I've been so focused on state government, I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq.

Learning to read music in Braille & play by ear helped me develop a [very] good memory.

If the history of the last century taught us the dangers of empowering governments to determine genetic —fitness— (i.e., which person fits within the triangle, and who lives outside it), then the question that confronts our current era is what happens when this power devolves to the individual. It is a question that requires us to balance the desires of the individual— to carve out a life of happiness and achievement, without undue suffering— with the desires of a society that, in the short term, may be interested only in driving down the burden of disease and the expense of disability. And operating silently in the background is a third set of actors: our genes themselves, which reproduce and create new variants oblivious of our desires and compulsions— but, either directly or indirectly, acutely or obliquely, influence our desires and compulsions. Speaking at the Sorbonne in 1975, the cultural historian Michel Foucault once proposed that —a technology of abnormal individuals appears precisely when a regular network of knowledge and power has been established.— Foucault was thinking about a —regular network— of humans. But it could just as easily be a network of genes.

If he could not go out into the world, the world could come to him.

In fact, his travelogues spend amazingly little time discussing his blindness. Only one passage stands out for its frank discussion of his handicap and how it changed his worldview. In it, Holman was reminiscing about a few rendezvous from his past. Disarmingly, he admitted that he had no idea what his paramours looked like, or even whether they were homely. Moreover, he didn't care: by abandoning the standards of the sighted world, he argues, he could tap into a more divine and more authentic beauty. Hearing a woman's voice and feeling her caresses -- and then filling in what was missing with his own fancy -- gave him more pleasure than the mere sight of a women ever had, he said, a pleasure beyond reality. Are there any who imagine, Holman asked, that my loss of eyesight must necessarily deny me the enjoyment of such contemplation? How much more do I pity the mental darkness which could give rise to such an error.

I am conscious of a soul-sense that lifts me above the narrow, cramping circumstances of my life. My physical limitations are forgotten- my world lies upward, the length and the breadth and the sweep of the heavens are mine!

When I rang a restaurant to ask if they had wheelchair access I was told that they accepted all major credit cards.

I saw a man with a wooden leg, and a real foot.

Some days you see lots of people on crutches.

The only disability in life is a bad attitude.