The First Circuit United States Court of Appeals on Friday ruled in favor of the United States Constitution in regards to a Massachusetts man arrested for his recording three Boston police officers that were arresting another individual.
On October 1, 2007, Simon Glik was taken into custody and charged for recording an incident in which he states there was evidence of police brutality. On being approached by one of the arresting officers with the statement, "I think you have taken enough pictures." Glik replied, "I am recording this. I saw you punch him." When asked, Glik did affirm that along with video, his device also captured audio and was immediately arrested for the unlawful audio recording in violation of Massachusetts' wiretap statute, disturbing the peace, and aiding in the escape of a prisoner, which was later dropped for lack of probable cause.
Four months later the Boston Municipal Court disposed of the remaining two charges citing the, "officers were unhappy they were being recorded during an arrest... does not make a lawful exercise of a First Amendment right a crime." The court also found no supporting evidence for the wiretapping charge as Glik did openly admit to, and "had used his cell phone openly and in plain view."
In February 2010 Glik filed a civil rights action against the officers and the City of Boston in the United States District Court for violations of his First and Fourth Amendment rights, and for malicious prosecution under the Massachusetts Civil Rights Act. The defendants moved to dismiss the case citing that the officers were entitled to qualified immunity, "because it is not well-settled that he had a constitutional right to record the officers." Their motion was orally denied when the court affirmed the right of citizens to publicly record the activities of police officers on public business as being established.
This is a very important ruling for everyone. Know your rights, and read the decision of The First Circuit United States Court of Appeals.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Saturday, August 6, 2011
6 Stories to Help You Sleep at Night
This story was originally submitted to Cracked.com, but was rejected for the simple fact that it was just plain creepy.
We all like to think that everything is fine, and really it is. I mean we're a lot better off here in the United States than most and that's a good thing. Ah yes, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, just like the founding fathers intended. We can watch the news and see the economic instability in Europe, burgeoning democracies in the Middle East, and the economic powerhouse that the far East is becoming. We can be concerned. We can be thankful. We can be glad that we are not them living in some second rate police state, I mean after all, look around you and...huh?. What...is, is someone watching me?
Your Appliances
Congratulation! You've made it to the future. Here, all of your appliances are interconnected via the internet. Your refrigerator will send you a message telling you when you're low on milk. You can set your DVR from your phone to record those lost episodes of Gilligan's Island. Large appliances will run during off peak hours. You're home security system tells you who is in your home while you're away. Why, even the lighting adjusts to your preconfigured settings when you enter a room. It is a technological utopia. The internet as we know it isn't able to run it all though. It seems that we're running out of IP addresses, which has actually spawned its own black market. All sites have a web address, or URL, but that address is converted to numeric IP addresses by a Domain Name System (DNS) server so in practice, there is a limit.
IPv6 technology was created to manage the growing demands on the internet from computers, smartphones, home appliances, gaming devices and all sorts of sensors and actuators that have yet to be invented. This transition from one technology to the other is the new Y2K (remember that) for large business and government with a near frantic global retooling. Most home and small business users won't even notice the transition. You won't suddenly need a degree to plug in your toaster, but you will want to update your firewall settings if you change internet service providers after the January 1, 2012 industry deadline. If your internet doesn't work after that day, you know what happened. Fortunately the government has set their own deadline for a later date just in case.
No need to panic folks. Your government is here to help.
War on Terror
All was fine in the life of John H. Gass of Massachusetts until a Department of Homeland Security antiterrorism program recognized the face on his driver's license as belonging someone else. It seems that law enforcement frowns on that and rather than investigating the matter, Mr. Gass' driver's license was suspended and he was required to prove himself as not being an unperson in order to regain his privileges.
Sure it was just a computer error, but in Mr.Gass' lawsuit it's estimated that this has happened more than once. But really, what's the worst that could happen?
Facial Recognition
So you get to the airport, you're late, you get a little aggravated, but say nothing averse to the ticket agent as you check your bags. You dash off towards the terminal, and wait. You're standing in line waiting to be scanned, glancing past the other passengers wondering “What the hell is taking these guys so long?!” But you're not going to say anything because you don't want to get into some weird TSA handballing fetish scene. You're probably saving that for the S&M conference that you're going to anyway.
