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It’s clear to me that the sum of human knowledge is like a thimble in a sea of what we don’t know, and we’re finding more new questions than answers.  However, if science can find the answers to these amazing questions, it will revolutionize everything.

Below, I’ve assembled a list of these recent new theoretically impossible discoveries, and while some impossibilities are more easily explained than others, and indeed, some are far more revolutionary than others, I think you’ll find *all of them* fascinating.

1. Three Huge Planets Share an Orbit! 

Source: io9.com: Bizarre solar system crams three giant planets into fraction of Mercury’s orbit

This discovery is the least impossible on the list, but still incredibly bizarre, especially when you consider the model of “clearing the neighborhood” planets follow right after their formation, securing an exclusive, uncontested orbit for themselves by knocking all other objects out of their path. Since the International Astronomical Union’s new 2006 definition of a planet requires that an astronomical object “clears its neighborhood” to be defined as a planet, this discovery raises serious questions about the IAU’s definition.

The Kepler spacecraft observed these three planets, two Neptune-like gas giants and one rocky, terrestrial planet twice the size of Earth, orbiting weirdly close to their sun, the newly-discovered Kepler-18 star which is eerily similar to our Sun.  The three planets are so close together that they’re constantly pushing and pulling each other out of their natural orbits, the substantial gravitational fields of each preventing cataclysmic collisions. Since the rocky planet is even closer to its sun than the planet Mercury is to our Sun, it would be even hotter than Mercury (442 Kelvin) and not even microbial life could call it home.

But, if you imagine Earth sharing its orbit with others, getting yanked around by the gravitational pull of two gas giants, it would cause VERY WEIRD climate fluctuations.

We don’t know why these three didn’t clear “their neighborhood.”  The situation they’re in isn’t supposed to be possible really.

To learn more about the Kepler spacecraft and its planet finding mission, click here.

2. The Pulsar in the Crab Nebula is Impossibly Powerful

Source: io9.com: One of the most intensively studied objects in space has been identified as an impossibly powerful neutron star

Astrophysicists have observed the often studied pulsar (also known as a neutron star) in the center of the Crab Nebula pumping out radiation at energies far greater than current astrophysical models can explain.  There’s currently no theory to give us any possible answers to why this pulsar is emitting gamma rays exceeding 100 GeV. 100 GeV! That’s 100-billion electron-volts, or 100-billion times more energetic than visible light.  That’s supposed to be impossible.

3. Impossibly Large Planet Discovered

Source: Space.com: Largest Known Exoplanet Discovered

An exoplanet (from the Greek prefix exo- “external” or “outside”) is a planet outside our Solar System. In 2007, the Trans-Atlantic Exoplanet Survey coordinated out of the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona (the first observatory to photograph the then-unnamed Pluto in spring 1915, then the observatory where Clyde Tombaugh officially confirmed and discovered Pluto) also known as the TrES Project, discovered the largest-ever exoplanet to date. It’s a gas giant, 1,400 light-years away, nestled closely to its star in the constellation Hercules, but it’s SO giant it theoretically shouldn’t exist.

There are currently no models to explain why TrES-4b, one of the first “puffy planets” observed, is so puffy, not to mention why it exists. Data obtained from precise measurements of the starlight blocked when the planet crosses in front of its star (the transit method) indicates TrES-4b is 70% larger than Jupiter, but only 3/4 of its mass. Not only is it the largest planet ever seen (as of 2007) it’s also the least dense planet discovered; it’s roughly the density of cork! According to current models, we don’t know why it exists, the mass is so little that the upper atmosphere would be escaping in a comet-like tail! Why the entire gas giant doesn’t similarly escape into space is so baffling that the TrES Project team and shook their heads and had no other avenue than sent the problem to astrophysics theoreticians. Leading theories speculate that the planet’s inexplicable existence has to do with the intense heating given TrES-4b’s close proximity to its sun, and/or an alien greenhouse effect, with hydrogen in the atmosphere trapping the other gases inside and keeping the gas giant cohesive.

The questions themselves have revolutionized what we know is possible for exoplanets.

