Imagine this: you live in a fairly remote place and need emergency eye surgery to save your sight that very same day. you get onto a plane but mid-trip
your flight gets cancelled because of a technical problem. flying with most airlines we know would mean you'd miss your surgery and be in a pretty tough spot.
but not when you're flying SAS. instead of leaving you stranded with a voucher, the airline found a replacement aircraft at another airport,
flew it over to the passenger and got her to her surgery on time (
original article). there is a lot going wrong in the airline industry these days but in my book that's pretty awesome.
posted by krautland
on Apr 12, 2011 -
76 comments
'Twas blind, but now I see? — Virgil surgically regained his sight after nearly 50 years of blindness: "
On the day he returned home after the bandages were removed, his house and its contents were unintelligible to him, and he had to be led up the garden path, led through the house, led into each room, and introduced to each chair." In the end, he and
others like him
[PDF] would have rather stayed in the
Country of the Blind.
(A happier ending was the more recent case of Mike Mays, previously posted here.)
posted by cenoxo
on Jun 17, 2006 -
19 comments
Seeing with sound.
A researcher in the Netherlands has developed a system that converts pictures from a head-mounted camera into highly complex soundscapes, which are then piped to the user via headphones. After only a week of use, a woman who has been blind from birth can tell a CD from a floppy, and discern whether the lights are on or off. Not quite up to either a
bat and/or Daredevil standards, but very cool nonetheless.
posted by Irontom
on Oct 14, 2003 -
5 comments
The gift of sight is easy to take for granted. Not for
Mike May, blinded in infancy, Mike had partial vision restored at the age of 43.
This is his journal, written with infectious delight for his new gift and documenting the unexpected problems that the miracle brings. There's much, much more to vision than
just the data and Mike is an unprecedented opportunity to better understand how perception works.
[via the Guardian and previously mentioned here]
posted by grahamwell
on Aug 26, 2003 -
14 comments
A set of 24 colour blindness tests I picked up this link from the comments in another forum, somebody mentioned they were colour blind and provided a link to these tests. Interestingly the colour blind can also see stuff that normally sighted people can't.
[more inside]
posted by substrate
on Mar 6, 2003 -
40 comments
Re-Shape Your Eyes While You Sleep? Wow - I don't know about you, but if I could wear contacts during my sleep that I *took out* when I woke up and didn't have to wear any all day,
and I could
see, then I'd do it in a second. When will it become reasonably priced?
posted by djspicerack
on Sep 26, 2002 -
25 comments
Virtual light - "...the wires plug into Patient Alpha's head like a pair of headphones plug into a stereo. The actual connection is metallic and circular, like a common washer. So seamless is the integration that the skin appears to simply stop being skin and start being steel."
Cameras that jack into a blind man's brain, allowing him to 'see' may soon be here.
posted by GriffX
on Aug 14, 2002 -
23 comments
