Hot News: Week of 1/21/10

- Thursday January 21st

Tourists at Cape Town in South Africa may enjoy riding on the water taxis at the V&A Waterfront.
These taxis would look like floating soccer balls if viewing from a distance. These soccer balls carry ads. Anyway, these soccer ball taxis were built by deaf students, that attend classes at the Whisper Boat Building Academy.
Of course the tourists would not know it unless someone tells them!



- Friday January 22nd

A result of the stimulus funds pushed by the federal government was the establishment of The Green Bank of Kentucky. The bank's first loan was to the Kentucky Department of Education.
Part of the funds will help upgrade the energy facilities at the Kentucky School for the Deaf.


- Saturday January 23rd

For the benefit of deaf households that have landline telephones, the FCC issued a ruling regarding these robocalls. Robocall operators must obtain written permission from deaf households.
Without such a permission, robocalls are banned.
This is great - but these robocall operators will still find a way to get around it!

Two Half-Deaf Actors in a Movie

Many years ago, famous actor Richard Widmark was deaf in one ear. Also, another famous actor Jimmy Stewart was deaf in one ear.
Making it worse was that director John Ford was late deafened.
Both Widmark and Stewart worked together on one movie, directed by Ford.
It was confusing. In one scene, Stewart and Widmark were placed across the room. Stewart's deaf ear was opposite Widmark's deaf ear - and they could not easily communicate with each other. And they could not hear the commands by Ford!
The cameraman had to use hand signals to tell these two actors what to do!
- for DeafDigest ASL News version, please click on:
http://deafdigest.com/videos/video-half/

From the Newspaper Pages

There was a story in a newspaper that Andrew Wong and his research team claimed that ASL users speak as fast as hearing speakers. The story, however, did not say where the group was coming from. Anyway, DeafDigest is not surprised because we have ASL interpreters, with maybe 3 or 4 hand movements, would tell us what a long winded hearing speaker is trying to say!