Bullies don't deserve your sympathy.

I feel satisfied that if the bully was winning that sparing match he wouldn't have been so restrained, his prison record reinforces that theory.

The only obvious sign of brain injury I saw was the asshat driving an hour to try to bully a boxing coach. He wasn't pounding him in the head, he was more pushing him to the floor. I saw a boxer jabbing at 10% power vs an arrogant bully throwing haymakers who thought he's the toughest person around. Sometimes the only one who can teach humility is the ground.

I think he learned that lesson, he seemed like a good teacher to me.

I see a pair of assholes in this video.

First indication:
"After I showed him my crutches he went on to call me a pussy and said are you backing out."

Fighting someone because they called you a pussy and then continuing to punch them in the head after obvious signs of brain injury...
Yeah, you're an awesome teacher.

"Aside from Tourette's, brain injuries, strokes, dementia , seizures and many other forms neurological damage can usher the onset of coprolalia as well. It is known to be caused by brain dysfunction, but the details are, as yet, hazy. One hypothesis, described by psychologist Timothy Jay in his book "Why We Curse" (John Benjamins Pub Co. 2000), suggests that it's caused by damage to the amygdala, a region of the brain that normally mitigates anger and aggression. Because cursing is a form of verbal aggression, amygdala damage could result in the inability to control aggression, including verbal aggression, or cursing."
http://www.livescience.com/33384-tourette-syndrome-people-curse-uncontrollably.html

Having worked a lot with people with brain injuries I am convinced helmets are essential for a lot of things. Now I just need to remember to buy myself one...

Listened to this the other day.

Everyone pretty much ignored the philosopher because he had nothing substantive to say in a debate grounded in fact.

Traumatic brain injury can result in significant personality changes, and I recall reading on occasion that one of these can be a predisposition to religious belief (can't find a source right now).

I wonder if this is the case for the neurosurgeon here as nothing he says really explains why what he perceived wasn't simply imagined reality.

I thought the really straightforward and clear cut rebuttal here from the con side was that people's interpretations of the afterlife always seem to mirror what their religious upbringing would have assumed to be the case.

Also, that of course no revelatory information seeming to confirm the veracity of the experience (say the location of a valuable buried family heirloom) has ever been recorded to occur.

To say we haven't hyper masculinized our culture is just plain ignorant. If you look throughout history, you can see the gradual progression towards an ungodly amount of "manliness". Same goes for women too. A lot simply comes down to advertising and commercialization, the segmentation of the have's and have not's and so forth.

You want to have respect? Be a man! Want money? Be a man! But what IS being a man? Is it punching some dude in the face for "disrespecting" you? Or if it laughing it off knowing the other guy is just a loser?

In reality, it comes down to money. To people who are poor, violence is usually the solution. There is no question about that; statistically speaking poorer men are more likely to lash out violently than those with more. Mostly because the poor man only has his respect. The rich man, well, he could get sued, lose his job, get hurt, lose his house and fancy car etc.

Knowing this, how do you advertise to the male with little? You tell him if he wants to be anything, he needs to be a man! Like James Bond or something. 6-pack abs (despite a long history of that not being the ideal form, i.e. early black and white movies or dress makers changing the sizes of their clothes from a size 12 being "average" to a size 6.)

I know we love to say men are being feminized and turning into "wussies." Fox news loves talking about how the NFL is worried about brain injuries (despite all the evidence showing clearly there is a ton of it) and Christian groups claiming bullying is GOOD for society because it weeds out the gays. For a "man" to, I have no idea actually, whatever it is the Fox News thinks men should be . . . Are "men" supposed to always be violent? They should always resort to shooting each other over trivial things?

What exactly is "being a man" all about anyway? Not being gay? Not being like a woman? And why is being a woman, or gay, so terrible? Why is it that high heels and make up were originally a "man" thing? Or frilly clothes . . . Why is it that 100 years ago, little boys and girls wore the same clothes, which were usually dresses? Hell, Ernest Hemmingway (a man's man) wore a dress as a child. There are plenty of pictures of him in it, and it's even on display at his house in Key West. So is he less of a man now?

