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Domain: paralinks.net

Stories and comments across the archive that link to paralinks.net.

Comments · 7

  1. I also learned to scuba dive with quadriplegics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Redundant · on Scientists Restore Walking After Spinal Cord Injury

    To qualify for the class, the disabled students had to have just enough arm control to plug their nose, which is needed to "clear" their ears, that is, adjust the pressure inside the ear drum to the water pressure outside.

    Two of us fully-abled people would buddy with the disabled divers. We'd pull them around the ocean floor.

    I found it quite an eye-opening experience.

    One of the students was my quadriplegic friend Foster Anderson, who was injured in a motorcycle accident as a teenager. I haven't seen him for a while, but he used to commute from Santa Cruz to Silicon Valley in a special van to work as an engineer. He can just control his arms, but not his fingers.

    I understand he once appeared on the cover of a surfing magazine, riding a surfboard.

    I also read in Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience that a study of Italian paraplegics found the unanimous opinion that becoming disabled was the best thing that ever happened to them: before their injuries, they failed to fully appreciate their lives. Afterwards they were able to live far more rich and rewarding lives, because they understood better just how precious the gift of life is.

    Don't write off the disabled. They - we, rather, as I myself have a profoundly serious mental illness - are capable of far more than most of society gives us credit for.

    Think of that next time you park illegally in a handicapped spot. (Foster saw someone do that at a restaurant once, and started repeatedly ramming the car with his electric wheelchair!)

  2. I learned to scuba dive with quadriplegics by MichaelCrawford · · Score: 4, Interesting · on Scientists Restore Walking After Spinal Cord Injury
    ... and paraplegics. To qualify for the class, the disabled students had to have just enough arm control to plug their nose, which is needed to "clear" their ears, that is, adjust the pressure inside the ear drum to the water pressure outside.

    Two of us fully-abled people would buddy with the disabled divers. We'd pull them around the ocean floor.

    I found it quite an eye-opening experience.

    One of the students was my quadriplegic friend Foster Anderson, who was injured in a motorcycle accident as a teenager. I haven't seen him for a while, but he used to commute from Santa Cruz to Silicon Valley in a special van to work as an engineer. He can just control his arms, but not his fingers.

    I understand he once appeared on the cover of a surfing magazine, riding a surfboard.

    I also read in Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience that a study of Italian paraplegics found the unanimous opinion that becoming disabled was the best thing that ever happened to them: before their injuries, they failed to fully appreciate their lives. Afterwards they were able to live far more rich and rewarding lives, because they understood better just how precious the gift of life is.

    Don't write off the disabled. They - we, rather, as I myself have a profoundly serious mental illness - are capable of far more than most of society gives us credit for.

    Think of that next time you park illegally in a handicapped spot. (Foster saw someone do that at a restaurant once, and started repeatedly ramming the car with his electric wheelchair!)

  3. Stephen Hawking already got one. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0 · on Power Armor For the Elderly

    See here.

    (originally from The Onion, but their archive is no longer freely available)

  4. Re:Liar. by NewbieProgrammerMan · · Score: 1 · on Gates Says No to Implants

    I assume that by "support/assualt subsystem" you are actually referring to Mr. Hawking's advanced cybernetic exoskeleton.

    Seriously though, I wonder what Hawking's position would be on receiving implants that offered a direct interface between the brain and a computer. I think if I became confined to a wheelchair, and such technology was available (and reasonably safe/reliable), I'd probably want it.

  5. Stephen Hawking by wattersa · · Score: 1 · on Japan Displays Prototype Robot Suit


    Yet another successful prediction by The Onion!

  6. Don't forget Stephen Hawking by pjmatt · · Score: 1 · on Commercial Exoskeletons
    Stephen Hawking did it first - here. [orig. theonion.com].

    "Beware, would-be evildoers," Hawking said. "My crimefighting powers are as infinite and unknowable as the very universe itself."

  7. The link posted with "URL:" by antispam_ben · · Score: 1 · on Homebrewed Robot Exoskeleton In Alaska

    http://www.paralinks.net/paralinksarchives/hawking exo.html

    Actual, operational link:

    http://www.paralinks.net/paralinksarchives/hawking exo.html

    Please use the URL feature that will auto-link a URL, as shown under the Submit button on the Post Comment page. Those of us who perfer to click rather than copy-paste and then fix the link.

    In your post it has a space that's not in the actual link, dunno why /. does that to a line of text, but the URL thing doesn't add spaces [to the ACTUAL LINK - the text still shows a space in hawkingexo].