Well it turns out you don't have to say anything anymore. The expressions on your face, your behavior, you adjusting your crotch, and you eying that booger for it's nutritional value has already been cataloged by the airport's pre-crime detector program, Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST). FAST is a program currently being tested at airports in the northeastern United States that can supposedly 'sense' whether you are planning to commit a crime. Similar to a lie detector, but not bothering to use controlled instruments like direct contact or questions, FAST measure various indicators to judge a person's state of mind and intent. On an unrelated note, the TSA at Logan International Airport in Boston is now using the more exotic approach to counter terrorism such as making eye contact when they talk to you.
Maybe next year you should take a train, they don't search that shit, do they?
An Increasingly Mobile Society
So you're tired of the lines, the pat downs, the radiation. Dammit, you're an American and you shouldn't be subjected to a state sanctioned molestation. The airplane isn't the only way to travel and by golly, you can always appreciate the open road. That is until you get stopped, and then you kind of have to do it.
As it turns out, the TSA's Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR) program participates with local law enforcement in some 8,000 unannounced security screenings each year with airport-style screenings of passengers at bus terminals, train stations, subways, and ferries. There is also at least one report from Brownsville, Texas of the VIPR program having been extended to include personal vehicles. Couple this with a recent Indiana Supreme Court ruling that the right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, and you're pretty much reduced to that moment when your mom found your porn stash.
Just be sure to smile for the Mobile Offender Recognition and Information System (MORIS) when they stop you and to provide a DNA sample if they arrest you because of your new found diminished expectation of privacy. MORIS is an iPhone compatible biometric device that is capable of performing iris scans and facial recognition searches against the manufacturers managed database. The Bill of Rights was a stupid idea anyway.
Social Networking
Social networking has certainly changed the face of culture as now we tell everyone everything about ourselves including who all of our friends are in alphabetical order. We check in at any little mediocre event we go to. We post and tag our most current pictures online, which is not always a bright idea as learned by Canadian water polo star and Olympic hopeful Nathan Kotylak who was tagged on Facebook stuffing a gasoline soaked rag into the gastank of a parked police cruiser following the Canucks Stanley Cup loss to the Bruins in Vancouver.
“So I just won't post my picture,” you smugly say to yourself. Once again the efforts of what's good and right have been thwarted by your evil genius. As it turns out, “they” will take your picture for you, from an unspecified distance even. The Air Force has been working on a camera that is capable of creating a digital signature of your face and using your biometric information to locate and track you, anywhere. How many cameras do they have anyway? Now you'll just have to walk everywhere making that grrr-face for posterity.
Fortunately you can always friend “them” online, tag your own photos, and just give them the straight feed on your activities. Unfortunately they're sneaky bastards so you'll have to start 'friending' random strangers, kind of like you did with those hobos when you were a kid.
Internet Privacy
Did you know that your profiles really aren't that private? I mean sure you can block your family from seeing your "experiment" at that party, but maybe it's not your family that you need to worry about. Law enforcement agencies of all stripes are allowed to browse your complete Facebook profile and all of your linked accounts for information due to a loophole in regulations from the 25-year-old Electronic Communications Privacy Act that was designed to protect telephone users from illegal wiretapping. The internet as we know it didn't even exist 25 years ago. In reality whoever owns the copyright on the website or the server that the information is stored in owns whatever content there may be, and technically information that is stored for over 180 days is fair game. Your lazy ass not clearing your Inbox or saving grandma's first email just makes their a lot jobs easier.
Fortunately for you, agoraphobia will soon be socially acceptable.
It seems that privacy does not exist like it used too in today's society. There was a time when people were very sensitive about their personal privacy. We didn't talk about how much money we made, or how we raised our children. We definitely didn't talk about who we voted for, but that's a bit out the window since an affiliate of Anonymous released hacked portions of the Florida voter database that included information on voter and candidate statistics.
But that's Florida I'm one of an estimated 2,095,006,005 internet users, globally. Who cares what I do online? They...I mean we do, we really do. By all means link your Facebook login at every opportunity. It's convenient and will help you save time on having to remember all those other pesky passwords. On the down side, you may need a FOIA request to get a password reminder if you forget yours because between the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's interception system, Echelon which is capable of intercepting every electronic transaction made, and the National Security Agency recording as much from the internet alone every six hours as is stored by the entire Library of Congress, your private life isn't really all that private. Yes, even those webcam chats that you've become notorious for. Add HR 1981 to the mix, which requires ISP's to retain all of your browsing information for 12 months and you're pretty much out of the closet.
