Original work from our Writers, Guest Bloggers and Freelancers
Who do you consider intelligent? What is intelligence to you?
I want to start this conversation with you because I strongly feel that many intelligent people are continuously considered not intelligent just because they:
Artn’t traditionally achieved
They don’t read a lot of books, or
Aren't getting high grades on papers
My name is Quinlan and I will be a contributing writer for SPORK! starting….now! I’m very excited to lending my voice and views to this movement. After I told my mom about what SPORK! is and what I’d be writing about the first question she asked me was, “will you be using your own name? or will I use a alias?”
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) provides broad protections for people with disabilities to prevent discrimination. The Act maintains that places of public accommodation must be accessible to those with disabilities. Amusement parks have a duty to ensure that they comply with the ADA.
Those who have disabilities often cannot endure waiting in long lines in hot weather. Amusement parks provide individuals with “fast passes” that allow them to cut lines if they have a disability. Amusement parks are increasingly trying to take the needs of individuals with disabilities into consideration.
I can’t speak for the original, genteel Southern Kellers, but it was a privilege to keep house for century Kellers and as much of their languid estate that would fit in our pint-sized theater. My Kellers opened their home to scores of Minnesota arts enthusiasts, but mostly the pack of 21st shied away from hob-nobbing with the locals...
Televisions were much smaller long ago in the bygone era of 1993. Reception was much spottier, too, and the sound quality was not nearly so … Dolby surround. You might have to fiddle with your antennae to get the picture to stand still in 1993. Some of you might say, “That was the year I was born,” and I will scoff, because surely there can be no creatures as young as you. But I digress. Our technologies may have been a shadow of your current, twenty years sleeker and more intuitive devices, but we knew touch-screens and Google Glass-ware were in our future. They were there already, inhabiting our fuzzy screens as all of us tuned into Star Trek: The Next Generation. Well, maybe not all of us, but at least three eleven-year-old girls, drawn together by our lack of athleticism, scholarliness and ability to read social cues. Glued to the television each week: I, with the thick glasses and mouth-crank speech impediment, Sarah the heavyset and asthmatic, and Deena, tiny, black and soft spoken. We founded our own Starfleet against the specter of advancing algebra and well-dressed children who seemed to sniff out our thrift store clothes.
Living with a disability can be difficult, and it's not just the medical costs or care requirements that are a burden. For many people, the lack of independence can be especially hard to swallow, especially if the disability occurred suddenly. Fortunately, there are many things you can do to improve life with a disability and to gain back your independence. One great way to gain back independence is through exercise.
Hello intrepid Spork! readers,
I am new contributor, Sean Margaret Wagner, and I feel absolutely privileged to join the fine people at Spork in their endeavor to bring stories pertaining and of interest to the differently abled community to a growing readership. That said, if I am going to start this relationship off on the right foot, there are a few things I really must get off my chest...
Very few words can sum up my disgust. My hatred. My anger. And with all the emotions that rise to the tipping point of what my consciousness can handle, I am left physically recoiling from the very thought of our police, nay political state. Endlessly questioning on when our cops became the true parody of Dredd, winning the tittles of Judge, Jury and Executioner. What powers have we as an American people given up to be ruled by fear and abused by authority? If our governed figureheads, time after time, choose to make examples of citizens for petty crimes, then why doesn't the unlawful murder at the hands of a cop weigh in the same? Why do we settle on only blaming the cop and not the departments that employ, teach and train them? Surely the Commissioners, Chief Of Police and Legislatures who issue leniency and minimum repercussions towards their own in uniform, gravely affect the outcome of how the following officers carry themselves - conduct their duties
Straying a little bit away from articles that are usually posted here at Sporkability, I recently got caught up with the idea of depersonalization. And so, going with that mind set, I examined curious occurrence of dreams and how they trick the mind and senses into believing something false and how Descartes Meditation theories play into this idea. Enjoy!
In our awaken state of mind, with our bodies tolling throughout the day, we rely on our senses, our conscious morally correct mind, each other and ourselves to relay back to us what we see and know. We trust in the elementary things that have been taught to us from years ago. We act on them and use them as devices to make simple and exquisite decisions. At the end of the day we retire, slipping into an altered state of mind, we dream of things that could never fully come to term if placed in this world of limitations. We wake and replay each day with only minor differences to tell one another from the last. Our senses drive us through this process; we follow blindly. We are finite. We are flawed.
I remember the first time I ever saw one. I was in the college cafeteria, and I’d never seen anything like it before. I’m sure I stared, but I didn’t mean anything by it. I mean, they didn’t have anything like it back where I grew up, not that I am all that sheltered, you know. I mean, I have seen things, and I’m not prejudiced or anything. Really, I’m not. It was just a natural reaction to something so different. I just didn’t want to use it. I just didn’t really trust that that something so odd would even work. Hell, it was so strange that I wasn’t even sure how to use it. But I pride myself on having an open mind, so I tried it. I used it on the meatloaf, and it worked. And then I used it on the mushroom soup and it worked again. “I’ll be damned,” I remember saying to my friends, “this spoon-fork is pretty creative!” And then someone told me that term was impolite, that the correct term was spork!
