Common Paradox Tech Blog

MaryBethP writes “Scientists in Italy announced Wednesday that Pierpaolo Petruzziello, a 26-year-old Italian who had lost his left forearm in a car accident, was successfully linked to an artificial limb that was controlled by electrodes implanted in his arm and connected to the median and ulnar nerves. He has learned to control the artificial limb with his mind. According to CNet, Petruzziello says he could feel sensations in it, as if the lost arm had grown back again. The BBC has a brief video showing the arm in operation.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Although Tiger Woods has released a statement about his “transgressions” and asked for privacy, the media frenzy around the car accident and his alleged infidelities continues to swell.

As if that’s not bad enough, Spirit Airlines has come out with a new airfare sale, inspired by Woods, that smacks of a marketing ploy. The “Eye of the Tiger Sale,” advertised front and center on Spirit Airlines’ homepage, shows a tiger driving an SUV into a fire hydrant, and then promotes their $9 fare sale.

Obviously the stunt will generate buzz for Spirit, but has the airline gone too far? Watch the screencast below and then let us know what you think.

[via TMZ]

Tags: eye of the tiger sale, spirit airlies, tiger woods

For the past six days, much of the world has been riveted by the fallout from the Thanksgiving car accident of Tiger Woods. The story has been driven in large part by the online tabloid media and the all-knowing eyes of TMZ, who has speculated about the athlete’s marriage, affairs, and perhaps even prescription drug use before taking the wheel.

As it turns out, much of what TMZ’s been reporting appears to be true, as this morning Woods issued a statement on his Web site, acknowledging wrongdoings and writing, “I have let my family down and I regret those transgressions with all of my heart.”

But Tiger goes on to bring up what is perhaps a more interesting issue about the world we live in. The extremely private superstar goes on to write, “Although I am a well-known person and have made my career as a professional athlete, I have been dismayed to realize the full extent of what tabloid scrutiny really means.”

Continuing, Tiger writes:

“But no matter how intense curiosity about public figures can be, there is an important and deep principle at stake which is the right to some simple, human measure of privacy. I realize there are some who don’t share my view on that. But for me, the virtue of privacy is one that must be protected in matters that are intimate and within one’s own family. Personal sins should not require press releases and problems within a family shouldn’t have to mean public confessions.”

Tiger’s right. While we’ve come to expect a certain level of transparency from companies, brands and even public figures thanks to social media, it’s not our God-given right to know what Tiger does in his personal life, as many seemed to think it was in the days following his accident.

Of course, as the world’s first billion-dollar athlete, Tiger could conceivably be deemed a company and brand, but nonetheless, as a man, it’s his right to remain private and accept the consequences, whether they’re lost endorsements or unforgiving fans. That right was seemingly stripped away from him by the “we deserve to know everything about everything” culture we now live in.

As a sports fan, a social media connoisseur and a man, today is a sad day.

Tags: social media, tiger woods, trending

The year is 1963. It’s November. At 1:40 PM ET, CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite comes on the air. “In Dallas, Texas, three shots were fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade in downtown Dallas. The first reports say that President Kennedy has been seriously wounded by this shooting.” Rapidly, everyone in America descends upon the closest television set to tune in.

Thankfully, we have not yet had a tragedy of that magnitude in the age of the realtime web. But we will. It’s just a matter of time.

If it were to happen today, most people would still turn to their TV sets to get the most up-to-date information on such an event. We saw that on September 11, 2001. But a large number of people would also now turn to the web. And there they would likely find the information they were looking for faster than those watching on television. We’ve seen it time and time again recently.

World champion golfer and sports icon Tiger Woods is in serious condition after his car crashed into a fire hydrant and a tree near his home in Isleworth, Florida.

The Orlando Sentinel reports that Woods hit the hydrant with his 2009 Escalade after pulling out of his driveway at around 2:25 A.M. this morning. According to Florida Highway Patrol reports, he subsequently drove into a tree on a neighbor’s property. He is now at the Health Central Hospital in Ocoee, Florida.

Woods is one of the world’s most iconic sports figures as well as a husband and father. The Mashable team offers its best wishes for Tiger and his family.

Update: According to a statement form Tiger Woods’ publicist, he was admitted, treated, and released from Health Central Hospital today. He is being described as being in “good condition.”

Tags: sports, tiger woods

Rom Houben has been trapped in a series of worst nightmares, including trying for 23 years to alert those around him that he was not in a coma. A new report suggests he’s not alone in his experience.

In 1983, Belgian engineering student and martial arts enthusiast Houben, then 20, was in a car accident that was thought to have left him in a vegetative state. Doctors relied on the widely-used Glasgow Coma Scale, assessing his eyes, verbal, and motor responses. What they failed to notice was that Houben was actually conscious—but completely paralyzed.

“I screamed, but there was no one to hear,” he says in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel. Three years ago, neurologist Steven Laureys used modern scanning techniques to discover that Houben’s cerebral cortex was, in fact, functioning. (The doctor has only just now made Houben’s story public.)

Houben, who communicates via a computer with a special keyboard activated with the slightest movement of his right hand, is now 46. He has spent more than half his life trapped in his own body, and says he only survived this excruciating existence by dreaming himself away. In the interview, this is what he typed:

I am called Rom. I am not dead. The nurses came, they patted me, they sometimes took my hand, and I heard them say “no hope.” I meditated, I dreamed my life away—it was all I could do. I don’t want to blame anyone—it wouldn’t do any good. But I owe my life to my family. Everyone else gave up.

I studied what happened around me as if it were a tiny piece of world drama, the bizarre peculiarities of the other patients in the common room, the entry of the doctors into my room, the gossip of the nurses who were not embarrassed to speak about their boyfriends in front of “the extinct one.” That made me an expert on relationships.

According to Laureys, Houben’s case may be far more common than we’d like to think. The doctor, who leads the Coma Science Group and Department of Neurology at Liege University Hospital, says that while Houben’s doctors were “not good,” he’s not sure better ones using this same coma scale would have detected brain activity either:

In Germany alone each year some 100,000 people suffer from severe traumatic brain injury. About 20,000 are followed by a coma of three weeks or longer. Some of them die, others regain health. But an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 people a year remain trapped in an intermediate stage—they go on living without ever coming back again.

In his paper, Laureys writes that in about 40 percent of “vegetative state” cases he has analyzed, current brain scanning techniques reveal signs of varying levels of consciousness. A case is being made, it seems, to stop relying on the Glasgow Coma Scale and start looking more closely at brain scanning images.

This is one mobile application I think everyone should have installed. And be recommended by them to all of their friends and relatives to boot.

Meet iMobile Care, a potential life-saver that you can carry around in your pocket.

Launched at the beginning of this month, the app is primarily a reference guide that lets you obtain essential information about medical conditions and situations quickly and easily. The tool allows users to get a visual and textual explanation of how deliver aid and care during emergencies and events such as accidents, bites and stings, choking, injuries, poisoning, burns, and many other critical situations.

But billed as a mere mobile first aid guide even by its own makers, it’s actually much more than that.