Wheel chair ski jump looks way more interesting than the regular sort.

A bit off topic but listen for the left ankle break(?) @1:23 of the guy in the fuschia colored shirt. You can also kinda see where it goes bad for him. It's why he ends up in that wheel chair it seems. Although @2:34 i hear someone (assume it's him) say "i don't think it's broken". I'm surprised he showed no sign of pain, as far as can be seen. Maybe adrenaline. Sure did sound nasty.

He has (or maybe had) a TV show that includes a character in a wheel chair so I'm guessing that character is based on his friend.

With that in mind here's a list of people that make me variously: scared, uncomfortable, upset and sometimes outright angry. I find it deeply unpleasant and sometimes disturbing to have to deal with them and I think life would be a lot better if we just locked them away.

Police
Politicians
Pro-lifers
Anyone who watches X-factor
Anyone who doesn't think the British royal family are murderous tyrants.
People who play music on their phone speakers on the bus/walking down the street.
People that use the term "free country" without irony.
The unregulated hyper rich over class.
Rugby players on a night out drinking.
People that advocate the death penalty.
Hyper nationalists.
Xenophobes, Racists and Homophobes.
The priesthood of amen/the brotherhood of shadow.
Young people in tracksuits/hoodies.
Anyone that uses the word "party" as a verb.
Practising Christians, Muslims and Jews (doubly so if they are raising their children religiously).
Hyper-Atheists.
Chimpanzees! (seriously, fuck the chimps they scare the shit out of me)
People that use the phrase "I just don't give a fuck" and actually mean it.
The Chinese scientists developing the "death robots" (you might laugh now....)

Whilst some are clearly more serious than others, all of the above represent things/traits which deeply concern me. Many of the people on that list I'd label as outright insane and/or seriously dangerous to my health and well being.

Some, were I to be confronted by them unexpectedly, would outright terrify me, much more so than that lady. There's a good chance that by simply responding with concern and a lack of antagonism she could have been talked down, but certainly pulling an incredulous expression and calling her a crazy lady is not likely to diffuse the situation one iota.

As I said before maybe she is a genuine danger to herself and others, such people do exist and there are systems in place to try and deal with it.

The issue here is that your not even remotely in a position to make that diagnosis, nor are any of us here. We don't know how serious her condition is or how likely she is to respond to various forms of treatment. Speculating based only on video's made during episodes (i.e. at her worst) with no context of her medical history just fuels the kind of knee jerk "lock them away" mindset that contributes heavily to these poor bastards getting the way they are in the 1st place.

For all you know a bit of in the community C.B.T. and mentoring might be all she needs/needed. Not everyone displaying psychotic symptoms benefits from or warrants full on institutional incarceration, it often makes things much worse.
She clearly needs/needed further investigation and perhaps having the benefit of her medical history and first hand interaction it might be reasonable to conclude that some form of isolation is needed. But I'd rather leave that down to those who are professionally qualified to make that judgement than bystanders who merely witnessed a few isolated psychotic episodes and know sweet F.A. about her as a person.

It's you that's failing to see the bigger picture here. You want to put her in a neat little box marked "crazy" so you don't have to face the implication that in some fundamental sense you are the same thing. The crazy person sits next to you on the bus and you think "I don't deserve to have to put up with this inconvenience. How dare they make me feel uncomfortable".......

....Do you have the remotest idea of the kind of deep lasting damage that does to a person when virtually everyone they ever meet thinks and behaves that way? How it feels for someone to just condemn you to be locked away without even attempting to understand what your all about?

It's only about 50 years ago that it was standard practice to basically label everything as just various forms of "madness" and lock them all away in the same building. While we've come along way there's still very much a ways to go and the public perception of acute psychotic illnesses is by far the most backwards.

If you'd said maybe she might need institutional treatment, or that you had concerns that the behaviour she displays could escalate to a violent incident (both legitimate concerns) then I wouldn't have reacted with such hostility.
But you didn't do that, you outright declared she that must be forcibly segregated and treated and moreover that she is definitely a danger to herself and others. No grey area, isolation is the only alternative!

I don't want this to descend into a personal attack, you might after all be a really nice person and this is a deeply rooted prejudice common to most people I come across. Much like many peoples homophobia isn't especially malicious it's just an unchallenged social convention (one fortunately that is changing).
But malicious or not the damage done is the same, for crazies, ethnic minorities and homosexuals alike. And I don't think its unfair to say that the "crazies" are the more vulnerable group by quite some margin.

You don't begrudge offering a little time and understanding for say a disabled person holding you up in a door way, why is taking a little step back when confronted with a "crazy" person so different? That postie clearly recognised she wasn't occupying the same reality as himself very quickly, but his response is to pull a face that says "what the fuck is your problem?" and just dismisses her as crazy. She might have calmed down and gone away peacefully in the space of a few mins if he'd tried to diffuse it, but he didn't, he escalated immediately. (because he's mentally ill too, just in a different way)
That's basically like someone getting in your way, you realizing its because they are in a wheel chair and then treating them like an arsehole because they had the indecency to be out in public and get in the way of the able bodied people! Those bloody cripples, they should be taken away for their own protection! (the fact the rest of us don't have to worry about dealing with them any more is just a bonus naturally )

Now obviously this is a somewhat flawed analogy as people with mobility impairments don't have heightened rates/likelihood of violent outbursts (though I'm sure there are plenty twats who just happen to be in wheelchairs). But the fundamental point I'm trying to make about how people treat the extravertly mentally ill stands. If your being directly threatened with no provocation is one thing, but this guy isn't he's just antagonising someone in a clear state of paranoia and delusion/misunderstanding (which he recognises within seconds). He doesn't even attempt to address that he just closes off and becomes passively hostile.
As I said before its understandable, but only in the same way as being frightened of homosexuality, alien cultures, physical disfigurement etc.. It's just cultural isolation, get to know a few people from any of those groups and it quickly starts to sublime into respect and understanding.

