I just became aware of From Silence to Sound, a documentary that tells the story of the first recipient of a bilateral cochlear implant in Oklahoma. The film is slated to play at the New York International Film Festival on Friday, Oct. 23, 2009, and because of that, I received a press release. It seems like an interesting film, so I thought I'd ...

Over the course of the last two weeks, I've blogged about some pretty political stuff, offering up lengthy opinion pieces on government volume control and acoustic warfare. This week, I thought I'd take a lighter approach and focus on something a bit less controversial and a bit more fun. Because of this, I'm just going to keep this blog short ...

Peculiar People Day... Lost Sock Memorial Day... Smile Power Day... Winnie the Pooh Day. If you didn't already know (don't feel bad if not; I didn't), these are all celebrated holidays. They obviously aren't in the same league as a Christmas or Thanksgiving, or heck, even Groundhog's Day or April Fool's Day, but they exist, because... well, I ...

I recently read two interesting articles that raised some serious questions about the relevance of American Sign Language (ASL), albeit in slightly different contexts. The first details a controversy in Western New York surrounding the appointment of Thomas Burns, a hearing individual who does not know ASL, as executive director of Deaf Adult ...

Most of us are not in the practice of laughing about hearing impairments (hopefully), but I recently learned of a comedian who consistently makes them the brunt of his standup sets. I know--even though the late George Carlin often claimed you can joke about anything, it sounds in bad taste. However, comic Mike Murray is just doing what all ...

What a busy week! This quarter, I am taking a class on cochlear implants and similar devices. All three companies have come to speak to us since the class has started, but this week we had a day-and-a-half workshop with Cochlear Corp. There was a bilateral recipient in attendance, and so the most interesting part of the workshop involved getting ...

Wisconsin is poised to become the first state to mandate coverage for cochlear implants in children, but a last-minute petition is being waged by some in the deaf community to persuade Gov. Jim Doyle to veto the decision. The main argument from the deaf community seems to be that cochlear implants are a threat to their culture and that requiring ...

As many of you are aware, there is debate over whether or not cochlear implantation should be used in deaf individuals. Many in the deaf community accept their deafness as a natural part of life and believe cochlear implants would infringe upon that. The deaf community has developed a rich culture, a recent example of which, the First Annual Deaf ...