21st Century Deaf Beethoven

Looks like I spoke too soon again!

 "He's being hailed as a modern-day Beethoven - a performer and composer of exquisite classical music and an accomplished conductor, too."

(courtesy of Mail Online)

A native of South Wales in United Kingdom (England), Lloyd Coleman,  is taking the world of classical music by storm. His gift was discovered when he was only 5 years old. "He had perfectly drawn five stave lines, and then added notes to make his very first musical composition." He always carried paper in his pocket and continued to scribble whatever appeared in his head.

Currently a member of the National Youth Orchestra, he was offered a coveted place to study music at Oxford University. He is only 17 years old. "It comes as no surprise to learn that this extraordinary young man, blessed with a steely determination, has fulfilled his childhood dream by playing in the Royal Albert Hall. His mother says proudly, 'Lloyd now has a new ambition  -  to return there and conduct an orchestra during the Proms.' She pauses and adds, 'Knowing Lloyd, it is a case of when  -  not if  -  he will make it happen.'"

One more thing. He is not only Deaf, but he's also Blind!

So again, let me ask you, does music truly touch everyone's heart regardless?

World-renowned and Deaf mime

Continuing my thoughts about "Can Deaf "see/hear/feel/smell/taste" music?", I remembered of another video that I saw a while ago.

I'll tell you something. That guy is good.... His name is Max Fomitchev. He currently lives in Vancouver, Canada, but he's originally from Moscow in Russia. He started performing mime at age 13. You name it, he has done it. He did film, tv shows, tv commercials, theater, festivals, and many more. You can contact him to appear at your location. Check out his website, Max-i-mime.

Now, his next project is possibly the biggest project of his life.

http://www.seewhatimsayingmovie.com/

Sprint Relay Promo

Best of luck to him and all the entertainers in the project.

Does anyone else know of any other Deaf, DeafBlind, Hard of Hearing musician / entertainer ? 

Can Deaf "see/hear/feel/smell/taste" music?

A friend told me about a video clip that I had to watch.

After watching this, it brought up a classic question that has befuddled everyone, 

"Does music touch everyone's heart regardless?" 

Is everyone capable of experiencing the thrill of music? When Deaf people go to music clubs to dance, are they really 'dancing" to the music? When Deaf people crank up the music in their cars, are they really "enjoying" it?

Most people have told me:

• Yes I do "feel" music and I love it!
• I feel absolutely nothing and I don't care for it.
• Music gives me nausea.
• It depends on the situation. I can't hear it, but I like feel the vibrations when I am in a movie theater or something.

What about you? 

Modern "Deaf Joke" Economic Lesson

(This is a joke. It's not intended to offend anyone.)

 It's a slow day in a little East Texas town. The sun is beating down, and the streets are deserted.  Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody lives on credit.....

On this particular day Peter Cook, an ASL Poet from back east, is driving through town. He stops at the motel and lays a $100 bill on the desk saying he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one to spend the night.

As soon as Peter Cook walks upstairs, the owner, Bernard Bragg, grabs the bill and runs next door to pay his debt to the beautician, Laurent Clerc.

Laurent Clerc takes the $100 and runs down the street to retire his debt to the law firm of Alexander Bell, Marlee Matlin, and Robert Weibrecht (BMW).

Bell, Matlin, Weibrecht (BMW) take the $100 and head off to the bank of DeafRead to pay their bill off to Helen Keller.

Helen Keller takes the $100 and runs to pay her gambling debt to the booker, Dummy Hoy, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer his “services” on credit.

Dummy Hoy rushes to the hotel and pays off his room bill to Bernard Bragg.

Bernard Bragg then places the $100 back on the counter so Peter Cook will not suspect anything.

At that moment Peter Cook comes down the stairs, picks up the $100 bill, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, pockets the money, and leaves town.

No one produced anything.. No one earned anything.  

However, the whole town is now out of debt and now looks to the future with a lot more optimism.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how the United States Government is conducting business today.

Videophones coming to school buses

We already can access to TVs and Internet inside airplanes and cars. So why can't we do that for school buses???

Well, guess what??? Now you can! :)

"Internet buses may soon be hauling children to school in many other districts, particularly those with long bus routes. The company marketing the router, Autonet Mobile, says it has sold them to schools or districts in Florida, Missouri and Washington, D.C." (Internet Bus)

I am constantly impressed by people's ideas! It's amazing what we can come up and how we apply our ideas. 

Soon, we'll be able to access to the Internet anywhere in the world. I can't wait! How about you?