For more information: National Geographic: Largest Known Planet Found, Has Density of Cork

4. Did Neutrinos Break The Unbreakable Speed of Light??

Source: io9.com: Faster-than-light neutrinos could be proof of extra dimensions

This last item is by far the most impossible, as exceeding the speed of light is one of physics’ brick walls. Einstein’s theory of general relativity explains the speed of light as an immutable cosmic speed limit, and in the near-century since Einstein first presented the theory of general relativity, no one has been able to disprove it. In fact, data continues to mount supporting the theory; for example, recent measurements near the Sun taken by the Cassini spacecraft prove that Einstein’s predictions about the heavenly bodies’ (stars, planets, etc.) gravity bending space-time are true. More on that in a moment. So far, everything we observe about nature and physics, has been unfailingly consistent with Einstein’s elegant theory, and the theory of general relativity has stood the test of time like a stone lighthouse, unperturbed by the tides of history and the vicissitudes of science and its constant discoveries.

Until now (possibly). The recent neutrino speeds recorded in CERN’s OPERA neutrino experiment (CERN is the European Organization for Nuclear Research, well-known for its gigantic particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider) rocked particle physics last month. If the clocks prove correct, and that’s a big IF, and it’s true that neutrinos moved from CERN in Switzerland to Italy 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of light, meaning FTL (faster than light) travel isn’t impossible, then that’s an unexplained hole in Einstein’s theory of relativity, and a big one! (Wondering what a neutrino is? Click here.) Not only would FTL travel come into play, but a pandora’s box of impossibilities would open up, everything from time travel to brain-twisty weirdalities like future you sending current you an email from the future with a faster-than-light internet (FTernet!)

It could mean evidence of a fifth or more dimensions, and thus the first observable evidence of string theory. String theory is an attempt at a “theory of everything” that would elegantly reconcile/combine Einstein’s theory of general relativity (addressing the big, cosmological, astrophysics and planetary mechanics problems) with what we’ve learned of quantum mechanics (atomic, sub-atomic, and now, sub-sub-atomic and lower, scale) in the intervening decades, the big astronomical, and small, quantum, questions answered in one string. String theory’s calculations have pointed to possible extra dimensions to explain where dark matter is, and how Earth’s gravity is so light considering the enormous mass of the planet. To answer fundamental physics problems like these, some suggest that gravity (and dark matter—watch Dr. Michio Kaku explain that dark matter may just be the gravitational pull of regular matter from a parallel dimension) are leaking into other dimensions, and they have produced compelling math to back up their ideas. Unfortunately, if string theory isn’t falsifiable, meaning it’s impossible that some observation or experiment will produce a reproducible result that conflicts (or doesn’t conflict) with the theory (because we don’t have the knowledge nor the technology to run experiments that test whether or not it works) then string theory isn’t really scientific, just pure mathematics, and it will wither on the vine. However, if CERN’s FTL neutrinos accidentally uncovered an extra dimension, it would move string theory to frontrunner while keeping general relativity intact, because the 60 nanoseconds FTL incident could be accounted for by the neutrinos cutting across a dimensional shortcut, proving Einstein’s cosmic speed limit is still impossible to get past within normal, four-dimensional space-time.

But a far more likely solution to the 60 nanosecond mystery is a weirdness with CERN’s clocks caused by the curvature of spacetime. As mentioned above, the heavenly bodies, Earth included, by virtue of their mass and gravity, curve spacetime, meaning that gravity is very slightly heavier at the CERN site near Geneva than in central Italy, and thus the clock on the beginning side of the neutrinos’ trip could be tens of nanoseconds slower than the clock at the finish line in Gran Sasso, Italy, and the clocks would have to be precisely synced to compensate. That gravity effects time is nothing unknown or new, but we don’t know whether or not the clocks on both ends were possibly out of sync, not exactly calibrated down to one nanosecond correctly. If such a clock synchronization problem is confirmed, it could shave up to 30 nanoseconds off the speedy neutrinos’ journey, reducing them to a much less-significant and much more easily explained 20 nanosecond over-FTL speed. Source: Faster-than-Light neutrinos face time trial : Nature

"Two-dimensional analogy of spacetime distortion. Matter changes the geometry of spacetime, this (curved) geometry being interpreted as gravity. "

Source: Spacetime – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Me, and lots of space fans like me, are hoping that scientists find a way to prove the FTL barrier really was broken, or discover more about the dimensions the mathematics implies. No one wants this explained away as a clock synchronization anomaly.

