Farage refused to get off his bus in Rochester because of two people prominently standing with milkshakes. Well done Rochester, begins to redeem you for electing Mark Reckless as UKIP MP after he had responded to my experience of disability hate crime with "people are entitled to be angry".

The co-director of MIT's Lorenz Center was preparing for a symposium on Lorenz's discovery of the butterfly effect at MIT in the '60s and noticed something he'd skipped over previously, two women thanked for "numerical calculation" in his seminal papers. Some research turned up that Margaret Hamilton (who went on to be belatedly famous for her work on Apollo and Skylab, and popularised Software Engineering as a term) and Ellen Gille nee Fetter, who ran into the male-imposed computer science glass-ceiling post raising kids, had done basically all of the computational/programming work for Lorentz's work  and would be listed as co-authors if the paper was published today.

The Hidden Heroes of Chaos

When Gille's daughter was later interviewed for a place at MIT in the 80s, one of the questions she didn't get, but others did, was "How would you explain chaos to your mother?" {Sigh}

This is kind of delightful, choosing to let her tell it in her own words was an inspired choice.

My FB memories threw up a reminder about Peter Stults's What If: Movies ReImagined for Another Time and Place , and it turns out he's now up to volume 8 in his series of movie posters reimagined with new casts and the stying of the times, with the aforesaid Buster Keaton as the first one up. Other highlights: 'Eraserhead, a film by Charles Chaplin'; A Clockwork Orange starring the Beatles, Kill Bill starring the Spice Girls, the Aliens series as blaxploitation flics starring Pam Grier, Audrey Hepburn in Black Swan; James Dean and Janet Leigh in True Romance and so on. He even created an all-new Connery Bond for an episode of 'Timeless'. Definitely worth a look, though you may have to be an early film buff like sovay to pick up all the nuances.

I've linked direct to volume 8 as that has links to all of the other volumes.

I forgot to mention it before heading North, but BBC R4 just re-ran their radio play version of Iain M Bank's The State of the Art, which is a pretty good adaption and well worth listening to if you're a fan. It's available here until the 20th (though I'm not sure if that link will work for non-UK users).

Should interest one or two people here: NHS Treats Transgender People as Second Class Citizens

ETA another (rather more positive) Trans-focussed story in the Guardian today:

Church of England to consider transgender naming ceremony

First off an excellent post a friend came across: Please Stop Saying “Don’t Let Your Disabilities Define You!”: An Open Letter to Almost Everyone I absolutely agree with the sentiment here, my disability is a huge part of my identity, telling a disabled person not to let them their disabilities define them is no different to 'I don't think of you as black' or similar language towards other minorities, so why do people think it's okay, or, worse, inspirational, to say it about disability?

Now a couple by me - and I have two more in draft, plus two more I probably need to write, you would almost think there was an election on. Scarily one of the things I need to write will need me to work out what UKIP's disability policy is, does anyone know which pub Farage left the beermat in?

Election 2015 - Quick, Get the Crips Out of the Attic...Esther 'they get better' McVey, the former Ministed for Disabled People, has produced an election leaflet showing her standing next to a bunch of disabled people from the learning disabilty charity People First England. Unfortunately she didn't ask their permission, and none of them support her (and one of them lives in McVey's constituency, so woke up to find a leaflet shoved through her door token-cripping her by someone she despises). As Kaliya's pretty sharp at this stuff, she turned it into an expectation that McVey will rush out an Easy Read version of the leaflet, while emphasising that the charity supports no party.

Tory Cuts: As Bad as we Feared This picks up on yesterday's BBC story leaking the details of the £12Bn in cuts the Tories refused to detail in this week's budget. As expected they're almost completely targetted at disabled people, with 40% of Carer's Allowance Recipients to lose it at a stroke (people are pointing out Carers are estimated to save the country at least £57Bn, so that's saving £1Bn by adding £23Bn to the care bill - genius), while contributory ESA and JSA will be means tested, effectively abolishing them, and Disability Living Allowance, Personal Independence Payments and Attendance Allowance will be taxed (never mind that some people already have 100% of these deducted for care).

Kate Green, Labour's Shadow Minister for Disabled People on Labour’s commitment to disabled people I'm fairly vocal in the comments, and not in a positive way. Labour need to admit they have a credibility problem with disabled people after being the architects of ESA and the WCA (which they are insistent they will keep). their relationship with Unum, and their shabby treatment of their own disability taskforce barely a year ago.

( TW For a couple of related stories about suicides )
And completely unrelated, but as I happen to have the post window open - All female PLAAF aerobatic team to perform abroad for first time. On the one hand good that the Chinese AF is open to it, but OTOH they aren't exactly normalising women pilots through this.

(Hmm, given the furore over a female 'Ghostbusters cast', just picturing the reaction to 'Top Gun' with the genders reversed)

50 Shades of Social Feminism

This is brilliant (like most of Laurie Penny's work), though I can see why it isn't in one of her normal venues like New Statesman.

I've just been catching up with a bunch of disability-related stuff I've missed over the past couple of months.

Sadly that started with the news that activist and disability journalist/writer Lucy Glennon (aka @LucyTweeting) died this morning. I didn't know her well, but we had chatted online a few times. Best tribute is the tweet from a couple of the Guardian journos with a link to her articles. What's particularly poignant is that the first story is about the fear disabled people face of being falsely accused of benefit fraud (been there, done that) and @DWPPressOffice chose this morning to start urging people to shop anyone they suspect of benefit fraud. The last article talks about Lucy's own disability, the little understood (and intermittently derided by DWP as 'blisters') epidermolysis bullosa.

DPAC are challenging Labour to confirm that they will save the Independent Living Fund if they are elected - we've been getting very mixed messages from them: The battle for independent living and political hypocrisy

Meanwhile the Minister for Disabled People, Mark Harper, has been urging shops and sports venues to ensure they're accessible, as improving accessibility is “a no-brainer', only, whoops, his own constituency office is inaccessible: ’Hypocrite’ Harper hides from questions over office access and Minister hides truth over office access

And, whoops, so is that of Lib Dem Minister for Women and Equalities Jo Swinson: Second minister shamed over inaccessible constituency office

And, double whoops, so is that of Harper's boss, IDS, Iain Duncan Smith facing ‘hypocrisy’ claims over inaccessible office (Oh, hang on, it's IDS, hypocrisy is positively expected).

A couple of linked blogs on disability and sickness and the Social Model Sickness and the Social Model of Disability
Misrepresentations of Chronic Illness and Disability

And finally a piece from a leading HR type wondering why there is a shortfall of 2 million people when it comes to disability employment, that manages to avoid even a single mention of discrimination *headdesk* The Business Case for Diversity in Recruitment (with comment by yours truly pointing this out - we'll see if that stays there)