A sure-fire way to fix our economy

Due to the recession in our current economy, many articles are emerging about how to restore our economy. How do we become the best economy in the world once again? Many economists, politicians, historians, and others offer a wide range of solutions. Interestingly enough, while I do enjoy reading these articles with different solutions, there is a common ground that keep appearing among all of these articles....

Innovation

Yep, Simple as that. "Ultimately, innovation is what allows an economy to grow quickly and create new jobs as old ones obsolesce and disappear. Typically, one salutary side effect of recessions is that they eventually spur booms in innovation. Some laid-off employees become entrepreneurs, working on ideas that have been ignored by corporate bureaucracies, while sclerotic firms in declining industries fail, making way for nimbler enterprises." (source). I'll give you few easy examples:

• Whitcomb Judson and his zipper
• Henri Nestlé and his Nestle Company which is the world's largest food and beverage company.
• Henry Ford and his cars
• James Marsters and his TTY / TDD
• Pierre Omidyar and his Ebay.com

it can be a simple innovation such as a zipper to something complicating like the Internet. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, start being creative and imagine!!!!!! Soon and sure enough, you can change the world, create jobs, become a millionaire or even a billionaire. There's no limits to our imagination and innovation. What's stopping you????? Go for it! :)

Facebook for Deaf

I found a version of Facebook for the “Deaf, Hard-of-Hearing, Interpreters, Teachers of the Deaf, Late-Deafened Adults, CODAs, Friends/Neighbors of the Deaf, Allies/Colleagues of the Deaf, Deaf-Curious, Parents/Siblings of the Deaf.”

Based on my first impression of the website, it looks open source yet professional. It made me excited like a little boy in a candy store. They offered so many features: Forum, Blogs, Games, World Map, Shoutbox (a feature that acts like Facebook's status messages.),  Videos, Statistics, Members, Events, Polls, Youtube, Chat and even more after registration.

The registration process is fairly simple and only took me about 1 minute to sign up. That was nice. Then it took me to my account page That’s when the reality hits like a hard jawbreaker. I became overwhelmed. I often became confused about what to do next. Should I look at videos? How do I find friends? How can I post a picture? History has taught me that too many choices can be a dangerous thing... Haha.

Anyway, after playing around some more, there are some features that I particularly like a lot. For instance, I can view all members and filter it based on many different choices: latest activity, registration date, with photos only, gender, age, birthday, country, etc. See what I mean below.

 

However, I began to look for a way to log out and I assumed it would be simple enough. Well, it ended up taking me 5 minutes to figure it out! It never struck me it would be here… (see pic).

Perhaps creativity has its boundaries with usability.

Nevertheless, it’s definitely worth a look. J. It’ll take time to get used to the new website. The biggest advantage for this version of Facebook is that there’s already a common interest established among each other. Everyone has some kind of affiliation with Deafness such as they may be Deaf, a Deaf advocate, someone who is curious in learning ASL, and etc. Go check it out!

http://www.deafpals.com/

Can you imagine yourself Deaf or Blind or Both?

 Stephyn Duck, 20, a junior psychology major at Wofford College, has spent the past couple of weeks depriving himself of his sight and hearing. It's been frustrating not being able to read books or hear chirping birds.

His goal is to gather data on whether his other senses will improve while he's unable to see and hear, but he's most interested in how he's treated.

What would the social ramifications be?

Well, first of all, KUDOS to him for taking such a challenge. The first thought that comes to my mind is a famous quote by Helen Keller. "Blindness separates us from things, but deafness separates us from people." Think about it. Imagine yourself sitting in the middle of a food court at a mall. Go ahead and close your eyes. You can still hear everything around you. People talking, footsteps, making noises while eating their food, ice cream machine humming, and etc. It'll be difficult for you to find a shoe store without asking for someone to take you there. Blindness limits your freedom to move around. Then on the other hand, open your eyes and put ear plugs into your ears. Now you either barely can or can't hear people talking, footsteps, making noises while eating their food, ice cream machine humming, and etc. Although, it'll be a piece of cake for Deaf people to navigate their way into a shoe store, but it won't be too easy to ask for assistance on your shoes. Deafness limits your freedom to communicate freely. Blind people say, "I can't imagine myself being Deaf." Deaf people say, "I can't imagine myself being Blind." It's an interesting dilemma.

Anyway, we often overlook the 5 senses that make up our lives. It's human nature. We tend to think about either ourselves or tangible objects. "How can I be rich?" "I want a Hannah Montana pants." I want my mother to make me a homemade dinner now." But we don't think about how our tastes determine what makes food so delicious or not. We don't think about how our eyes get us to places and people. We don't think about how our ability to feel helps us to determine if something is hot or cold. We don't think about how our nose is used to detect chemicals such as perfumes or even better, body odor. Haha. Finally, we don't think about how we use our hearing to distinguish sounds.

