapons still being used today to kill Americans in Afghanistan.

“We have removed Saddam Hussein and Iraq from the list of nations that sponsor terrorism,” President Ronald Reagan in a speech in 1983 when he told us that we would be helping Iraq fight for freedom everywhere by helping them defeat Iran.

So, Ben Laden, once a good guy, now an “evil doer.”  What did Ben Laden change?  His target.  Saddam, a great ally, now another evil doer on trial in a place off limits to the international community, ostensibly to prevent a global media from hearing him discuss his days as a friend of the US.  Manuel Noriega, once on the payroll, then on the hit list.  Libya and Qadafy, formerly big time hit list, now our new found ally in the fight for freedom in his region.  

It’s getting difficult to keep track of the thugs without a scorecard.  At least we can count on a continuing hatred of Fidel Castro that is if he lives.  

A lot of years ago, Gore Vidal wrote a sequel to “Myra Breckinridge” in which Myron, for whom the book is titled, starts emerging from beneath his female persona revolting against his sex change in the first book.  This book came out shortly after the strangely ambiguous Supreme Court ruling stating that “indecency should be judged by the local community.”  A decision which resulted in one justice being quoted as saying, “Pornography?  No, I can’t define it but I know it when I see it.” And, in the famous Florida versus 2 Live Crew obscenity case, an eighty year old lady from Miami who sat on the jury saying, “They said it was up to the standards of the community and I hear far worse on the city bus every day.”

To avoid being banned in, perhaps, Peoria and Boston but sold in New York and Cambridge, Vidal changed all of the potentially profane words to the names of the Supreme Court Justices and other defenders of censorship.  I had started thinking of doing the same but many of Vidal’s choice names are of people dead and/or forgotten.  Thus, I think the Blind Confidential readership, in order that we not cross the line into indecency, choose the names of high profile individuals who find profanity more indecent than killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians in Katrina, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Indonesia, Serbia, Bosnia and any other place where such activities go on, with or without the consent of the US Government.

Personally, I think that Colin Powell’s son “Chubby” Powell could serve as a nice replacement for testicle.  “Wendy drew my Chubby Powells slowly into her hot and juicy,” has a certain pornographic ring to it.

“Then, as she caressed my Rumsfeld, I could hardly keep myself from screaming…”

““She retreated, grabbed my face and pulled it onto her left Kathryn Harris as my hand started to stroke her Barbara Bush and finger her Condi…”

Now, that’s some real porn on the cob  Please send in your favorite public figure for addition to the lexicon of indecent individuals.

–End