She didn't walk up to him screaming she walked up and firmly presented an accusation that the postman knew could not possibly have been true. She became aggressive/shouty only after he became dismissive, before that she was only restless and paranoid. And even then she didn't make any aggressive physical moves we can see. Postie doesn't look at all in fear for his safety to me, he turns his back on her several times and barely maintains eye contact, not the behaviour of someone that feels physically threatened!

How might she have reacted if postie had looked genuinely scared? Maybe she'd have backed off? Changed her attitude? And yeh maybe she'd have got even more threatening or attacked him with a stick too.

We don't know what she'd have done because we don't know her or anything about her other than a few paranoid videos on the internet. Leave the judgements to the people that have done the research, interviews etc. and know know what the fuck they are talking about with regards to this lady's condition and best treatment.

Speculation is one thing, outright declarations of fact is quite another. People are not guilty before you can prove their innocence...

Guns over Non-Lethal? You think you're going to win with that? Sorry but shooting someone because they're a danger to themselves, No doesn't fly. Shooting someone because they're a danger to others flies, if they're actually showing an intent to harm other people.

Shooting someone because they're endangering a cops life? Nope Nuh uh that's not how it works. Cops swear an oath to serve and protect, that means they put themselves UNDER everyone elses life in their district. So they risk being shot and stabbed and exhaust every option in order to stop someone without murdering them out of fear that they'll be hurt. They don't like it they don't have to take the job.

You don't just get to shoot people ever, not when they're not an immediate threat and not when you have options to take them down in non-lethal ways.

As far as the sifts opinion, we wouldn't give a fuck if they tazed a guy to the ground who had a knife in his hand. We get pissed when the people who get tazed are helpless, like that old grandma in a wheel chair.

The cop fucked up, and that crowd fucked up by not storming that building and killing all who stood in front of them. Only Murder will fix this situation now!

He didn't even hold the door for the wheel chair lady behind him.

*law

Apparently he has legs, or at least one (he only straps for the first set of layups) and he is both able to bend and straighten at least the one leg out for his flat layups. At the same time being in a wheel chair all his life has lead to a) lighter body mass and b) he only ever uses his upper muscles. I won't discredit anyone who keeps in shape in today's world, but due to this kids circumstances he uses his arms to make up for what ever his legs cant do.

I used to write software for a company that made power wheel chair electronics. There was one guy who had set up a website featuring reviews of power wheel chairs on mountain bike tracks, going over jumps etc.

I always admired that guy. If you have to have a wheelchair, may as well get the most out of it.

Turned out his reviews were so popular that he would gets thousands of dollars worth of free gear from wheelchair companies looking for a recommendation.

I think her point wasn't to just go scuba-diving. Sure she could have just paddled around in the water if she wanted a nice swim.

It was to deconstruct/reconstruct the preconceived icon that is "The Wheel Chair" into something that would be as empowering and symbolic to everyone else as it is to the artist.

"Transcendent" isn't the right word, but it's the first word that comes to mind.

>> ^RFlagg:

So can somebody explain the diaper he wears when not in the wheel chair? Is it to protect his stuff, which when he was spinal walking appeared to be out, or for some other purpose?


Or maybe pooping?

*music

I once had a cat that had a spinal cord injury...he could not relieve his bladder or his bowels because of it...I'm guessing this injury perhaps he does not have control over those two functions.>> ^RFlagg:

So can somebody explain the diaper he wears when not in the wheel chair? Is it to protect his stuff, which when he was spinal walking appeared to be out, or for some other purpose?

So can somebody explain the diaper he wears when not in the wheel chair? Is it to protect his stuff, which when he was spinal walking appeared to be out, or for some other purpose?

Hell my dad worked at GM. There was a guy there who begged right outside the plant. The guy made so much money he had a driver who drove a brand new Cadillac sitting around the corner so he could get in and warm up between shift changes. Very few people caught on, even after my dad told them what the guy was doing...they thought my dad was just being an asshole for not giving the guy money.

It's a shitty thing to do, but it's not much different than people who work the same job as you and complaining about not having enough money and need a few bucks over and over. Especially once you find out that they don't have kids or the majority of the expenses you do and probably spend their money getting drunk or pissing it away in some other fashion.



Is it fraud......technically yes. But considering on the scale of things, it's not much different than the sales guy who tells you what you want to hear about something and has to be asked question after question to get an honest non-deflected answer from the guy. Beggar could have hurt their back in an accident, they are just letting you fill in the extent of the injury with your imaginings. Hell I've hurt my back bending over picking something up......if I show up in a wheel chair and tell you I hurt my back when I was lifting........ and that's all you ask most people would assume something heavy or weights.

>> ^GenjiKilpatrick:

paralyzed at five weeks.. and no thought to get him one of those animal wheel chairs yet?


Not everyone is a Genius like you seem to be.