From New Politics, a symposium on disability rights. John Amaechi was the first major league sportsman in America to come out as gay; now he’s a psychologist, an OBE and an outspoken atheist. From The Progressive, Ian Murphy on the 9 most loathsome lobbyists. Larry Smarr, an astrophysicist turned computer scientist, has a new project: charting his every bodily function in minute detail — what he’s discovering may be the future of health care. How might the federal budget be balanced without increasing revenues? A review of Political Writing: A Guide to the Essentials by Adam Garfinkle. Phoenixes: The critics did not like I’m Still Here; if, as many suspected, it was a “mockumentary” — by then an established comic genre — then why perpetrate so much deceit? A review of Ascent of the A-Word: Assholism, the First Sixty Years by Geoffrey Nunberg.