08:09 – Barbara’s dad is back at Brian Center. Barbara called me yesterday about 12:25 to let me know he had left the hospital and was on his way. I stopped at Harris-Teeter on the way over to pick up a six-pack of Pepsi and a couple cans of sliced Mandarin oranges for Dutch, which he’d requested. Then I spent an hour or so talking with his new roommate and his sister while I waited for Dutch to arrive.
The privacy curtain was drawn between the two beds, and as I was talking to the sister a woman on the other side of the curtain asked, “Who is that speaking?” I told her my name and that I was Dutch’s son-in-law. She replied that I had a beautiful voice and asked if I was on the radio. For some reason, people frequently ask me that.
After Dutch finally arrived, I visited him for a while and then headed back home. As I was walking to my truck, I saw one of the nurses, Jodi, coming in the opposite direction. Over the time Dutch has been at Brian Center, I kept thinking that she looked familiar. She’s far too young to have been there when my mom was there 10 years ago, but I kept thinking I must know her from somewhere. So I finally asked, “Do I know you?” She stopped and said she’d been thinking she knew me too. We talked for a while about where we might have met, but we couldn’t come up with any explanation.
Barbara is taking today off to give herself a four-day weekend, so we’ll be doing kit stuff over the next few days. I got another query yesterday from someone who wants to buy multiple forensics kits for a class, so we need to get another batch of those in progress as well.
11:08 – Barbara and I started watching Switched at Birth on Netflix streaming. We’ve watched only two or three episodes so far, but the cast and writing are both very good.
The story centers on two high-school girls who were, uh, switched at birth. In the first episode we discover how they find out it had happened, and I thought that was interesting because in one of the biology book lab sessions, we warned strongly about just such an event. That lab session was on using PTC to track the tasting and non-tasting alleles within a family group. In the program, one of the girls was doing a biology lab that determined her blood type. She soon discovered that genetically she couldn’t be the child of her supposed parents. Same concept, different alleles.
One of the girls is deaf. Given her speech patterns, I was very surprised to learn that the actress is actually capable of speaking like a hearing person, but intentionally assumed a “deaf accent” for the role. She grew up hearing, and didn’t start to experience hearing problems until she was 20 years old, about five years before she started work on this series.
It’s interesting for me to watch a series that features deaf people and deaf issues, because I had some experience with deaf people when I was at RIT in the mid-70’s. RIT is home to NTID (the National Technical Institute for the Deaf), and roughly half of the students I regularly associated with were deaf.
The series does portray the ability to lipread as both more common and more successful than was my experience at RIT. One evening, I walked into the lounge and found the TV tuned to Carson’s monologue with the sound off. There were a dozen or more students sitting with their backs to the TV, and one student standing facing the TV and interpreting the monologue in ASL. Thinking that any deaf person could learn to lipread, I asked her later. She explained that many/most deaf people couldn’t lipread at all, and that the ability to do so varied greatly even among those who had some ability. She was among the best lipreaders she knew, and said that even she often missed things or interpreted them incorrectly. That was why she sometimes paused while interpreting when she was uncertain about what was being said and wanted to wait for context before interpreting something.
I started to learn ASL, beginning of course with the most important things: swear words, how to proposition a girl, ask for a beer and so on. As I told Barbara, in my experience deaf people have better-than-averages senses of humor, and some of them are absolutely wicked. I remember sitting around with a group of girls while I was trying to learn to sign. With completely straight faces, they attempted and eventually succeeded in convincing me that, when signing, deaf people had regional accents just like hearing people. They said they could always tell when someone was from the deep South by the accent of their signing. I sat there trying to figure out how that could be true, and eventually decided that it must just be that local ways of signing used slightly different gestures. Once they finally had me convinced, they looked at each other and started to laugh. I finally realized I’d been had by experts. And that was just the first of many examples of the wicked senses of humor that many of my deaf friends had.
13:35 – I can’t believe it took me this long to think of it. Barbara was filling several hundred RIA (radioimmunoassay) vials this morning. She was working at the kitchen table because she was filling obnoxious ones, like black fingerprint powder and activated charcoal, which put up clouds of filthy black dust. She was filling them using a pointy scoop, when it struck me. This would be an ideal application for a powder measure. Fill up the reservoir with the stuff being filled, hold the mouth of the tube under the dispensing spout, throw a lever, and you’re finished loading that tube. Just like handloading ammunition. The powder even resembles gun powder, and the mouth of the vial is the same size as a .44 or .45 case. I can’t believe it took me that long to think of it. It’s not like I haven’t sat at a reloading bench and filled tens of thousands of cartridge cases with powder using just such a powder measure.
