The usual "This is not medical advice" disclaimer applies to the below.
Yes, there are methods of communication involving computers and gaze recognition. (For example: http://www.tobii.com/en/assist... or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... ). I read in ye olde days there were analog 'gaze boards', and maybe your sister-in-law can develop codes (eyes left yes, lip up no...) But you also need to have conversations with her physicians - maybe they want her working / tiring by blinking for a therapeutic or rehabilitation reason... And the care team for your sister-in-law should be better in touch with what's out there as resources for her and be able to discuss that with you, or you should look into changing that team. (Moderated by knowing the care team will want to get some data over time to determine the best course of action to take - they may need to wait long enough to get data before they'll make a recommendation.)
In any event, deep sympathy for you, your wife, and family!
You flirt dangerously with TL:DR and lack of paragraphs. But I got through anyway. In rebuttal:
1) The farmhands - fewer than ever and fewer still - don't have jack squat. But I never met a farm owner who didn't buy all new vehicles (pickup and car) every three years or more often.
2) Farmhands often live in squalid conditions. But farm owners usually have the finest homes in the county aside from the few physicians and lawyers who still practice and live rurally.
3) Horses also die unexpectedly, break legs / etc., can be injured during the reproduction process, and have far less power than tractors of fifty years ago. If horses were truly superior to power in terms of productivity, they'd still be in use today. Duh. And if modern computerized tractors weren't more efficient and profit-making than tractors of fifty years ago, they'd never be bought. While farmers must have new personal vehicles, most I've known in life will never dispose of equipment unless swapping makes them more money.
4) It is common sense that, were farmers to truly co-op and fight, food prices would go more to the farmer. But they don't.
5) Yes, deglobalization is a nice thought. Go for it. But, when nobody buys your bug-ridden crop because the processors can get healthier meat shipped from over a border cheaper than you can produce it... Good luck.
6) Yes, farmers and hands do work long and laborious hours. So do many others, and I feel much more for the fast food fry cook than the average farmer or hand. Just sayin'
The news is the Apple has received enough LEA requests for information that they've put together guidelines as a pre-emptive against being bothered about things they can't do.
I suppose we could be heartened that it specifically states upon receiving a warrant thus-and-such are available? Until a three-letter agency gives them a Sekrit Not-A-Warrant Order requiring the information. And that, Government, is the whirlwind you reap when you play fast and loose with the Constitution - there should be no trust of you, ever.
But if you were thinking that Obama was going to be blamed for the existence of a problem that has been around since 1945 you might have a distorted view of Fox News, and are confusing their opinion segments with the news segments.
They have news segments? Every time I've watched it's been a panel of pundits yacking... Praytell when do they actually report only news and not urinate all over it with their opinions?
...would be done to the U.S. economy by having the U.S. Federal Government migrate away from Microsoft to an open-source solution.
(And please, not a Microsoft shill or apologist here - I use OpenOffice at home and enjoy it and wish I could implement it at work. I don't like the economy of the United States hinging on continued government spending, either. But OTOH, you can't tell me that ditching Microsoft wouldn't have some pretty serious economic consequences and we're in the mess we're in.)
Hackers of the world, unite!