Religion is using everything for God.
When I do public speaking, I ask the audience, "Who has a family member, a neighbor, a friend with some form of disability?" Every single hand goes up. We're all connected.
As people live longer, disability becomes more of an issue. And there seems to be more children born with a disability. I don't know if it's true, or if we're just better at diagnosing certain disabilities than in the past.
Popular culture does a lot to shape attitudes. You can't compare different communities to each other, but in my lifetime the gay and lesbian community has become much more mainstream in society. I would venture to say it's in part because people began to feel more comfortable when they saw that group on TV.
People are starting to realize that the disability community has been disenfranchised and deserves to have its rights recognized, which I see as a positive trend. I don't think it'll be a quick process, but I see more attention being given to it.
Throughout history people with disabilities have been institutionalized and segregated, which tends to make you think that it's a group in need of charity. It's not about charity, it's about empowerment.
We live in a global market and money's fungible and hedge fund private equity is looking for momentum plays, and there ain't no momentum plays in bonds, right? When the interest rates were spiking up or down, well they never really spike down they do spike up though. Something's got to happen, there's got to be motion, the dice has to be rolling on the board, and if it's not then they're not going to play because they're not going to get the adrenaline rush from looking at. . . you know, money markets fund interest rates or bond interests or whatever. It's got to be sexy.
Life is a cup of tea; the more heartily we drink the sooner we reach the dregs.
People in my books tend to get their just deserts, even if not at the hands of the police.
It may merely be apocryphal that when the Wizard saw the glass bottle he gasped, and clutched his heart. The story is told in so many ways, depending on who is doing the telling, and what needs to be heard at the time. It is a matter of history, however, that shortly thereafter, the Wizard absconded from the Palace. He left in the way he had first arrived-- a hot-air balloon-- just a few hours before seditious ministers were to lead a Palace revolt and to hold an execution without trial.