“She replied that I had a beautiful voice and asked if I was on the radio. For some reason, people frequently ask me that.”
I’ve heard your voice once, on a radio broadcast about science that was available on the Internet. To be honest I didn’t think it beautiful or ugly, just “American”. There are basically three US accents I know: Alabaman, other Southern, and everywhere else (including Kanukistan.) I like Alabaman the best, of course.
I don’t think of my voice as “broadcast-quality” or whatever, either, although many people have commented that it is. I think of a “radio voice” as deep and overly-emphatic. My voice is relatively deep, but I try not to be over-emphatic.
For anyone who’s curious, here’s me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pu98DeqmsSE
When I speak I think nothing of how my voice sounds. When I hear it (on answering machines) I think it’s really deep, monotonic and weird. I don’t think I’d cut it as an announcer.
Okay, I listened to that. All I can say is that your voice is “not Southern”. The one difference in pronunciation that I really noticed is that you say ‘stoodent’ and I say ‘stewdent’.
Pronouncing the long U with an initial Y sound (you rather than ooh) is characteristic of many British and Commonwealth accents. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any regional US accents that emphasize the Y sound at the beginning of the long U.
When we’re watching British TV shows, it’s most noticeable to Barbara and me with the British stupid as styoupid rather than our stoohpid.
Hm, I say ‘stewpid’, and think ‘stoohpid’ sounds hilarious.
You’ve got a deep voice, Bob; bass, maybe basso profoundo in the church choir, ha, ha. Get some wire-rim specs, put on a hundred-fifty pounds and you’d be a great Santa, too.
I get a kick out of how youse guys around the country pronounce words with the letter ‘r’ in them.
http://news.yahoo.com/exiled-cleric-taught-uk-knifeman-praises-courage-112658347.html
You know, if a UK drone dropped a bomb on this animal, I would not protest.
My wife and daughter watch “Switched at Birth” religiously. When the show goes to two or more people signing away, the silence feels a little odd. I applaud the show’s choice to go silent in such cases.
My grandfather could not hear anything during the last 10+ years of his life. I maintain that he could read lips enough to get along though. You had to present yourself to him and repeat about 2 or 3 times to him before he got what you were saying. Me, I am thinking about getting a pair of sportears and maybe wearing them them permanently (they block all noise above 85 db automatically):
http://www.sportear.com/hearing-aids
I know some decent Moslems but I absolutely loathe their medieval religion.
“I remember sitting around with a group of girls while I was trying to…”
I was using my imagination to work out what you’d be saying a sentence or two ahead. Of course, knowing you like we all do, I assumed that you’d say they were all trying to seduce you and see which three or four of them you’d choose for a roll in the hay.
Yeah, I’m the only person I know who can actually sing the “I took a drink” line in the original Clovers Love Potion #9, and do it on-key.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nt7htnE1s4o
To the best of my recollection, which may be faulty, I never did have sex with a deaf girl, although not for lack of trying. Some of the deaf girls simply refused to date hearing guys, although they were in a minority.
I did certainly spend a lot of time in groups that included deaf students, though. There was a nightclub in the basement. (The whole campus was connected by tunnels because of the heavy snow Rochester experienced, so there were a lot of things in the tunnels–convenience stores, bookshops, restaurants, etc.) The drinking age for beer at the time was 18 in New York, so pretty much all the students from freshmen to grad students drank a lot. One of the interesting things was one of the nightclubs. They played rock very loudly sometimes, and I remember thinking what an advantage it was to know ASL. The hearing students who didn’t have ASL couldn’t hold a conversation, but the noise had no effect on signing.
As it happens I was looking at the Wikipedia page for RIT last night and noticed that they were a major centre for hearing impaired students.
As to the tunnels… I think I’d rather live somewhere where that sort of thing wasn’t necessary. Did students drink beer there in winter? I hardly touch it in the cold (moderate to warm by Rochester standards) half of the year here – beer is so much better in hot weather – in summer a couple of VBs don’t touch the sides on the way down.