With that, a recently recognized piece of advanced software called Nexus 7 combines all of the previously mentioned capabilities and more, and is currently in use in Afghanistan. Nexus 7 uses collected information from various resources to create population centric cultural intelligence. Of course it's all for the greater good and the technology uses a technique similar to Search Engine Optimization to identify and target specific individuals that may be involved in specific activities, but rather than looking for one individual, it uses a god's eye view to look for everyone to find out how communities work and to identify individuals that pose a potential threat. But that's Afghanistan, because doing all of that stuff here in the United States would just be unethical, wouldn't it. Hopefully Nexus 7 will make the Federal Government's IPv6 transitional deadline of September 30, 2012.
You may want to burn your computer after reading that last part. In fact, you probably should. I wonder if iPhone has an app for that?
We all like to think that everything is fine, and really it is. I mean we're a lot better off here in the United States than most and that's a good thing. Ah yes, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, just like the founding fathers intended. We can watch the news and see the economic instability in Europe, burgeoning democracies in the Middle East, and the economic powerhouse that the far East is becoming. We can be concerned. We can be thankful. We can be glad that we are not them living in some second rate police state, I mean after all, look around you and...huh?. What...is, is someone watching me?
Your Appliances
Congratulation! You've made it to the future. Here, all of your appliances are interconnected via the internet. Your refrigerator will send you a message telling you when you're low on milk. You can set your DVR from your phone to record those lost episodes of Gilligan's Island. Large appliances will run during off peak hours. You're home security system tells you who is in your home while you're away. Why, even the lighting adjusts to your preconfigured settings when you enter a room. It is a technological utopia. The internet as we know it isn't able to run it all though. It seems that we're running out of IP addresses, which has actually spawned its own black market. All sites have a web address, or URL, but that address is converted to numeric IP addresses by a Domain Name System (DNS) server so in practice, there is a limit.
IPv6 technology was created to manage the growing demands on the internet from computers, smartphones, home appliances, gaming devices and all sorts of sensors and actuators that have yet to be invented. This transition from one technology to the other is the new Y2K (remember that) for large business and government with a near frantic global retooling. Most home and small business users won't even notice the transition. You won't suddenly need a degree to plug in your toaster, but you will want to update your firewall settings if you change internet service providers after the January 1, 2012 industry deadline. If your internet doesn't work after that day, you know what happened. Fortunately the government has set their own deadline for a later date just in case.
No need to panic folks. Your government is here to help.
War on Terror
All was fine in the life of John H. Gass of Massachusetts until a Department of Homeland Security antiterrorism program recognized the face on his driver's license as belonging someone else. It seems that law enforcement frowns on that and rather than investigating the matter, Mr. Gass' driver's license was suspended and he was required to prove himself as not being an unperson in order to regain his privileges.
Sure it was just a computer error, but in Mr.Gass' lawsuit it's estimated that this has happened more than once. But really, what's the worst that could happen?
Facial Recognition
So you get to the airport, you're late, you get a little aggravated, but say nothing averse to the ticket agent as you check your bags. You dash off towards the terminal, and wait. You're standing in line waiting to be scanned, glancing past the other passengers wondering “What the hell is taking these guys so long?!” But you're not going to say anything because you don't want to get into some weird TSA handballing fetish scene. You're probably saving that for the S&M conference that you're going to anyway.
Well it turns out you don't have to say anything anymore. The expressions on your face, your behavior, you adjusting your crotch, and you eying that booger for it's nutritional value has already been cataloged by the airport's pre-crime detector program, Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST). FAST is a program currently being tested at airports in the northeastern United States that can supposedly 'sense' whether you are planning to commit a crime. Similar to a lie detector, but not bothering to use controlled instruments like direct contact or questions, FAST measure various indicators to judge a person's state of mind and intent. On an unrelated note, the TSA at Logan International Airport in Boston is now using the more exotic approach to counter terrorism such as making eye contact when they talk to you.
Maybe next year you should take a train, they don't search that shit, do they?
An Increasingly Mobile Society
So you're tired of the lines, the pat downs, the radiation. Dammit, you're an American and you shouldn't be subjected to a state sanctioned molestation. The airplane isn't the only way to travel and by golly, you can always appreciate the open road. That is until you get stopped, and then you kind of have to do it.
As it turns out, the TSA's Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR) program participates with local law enforcement in some 8,000 unannounced security screenings each year with airport-style screenings of passengers at bus terminals, train stations, subways, and ferries. There is also at least one report from Brownsville, Texas of the VIPR program having been extended to include personal vehicles. Couple this with a recent Indiana Supreme Court ruling that the right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, and you're pretty much reduced to that moment when your mom found your porn stash.
