Via Clay Spinuzzi, The NY Times has an article today on runner Oscar Pistorius, who is a double-amputee. The Olympics have ruled that, because they believe his prosthetic legs give him an advantage, that he is disqualified from the Olympics. He’s planning to appeal, but that process will take longer than the South African trials, so he won’t be able to run even if he wins his appeal.
I’m finding this turn of events fascinating, in the way that we (continue to) construct bodies as able-bodied; where is the technological line that separates an able-bodied runner from a differently-able-bodied runner? Aren’t we all cyborgic, to cite Donna Harraway?
As an interesting aside, I might show the cool NY Times graphics explaining the prosthetic legs to my technical writing class as an example of a document that does a good job of mixing graphics and texts and explaining a concept.
