It's a university, for God's sake! They're supposed to be four-eyed eggheads

Damn. "Who's," not "whose." Believe it or not, there no apparent cognitive deficits.

Actually, speaking as somebody whose recently had a stroke and has had to take unpaid leave, you might be surprised how much economic issues still matter even amongst medical ones. Your grizzly insurance is probably partially employer-funded.

Remember, some of these blind folk may have been working, studying, and paying tuition there for years, and now everything's been changed, for maybe not much reason. "Clean out your desk, Perkins--a man who can't throw a javelin better than that has no business in shoe distribution--God knows how you almost got vested in the pension plan."

Besides, schools should be concentrating on sharp minds, not sharp eyes.

Yeah, I know. I'm an insensitive bastard. But even you might have trouble after that grizzly bear bites off your left hand. Point is that there are constraints needed for a job--I suppose firemen might need to climb a thirty-foot rope to rescue panda cubs from flaming orphanages--and some are more-or-less arbitrary, and this may fall into the latter category.

You're talking to the wrong end of the horse. The NFB is suggesting that Google Apps was a bad choice for these (incidentally federally-funded) institutions.

Let's say you came to work one day and all the stairs and elevators had been replaced with climbing ropes. You'd still be a perfectly competent WHATEVER_YOU_DO_FOR_A_LIVING, but you'd never be able to reach your third-floor office, and all because you can't climb thirty-foot ropes--boo hoo, you whiner!

Won't the Census tell you that stuff by ZIP code? Anyway, I'm not sure that wi-fi is such a great indicator of wealth. I think I'd go with a Lexus Index or something.

May I recommend the first track of David Stutz's Iolet: The Music of Anathem

But in Europe, July 22 would work better.

Since when does the Third Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War apply to the case of a U S Army enlisted man held by the U S Army? He may be a prisoner during time of war, but so is the guy who robbed the liquor store down the street

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Does the UCMJ (which would seem the appropriate body of law) provide for speedy trials and such?.

Have you ever had sex with someone you liked and enjoyed? Spending time with her isn't the price, you poor bastard, it's another part of the payoff.

Our representatives are not simply expected to vote as their constituents feel at the moment. If they were, we could shut down this whole elaborate structure of elections and simply run referenda on everything.

We expect them to vote for what is right and in our long-term interest. Sometimes that means something other than reading polls and being a weather vane. Many a politician has voted against his state's wishes and later been revered by those same voters for taking a stand that they themselves couldn't see. Many more have been voted out of office next time around, because them's the breaks.

There's a reason we call them (well, some of them) "leaders" rather than "followers."

Away missions went to real places to do real things. Simulating the repair of my toilet on your holodeck may be educational, but I still won't be able to flush back at my house.

An argument that has been made, though. There's a reason governments like credit cards and direct-deposit and all those other things that leave a trail (except voting machines, of course:)

Spray cleaner. The glass ought to be cleaned once in a while anyway.

Do you worry about telephone handsets and toilet handles as well?

(Unless, of course, you were just working the staph/staff pun, in which case I apologize for my density.)

Because it is a word, albeit not perfectly applied in this context? The platen is the plate used to press the paper into the type in a printing press, so it's probably more applicable to the drum in a copier than to the cover glass.

At any rate, I don't think he meant "platen" as some sort of bastard-German plural, like Vaxen.