Just be sure to smile for the Mobile Offender Recognition and Information System (MORIS) when they stop you and to provide a DNA sample if they arrest you because of your new found diminished expectation of privacy. MORIS is an iPhone compatible biometric device that is capable of performing iris scans and facial recognition searches against the manufacturers managed database. The Bill of Rights was a stupid idea anyway.
Social Networking
Social networking has certainly changed the face of culture as now we tell everyone everything about ourselves including who all of our friends are in alphabetical order. We check in at any little mediocre event we go to. We post and tag our most current pictures online, which is not always a bright idea as learned by Canadian water polo star and Olympic hopeful Nathan Kotylak who was tagged on Facebook stuffing a gasoline soaked rag into the gastank of a parked police cruiser following the Canucks Stanley Cup loss to the Bruins in Vancouver.
“So I just won't post my picture,” you smugly say to yourself. Once again the efforts of what's good and right have been thwarted by your evil genius. As it turns out, “they” will take your picture for you, from an unspecified distance even. The Air Force has been working on a camera that is capable of creating a digital signature of your face and using your biometric information to locate and track you, anywhere. How many cameras do they have anyway? Now you'll just have to walk everywhere making that grrr-face for posterity.
Fortunately you can always friend “them” online, tag your own photos, and just give them the straight feed on your activities. Unfortunately they're sneaky bastards so you'll have to start 'friending' random strangers, kind of like you did with those hobos when you were a kid.
Internet Privacy
Did you know that your profiles really aren't that private? I mean sure you can block your family from seeing your "experiment" at that party, but maybe it's not your family that you need to worry about. Law enforcement agencies of all stripes are allowed to browse your complete Facebook profile and all of your linked accounts for information due to a loophole in regulations from the 25-year-old Electronic Communications Privacy Act that was designed to protect telephone users from illegal wiretapping. The internet as we know it didn't even exist 25 years ago. In reality whoever owns the copyright on the website or the server that the information is stored in owns whatever content there may be, and technically information that is stored for over 180 days is fair game. Your lazy ass not clearing your Inbox or saving grandma's first email just makes their a lot jobs easier.
Fortunately for you, agoraphobia will soon be socially acceptable.
It seems that privacy does not exist like it used too in today's society. There was a time when people were very sensitive about their personal privacy. We didn't talk about how much money we made, or how we raised our children. We definitely didn't talk about who we voted for, but that's a bit out the window since an affiliate of Anonymous released hacked portions of the Florida voter database that included information on voter and candidate statistics.
But that's Florida I'm one of an estimated 2,095,006,005 internet users, globally. Who cares what I do online? They...I mean we do, we really do. By all means link your Facebook login at every opportunity. It's convenient and will help you save time on having to remember all those other pesky passwords. On the down side, you may need a FOIA request to get a password reminder if you forget yours because between the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's interception system, Echelon which is capable of intercepting every electronic transaction made, and the National Security Agency recording as much from the internet alone every six hours as is stored by the entire Library of Congress, your private life isn't really all that private. Yes, even those webcam chats that you've become notorious for. Add HR 1981 to the mix, which requires ISP's to retain all of your browsing information for 12 months and you're pretty much out of the closet.
With that, a recently recognized piece of advanced software called Nexus 7 combines all of the previously mentioned capabilities and more, and is currently in use in Afghanistan. Nexus 7 uses collected information from various resources to create population centric cultural intelligence. Of course it's all for the greater good and the technology uses a technique similar to Search Engine Optimization to identify and target specific individuals that may be involved in specific activities, but rather than looking for one individual, it uses a god's eye view to look for everyone to find out how communities work and to identify individuals that pose a potential threat. But that's Afghanistan, because doing all of that stuff here in the United States would just be unethical, wouldn't it. Hopefully Nexus 7 will make the Federal Government's IPv6 transitional deadline of September 30, 2012.
You may want to burn your computer after reading that last part. In fact, you probably should. I wonder if iPhone has an app for that?
Monday, July 18, 2011
7 Facts About Head Injuries that Hollywood Almost Got Right
This submission was rejected by Cracked.com for its similarity to another article, 6 Deadly Injuries that You Think You'd Survive (Thanks to Hollywood), which was not mine, so you get to read it here.
Will Gabrielle Giffords return to politics? Why is that player such a pussy and can't just walk it off? Why does that soldier think he deserves a Purple Heart for a bump on his head? Why does that boxer talk funny? Where's my shoe? All these questions and more will not be answered. I just want to reset your expectations about the walking wounded.
