Man's deafness cured after a TOOTH is removed from ear!!!

For more than 30 years Stephen Hirst was in constant pain and partially deaf because of excruciating earache.But that is all in the past now after doctors found a TOOTH lodged in the former miner's ear.

Okay! Ladies and Gentlemen, start pulling your teeth!!!! (smile)

I cannot say if this is an actual prank or not.. But it seems to be true according to several sources online. Read for yourself.

Read more:

• http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1321482/Mans-33-year-earache-mystery-solved-doctors-pull-tooth-ear.html
• http://sify.com/news/uk-man-s-33-yr-old-ache-was-due-to-tooth-stuck-in-ear-news-international-kksrksaheaj.html
• http://www.medindia.net/news/Doctors-Remove-Tooth-from-Ear-75535-1.htm

Hearing loss hits 1 in 5 U.S. teens

One in five American teenagers now suffers from some type of hearing loss, an increase of 31% since the mid '90s, new research shows.(USA Today).

How should we react to this? 

• Will some Deaf people say "Hoorah!" because it can eventually lead to more exposure to the Deaf awareness and Deaf culture? 
• Will some Deaf people say "aww" because of the simple fact, they are losing their hearing?
• Or Deaf people just don't care due to the paradox of inclusion vs exclusion?

Furthermore, another section caught my attention.

"Other studies show that even a small hearing loss can harm a child's school performance, language development and social interactions, Shargorodsky says."

Do you agree with this? (Or have we proven them wrong?)

For full details of the article; go to USA Today.

Finally, Captioning for Deaf and Hard of Hearing at Sports Venues!!!

Here is some exciting news for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Community! Finally, I can go to a baseball stadium and enjoy Closed Captioning (CC) on the jumbo screen. Finally, I can go to Deaflympics and enjoy the CC. Finally, I can go to the Air & Space Museum and enjoy subtitles.

Debra Joyce, President of NJCaptions , and Jennifer Bonfilio, , President of Team Captioning, combined with more than 30 years of experience in providing captioning, have decided to work together and founded a new company, Coast 2 Coast Captioning… Coast 2 Coast Captioning will “provide Communication Access Realtime Technology (CART) and Open & Closed Captioning services to sports and entertainment stadiums, arenas, auditoriums, and other public venues, as well as meeting and conference centers nationwide.”

http://www.c2ccaptioning.com

"There has been a significant jump in the number of hard-of-hearing consumers who are requesting captioning." 

Coast 2 Coast Captioning works closely with organizations such as Association of Late-Deafened Adults (ALDA) and Hearing Loss Association of America (HLAA), to adhere to the parameters of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which requires accessibility for deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals in public places, and to provide the best experience and optimal communication for public safety.

Superbowl, here I come!!!!! haha.

DeafWeekly - Where do you find Deaf-related news

I am impressed with http://deafweekly.com/. It gathers all kinds of news relating to the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community from all over the world and puts the news on a central website. That is really neat. I took the liberty to contact Tom Willard, the founder of DeafWeekly.com and conduct a short interview with him via emails.

deafweekly

Here is what I have learned.

1) Is Deafweekly.com Deaf-owned?
Yes, I am the owner and I am deaf. I went deaf slowly between the ages of 8 and 22. I didn't have much exposure to the deaf world until I went to college at NTID/RIT but that was 30 years ago and I've been involved with the deaf community ever since..

2) How did you come up with the idea for Deafweekly?
I have a long history in deaf journalism going back to when I was editor of the NTID student newspaper. I was also editor of Silent News and Newswaves, two national newspapers for the deaf. When I started Deafweekly, there were some web services that listed deaf-related articles, but who had time to read them all? I decided that I would provide this service so that others could easily keep up with the deaf news just by reading Deafweekly. The first issue came out in Oct. 2004 and last October we marked our fifth anniversary. The first 4+ years, I wrote the whole thing myself, reading each article and writing capsule summaries. It got to be too much, and last July I switched to a different format and now I just include a brief portion of the stories with links to the full articles. By the way, most of the deaf-related print publications have gone out of business, killed by the Internet. I am glad to not have to pay printing and postage bills, as that was always a challenge.

3) Do you have any plans to expand or perhaps hire other employees?
No, as I don't think it is necessary. Sometimes people will suggest ways to improve Deafweekly but I always ask, will this help sell more ads? If not, then it comes down to me doing more work and getting paid less. Our only source of revenue is advertising, since it is free to subscribe. There are not a lot of companies interested in advertising in deaf publications and it's always a challenge to sell ads but we're doing okay ..

4) What is the biggest challenge you see coming up regarding Deafweekly and news regarding Deaf and Hard of Hearing communities across the world?
I don't see many challenges because deaf people will always be making news in one way or another. One small concern: if news websites start charging money to access their content, it would make it more difficult for me to alert people to links of deaf news.

5) Have you ever consider or foresee the possibility of establishing some sort of News station where reporters would sign out different news and events including yours? (FYI, there are few websites that are already doing this).
No, not at all. Deafweekly is what it is. It's for people who like to read as opposed to those who prefer to get their info via sign language. And as you said, there are already websites doing video news so what is the point of Deafweekly doing it too? It would just be a lot more work with no corresponding increase in income.

Thank you Tom Willard for your excellent work on finding Deaf-related news from all over the world and putting the news into a nice format that makes it easy to read. Thank you again.

Hearing and Deaf now can drink from the ocean!

1.2 billion people lack access to safe drinking water, but that's not going to be a problem in the future. We figured out how to purify the salty water from the ocean into fresh water. How awesome!

A quick background:
70% of the world is water. That is equal to about 300 quintillion gallons. That's a lot of water, but we couldn't drink most of it because it comes from the ocean. The ocean water is too salty for us to drink. It'll make us sick.

California actually established the first full-scale seawater desalination facility last year, but it wasn't until this year that the California Department of Public Health finally approved the water for public use. How exciting! That means we'll never have to worry about running out of freshwater.

How it works:

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-04/californias-first-full-scale-desalination-plant-lets-residents-drink-pacific-ocean

First, the plant will filter all the dirt and chemicals out of the water. Then it will go through a special layer of a membrane consisting of millions of holes. The holes will be big enough to allow water go through, but not for the salt. That's probably the simplest explanation you'll find. The reason why we haven't established this technique all over the world is because it is expensive, but then again our technology is finding ways to make it cheaper and affordable.

Cool huh? :)