I'm anxious to find out what he gotta say about this afterwards! Wofford Article.

Do Deaf people hear in their dreams?

Whoo, I just woke up from a dream. I already forgot what it was about. Haha. However, I do recall two things that seems quite contradictory to each other. I was debating with a Hearing man and a Deaf man. The hearing man was talking and instead of lip-reading him, the Deaf man and I listened with our ears. Yes, we actually heard him. Then the Deaf man signed pure ASL with his voice turned off completely. The Hearing man and I understood him through our eyes. Finally, when I talked, I actually signed and talked at same time. The Hearing man never looked at me. He "heard" me while the Deaf man did look at me.

After waking up, I began to wonder:

1. How do Deaf people process language in their mind? 
2. When Deaf people read a book, do they see people signing? Do they see pictures? Do they "hear" it? 
3. In their dreams, do Deaf people hear everything? Do they sign? Feel? 

I googled it up and I found only two common answers... 

• "Research suggests deaf people who have some ability to phonologically encode letters and words are the best readers." In other words, they hear it in their Deaf minds. 
• Deaf people visualize and feel the words.
• i.e. "A beautiful woman is crying for Help". Some Deaf people would visualize a beautiful woman and she is signing "Help." 

I'll tell you how I process language. 

H +  = Hear (or here).

I combine both sounds and pictures in my head. This kind of thinking is called, "Rebus." This kind of thinking seems not to be too common among people. Go figure.

Link 1
Link 2
Link 3

Tell me.... How do you process Langauge in your head? Do you sign in your dream? Do you hear when you're reading a book? 

Goodbye to Flashing Fire Alarm, Hello to Wasabi Fire Alarm!!!!!

Well, I did not expect this........ This is truly a bizarre idea... So bizarre that it might work!

Imagine this.... You're sleeping peacefully in your bed and dreaming about World Peace. Suddenly, the fire alarm goes off and everyone in the building evacuates.... except you. Why is that? Because you are Deaf. you didn't hear the fire alarm. Additionally, the fire alarm wasn't hooked up to your vibrating bed or perhaps, the flashing light wasn't bright enough to wake you up. Great! Here comes tons of medical bills, therapy, and lawsuits. Tsk! Tsk!

That doesn't sound a very pleasant situation to be in. Unfortunately, that's something many Deaf people have experienced at least once in their lifetime. I, too, did experience it when I was a student in college. Ouch!

Well, no more worries!!! A Japanese company has developed a fire alarm that alerts people with impaired hearing by emitting the strong smell of wasabi. That's right! You heard me. WASABI!

"We tested many different scents, but we found that the chemical components of wasabi make if difficult for people not to wake up when it is released," said Chigusa Shimokawa of Seems, a Tokyo company that is distributing the Wasabi Odour fire alarm. "We tried peppermint, lavender and many others, but none of them worked like wasabi being sprayed into a room." 

Seemsis planning to open a global sales campaign soon. So watch out for Wasabi!

The only 2 questions I have are:

1. What about those Deaf people who cannot smell? Will it still be effective?
2. How do we clean it up afterwards? 

For more details: go here. 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/7128477/Wasabi-fire-alarm-alerts-deaf-in-Japan.html

Hate Crime and the Deaf

This is actually quite fascinating!

Carl Schroeder is an American Sign Language Studies professor at Western Oregon University. He's also the president of the Oregon Association of the Deaf (OAD). He gave a lecture in Portland about "Hate Crime and the Deaf." 

"Key to understanding Schroeder’s mission is a rejection of audism—a term he defines as “the belief that the ability to hear and speak is better than being Deaf”—and the belief that ASL is in any way less of a language than spoken languages."

Carl Schroeder 

To read more about it;

• Article:
•  http://www.disabilityrightsoregon.org/hate-crime-and-the-deaf-understanding-american-sign-language-wars
• Carl Schroeder 's Website
• http://hatedeaf.com + His dvd will be coming out soon.

Classic Deaf Video Clips

These are some of our favorite classics in the Deaf community.. They are quite entertaining!.Enjoy!

Fastest Hands in the West

Deaf Ninja: Origin

Deaf Ninja: DN vs TF

I'll keep trying to find some more. Some are difficult to find online. Anyone knows where I can find "Fingerspelling Champion" (a male reporter telling a story about Marlee Matlin and Heather Whitestone IN FINGERSPELLING) ?