Smile! You're the Candid Camera!

Now you can hear with your teeth.  If you need to.   

It’s not for everyone, of course.  But entrepreneurs in medical science have devised a gadget for those who are deaf in only one ear, or “single-side deaf.”    

Aptly named the “SoundBite,” it’s comprised of two transmitters; the one you wear in your deaf ear picks up sound signals on that side and sends them to pre-wired molars on the other side.  Then the molars use the second transmitter to forward the sound signals through the bones in your skull to your hearing ear.  Weird, but miraculous.   

And it gives an entirely new meaning to ‘Radiohead.’ 

I’m a little hung up on how it works if someone knocks on the door on your left and you hear it from the window on your right.  Or what if there’s signal interference from, say, SETI?   

But hey, my grandma’s knee predicted the weather.  I always knew when to bundle up, so who am I to argue?    

I’m not surprised at this latest invention.  After all, it wasn’t that long ago when we saw pictures of lab rats with ears growing out of their backs.  No, not rat ears.  Human ears.  Lab techs cultivated ears for future use in little peripatetic plantations, like rootless, itinerant Christmas tree farms.  Ewww.  

But it’s all for the good.  Burn victims and anyone doing a few rounds with Mike Tyson could benefit. 

It was only a matter of time before other body parts were re-purposed in today’s “green” climate. 

We have more teeth than we need anyway, so why not rethink the whole mastication thing?  Shift it all to the front, rodent style, and set aside a few back teeth and those canines for a quiet day, if you get my meaning.  The Tooth Fairy will have to reinvent himself, but the world’s changing, man.  Adapt or die.   

Horticultural grafts have had us harvesting peaches from apple trees for decades.  The internet is rife with videos of momma dogs raising baby squirrels.  It’s no wonder we accept these kinds of “cross pollination” as routine.   

But carry it to its logical extreme and next thing you know we’ve got Sodom and Gonorrhea.  No, wait…I didn’t mean that.  Spell check is messing with me.  I meant that Biblical thing.  You know - the foundation of Las Vegas?  Sloth and Greed!?  No – Sparkle and Flash!?  Oh forget it. 

I’m ambivalent, that’s all.  

OK look, at my age, I’m all for it, this new-fangled angle on body parts.  Repurpose a tooth?  Sign me up!  Reuse bone marrow?  I’m there.  Refurbish the ragged, the weary, the long-in-the-tooth?  Oh yeah, count me in.   

I’ll tell you what I’d like to see recycled.  Robert Redford.  Like American Pickers with an eye for treasures heaped up in a hoarder’s back bedroom, new age scavengers could pick him up for a song.  Take him back to the shop; sand him down with #3 grit; rub in a honey glaze and finish him off with a coat of satin sealant.  Hollywood could still get a lot of use out of him.  But no!  We’re all too ready to cast off the classics.  

Instead, we have Wayne Newton.  A cautionary tale of misguided science and misspent technology.   

You can see why I’m torn. 

Just watch.  Now that Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp have crossed the threshold from fresh and plump on their way to shriveled and mossy, like so many Marlon Brando’s, they’ll wind up on a Tinsel Town junk pile when they could be aged like a single malt scotch.   

I’m not a Luddite, really.  I love the gadgets and apps.  I’m young.  I’m hip, or hep, or sick or cool.  Whatever.  Heck, I’ll go bionic when the time comes.  Or piecemeal me.  I’m good with it. 

In fact, in the spirit of progress, I offer these visionary suggestions for advances on the dental front.  Why not put our network where our mouth is?  We could link our teeth to Facebook and chatter away.  We can update our status while whitening.  

And why stop there?  Mount MP3 players, digital cameras, Angry Birds apps and home monitoring systems all around the grille. 

We’ll call it a Swiss Army mouth.  Say cheese!

Your Mother Doesn't Live in Outer Space

I’m not one to lose faith in the human race, but even a person with my high level of patience and boundless optimism can be tested.   

Some things just make me wonder if we humans will ever grow up.  Are we evolving? 

OK, sure, we’re standing upright.  That’s important, but so 2 million years ago.  We created Facebook and yogurt-on-the-go, though some may question whether these represent progress. 

It’s just this news item I ran across the other day:  “Orbital mess may require high-tech maid service.” 

Come on!  Really? 

The brain trust that developed our space program, the brilliant thinkers who put the International Space Station and all manner of satellites into the sky bringing us everything from the NFL Red Zone to GPS pet tracking, the brightest and the best among us merged onto the intergalactic highway and just threw the trash out the window? 

It’s so disappointing.   

Twenty-two thousand objects large enough to track from terra firma circle above our heads, not to mention the countless chunks of space rubble too small to track, but still large enough to damage human-carrying spaceships or valuable satellites.  The International Space Station had to maneuver out of the way of this cosmic flotsam more than once.  That involves a bit more effort than swerving to avoid a cast off tennis shoe on the freeway. 

“We’ve lost control of the environment,” admitted a retired NASA senior scientist.  That’s a pretty big environment!  It’s not just a teenager’s bedroom you can close the door on.  

To be fair, 25 years ago, when scientists around the world first noticed their slovenliness could cause problems, they came up with agreements to limit new space junk.  They signed a pact guaranteeing what they sent into orbit would eventually fall back to Earth and burn up.  It actually worked. 

That was a close one. 

But wait…what’s this?  Another headline?  “Earth braces for giant piece of space junk.”   

You mean the grand “it’ll flame out and fizzle on re-entry” scheme is flawed?  OMG.  A six-ton NASA satellite the size of a school bus reported to be “tumbling in orbit and succumbing to Earth’s gravity”…will crash to the surface Friday [today].  Or maybe Saturday.  They’re not sure exactly when, or where. 

