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Selective Hearing ... HUH? WHAT?
So many things started to make sense once I read this article. I have been assuming selective hearing was something mastered by the male of our species. I may be all wrong about this!
It seems my SO may have been muting her hearing for all these years! (thank goodness there are providers who make it their business to listen and pay attention! You girls ROCK!) So ... the next time you feel like you're being ignored, consider the possibility that you've been muted!
There, feel any better?
Honey, hand me the TV remote. We're not watching "Project Runway" while the game's on. Babe? HEY YOU, ARE YOU DEAF OR SUMTHIN'? CAN YOU HEAR ME??!! (<sigh>geez, it's not even fall!)
Selective hearing spans species
"Purdue Alumnus Magazine" 
Birds have found a simple solution when they are not looking for a mate in the fall — they just ignore love’s call by muting their hearing.
Purdue biologists studying how both birds and humans adapt to noise have found that some bird species have degraded hearing ability in the fall — when it’s not mating season — as well as in other select situations. The findings have potential implications for hearing loss in humans, says Jeffrey Lucas, a Purdue professor of biological sciences.
“We’ve been thinking a lot about human hearing,” Lucas says. “The world is getting noisier as the environment gets more urbanized. Noise becomes much more important to understand.”
In ongoing research, Lucas is looking at how birds adapt the precision of their hearing to seasonal changes as well as to disturbances in their environment. His work even goes so far as to suggest hearing ability differs between the sexes.
Birds serve as a good model for hearing research because of how they learn vocalizations and adapt their hearing to behavioral changes induced by the changing of the seasons.
In the fall, the reproductive activity of some birds comes to a standstill. This behavior causes certain birds to “down regulate,” or decrease the precision of their hearing, Lucas says. Females, in particular, invest less energy in maintaining their auditory system in the fall because they are not looking, or more aptly, listening, for a prospective mate.
While it’s not known how birds alter their hearing ability, there are two factors believed to help explain the seasonal decrease in auditory performance.
Scientists know that messages, or impulses, sent spontaneously by nerves decrease in frequency during the fall. It also appears that the hormone estrogen plays a role because of how it alters certain parts of the auditory system, like hair cells in the inner ear that convert sound to impulses.
Snip City? What a great marketing ploy!
Talk about March Madness! Are you a basketball fan and have been putting off getting neutered? Get a doctor's excuse to stay home from work during the tourney! Kudos to the urologist who not only came up with this, but had the BALLS (pun intended) to actually do it! Check this out: It's Hip To Snip During March Madness Last year, the Oregon Urology Institute got plenty of press by encouraging people to get their vasectomies while watching the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. Since a vasectomy requires a few days of rest, the people at ORI reasoned what better time to get vasectomy than March Madness, when you have a good excuse to sit on the couch? The folks at the Oregon Urology Institute did so well last year that they are following up with "Snip City 2009." The office has 24 prime slots to get the surgery during the first couple days of the tournament. Anyone who gets the surgery, which costs around $1,000 if you're paying out of pocket, gets to take home a kit that consists of an ice chest and frozen peas. Terry FitzPatrick said business was up 10 percent during tournament days last year and the publicity over the promotion helped push the vasectomy business in the office up 10 percent for the year. Click here to listen to their radio ad. This year, the folks at the ORI have company, as the folks at The Urology Team in Austin, Texas, are doing "Vas Madness." In order to drum up some business, the Urology Team has been passing out these flyers around town to potential referring doctors.
Appointments are going fast, said Vikki Smith, community liason for The Urology Team. And while the TV is going to be on the games in the waiting room — we'll have to tell them that CBS, not ESPN, has the rights — she said there are no TV's in the operating room for that guy that gets the 12:30 slot next Thursday. "We don't want to distract the doctors," Smith said. A couple interesting things to point out about this flyer. Who do you think they modeled the player after? We're thinking Larry Johnson. That's an interesting pick since, in the 1998 Sports Illustrated "Where's Daddy?" feature, Johnson at the time had five kids from four different women. We also should note that the doctors names are not a joke. There really are doctors named Stephen Hardeman and Bryan Kansas. There's also a doctor on staff at the Urology Team named Richard Chopp. Just to show you I'm not making this up, here's his bio. Said FitzPatrick of the doctor names on his staff in Oregon: "We can't compete with the name roster they have in Texas." .
70 degrees with a winter storm warning?
During my evening commute home from work today, I heard the radio weatherman announce that today in Wichita, it's 70 degrees and they have issued a winter storm warning. This made me shake my head and think, "WTF!" I guess the cold and the white shyt is coming again! So sick of snow. You folks out in Kansas can keep it! Here in Indiana, it has long been said that we always get a big snow when high school basketball sectionals start. Had the IHSAA so-called and self-proclaimed experts not totally changed the high school basketball playoffs, and in so doing, changed the true meaning of "Hoosier Hysteria" the sectionals would be finishing up this weekend. That would make this upcoming snow forecast true to the old "sectionals snow" tradition. Fortunately, it will be melted and gone soon enough. UGH!! Another two feet of snow!!
ATTENTION! VIRGIN ENTERING!
After the prodding and encouragement of a few providers and one certain notable fellow hobbiest, I have decided to give blogging a try. So, please be gentle and kind to the virgin here until I can at least get my feet wet! I have always said, "Ehhhh.... no one gives a shyt about what I have to say and I don't often have a strong enough opinion to speak anyway." Well, reading HB and EB for a few years, I now understand that having a cogent opinion is as important as having a forum to formulate one -- amen? This is more of a "welcome me" post and a chance to "kick the tires" on blogging. In time, i'll work on getting a better avatar uploaded and becoming more of the community here.
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