7 Facts About Head Injuries that Hollywood Almost Got Right
Most humor writers rely on a form of situational irony to get the point across to the reader. Indeed that is the forum of great philosophers called Cracked.com. In turn, fiction writers rely on an unspoken agreement with their audience that a suspension of belief is required. Viewers though do not always get the memo. They're here to watch stuff and not get all caught up in details like reading unless it's followed by something of onomatopoeic value. This approach to life may all be well and fine when picking softdrinks, clothes, and romantic partners, but decisions on long term health care are not ones that should be influenced by seeing Uma Thurman will herself to move her big toe.
Coma in Hollywood is the ultimate failure of plot device. TV and movies give us the “sleeping beauty” version of coma that features a healthy, tanned individual with muscle tone. Now by tanned I don't mean like they just came back from a Caribbean vacation. I mean they don't look like that sandwich you bought from the gas station that's been laying under fluorescent lights for the last 17 days. Never mind the lack of feeding tubes, monitors, catheters, and the occasional ventilator. The audience wants to believe that all is OK and that losing consciousness is just like sleeping. The fact is though, the longer that you're in one, medically induced or otherwise, the less likely you are to be much more than drooling meat sack when you wake up. On the plus side, you're going to lose a lot of weight. The down side being that most of it will be muscle mass. There's an excellent chance that you'll lose a few IQ points as well.
The medical industry literally has a detailed character description for the taking, and writers piss it away every time. On that it should be explained that there are two types of brain injury. There is the obvious Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and the not-so-obvious, Acquired Brain Injury (ABI), each having it's own list of causes. For those two types of brain injury, medical professionals also have a means of grading them that clearly fiction writers tend to overlook. The Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) was created to assess the status of the central nervous system on a spectrum. The Ranchos Los Amigos Scale (RAS) was developed as a way to gauge cognitive and behavioral presentations of patients as they emerge from coma. A patient scoring at the top of both scales would be considered perfectly normal; at the bottom, dead. If the dead person scores higher, run.
You see it's all right here in the charts. There was no injury, they're just stupid.
Fortunately I'm here to help you separate the bullshit. Having been there myself gives me license to bitch. The last thing on my mind when I woke up wasn't so much about “Who's next?” as it was, “Where the fuck am I?”, “Where's the bathroom?”, and “What's wrong with my legs?” in that order. It is a tremendous exercise in humility having petite Asian women that you did not hire pick you up off the floor and hold your junk so you can pee in a bottle in the middle of a dimly lit room. It's like being black-out drunk, but horrifyingly sober. So congratulations! You now have a head injury. Let's see some what you can expect.
The Dead Zone: your head hurts for a reason.
The television show, The Dead Zone itself was one starring Anthony Michael Hall based on the character played by Christopher 'freakin' Walken based on a book written by Stephen King where our hero wakes after a six year coma to find the world he knew is no longer available, which in reality can happen after just a couple days of calling in sick to work. The injury itself causes our hero's brain (Walken's, not Hall's) to remap itself around the injured areas with a side of awakening precognitive abilities.
In reality these dead zones are caused by Axonal Shear, which is the term used to describe the severing of nerve fibers in the brain. The inside of your brain case is much different from the outside, and unlike the TV series, is full of points. Your brain being really just a big ball of fat with some fibers running through it tears against these points during an injury and scar tissue begins to form around the severed neurons creating 'dead zones'. Your brain eventually remaps around these areas in order to transmit, store, and retrieve information. The term for this is neuroplasticity, which probably was King's first choice of title for the book.
Ewwww, it's all bruised.
28 Days Later and The Walking Dead: you will have to learn to walk again.
These are the same programs and I will treat them as such. Atlanta, London, they're both places I haven't been and both have had governments that the United States once beat into submission so yep, they're the same. In those places we find our unshaven hero waking up alone in a barricaded hospital room slightly confused to find a post-apocalyptic scene has unfolded around them. Determined, he makes his way back home and witness' varying degrees of horror on the way, one by one collecting the shattered pieces of his past.
Though this may sound like your typical Sunday morning, sans the taste of weed and hooker spit in your mouth from the night before, this guy wasn't even sleeping off that much. I mean at the very least he should have woken in puddle of his own urine since the catheter was not an issue, and trust me, they are. Beyond that he would have been zombie chow since muscular atrophy in the legs would have been the worst possible thing to need therapy for in a zombie apocalypse. Muscular atrophy is the same reason that astronauts on extended trips to space exercise furiously and still experience muscle loss. Sedentary jobs have similar effects so you might want to get out of that chair.