That can’t be a serious question. Of course the students there drank beer in the winter. Not to mention the spring, summer, and autumn. If nothing else, it was the cheapest and most readily available source of ethanol.
And I always have to mention… RIT (Rochester Institute of Technology) isn’t actually located in Rochester, New York. It’s located in a suburb named South Henrietta.
So I always tell people that the place I did my graduate work was SHIT. The usual response is something like, “Amen, brother. You and everyone else…”.
I went to high school in Berkeley, graduating in 1970. (My wife says that explains a whole lot of things).
There were lot of events at the First Unitarian Church of Berkeley. It was actually in Kensington, but even the Unitarians wouldn’t adapt the correct acronym.
One of the important characteristics I didn’t mention… The “T” in NTID stands for “Technical”, so the fact that they were deaf was by no means a defining feature let alone the defining feature of my deaf friends.
The fact that they were deaf paled into insignificance, because most of them were also elite STEM students, and often very accomplished in other fields as well. If I had to describe one of them to someone, I might have said something like, “She’s a brilliant biologist, a top-notch pianist, and a first-rate tennis player. Oh, by the way, she’s also deaf.”
I don’t doubt that students at SHIT guzzled beer in winter. I just don’t see the attraction. Kahlua or Baileys Irish Cream with milk (preferably warm) is my drink of choice in winter.
A girl I know (she’s 24 now) was a premmie and she’s worn dual hearing aids from the time she was a toddler. She’s very very smart, but doesn’t speak very clearly, presumably because of her hearing impediment.
Pictures from the Europe trip are available.
http://www.raymondthompsonphotography.com/Europe
A defense contractor I worked for in the 70s had a deaf man apply for a job as a computer operator. They couldn’t hire him for that since the system they used had audio alarms, but they found out he actually had a CS degree, but nobody would hire him to be a programmer. They interviewed him and hired him. We had lots of programming jobs that were specced out so well that they could just hand him a spec with some notes and a deadline and he did it. I wonder if he went to RIT.
Be sure to empty the powder measure, Bob; it would be unfortunate indeed to load up rounds with activated carbon… 😀
Cheers, Rod
Or activated carbon containers with smokeless powder. 😉
Great pics Ray. That raft of them at the brewery really shows how super-clean Germany is—not a spot or speck of anything, anywhere. I really miss that. We were driving from the transmitter of the radio project, back to Indy on Friday, using country and state roads. We passed so many buildings that had just been completely abandoned and some were literally collapsing from neglect. I never saw anything like that anywhere in Germany—except for houses in the East that were vacant and the outsides crumbling, while the government was searching for the descendants of the owners from whom they were taken, in order to sell them back to them (that’s right, the Soviet-led government TOOK the buildings from people, and the current government sells them back to the same families). We knew a couple of folks from rich families, who literally exhausted the family fortunes buying back castles and property that once belonged to the grandparents’ generation before it was taken from them.
I never did get used to the graffiti in Berlin. It is considered ‘art’ in that area, not desecration of private property, and there is considerable backing to preserve that graffiti. Some businesses did not appreciate their building properties being considered a canvass, and during our time there, I saw quite a few that painted over the sides of their buildings every few months, in order to get rid of ‘the people’s art’.
That rail bridge in the East that you shot, I travelled over almost daily for many years. At the bottom of a circular staircase at one end of the bridge, is a guy who, from a former public restroom, sells (if he is still there) ‘American’ hamburgers and French fries that—in my life encounters—was outdone only by a family-owned hamburger hole-in-the-wall in Natick, Mass. My students wanted me to assess if the offerings there were any good, and I confessed it was among the best I ever had.
One thing about the Germans, they don’t revere the past. They have selected just a very few memorials to past major events, and preserve those, so certain things will not be forgotten, but they do not mark sites as historical—never to be demolished or used for anything but their original purpose, like the US and UK do. Much saner approach, IMO. And that is why there is virtually NOTHING left of the wall separating East from West. Berliners did not want the encumbrance of miles of wall—or even a bicycle path along the route as had been proposed when we first got there—hanging as a heavy reminder of the past; only a couple very short strips of it—really aimed at tourists. Berliners would have been happy to eradicate it entirely.