For more information: Discovery.com: Faster-than-light neutrino research “Almost Certainly Wrong”

New Scientist: Faster-than-light neutrinos? New answers flood in

OPERA neutrino anomaly – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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The History of U.S. – Latin American Relations: An Overview
Nicholas F. Dupree

The history of U.S.-Latin American relations is a long and bloody one checkered by imperialist aggression and exploitation. The United States had a head start building its democratic institutions because it spawned from Britain, a constitutional monarchy whose fledgling parliamentary democracy was far ahead of most of the world at the time, and the U.S. built on that with a constitution and a government based on a revolutionary ideology. American revolutionaries, like the French revolutionaries that followed, were driven to spread their pro-freedom, anti-monarchist ideology, but unlike France’s First Republic, America’s first republic was not only more moderate, it could quickly stabilize amid its isolation and relative lack of competitors for the continent. Surprisingly rapidly, the United States was moving aggressively west and south to spread their revolutionary state and colonize land held by loosely organized indigenous tribes and a Spanish Empire spread thin and in relative decline.

Early on, America’s founding generation had their eyes (and territorial ambitions) pointed South. Presidents Jefferson and John Adams saw Cuba and Puerto Rico as “natural appendages” of North America that should break away from Spanish influence and join the United States. John Quincy Adams thought Cuba an “apple” fallen from the North American tree and that it should end its “unnatural connection” with Spain and rejoin its source, America. (Smith, 2007, p. 25) Thomas Jefferson had an impressive collection of Iberian writers in his library at Monticello, and actively promoted learning of the Spanish language.

“Spanish,” he wrote in a note accompanying a Spanish-language dictionary that he gifted to Peter Carr in 1787; “Bestow great attention on this, & endeavor to acquire an accurate knowledge of it. Our future connections with Spain & Spanish America will render that language a valuable acquisition. The antient [sic] history of a great part of America, too, is written in that language” (Works V: 322).1

But alongside the founding generation’s interest in Latin America, loomed skepticism. The prevailing views of the time included deep doubts about the ability of newly independent Latino populations to adopt republican values and effectively govern themselves, given racial and cultural differences and the dark legacy of oppression and violence from Spanish colonization. “I fear the degrading ignorance into which their priests and kings have sunk them, has disqualified them from the maintenance or even knowledge of their rights, and that much blood may be shed for little improvement in their condition. Should their new rulers honestly lay their shoulders to remove the great obstacles of ignorance, and press the remedies of education and information, they will still be in jeopardy until another generation comes into place, and what may happen in the interval cannot be predicted, nor shall you or I live to see it,” Thomas Jefferson wrote (Smith, p. 46) in an 1811 letter to Dupont de Nemours.2