Because even Tom Hanks could beat your ass.
Resident Evil I and II: multiple bouts of unconsciousness are a bad thing.
OK she wasn't in a 'coma' per se, but she did lose consciousness in both movies, and it's Milla Jovovich, naked. We cannot have a serious conversation about brain injuries without a naked Milla Jovovich. End of argument.
It was more of a concussion really in the first, though both bouts of unconsciousness were chemically induced. Regardless, any loss of consciousness can be bad. The more times you lose consciousness in your life, the worse off you are, such as with Second Impact Syndrome. Generally your doctor would not recommend such instances more than once every 18 months as the cumulative effect can result in long-term neurologic and functional deficits, kind of like most any retired boxer, or in other emotional disturbances such as with Ernest Hemingway. Sure she's hot now, but soon all of her children will be named Alice and she'll be found running through the streets of Pamplona.
He died as he lived.
[50 First Dates: you will have issues remembering things.
Though in the movie Drew Barrymore is given a fictionalized form of anterograde amnesia, she still functions as a normal part of everyday society despite the fact that she is unable to form new memories. Daily her family relives her birthday until Adam Sandler steps in and decides to brutalize her with the truth of her condition, daily. Trust me when I say that you will be the first person to remember it when you have memory issues. The last thing you want is for some well meaning soul (pronounced, asshole) to continually remind you of it.
This is the type of person that isn't allowed outside unescorted. Sure the movie may seem cute and romantic, but the fact that Adam Sandler has to get his game on daily for this woman makes him more the type to opt for a windowless van than cheeky video tapes.
Remember me?
Hard to Kill: you may have some anger issues.
This is the cliched meeting our hero in lying a coma for several years, alone in a hospital bed with a building sense of pending doom. We meet the henchmen followed by some harrowing escape. They did get the reality of the situation right in that you will need something to facilitate your mobility such as a wheel chair or in this case, a bed with wheels on it while you're in the hospital because really you're going to need it unless you would like to develop an intimate relationship with the floor. They did miss that you get a cadre of therapists that will help you redevelop everything from learning to swallow your food and talk, to controlling the urge to snap the neck of every ass-clown you meet. Unfortunately people are going to piss you off by the shear fact that they are trying to be helpful meaning family, friends, and healthcare providers. Maybe Hollywood got that last part right and Steven Seagal just had something to fixate on. It really makes me want to know what was written on the note that he sent Kelly LeBrock to Chinatown with. It was for his “herbs and needles,” I'm sure.
Roid-rage: it does a revenge good.
Rocky II: this will not make your relationship stronger.
Here we find the stereotypical down and out boxer working to get back into the ring against his wife's wishes when she goes into labor and falls into a coma. Rocky, being the loving husband stays by her side, refusing to see the baby until she wakes up so they can meet him together...awe. Her eyes flutter. They stare lovingly into each other and in her drug induced haze, consents to his re-entering the ring.
Divorce rates among couples where one spouse has incurred a head injury are reported to be as high as 78%, significantly higher than the general population. This has much to do with the strain such injuries place on a relationship because the person emerging from the injury is not always the same person they were before. In reality she would have probably woken up confused and very agitated, but considering that she's cool with his decision, her first act was probably to go change diapers, and for the fact that she folded faster than Superman on laundry day suggests that she was either already beaten, or it was the equivalent of her saying, 'fine'.
Don't make me tell you again.
Kill Bill Vol. I: your last employer may not be happy to see you.
Again with the cliched meeting our hero in lying a coma for several years, alone in a hospital bed with a villain thoughtful enough to have called ahead for an orchestra to play an ominous tune as they enter the hall. We're so used to seeing it as a plot device that we naturally expect to see some dramatic turn of events the moment our hero wakes up. A quick closeup of the eye suddenly opening and , BAM! Someone needs to restock cans of Whoop-Ass on isle five. A few scenes later and they're back on their game without having spent a single montage on physical, or even vocational rehabilitation.
The truth of the matter is that returning to your previous line of work will be difficult, at best. If your job requires learning new information or you are a student, you might want to consider a new field. I'd recommend something that doesn't involve much math or learning a new language, because you're going to have enough difficulty speaking your native language as it is.
Now try it just like I said it, “booobsza”.
