One of my favorite jokes always results with a wry grin on my face and ends with the punchline: "fuck the blind." Like many jokes, it is not politically correct. The only reason these jokes are funny is that they expose prejudices and injustices that still exist. Many of us laugh at these things and find little bits of truth in ourselves. The best of us reflect on that and increase our level of tolerance for all things different. I, like most Americans, have a long way to go, but see profoundly increased tolerance from generation to generation.

I am for freedom of choice; it allows people and corporations to take action on which they can be harshly judged. Amazon has given publishers the choice of disallowing their author's works from being automatically read aloud by computer. Now, I actually have no issues with this. If an audio version of a work is provided at the same price as the print version, then we have some element of accessibility. However, if a publisher disallows this and makes no spoken derivative available I think I get the message: "fuck the blind." However, I'm no longer laughing.