John Quincy Adams echoed Jefferson’s views (p. 46), and as the United States became a power on the world stage competing for land and resources, it sought to seize them without seizing the diverse populations that lived there. “By the late 1830s, the idea of manifest destiny signified a racist nationalism that preferred to incorporate into the Union ‘unsettled’ and ‘empty’ lands—such as those taken from Native American peoples and, soon thereafter, Mexico.” (Loveman, 2010, p. 57) After the “Mexican Cession” of 1848, in which Mexico “ceded” 55% of its territory to the United States, the limits of Manifest Destiny were undecided, and the question of further annexation was fiercely debated among the varying factions in Congress, especially in the Senate. Seizing “Mexico proper,” including the entirety of the Yucatan peninsula, and Cuba, were both the subject of heated debates, but ultimately they were just too different for Congress and the public to support annexing. Cuba was too black (Smith, p. 26) and Mexico was too Indian: as the New York World wrote, “Mexicans are Indian, aboriginal Indian, and they must share in the destiny of the Indian.” (p. 49) Neither Mexico nor Cuba were incorporated into the United States, despite an unprecedented surge in U.S. imperialism in the 1890s and early 20th century that brought U.S. borders to their greatest territorial extent after Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam, Hawaii and more were brought under U.S. control. American militarism and expansion were led by William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt at the helm of a newly modernized and powerful army and navy, and like-minded Republicans like Albert Beveridge and Orville H. Platt at the helm in the Congress. These American imperialists believed, in the words of Senator Beveridge, that “God has not been preparing the English-speaking and Teutonic peoples for a thousand years for nothing but vain and idle self-contemplation. No. …He has made us adept at government that we may administer government among savage and senile peoples.” (p. 51) This view would have driven even more aggressive expansion had their not been deep anxieties among the people and their Congress over “inferior peoples” becoming U.S. citizens. “Racism cut at least three ways. It inspired and justified American territorial expansion, but it also limited its reach due precisely to the indisposition of many Americans to incorporate into the Union “inferior peoples” as equals and citizens. It also underlay the slave/free divide in American domestic politics.” (Loveman, 2010, p. 57)

Once the United States had emerged as a 20th century world power after McKinley and Roosevelt’s wars of expansion, it was ready to put the Monroe Doctrine’s shaky record keeping European powers out of the Hemisphere throughout the 19th century behind it and enforce a U.S. sphere of influence in the Americas in earnest. The U.S. positioned itself to defend its gains in the new global race for land, resources, arms, military bases, trading-posts and colonies, called the “Great Game” in Britain, and the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine was designed do just that: no opportunistic Europeans would bring their game into the U.S.’ backyard. Roosevelt’s Corollary insisted that the United States could intervene in any Latin American republic where instability reigned; the U.S. would send troops anywhere in the Americas where European powers could possibly see an opening due to unpaid debt or revolutionary turmoil. And send troops they did: TR sent troops to seize the “Isthmian Canal” in Panama and took over the customs collections of the Dominican Republic until debt to the U.S. and other great powers (Netherlands and France) were paid in full. (Smith, pp. 56-57) A similar scheme of occupation and repayment was imposed in Haiti with much less success. (p. 60) The customs repayment scheme actually led to war in Nicaragua, where the Americans’ fears of the “Bolshevist” revolutionary government of Mexico establishing its own “sphere of influence” and “primacy” over Central America (p. 67) collided with the Nicaraguan people’s anger and aspirations to be free from the yoke of crushing debt, and a guerrilla insurgency erupted (p. 59). President Coolidge only withdrew the Marines from Nicaragua in 1924 after imposing a fraudulent election that ousted disobedient liberals in favor of pliant “conservatives” led by Adolfo Diaz, who would focus on debt repayment. The Marines came back five months later amid rumblings of possible rebellion against Diaz and further unrest. U.S. efforts to “break kneecaps” in Central American and Caribbean states for payment due didn’t end until the Great Depression and looming threat of World War II necessitated it.

The last Marines withdrew from Nicaragua in 1933, and the Marines’ nineteen-year occupation of Haiti ended in 1934. The Great Depression made such foreign entanglements financially untenable, and Americans looked to the prospects of increased inter-hemispheric trade to aid recovery (p. 74) Soon, the U.S. would concern itself with an even more dire task, countering Axis attempts for world domination; with German and Italian fascists competing to influence fledgling republics in Latin America, Washington could ill-afford its previous “Big Stick” foreign policy. Brazilian trade with Germany was at an all time high, and the Ação Integralista Brasileira (AIB) “formed in 1932 as a deliberate imitation of the Fascist parties of Benito Mussolini in Italy and Salazar in Portugal,” (Leonard, 2007, p. 145) had taken over Brazil’s government, given themselves unlimited “emergency powers,” and decreed the Estado Novo, “the new state,” along the lines of Portugal’s integralist Estado Novo. Brazil was obviously part of Hitler’s empire-building strategy; in Congress, a young Fiorello LaGuardia ranted against Brazilian collaboration with Nazi Germany (Smith, p. 76). Chile remained neutral at this time, having strong ties with the German military and an active German-Chilean minority, and still embittered over the Americans’ siding against them in the 1879-83 War of the Pacific and the U.S. adoption of the Smoot-Hawley tariff, which had hurt Chile economically. (Leonard, p. 162-165) And Argentina, despite being a “closet ally” who supplied the Allies with crucial food during the war, (p. 184) was bogged down in a power struggle with its Nazi-sympathizing military, who were devoted to ultra-conservative, virulently anti-Semitic Argentine Catholicism (p. 188). Ultimately, Argentina didn’t end diplomatic ties with Germany until January 1944 (pp. 162-163).