I can tell from the skies in many of the pics that you were having a non-humid, comfortable spring, instead of either the near 90, almost 100% humidity or else low 60’s weather we are having now. Spring has just about disappeared entirely from the Midwest. I have not seen a real spring since I left Germany.
Sanssouci, translated by most as ‘without cares’ (or ‘worries’) was translated as ‘without tears’ by the Germans around me. Built by Friedrich Wilhelm IV, King of Prussia, he never allowed his wife or any women in the palace while he was alive.
“One thing about the Germans, they don’t revere the past.”
What past is there for them to revere? In modern times alone, a hundred years of war, genocide, and half the country a totalitarian regime dominated by a foreign power for forty-plus years after The Good War. Goethe? Who reads him anymore? Mozart was Austrian. OK, maybe Wolfram von Eschenbach and the Parzival legend stuff, the minnisangeren, etc., of the Middle Ages. Albrecht Durer and his woodcuts.
” Berliners would have been happy to eradicate it entirely.”
No doubt. And I’d be happy, along with millions of others, to see Mordor On The Potomac entirely eradicated also.
Although Berliners succeeded in demolishing all but tiny remnants of the wall. Not so sure we will ever have that success with Mordor.
From my perspective, except for the Nazi aberration, I do not think Germans have any kind of monomaniacal tendencies to be any kind of ‘shining light’ to the world, as we are constantly told is the mission of America. The Germans are happy to be ants, always working away to accomplish common goals. That all of Europe had Kings who set the wrong—and personal—objective of spending time conquering each other, and that the Nazi’s believed in the now discredited economic theory of Lebensraum—that to grow, required possession and control of more land,—have never really represented the wishes of Germans as a whole, from what I learned.
I am not going to argue that issue of what Germans have really felt, because even I have family who have never set foot in Germany and know no one German firsthand, but who refuse to believe that not all Germans backed everything Hitler did. My own extended family still living there, who had sons in the war, including some drafted into the SS, had no idea what those conscripts were doing, until they were reunited after the war and learned the awful truth.
So whether the Germans had a notable history to revere, is pretty much inconsequential to them. Work is life to them, whereas I was brought up here to believe that life is work. Does an ant colony care about what the whole is accomplishing? I doubt it. Nor is the past relevant to them. Getting on with the present is the order of the day, and tearing down anything standing in the way of that is efficiency in action.
On the other hand, there is this guy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTqvBhFVdvE
Peter ‘Let’s Put a Price on Everything, including the Air We Breathe’ Brabeck. He’s Austrian, though—not really German.
I’ll look for the vid elsewhere; my machines here are set up security-wise in such a way that they currently bounce off servers in Germany and the German state will not allow me to view that YouTube vid.
I have a piece of the Berlin Wall here that our son brought back for us from his trip there some years ago; our daughter is now in Berlin, working; well actually she’s on a trip right now between there, Prague, Brno, Grodz, Vienna, Budapest, Rome, some town in Italy’s boot heel, back to Rome and then “home” to Berlin. $200 for the whole deal, via bus and train while she stays with friends from McGill. Can’t beat that with a stick!
I leave the Germans themselves to their own business; hopefully they’ve learned by now not to tangle overmuch with their Anglo-Saxon cousins again. And I am fully aware that not all Germans backed Hitler and the Nazis; that attitude comes from my parents’ and grandparents’ generations, including my own, who fought them in both wars. I know there was a German resistance on several levels, of heroic and astoundingly brave character. We may need our own soon enough and I agree that there should not be such a thing as “American exceptionalism” and the forced example of our Puritan shining city on a hill that we, through Wilsonian adventurism, would like to force upon the rest of the world.
It’s a German vid (with English subtitles), with lots of comments in German, so you shouldn’t have any trouble at all.
One thing about the Germans, they don’t revere the past
The wife and I drove the Rhine River several years and stopped at every castle (OK, tourist trap and I am exaggerating … somewhat). The castles on the Rhine sure are revered. And mostly beautiful and very deadly for traffic upon the Rhine.
Chuck wrote:
“One thing about the Germans, they don’t revere the past. They have selected just a very few memorials to past major events, and preserve those…”
I learned on my coach tour in 2003 that there was some beautiful old building in East Berlin that the commies almost completely demolished in the mid Seventies so they could put some sort of horrible modern building in its place, which when I was there they were wondering how to demolish safely, as it was riddled with asbestos. But they did keep one wall and balcony of the old building, because some important Commie had made an important speech from the balcony. It looked weird just having a section of wall and a balcony unconnected to anything else.