Great.  “Out-of-control crashing satellites don’t lend themselves to exact estimates even for the precision-minded folks at NASA.”  Ha ha ha.  LOL.  NASA scientists did, however, calculate the odds of a person being struck by a piece of this debris at 1-in-3,200.  I feel much better now. 

Adding insult, two recent incidents dumped enough junk into our cosmic greenbelt that the original problem re-asserted itself.  (We may be able to write that sci-fi disaster screenplay after all.) 

First, two satellites crashed into each other.  Go figure.  In the vastness of space they found each other, like that guy wandering in the desert who trips over the only log for miles.  Looks like we have a surplus of circumnavigating high-tech tree trunks.  

Then, in what’s characterized as an anti-satellite weapons test, the Chinese used a missile to smash one of their aging weather satellites into more than 150,000 dangerous hunks o’ junk, more than three thousand of which are large enough to trace with ground radar.  

In response to this, an expert panel at the Department of Defense huddled up and began developing all manner of unusual strategies, techniques, and weird space technology to vacuum up all the extraterrestrial trash accumulating above us. 

They’ve designed cosmic nets, magnets, even gargantuan umbrellas to collect the clutter and dispose of it properly.  I guess that means they’ll bring it back home and take it to the dump.  

The good news is the demand for these gadgets means jobs.  The project requires a wide range of workers, from those with high levels of technical skill and expertise who will create the machinery and launch it, all the way to those who will operate the levers on the colossal garbage trucks patrolling our solar system like so many Wall-E’s. 

The bad news is we must scale down our noble dreams of celestial exploration.  We’re reduced from Galaxy Quest to orbiting street sweepers.  

Considering this and the budget cuts to NASA and SETI, we won’t be exploring new worlds or seeking out new life forms and civilizations.  We won’t boldly go where no one has gone before.  

No.  Like chastised adolescents, we’ll go timidly right back where we went before and clean up after ourselves.   

If Darth Vader Calls, Don't Answer!

SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, announced this week that budget cuts have forced its Allen Telescope Array into hibernation.

The array comprises 42 telescopes in the Hat Creek Area of Northern California that scan for radio signals from outer space. With this effort, SETI has been engaged in one of the most profound enterprises in human history: the search for life elsewhere in the universe.

SETI directs the telescopes to scan planet candidates orbiting in the habitable zone around their parent star, like Earth around the Sun, and ask, “Anybody home?”

Turns out the universe teems with radio signals. SETI has amassed an immense volume of signal data, so much in fact that they cannot be sure if their computer software detects every signal, and every kind of signal that might be broadcast from afar.

Their brilliant solution to this stultifying problem: Gamify! It’s a new word – means make it a game. SETI invited all the game-playing geekoids around the planet to invent ways to make the tedious analysis fun. They also hope to monetize the search process in an effort to make the project self-sustaining. Good thinking.

SETI’s complementary project, Earth Speaks, addresses the next logical question: If we discover intelligent life beyond Earth, should we reach out to them, and if so, what should we say?

The first impulse is to call out to another intelligent civilization, right? Like first-timers in France, we would stretch our necks and wave high overhead. Camera around neck, black sox, hairy legs, and sandals:

“Hey!” we’d say, with our big, goofy, American grin, certain we’ll be greeted in kind.

“Bonjour!” ET would reply. “Bienvenu! Please share my croissant.”

The Extra-terrestrially Intelligent would see our inherent worth right away and want to chat us up. We’d go on to become BFF’s, exchanging our Twitter accounts and holiday recipes.

They’d be surprised to see us, of course. It would take them a moment to focus, trust their eyes, look at their buddies and say, “I’ll be darned. Look. That funny looking guy’s trying to get our attention.”

But what if, as some surmise, such a civilization is eons ahead of us technologically, spiritually, morally? We might more likely need to pull our shoulders up around our ears and say, “Oops. Sorry! Didn’t mean to cause all that____________.” Fill in the blank: Pollution, noise, nuclear waste, animosity, political gridlock, self-serving greed.

Earth Speaks invites participants from around the globe to submit online text messages, pictures, and sounds that convey the sentiment they would want to communicate to an extraterrestrial civilization.

A text message? “Zup?” Somehow, I don’t think a text message will embody the yearning of the human spirit. LOL.

Pictures? OK. Let’s send pictures of babies from around the world. Baby animals too. Show our potential, our sweet nature, our desire to learn.

But what would you say?

Actually, if it’s ever found, the Golden Record onboard Voyager 2, hurtling through deep space, already speaks for us. Carl Sagan and his associates at Cornell University assembled 116 images, spoken greetings in fifty-five languages, and printed messages from President Jimmy Carter and U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim along with a variety of natural sounds - surf, wind, thunder, and animal sounds including the songs of birds and whales. To this they added musical selections from different cultures and eras, featuring artists such as Mozart, Stravinsky, and Chuck Berry. Roll Over Beethoven. Tell ET the news.

But there is that other thought: That once the Frenchman, er, ET looks up from his knitting, he’ll focus on us with calculating precision, assesses our signals, and find us inferior. He just might reach out with the mentality of a praying mantis and snarf us up like an ear of corn.

So it’s not a question to be taken lightly….if we boldly seek and find someone, should we call out, or tiptoe back behind the moon?

Let’s say we set aside our terror at becoming an inter-galactic hors d’oeuvre, reach out and tap these guys on their alien shoulders

We’ll say, “Greetings.”

They’ll say, “Step into my parlor…”

My apologies. I don’t mean to let my paranoia overtake me.

I want SETI to survive. I don’t want to give up hope in that miraculous, transformative possibility.

Or, as Fox Mulder would say, “I want to believe.”