Hearing Informed

Mind altering substances of many kinds may have something to teach us but they’ve been mostly dismissed, demonized, and cast into broad legal categories that aren’t meaningful.

I had a curious experience a number years ago with one of these schedule 1 substances that led to a bit of an epiphany. No, I didn’t discover the meaning of everything; nor did I experience some radical realization that I needed to join Scientology to save my thetan. My discovery was far more pragmatical and relevant.

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I’ve been wearing Resound Canta 7 hearing aids for three years now and I have nothing but praise to give them. However, I am in the market to check out the latest technology available in digital hearing aids and I’ll be trying out many different brands. Its usually an obsessive and vapid practice to check on the latest technology when it comes to computers, cameras, ipods, e.t.c. Its often the case that one can be perfectly satisfied with a first generation ipod or a tv that’s several years older. Steve Jobs would tell us otherwise. When it comes to hearing technology I feel differently- because they provide such a massive quality of life difference – I try the newest thing every three or so years to see if a tangible difference can be made with the “ latest cutting edge, smartest hearing aid ever!”.

There are several new (at-least in their honed conception) concepts that I’m very excited to try. One of those is called “transpositioning”. That’s a mouthful for those who don’t speak in esoteric scientific tongues. The gist of it: the hearing aid can take the higher frequencies, those that I don’t hear as well as lower ones, and shift them down an octave so that they are available to me.

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The 2007 biannual World Deaf Surfing Championships went down in Miyazaki of southern Japan. A nearby typhoon generated short-interval, dumping two- to four-footers for the duration of the event, but strong onshore winds and intermittent rains made for some challenging conditions for competitors from all over the world. The next World Deaf Surfing Championships will be held in 2009 in Hawaii. For more information and pictures, see deafsurf.org.

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Trying to make ends meet , you’re a slave to the money then you die.

- The Verve

This statistic comes from a BIH (Better Hearing Institute) study that suggests that hearing loss, when left untreated, translates into a per household job earnings loss of up to $12,000 a year.

The BIH study elucidates the fact that earnings power isn’t the only thing lost from an untreated hearing impairment. Quality of life is compromised on many levels: physical and emotional health, self-image and self-esteem, social skills ( a requirement for success in any workplace environment), family relationships, e.t.c.

There are distinctly different demographics combined within the report. For example, there are those who lost their hearing later in life and those who were born with a hearing impairment (technically not a loss, because it wasn’t there to begin with). A person who was born with a hearing impairment or early loss has a head start with adjusting and adapting to listening environments. An individual who loses their hearing laster on in life must adapt at a later age- when the mind is less malleable and more set in its ways. The brain must re-learn and adapt to a very different hearing landscape.

Margalit Fox, a New York Times journalist originally trained as a linguist, wrote a new book, Talking Hands. The book details an intriguing community made up of deaf signers in the Middle East and in doing so touches upon a lot of interesting subjects. I will be reading the book and I’ll post an entry on my thoughts. [thanks to Jeff Roth for the link]

I like to see an author who can help dispel the myths surrounding sign language and deaf culture. On her website for the book she points out that sign language is not a universal language as as is often thought. On the contrary, each country has its own unique sign language. There are still some major universities around the country that have not yet accepted that sign language is a complete and grammatically complex language as any other. Marget points out that, ” The sign languages that Deaf people speak every day are real, natural languages, as grammatical complex and fully human as any spoken language. No one sat down and invented them. Instead, they arose spontaneously in places where Deaf people had the opportunity to congregate, and have evolved historically over time, just as spoken languages do. (Sign languages even have regional and ethnic dialects!)”.

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The award of opulence goes to this diamond encrusted, solid 24k gold hearing aid and remote. If you have 50,000 dollars to throw around and the vanity to boot, go ahead and buy this. Be seen with your bling bling hearing aid and bling H20- the trendy new bottle of water seen throughout Hollywood. Only Flavor Flav could sport this kind of hearing aid with style.

Those of us that make up the poorer lot will spend a measly 6,000 dollars for a pair of digital hearing aids. The proprietor of this hearing aid, Widex, does make some great hearing aids. This particular model is a BTE (behind-the-ear) hearing aid that is powerful enough for “open fittings” - a nice feature because it lets in more natural sound and sounds less occluded. Occlusion is the tech-speak for “sounds like your talking inside of an echoing barrel”. The real reason open fittings are popular: baby boomers love how invisible they are.

