The silver lining to cold rainy days

is that, when your insomnia once again has you waking up at 4 A.M., at least the chirpy birdsaren't outside your window, making a disgustingly happy racket. I am pretty sure there is this one wing of Satan that stares in at me, sitting at my desk next to the window, and tauntingly tweets directly at me . With malevolence.

Hot Dryden on Jonson action

That is the title acquired along the way by this history of the "never end a sentence with a preposition" debate.
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004454.html
Also, I now like Ben Jonson a lot better, and I am enchanted by the image of Dryden and Jonson getting into a grammar smackdown.

The Disability dongle, or, Ramps and canes work, too

This is a rant I have had many times in the past few months, especially as so much media attention is given to high-priced, complicated cutting-edge tech for people with disabilities that turns into hardly more than a publicity stunt for entrepreneurs
https://www.vox.com/first-person/2019/4/30/18523006/disabled-wheelchair-access-ramps-stair-climbing

It seems that a new high-tech expensive device to replace the white cane comes along every few months and then disappears into vaporware like all of its predecessors, which is no big loss, for the most part, because white canes don't require charging and rarely crash, unless a sighted person steps on it.

What this kind of flashy but insubstantial tech does do is reinforce the idea that blind people shouldn't be using white canes--maybe because it makes us quote look disabled unquote, and that makes able-bodied people uncomfortable? Wouldn't everyone feel better if none of us looked different, you know, if we looked more, what's the word? Normal?

Of course, it also lets designers off the hook for designing accessible buildings, because accessibility interferes with their creative vision for designing buildings that look like Tokyo after Godzilla came stomping through. Why are there still buildings being constructed without sufficient elevators and accessible bathrooms? Why are there still Web sites that are inaccessible to people using assistive technologies? Why is conforming to ADA laws still considered to be optional?