But Mexico, so important to U.S. national security for its bountiful oil reserves and immediate proximity along the U.S. border with the American Southwest, was Washington’s most pressing concern in the lead-up to World War II. The Cårdenas administration (1934-1940) was just stabilizing and consolidating control over a Mexican polity that for decades had been in revolutionary flux (p. 17). Mexicans were beginning to interpret the European battle between the communists and fascists, especially the Spanish Civil War, through their unique revolutionary lens, and whether Mexico would side with the United States was unclear during Lázaro Cárdenas’ rule as he remained neutral. “Capitalists, businessmen, Catholics, and middle-class Mexicans who opposed many of the reforms implemented by the revolutionary government sided with the Spanish Falange” (p. 18) i.e., the fascist movement, and Nazi propagandist Arthur Dietrich and his team of agents in Mexico successfully manipulated editorials and coverage of Europe by paying hefty subsidies to Mexican newspapers, including the widely-read dailies Excelsior and El Universal (pp. 18-19).

The situation became even more worrisome for the Allies when the major oil companies boycotted Mexican oil following Lázaro Cárdenas’ nationalization of the oil industry and expropriation of all corporate oil properties in 1938, (p. 19) which severed Mexico’s access to its traditional markets and led Mexico to sell its oil to Germany and Italy (Smith, p. 79). In Mexico and throughout Latin America, Franklin Roosevelt’s “Good Neighbor Policy” was necessary at such a delicate time, and in the case of the Mexicans, ultimately led to the Douglas-Weichers Agreement in June 1941 that secured Mexican oil only for the United States, (Leonard, p. 21) and the Global Settlement in November 1941, a rare example of the U.S. putting national security concerns over fairness for American oil companies (p. 22-23).

But such “Good Neighbor” agreements and “soft power” influence were self-interested in the end, accomplishing the abrupt end of German Fifth Column activities in Mexico, and after the attack on Pearl Harbor, all nine Central American and Caribbean republics declared war on the Axis nearly in unison in a show of seldom-seen Hemispheric solidarity (Smith, p. 86). Unfortunately for Latin America, the United States’ inter-American strategy would drastically shift as soon as their interests did.

The post-war world, with Russia and the United States locked in a Cold War that threatened to involve, if not destroy, every state on the planet, was not kind to the republics of the Americas. Washington soon divided Latin America simplistically along “with us or against us” red lines, and fear of communist infiltration, both real and used as a political football, was rampant. During the 1952 U.S. Presidential Election, Republican nominee Dwight D. Eisenhower accused the incumbent Democratic party of pushing Latin Americans into the arms of wily Communist agents waiting to exploit local misery and capitalize on any opening to communize the Americas (Smith, p. 127). From that point on, the “Big Stick” foreign policy came back to Latin America in various forms and guises until the ’90s, with the U.S. consistently backing the same type of elite-led fascist regimes they were trying to undercut during WWII.