I can imagine the cash drenched oaf showing the ladies his diamond adorned hearing aid- and maybe, at the end of the night, he can take them to this gravity defying magnetic floating bed (no joke).

My outstanding audiologist for 15 years, Gustav F. Haas, Ph.D., left his business rather unceremoniously and left me this sobering communication:

The Hearing Center Update, July 2001

“After 19 years at this and the Hopkins Ave. [San Carlos, Ca] location, the Hearing Center will close on approximately August 15th. I would have liked to see an experienced, knowledgeable, and responsible person take over this office, but a search of over three years as proved fruitless. Development in Managed Care have succeeded in reducing this business to the point where its not possible to make a living. At the same time, expenses have increased (rent more than doubled last October). It is thus not surprising that of a number of people who showed interest in this practice, no one has followed through. Whether or not this will be true of all individual health care practices remains to be seen, but the trend has been for consolidation into larger organizations, often with less personal attention to patients.

… I have enjoyed working with you and thank you for your past support. I truly regret not being able to continue to provide an office at this location, and would especially like to thank those of you who referred others to us. Unfortunately this was not enough; I could not compete with the marketing of large HMO’s and did not want to do fictitious “25% off” promotions.”

Recently, while going through some old unsorted papers I had kept in a box, I came across this communication. Finding this letter again was a catalyst to starting this site..

You can find Gustav F. Haas at www.hearingadvice.org. He provides consulting for consumers and professionals. The service for consumers is intended for current or prospective hearing aid users looking for advice free from any bias for or against specific manufacturers.

“Since Alice had never received any religious instruction, and since she had led a blameless life, she never thought of her awful luck as being anything but accidents in a very busy place. Good for her.” - Kurt Vonnegut

Luckily for me I can’t hear a damn thing the Evangelicals are gibbering about. In their feverish bouts of god-infused wailing, I can make out “jezus, brr, baa, warlocks evil something something sinful gnobwit”. I could learn a lot from these caring people. They are trying so hard to teach me their terminal truths, that global warming is a lie, and I’m drowning in their condescending dribble and my hearing aid battery is flickering out. I’m now doomed to fall into a fiery cauldron with flesh eating snakes when I die, having never been saved. Maybe the gnostics can sign to me.

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It is extremely sad to learn that the Yangtzee River Dolphin, also called the Baiji, is now extinct (one of my favorite creatures). Scientists believe that even if there are a scattered few around, there are not enough to reproduce and perpetuate the species. The long, slow death of the Baiji was caused by overfishing, construction of the Three Gorges Dam and other changes in the vicinity of the Yangtze River.

The construction of the Three Gorges Dam is an unprecedented behemoth. The hydroelectric dam is the largest in the world as of 2007; more than five times the size of the Hoover dam. It will in turn be a cataclysmic destructive force upon the cultures that lived on the river for thousands of years and the species that have lived longer than that in the river.

Among our losses is the ability to study the Baiji’s extraordinary use of sound. Largely blind, this dolphin is capable of using sound to stun and even kill its prey. Its sonar easily out-rivals that of the military with its precision echolocation under extremely turbid conditions. The freshwater dolphin is known for its ability to produce three dimensional representations of objects in its mind: it is capable of seeing through a box and detecting the shape and type of metal hidden inside. It’s teeth are adapted to act as an array of receivers that vibrate in response to pressure from sound waves. I speak in present tense because I can’t yet accept it’s loss. This dolphin could have been used to better understand sound perception.

“We have yet to take full responsibility in our role as guardians of the planet”

Dr Sam Turvey, Zoological Society of London

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Every three or four years I come to the audiologist to check out the newest hearing aids. Unfailingly, I have noticed tangible differences - clearer sound, directional microphones that work under a wider array of noisy conditions, and noise reduction that works closer to the ideal I have in mind. However- these changes have become less exponential than they once were. I foresee some practical improvements- but I have began to wonder how technology and the algorithms within the hearing aid processors can really improve my speech understanding and interpretation of other sounds like instruments or birds. My best audiologists have wondered about the same issue out loud. Certainly they can design hearing aids that process faster or block out exactly the noise I want. But these changes aren’t making it so that I can hear speech like a “hearing” person or provide some miracle hearing ability that allows me to hear as well as a bat.

just shamelessly plugging in my political views out of contex : “State Dept Can’t Hear When Faisal Describes Iraq as Foreign Occupation”

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