Will Gabrielle Giffords return to politics? Why is that player such a pussy and can't just walk it off? Why does that soldier think he deserves a Purple Heart for a bump on his head? Why does that boxer talk funny? Where's my shoe? All these questions and more will not be answered. I just want to reset your expectations about the walking wounded.
7 Facts About Head Injuries that Hollywood Almost Got Right
Most humor writers rely on a form of situational irony to get the point across to the reader. Indeed that is the forum of great philosophers called Cracked.com. In turn, fiction writers rely on an unspoken agreement with their audience that a suspension of belief is required. Viewers though do not always get the memo. They're here to watch stuff and not get all caught up in details like reading unless it's followed by something of onomatopoeic value. This approach to life may all be well and fine when picking softdrinks, clothes, and romantic partners, but decisions on long term health care are not ones that should be influenced by seeing Uma Thurman will herself to move her big toe.
Coma in Hollywood is the ultimate failure of plot device. TV and movies give us the “sleeping beauty” version of coma that features a healthy, tanned individual with muscle tone. Now by tanned I don't mean like they just came back from a Caribbean vacation. I mean they don't look like that sandwich you bought from the gas station that's been laying under fluorescent lights for the last 17 days. Never mind the lack of feeding tubes, monitors, catheters, and the occasional ventilator. The audience wants to believe that all is OK and that losing consciousness is just like sleeping. The fact is though, the longer that you're in one, medically induced or otherwise, the less likely you are to be much more than drooling meat sack when you wake up. On the plus side, you're going to lose a lot of weight. The down side being that most of it will be muscle mass. There's an excellent chance that you'll lose a few IQ points as well.
The medical industry literally has a detailed character description for the taking, and writers piss it away every time. On that it should be explained that there are two types of brain injury. There is the obvious Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and the not-so-obvious, Acquired Brain Injury (ABI), each having it's own list of causes. For those two types of brain injury, medical professionals also have a means of grading them that clearly fiction writers tend to overlook. The Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) was created to assess the status of the central nervous system on a spectrum. The Ranchos Los Amigos Scale (RAS) was developed as a way to gauge cognitive and behavioral presentations of patients as they emerge from coma. A patient scoring at the top of both scales would be considered perfectly normal; at the bottom, dead. If the dead person scores higher, run.
You see it's all right here in the charts. There was no injury, they're just stupid.
Fortunately I'm here to help you separate the bullshit. Having been there myself gives me license to bitch. The last thing on my mind when I woke up wasn't so much about “Who's next?” as it was, “Where the fuck am I?”, “Where's the bathroom?”, and “What's wrong with my legs?” in that order. It is a tremendous exercise in humility having petite Asian women that you did not hire pick you up off the floor and hold your junk so you can pee in a bottle in the middle of a dimly lit room. It's like being black-out drunk, but horrifyingly sober. So congratulations! You now have a head injury. Let's see some what you can expect.
The Dead Zone: your head hurts for a reason.
The television show, The Dead Zone itself was one starring Anthony Michael Hall based on the character played by Christopher 'freakin' Walken based on a book written by Stephen King where our hero wakes after a six year coma to find the world he knew is no longer available, which in reality can happen after just a couple days of calling in sick to work. The injury itself causes our hero's brain (Walken's, not Hall's) to remap itself around the injured areas with a side of awakening precognitive abilities.
In reality these dead zones are caused by Axonal Shear, which is the term used to describe the severing of nerve fibers in the brain. The inside of your brain case is much different from the outside, and unlike the TV series, is full of points. Your brain being really just a big ball of fat with some fibers running through it tears against these points during an injury and scar tissue begins to form around the severed neurons creating 'dead zones'. Your brain eventually remaps around these areas in order to transmit, store, and retrieve information. The term for this is neuroplasticity, which probably was King's first choice of title for the book.
Ewwww, it's all bruised.
28 Days Later and The Walking Dead: you will have to learn to walk again.
These are the same programs and I will treat them as such. Atlanta, London, they're both places I haven't been and both have had governments that the United States once beat into submission so yep, they're the same. In those places we find our unshaven hero waking up alone in a barricaded hospital room slightly confused to find a post-apocalyptic scene has unfolded around them. Determined, he makes his way back home and witness' varying degrees of horror on the way, one by one collecting the shattered pieces of his past.
Though this may sound like your typical Sunday morning, sans the taste of weed and hooker spit in your mouth from the night before, this guy wasn't even sleeping off that much. I mean at the very least he should have woken in puddle of his own urine since the catheter was not an issue, and trust me, they are. Beyond that he would have been zombie chow since muscular atrophy in the legs would have been the worst possible thing to need therapy for in a zombie apocalypse. Muscular atrophy is the same reason that astronauts on extended trips to space exercise furiously and still experience muscle loss. Sedentary jobs have similar effects so you might want to get out of that chair.