Up to the time of Reagan and the Iran-Contra scandal that embarrassed the United States on the world stage, U.S. foreign policy supporting fascist local elites as long as they were suitably pliant and reliably anti-communist was commonplace. One would hope that the current non-interventionist tack toward Latin America under the Obama administration is due to assessment of tough historic lessons learned and not mere economic constraints. Future repeats of the George W. Bush approach to the Americas, with “second acts” for several notorious Iran-Contra figures (see Observers Warn of U.S. Manipulation in Nicaragua) and the CIA’s Venezuelan Coup Attempt of 2002, is certainly cause for concern. The future of U.S.-Latin American relations I’d like to see, is one where Simon Bolivar’s famous statement “the United States seems destined by Providence to bring misery to the Americas in the name of liberty”4 seems something solely relevant for historical background, instead of something that’s directly related to current events and threatens to crop up again in U.S. Foreign policy at any moment.

Works Cited

Leonard, T. M., Bratzel, J. F., Rankin, M., Smith, J. & Scheinin, D. (2007). Latin america during world war ii. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield.

Loveman, B. (2010). No higher law: american foreign policy and the western hemisphere since 1776. Chapel Hill, NC, USA: The University of North Carolina Press.

Smith, P. H. (2007). Talons of the eagle: dynamics of u.s. – latin american relations (RFB&D Daisy Audiobook),

Footnotes:

1: Bauer, Ralph. (2009). Thomas Jefferson, the hispanic enlightenment, and the birth of hemispheric american studies Dieciocho: Hispanic Enlightenment, 32(1), Retrieved from http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-11917558/Thomas-Jefferson-the-Hispanic-enlightenment.html

2: Ibid.

3: Garcia-Navarro, L. (2006, November 2). Observers warn of u.s. manipulation in nicaragua. NPR, Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6423982

4: LaRosa, M., & Mora, F. O. (2009). Neighborly adversaries: readings in u.s.-latin american relations [2nd Edition]. (RFB&D Daisy Audiobook),

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This concludes my twitter coverage tonight of the #WildChina documentary series. Could do more in future if there's popular demand for it #

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Doing important adding to Wikipedia tonight. Let's see if it's all reverted/devolved into edit wars when I wake up tomorrow. #

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This is a survey of the most viewed posts ever on this site…

China’s Age of Discovery: The Voyages of Zheng He

This post, about the explorer Zheng He and the voyages of his grand treasure ships, is usually the most viewed post for any given week. Not only does the post shed light on the way-ahead-of-their-time ways that the Yongle Emperor projected power and influence with technology like the printing press and an enormous Navy (techniques that would seldom be used with such sophistication until the 19th century) but it also remains very relevant because it details a Chinese period of prolonged international engagement, trade and wealth only rivaled by the high water mark of Chinese power today. The end of the treasure ships, with hardliners burning them as an isolationist backlash swept the empire, illuminates a pattern you see over and over again in Chinese history: after the inevitable bust comes following an economic boom, Conservative Confucians take over and crackdown on trade after a harsh isolationist reaction. Today, China-watchers and investors, and indeed the PRC regime, worry about another cycle of isolationist backlash cropping up if Chinese people in the underdeveloped heartland don’t feel enough improvement in their lives from foreign trade and become angry.

The Griffin Was Based On A Real Creature!

Rivaling “Zheng He” for the Top Search term leading people to my blog is “griffin” or related key words. This post is shockingly well-visited, and it’s one of the quickest ones I’ve written. I saw a program on the History channel about mythical creatures that suggested the Griffin came from ancient Scythian warriors who came upon dinosaur skulls and spread stories about Griffins to intimidate enemies, and decided to blast a quick blog post. I guess people really like Griffins.

Donald Duck As A Nazi. Really.

This post, coming in a distant third in views, generates hits from the sheer bizarreness of the video it highlights, a war propaganda-era Disney short with Donald Duck dreaming he is a Nazi. Even though the film is clearly meant to mock and underline the failures of the Nazi system, seeing Donald in a Nazi uniform is still WEIRD!

Special mention: Vigorously Insisting On A More Perfect Union: Fighting Cuts, Demanding Universal Health Care

This blog post of mine was published by the Greenhaven Press imprint of Gale Publishing in their Opposing Viewpoints Series, which is heavily used both in libraries and high school and college courses, to introduce differing views of the issues. it’s in the 2008 edition of Opposing Viewpoints: Health Care, if anyone is interested.