And if wearing a skirt is so not manly, why are Scot's so manly then? Or is it manly to say fuck society, I'll do what I want? Is it manly to go against the flow? Stand up for what you believe? For instance, the story of the father who wore dresses because his son wanted to wear a dress, and the father didn't want his son to feel ashamed for being who he is? I'm pretty sure that father, as some say, has some pretty big brass balls. Would you do that for your kid? Or would you bow to societal pressure instead?

A worthy topic of discussion . . . I mean, right after ending the pointless wars and stopping the NSA from finding out whether or not you wear your wife's panties . . .

How is this "poor support on the part of the VA"? Yes, clearly his pain was not being adequately addressed, but he got an extreme surgery at a private hospital without relief of his symptoms. In my opinion, the VA doctors did the right thing by not operating without knowing that it would improve his pain. Now he is in pain without bowel function, worse off than he was before. I don't know the details of his injuries, but some spinal cord injury and traumatic brain injury patients have neurogenic pain that is unrelieved by any intervention let alone surgery.

I have a good friend of mine that got hit hard by an IED in Iraq. He lost both his legs and suffered some serious brain injuries. It took him a year just to be able to talk again, but he persevered and recovered as one can from something like that. He eventually got an entry-level job working as a teller at a bank. Within 5 years, he had worked his way up to branch manager. He is now on the short list for the regional manager's slot. He has to work 10x harder than his peers to even be considered, but he does it because he wants to be better than "just a cripple" (his words).

Honestly, a lot of people make excuses for why they can't instead of making strides to make it happen for them. He could have done nothing for the rest of his life and lived off his disability and pension modestly, but he chose to be better than that and worked his ass of for his successes.

Sure, there are people out there that flat out can't work or can't function normally in society, but that is a tiny fraction of the world as a whole.

>> ^alien_conceptWhat about people with moderate learning difficulties, or disabilities? They're able to work, but not a chance in hell they could go into the army and take advantage of what they have to offer, or work in an IT department. I think the only people who believe in this dream are the ones who are lucky enough to have had it happen for them. Not everyone is in the same position as you were or are now. Some people will never be able to have a good job, because they just aren't able.

Also from the Wikipedia:

Zolpidem (Ambien) may provide short-lasting but effective improvement in symptoms of aphasia present in some survivors of stroke. The mechanism for improvement in these cases remains unexplained and is the focus of current research by several groups, to explain how a drug which acts as a hypnotic-sedative in people with normal brain function, can paradoxically increase speech ability in people recovering from severe brain injury. Use of zolpidem for this application remains experimental at this time, and is not officially approved by any pharmaceutical manufacturers of zolpidem or medical regulatory agencies worldwide

I found this as I was all WTF am I watching-

Not sure too highly of the credibility but it makes a story-

"Man with brain injury thinks he is talking normally, except he only says tono. Unless he's counting.
It's not only Broca's Aphasia, which destroys the ability to form language into spoken words, but it must be something impaired in the way his brain assigns thoughts and internal grammar/statements/vocabulary into muscle-produced syllables.

It obviously seems like he knows he's talking about something in detail, it's just that the last stage of language production - the formation of mouthed words - is impaired. The counting thing just boggles my mind."

- http://xmb.stuffucanuse.com/xmb/viewthread.php?tid=6724

thanks. I think Yogi's is better...the problem being that it's so subtle I can't tell if he did it on purpose.

In reply to this comment by berticus:
i felt the need to tell you that i LOLd for realz when i read that. there was even a snort.
good job son.

In reply to this comment by rottenseed:
me to had brian injury in football to injured my brain when i was playing football.>> ^Yogi:

This is why when people bring up that Rugby is tougher I laugh because I have permanent brain damage the idiots.

i felt the need to tell you that i LOLd for realz when i read that. there was even a snort.
good job son.

In reply to this comment by rottenseed:
me to had brian injury in football to injured my brain when i was playing football.>> ^Yogi:

This is why when people bring up that Rugby is tougher I laugh because I have permanent brain damage the idiots.

me to had brian injury in football to injured my brain when i was playing football.>> ^Yogi:

This is why when people bring up that Rugby is tougher I laugh because I have permanent brain damage the idiots.