Night Owls Rejoice! The Truth About Sleep

by interestingfacts.com    About 35 percent of American adults get less than seven hours of sleep a night, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). That’s not enough.    Often we either can’t get to sleep, or we think of sleep as wasted time. What actually goes on while we’re lying there? Why are …

A New Tool In The Fight For Braille Literacy

by Kevin Burton    Last week we ran a story about subjects that are either gone from classrooms or close to it (“Subjects No Longer Taught (Much) In Schools,” March 6.)    That got me thinking about Braille.     While growing up at the Ohio State School for the Blind, I just assumed that all …

British Businesses Say No To The Blind

by Sophie Huskisson The Daily Mirror    Twenty percent of businesses say they would not be willing to adapt their workplaces to employ a blind or partially sighted person, research has found.    One in five companies said adjustments to make their firm more accessible would be too costly, with nearly half not knowing how …

High-Tech Glove Combats Parkinson’s

From todayonline.com LAS VEGAS —Roberta Wilson-Garrett looked at the glove keeping her right hand steady and smiled.    At bay for the moment were tremors caused by Parkinson’s disease affecting her muscle control. She could do things others take for granted, such as write crisply with a pen or hold a cup of coffee without spilling. …

Retronyms: The New Defining The Old

by Kevin Burton    We all know that time marches on. So does technology and so does the language we use to describe it.    Today from our friends at Merriam-Webster dictionary, we get some phrases made necessary by those inexorable marches. They are called retronyms. Think of them as a blast to the past. …

One Final Encore For The Beatles

by Kevin Burton    I’m guessing the final Beatles song, to be released later this week, will be neither a bang, nor a whimper.    Or maybe it will be a bang, and a whimper and everything in between. That would be fitting for a band that was and is “ way beyond compare” to …

Here’s Yet Another Label For The Disabled

by Kevin Burton In at least one part of the world, people with disabilities are called “people of determination.” Have you ever heard of that?    I had not. But I found a story about an expo where devices for the disabled were on display. (I include part of that story below).That story referred to …

Discrimination Common For The Disabled

by Julia Metraux Mother Jones    After becoming blind in his late 20s, designer and artist Marco Salsiccia had to learn to navigate the world through assistive technology—like a screen reader, software that speaks digital text and image descriptions aloud.    Leveraging that experience, Salsiccia began work as an accessibility specialist, eventually working part-time at a well-known …

How Many Fantasy Teams Are Too Many?

by Kevin Burton    If having one fantasy football team is great fun (which it is), wouldn’t having more than one team be even more fun?    That is the question I asked last year, in my second year as a fantasy manager. I answered it in the affirmative. Yes indeed, great big ridiculous fun! …

Ten Brilliant Facts About Braille

by Kelli Finger (from Mental Floss website)    Braille is a tactile system that blind people use to learn to read and write, invented in 1824 by a blind French educator named Louis Braille.     He revolutionized an existing writing and reading system that allowed blind people to enjoy books  and communication. I certainly don’t know …