Man Mistakenly Diagnosed In A Coma For 23 Years
For 23 years Rom Houben was imprisoned in his own body. He saw his doctors and nurses as they visited him during their daily rounds; he listened to the conversations of his carers; he heard his mother deliver the news to him that his father had died. But he could do nothing. He was unable to communicate with his doctors or family. He could not move his head or weep, he could only listen.
Doctors presumed he was in a vegetative state following a near-fatal car crash in 1983. They believed he could feel nothing and hear nothing. For 23 years.
Then a neurologist, Steven Laureys, who decided to take a radical look at the state of diagnosed coma patients, released him from his torture. Using a state-of-the-art scanning system, Laureys found to his amazement that his brain was functioning almost normally.
“I had dreamed myself away,” said Houben, now 46, whose real “state” was discovered three years ago, according to a report in the German magazine Der Spiegel this week.
Laureys, a neurologist at the University of Liege in Belgium, published a study in BMC Neurology earlier this year saying Houben could be one of many cases of falsely diagnosed comas around the world. He discovered that although Houben was completely paralysed, he was also completely conscious — it was just that he was unable to communicate the fact.
Houben now communicates with one finger and a special touchscreen on his wheelchair – he has developed some movement with the help of intense physiotherapy over the last three years.
Continue reading here.
Holy shit. So this guy was assumed to be in a coma for 23 years but was actually consciously aware of everything the entire time, and just couldn’t move or communicate to show it?! For 23 years?! Oh. My. God.
thoughtswithoutwords asked: Where did that hidden shelf picture come from that you posted just now?
I don’t know! Usually I’ll post credit to the person I took the image from, but my friend just sent me this through email. Sorry! :(
Saw this at the grocery store today. Really? Cause last time I checked kids are supposed to play outside, collect rocks and build their own worlds. Not check their fake email, and yell through their headset.
The Myth Of Fair Value
Some of the most successful product packages are the least practical. By universal consent, the Heinz Ketchup bottle is too tall and narrow to gracefully dispense its contents. Heinz experimented with a squatter, more practical bottle - and the public rejected it. For all the complaints about slow ketchup, they preferred to buy the old bottle.
The company has had more success with its squeezable plastic bottles (also strangely tall and narrow). You’ll find sleek profiles on many other containers, from the original Coca-Cola bottle to the Red Bull can to a jar of olives. The reason may have less to do with logic or aesthetics than with the quirks of human perception. The mind and eye are terrible at estimating volumes.
In an amusing demonstration of this fact, Brian Wansink and Koert van Ittersum, of Cornell and Georgia Tech, asked student volunteers and professional bartenders to pour out a shot (1.5 ounces) of a simulated liquor. They were instructed to pour carefully, to dispense as close to the exact 1.5 ounces as they could manage. Two types of glasses were used in the experiment: a tall, narrow highball glass and a short, squat tumbler.
Despite the different shapes, each glass had the same capacity. On average, the students poured 30 percent more “liquor” in the short tumblers than in the tall glasses. The professional mixologists were only a bit more accurate: They poured 21 percent more in the tumblers.
This result is relevant to the psychology of price, contends marketing consultant Rags Srinivasan in his blog, Iterative Path. As we walk the supermarket aisles, we make a lot of snap decisions. Is that enough ketchup for that price? Is it good deal? These judgments are rarely as exact as they could be. For the most part, we glance at the posted price but don’t bother to scrutinize the label for the number of ounces or milliliters. Nor do we look at unit pricing. (Who’s got time?) Instead, the purchase decision is based on two datums, the price and an eyeball estimate of volume. Since volume estimates are subject to all sorts of perceptual illusions, they are an important part of psychological marketing.
You’ve probably seen Discovery Channel shows on creatures that make themselves look bigger to scare off predators. Well marketers do much the same thing with packages. They use perceptual tricks to make packages look bigger. If two energy drinks cost the same, but one can looks bigger, you’re likely to try the one with the “bigger” can.
What a lovely way to celebrate an anniversary!
Overheard...
- Girl: Well that's cause [pause] ugh wow...
- Guy: What??
- Girl: I just can't believe we're really arguing about whether or not Aunt Jemima would support gay marriage.
Anonymous asked: > Where you’re from...?
I'm from soup.io but still see + love your tumblr
Born and raised in the lovely, sunny, city of angels.
Help any one of these organizations out and if you belong to Tumblr, you’ll even get a little ribbon.
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C’mon, these guys need us!
Karl Lagerfeld