Also check out my comic art, Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders vs. Zombies over at Superdude.org — it’s can’t miss!

Nick

Many disabled people have rejected this model. From the Taxi Driver Training -- Democracy, Disability and Society Group, UK

The social model of disability sees disabilities as normal aspects of life, not medical problems requiring "treatment," with the real problems coming from inaccessibility and ignorance of disabled people. From the Taxi Driver Training -- Democracy, Disability and Society Group, UK

I wanted to talk about the social model of services and supports for people with disabilities, and barriers to implementing it.

When you think about disability internationally, most disabled people in countries around the world are taken care of by their own families and their own communities. In Alabama, where I’m from, and in many of the poorer states, they didn’t get the medical model at all until federal funding in the 1960s. Prior to that, all you had was a kind of quasi-social model, with families and neighbors taking care of their disabled children, the same way they did in the 19th century and from time immemorial. A new social model of services and supports would essentially work like an enhanced version of that, with disabilities normal phenomena that communities live with and provide for.

In the first world countries, as families are working almost entirely outside of the home, they have no recourse but to use government services to help take care of their disabled children and adults. In Alabama, the attitude is that the most harsh, spartan medical model is all they can afford, and that they can’t afford to innovate. They have missed an opportunity to save money by re-imagining a social model that would put the power back in the hands of families and people with disabilities, instead of forcing them to spend on treatments that the medical model wants for them.

Across the country, budget cuts are removing the medical model more and more from our lives, because the states can no longer afford the kind of medical services that they’ve been paying for. The medical model won’t be the force it has been without enough public funding. So there’s more need than ever to implement a new social model of services and supports. In one of the conferences that I attended (TASH Boston ‘02) there was a session on what drives people to put their loved ones into nursing homes. And the number one reason found in studies was that when someone becomes incontinent of bladder and bowel, the family doesn’t want to deal with it, and puts them in a facility. There was one story where a mother wanted to put her autistic son in a facility just because he couldn’t figure out how to zipper his pants, though he could otherwise engage in self-care. This is the institutional bias, up close and personal, and it is ridiculous. We can no longer afford to put people with disabilities in segregated, medical model institutions. The funds saved by turning the institutional bias on its head and closing more of these terrible, outdated, freedom-killing institutions is great. We can’t afford these awful dinosaurs financially, and we can’t afford it in the human toll, in the human potential and spirits that are locked up.

To escape that fate of being put away forever in a nursing home, I had to fight Alabama Medicaid policies that would cut off home care services at age 21. My campaign, Nick’s Crusade, led to the Dupree v. Alabama Medicaid lawsuit, which used the Olmstead decision to end the practice of Alabama cutting off ventilator dependent people from in-home services once they turned 21. It was a victory that helped half a dozen people stay in their homes, but it didn’t solve the underlying problem, that even in the home, the medical model of home nursing care tends to segregate, restrict and limit the liberty and potential of people with disabilities.

I ended up having to leave college because of problems with home nursing care, and eventually I began to outlive my family’s ability to take care of me, and ended up relocating to New York City in August, 2008. Because of difficulties getting home care approved and started, home nursing agencies that are dysfunctional and cruel, and relentless ablism faced by me and my partner Alejandra, my first 378 days in New York were spent in a city rehab hospital. It was my first stent in a facility, and I learned a lot about the system that keeps unnecessary institutionalization going and told the world in The First Video Blog Series From Inside An Institution In History. Make especially sure to watch my videos What Life In An Institution Is Really Like, And Why This Entire Model Should Be Replaced and Too Many Setbacks To Count (about the barriers and delays to getting home, with music).

Because Alejandra and I love each other, we made the decision to spend our lives together, as many people with and without disabilities do. However, most people with disabilities living in the U.S. run into the so-called “marriage penalty” if they receive federal Social Security benefits, which are reduced by one-third if two recipients marry. Choosing to declare our commitment to each other despite this policy, we held a commitment ceremony in Central Park on June 6, 2010. It was also an opportunity for others in the community to learn about and share their experiences with this injustice.