Because even Tom Hanks could beat your ass.
Resident Evil I and II: multiple bouts of unconsciousness are a bad thing.
OK she wasn't in a 'coma' per se, but she did lose consciousness in both movies, and it's Milla Jovovich, naked. We cannot have a serious conversation about brain injuries without a naked Milla Jovovich. End of argument.
It was more of a concussion really in the first, though both bouts of unconsciousness were chemically induced. Regardless, any loss of consciousness can be bad. The more times you lose consciousness in your life, the worse off you are, such as with Second Impact Syndrome. Generally your doctor would not recommend such instances more than once every 18 months as the cumulative effect can result in long-term neurologic and functional deficits, kind of like most any retired boxer, or in other emotional disturbances such as with Ernest Hemingway. Sure she's hot now, but soon all of her children will be named Alice and she'll be found running through the streets of Pamplona.
He died as he lived.
[50 First Dates: you will have issues remembering things.
Though in the movie Drew Barrymore is given a fictionalized form of anterograde amnesia, she still functions as a normal part of everyday society despite the fact that she is unable to form new memories. Daily her family relives her birthday until Adam Sandler steps in and decides to brutalize her with the truth of her condition, daily. Trust me when I say that you will be the first person to remember it when you have memory issues. The last thing you want is for some well meaning soul (pronounced, asshole) to continually remind you of it.
This is the type of person that isn't allowed outside unescorted. Sure the movie may seem cute and romantic, but the fact that Adam Sandler has to get his game on daily for this woman makes him more the type to opt for a windowless van than cheeky video tapes.
Remember me?
Hard to Kill: you may have some anger issues.
This is the cliched meeting our hero in lying a coma for several years, alone in a hospital bed with a building sense of pending doom. We meet the henchmen followed by some harrowing escape. They did get the reality of the situation right in that you will need something to facilitate your mobility such as a wheel chair or in this case, a bed with wheels on it while you're in the hospital because really you're going to need it unless you would like to develop an intimate relationship with the floor. They did miss that you get a cadre of therapists that will help you redevelop everything from learning to swallow your food and talk, to controlling the urge to snap the neck of every ass-clown you meet. Unfortunately people are going to piss you off by the shear fact that they are trying to be helpful meaning family, friends, and healthcare providers. Maybe Hollywood got that last part right and Steven Seagal just had something to fixate on. It really makes me want to know what was written on the note that he sent Kelly LeBrock to Chinatown with. It was for his “herbs and needles,” I'm sure.
Roid-rage: it does a revenge good.
Rocky II: this will not make your relationship stronger.
Here we find the stereotypical down and out boxer working to get back into the ring against his wife's wishes when she goes into labor and falls into a coma. Rocky, being the loving husband stays by her side, refusing to see the baby until she wakes up so they can meet him together...awe. Her eyes flutter. They stare lovingly into each other and in her drug induced haze, consents to his re-entering the ring.
Divorce rates among couples where one spouse has incurred a head injury are reported to be as high as 78%, significantly higher than the general population. This has much to do with the strain such injuries place on a relationship because the person emerging from the injury is not always the same person they were before. In reality she would have probably woken up confused and very agitated, but considering that she's cool with his decision, her first act was probably to go change diapers, and for the fact that she folded faster than Superman on laundry day suggests that she was either already beaten, or it was the equivalent of her saying, 'fine'.
Don't make me tell you again.
Kill Bill Vol. I: your last employer may not be happy to see you.
Again with the cliched meeting our hero in lying a coma for several years, alone in a hospital bed with a villain thoughtful enough to have called ahead for an orchestra to play an ominous tune as they enter the hall. We're so used to seeing it as a plot device that we naturally expect to see some dramatic turn of events the moment our hero wakes up. A quick closeup of the eye suddenly opening and , BAM! Someone needs to restock cans of Whoop-Ass on isle five. A few scenes later and they're back on their game without having spent a single montage on physical, or even vocational rehabilitation.
The truth of the matter is that returning to your previous line of work will be difficult, at best. If your job requires learning new information or you are a student, you might want to consider a new field. I'd recommend something that doesn't involve much math or learning a new language, because you're going to have enough difficulty speaking your native language as it is.
Now try it just like I said it, “booobsza”.
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