Chasing Cars – Snow Patrol
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
Category: Uncategorized
The thing that makes Sigyn dangerous isn’t that she’s violent or cruel; it’s that she could be, and chooses to be gentle instead. In a world where everyone is always expecting harshness and punishment, receiving kindness and empathy in their place not only surprises people, but draws them to you. It wins love as well as loyalty—and there’s nothing more powerful than someone who has the love and loyalty of so many people who were likely used to nothing but cruelty and rejection before they met her.
Want to hear a great Helen Keller joke?
Helen Keller was an author, lecturer, and advocate for women’s suffrage, labor rights, socialism, and other radical left causes. She was the first deaf and blind person to earn a bachelor’s degree, and she was an avid supporter of birth control.
But let’s forget all that and make some disabled person jokes. That way we don’t have to acknowledge any of her work or any of the causes she represented.
Custom controller lets disabled man dig into Minecraft using his eyebrows
Alexander Kostov has spinal muscular atrophy, a disease that makes impossible for him to use most traditional game controllers.Very cool. I would like to know more about how they mapped muscle movements to computer inputs. Nonetheless, it shows what’s possible with creativity and abandoning the mouse-and-keyboard paradigm.
Custom controller lets disabled man dig into Minecraft using his eyebrows
Great news that Google has bought Lift Labs a tech company that makes an ‘assisted living’ product.
The Lift Labs device is a fork or spoon created to reduce tremor, by stabilising using internal mechanics to keep it steady. With Google behind it will have a big opportunities for reaching people worldwide and further development. NY Times has speculated that Google may have been interested because Sergey Brin’s mother has Parkinson’s disease and he has a genetic predisposition of developing it.
From NY Times:
Lift Labs’ founder and a handful of employees will join Google and work out of the company’s Mountain View headquarters.
Most people take eating for granted, but for the 11 million Americans with either essential tremor or Parkinson’s disease, the act of lifting a utensil can be harrowing, embarrassing and messy.
Lift Labs’ Liftware device – basically a vibrating spoon/fork that makes eating easier by counteracting the tremors with a bunch of little swivels – tries to ameliorate the condition.
“A lot of social interaction revolves around eating,” said Dr. Kelvin Chou, a neurology professor at the University of Michigan who has collaborated with Lift Labs. “It’s embarrassing for them, and they feel like people are watching them all the time. I’ve had patients say ‘Someone came up to me and said I should stop drinking.’ Things like that.”
To read more click here
People with tremor might also want to check out the handsteady cup.
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
Slow Dancing With A Stranger: A Caregiver’s Account of Alzheimer’s Cost
The symptoms were hardly noticeable at first. In fact, had Meryl Comer not been a veteran TV news reporter, she might have missed the subtle changes in her husband’s behavior. Even then, she chalked up his sudden lack of focus and lightning-quick temper to job stress: Harvey Gralnick had a prestigious position as a physician and chief of hematology/oncology research at the National Institutes of Health. Two years and countless medical exams later, Comer’s husband finally was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. By that time, the disease had already scrambled their lives and dashed their dreams. Gralnick was 57; Comer was just 50.
If Alzheimer’s is about forgetting, Comer’s just released book, Slow Dancing with a Stranger, is about bearing witness to everything Alzheimer’s took from her husband and her family. Equally important, it’s a call to action for women who, as caregivers, are most often Alzheimer’s second victim. What distresses Comer is that there are no better options for women today around care than there were 20 years ago. There are still no disease-modifying drugs or treatments for Alzheimer’s, a fatal neurodegenerative disease that has no cure.
Slow Dancing With A Stranger: A Caregiver’s Account of Alzheimer’s Cost
About 2.6 percent of American adults – nearly 6 million people – have bipolar disorder, according to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). But the disease, characterized by significant and severe mood changes, is still dangerously misunderstood.
Bipolar disorder is vastly different from the normal ups and downs of everyday life, but many have co-opted the term to refer to any old change in thoughts or feelings. The mood swings in someone with bipolar disorder, sometimes also called manic depression, can damage relationships and hurt job performance. It has been estimated that anywhere from 25 to 50 percent of people with bipolar disorder attempt suicide at least once.
Artist Ellen Forney detailed her diagnosis with bipolar disorder in the graphic memoir Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me. Forney previously shared her story with us, specifically detailing how her bipolar disorder has affected her creative work.
Below are some poignant pages from the memoir, along with unique commentary into how these panels came to be and what they mean to Forney, in her own words… What Bipolar Disorder Really Looks Like
Holding the Bowl 