“Sanssouci, translated by most as ‘without cares’ (or ‘worries’) was translated as ‘without tears’ by the Germans around me. Built by Friedrich Wilhelm IV, King of Prussia, he never allowed his wife or any women in the palace while he was alive.”
Who did the cleaning? -)
“She’s a brilliant biologist, a top-notch pianist, and a first-rate tennis player. Oh, by the way, she’s also deaf.”
Good one!
Regarding Germans not loving the past. How many of the medieval cathedrals, forts and castles have been pulled down and replaced by modern structures? They don’t revere crap like Soviet walls, or corporate offices, but there are plenty of historic structures in Germany that are preserved as a link to the past. Or at least that’s what it looks like in the tourism ads for Viking Ships.
Actually, I would not be surprised if they knocked down castles and cathedrals if they were not pulling their weight financially and actually stood in the way of something that could. However, most of those are not in developed industrial and business areas. I was specifically commenting about the more recent past—post-industrial revolution.
For instance, the Tiny Town downtown was a hodge-podge of architectural styles of no particular significance as the town exploded with growth in the late 1910’s. It is a good example of what results with no planning whatever and allowing anybody with money and influence to do anything they wanted. Almost all the buildings downtown are vacant, and have been for a couple decades. They are literally crumbling, with the roofs of 2 major structures having collapsed since I returned. Yet many of those buildings are marked by the state historical commission as ones that must be preserved. Empty, poorly constructed, utterly useless in modern-day Tiny Town, and totally unlike any construction considered efficient in this day and age. No wonder the whole business community moved to the edge of town, where the old Burger King building—less than 20 years old—was recently completely demolished to make way for a brand-newly constructed Hardee’s. About a year ago, Burger King knocked down another vacant building about a mile down the road from its old location, to build its current facility. Walgreen’s did the same with an old abandoned gas station a couple years before that. But knock down decrepit old buildings in a downtown that is of no use to anybody? Not on your life! Got to preserve those miserable and worthless structures—some of which were turned over to the city, just so the owners could be rid of the tax burden.
But knock down decrepit old buildings in a downtown that is of no use to anybody? Not on your life! Got to preserve those miserable and worthless structures—some of which were turned over to the city, just so the owners could be rid of the tax burden.
I haven often thought that the Historical Commissions, usually groups of old busybodies, are consistently violating the fifth amendment to the USA Constitution: “nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation”.
The Fifth has been routinely violated in that regard since the beginning of the country, like all the others, if not actually ignored. That convention in Philadelphia in 1787 was really bad news, followed by more of same, politically.
Yes, it kinda looks like the USA Constitution is being violated all over the place. Been reading this article which is fairly unnerving:
http://www.chron.com/news/nation-world/article/Asset-forfeiture-both-an-effective-tool-4546043.php
I knew that the asset forfeiture was getting bad but I had not realized that they were seizing property now without benefit of suit or a judge’s ruling. When did the USA turn into a third world nation?
“I knew that the asset forfeiture was getting bad but I had not realized that they were seizing property now without benefit of suit or a judge’s ruling. When did the USA turn into a third world nation?”
I remember when the David Copperfield (magician here in Vegas) was accused of rape, the state raided his warehouse and took everything. Including $100,000 in cash. Why? The govt just took it with no reason.
At the lower levels, cops routinely just take stuff from people, on the street, in vehicles and in their homes and places of business and walk away with it, never to be seen again, with a big fuck-you, I guess. At the higher levels, as with the Copperfield case, they love to make hay from whatever accusations and steal loot. As the late Murray Rothbard said, “The State is a band of thieves writ large!” Can’t put it any plainer than that; legalized banditry and piracy.
Asset forfeiture shows just how little hope there really is: the slide into a full-up police state is unstoppable, simply because people do not care. It happens to someone else, they were probably guilty of something, if I just keep my head down surely it won’t happen to me, if I just ignore the situation hard enough, maybe it will all go away…
What brad said.
And from Pastor Niemoller:
“First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.
Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Catholic.
Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.”
Of course I’d cheerfully let them take the communists and I’d have to think hard about the socialists.