Getting the supports needed to maintain my health and safety, attain freedom to access the community and resume college remain problematic. I write and draw webcomics, such as Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders vs. Zombies. I was going to show my work from a table at the MoCCA Festival, and ended up canceling because we didn’t have the help for getting me up in the chair and out to the festival. For me as a disabled man, “freedom,” means that I have good caregivers around me that can help me do stuff. Without those people, I’m stuck in my room at best, and, at worst, dead.

Nurses, personal care attendants, and other home caregivers will always remain enormously important in any model because in first world countries the cost of living is high, and thus the people doing the bulk of the care will be the ones who can do it without losing their apartment. Paid supports should be budgeted by the disabled person (see individualized budgets and the Cash & Counseling program) so that both the caregivers and the patient aren’t constantly battling middlemen–agencies and Medicaid, and so the patient can give their best staff higher pay and bonuses. This essay isn’t meant diminish the importance of nurses and PCAs but to re-imagine them as part of a support community that form around people with disabilities; with families and communities that refuse to shelve their people in prison-like nursing facilities, that refuse to use a strict, heartless medical model inside the home, that say NO to materialism and profiteering, and instead focus on care and caring. Personal care is incredibly intimate and sensitive, caregivers see and touch and care for wounds, deformities and vulnerabilities that no one else sees, this is soulful and special work; it should never be callously commodified or turned into a cold assembly line in a nursing facility. The people who are good at going into someone’s home and making them clean, comfortable, giving them care and freedom, are very special people. In a new social model, friends and neighbors of the disabled person partner with and lend their support to these special caregivers, helping them and assisting them to assist their patient. The caregivers in turn helping the friends to help their patient. They care about each other and collaborate to help the disabled person. The community loves and supports each other.

Relying on Medicaid to give me ALL the assistance needed to live a real life in the community will always be difficult as long as Medicaid is locked-in to the medical model. It’s near impossible without friends and volunteers in your community lending some support. What is needed is the social model: normalization of disability: for society at large to start seeing people with disabilities as equal members of families and communities, instead of undue burdens. If someone in the community had cared about the kid who couldn’t manage the zipper on his pants, he wouldn’t have been at risk of institutionalization at great cost to his community. If the community would give their time and love more, we’d need Medicaid, the increasingly dark, Kafkaesque bureaucracy that pays for services for disabled people, less.

There are plenty of ways for the community to support people with disabilities. When I was hospitalized for several months in early 1992, Bettie Hudgens, the founder of the Communications department at Spring Hill College, where my mom taught, created a sign up sheet so that volunteers would visit me every day, so I would have someone checking in on me during the hours mom was teaching. The signup sheet allowed the community to organize around me so that every day was covered. We need that kind of community building now more than ever.

Communities will eventually be forced to choose, will they pay more and more for Medicaid as its red tape continues to render it hilariously dysfunctional like a Soviet department, or will friends and neighbors pitch in to help the elderly get in and out of bed, and change soiled clothes so they wouldn’t have to be segregated in institutions, so their people with disabilities will have less involvement with the heartless Medicaid bureaucracy and be less exposed to the whims of the politicians that fund them. It’s up to us to implement a new social model, as the old models begin to collapse.

Nick

A study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers.

The study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation.

The team’s mathematical model attempts to account for the interplay between the number of religious respondents and the social motives behind being one.

The result, reported at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas, US, indicates that religion will all but die out altogether in those countries.

The team took census data stretching back as far as a century from countries in which the census queried religious affiliation: Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland.

BBC News – Religion may become extinct in nine nations, study says

I know that I open myself up to potential ridicule by posting such unabashed pro-religion views.  But I see people across the world living in despair, and more disconnected from each other in daily life than ever before. Americans work more and more hours than any other people on earth, go home alone, veg out on fake corporate food and culture, rinse and repeat. In this rat race culture, devoid of much meaning and largely disconnected from religious traditions, spirituality couldn’t be more important, and religion is key as an organizing force that I hope will foster more human connection, community building, artistic expression (see Religious Art} and fulfillment to a bleak, materialistic world.  We need it now more than ever.

Nick