The Alien Baby

In a recent article in The Providence Journal titled, "Baby's Brains Rehearsing Speech" (July 28, 2004), Katherine Long reported that even seven-month-old babies are "mentally working out the mechanics of how to form words with their mouths, well before they're able to utter their first recognizable syllable."

The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, emphasize the importance of speaking to babies from the minute they're born.  They also reinforce a longstanding observation of scientists:  that babies get the most out of one-on-one human interactions, such as speech or games, which can't be replaced by high-tech toys.

Which led me to think about the comic genius our nation lost this week - Robin McLaurin Williams.

How did he learn to take our common language and reshape the sounds, mimic it, recreate its rhythms, or semantically take it on a flight to elongate a story?  Did his mother talk to her toddler in dialogue with different characters' voices?  Reported to be shy in high school, did he learn his rubbery versatility at Julliard or was he coiled with manic energy as a child?

His impersonations as sometimes troubled lunatics or offbeat authority figures showcased his gifts in movies like "Dead Poets Society," "The World According to Garp," "Good Will Hunting," and "Mrs. Doubtfire."  But the role I most remember was in "Good Morning Vietnam."  It was there his feverish free associations reigned supreme.

However his brain reshaped his mother's words into loose-knit spontaneity, he remained an alien we understood.  When he used pure sound in an octave higher (or lower) than his own speaking voice, somehow we understood (like a woodpecker's "rat-a-tat-tat-tat").  His imitation of dialects and his mumbled asides took us on free associations, but somehow we followed. His routines stretched stories out to the planets, then brought us back with a snap, like Mork's rainbow-colored suspenders.

Yet he remained an alien.  His ability to play disturbing characters ("Insomnia," "One Hour Photo"), gave his genius the freedom to expand and grow inside characters we couldn't like.  He was tormented with interior demons, we know, living in a universe most of us will never inhabit, like his disturbing characters.  But unlike them, he will always be loved.

If only we had a clue as to the sounds he heard as an infant, we might begin to understand the development of his creative powers. They might have been the same sounds we heard in his stand-up routines, sounds that, like his genius, couldn't be contained.

Robin McLaurin Williams   1951-2014

Two Plane Stories

I recently read a post on Peter Greenberg's blog (Out of the Office) titled, "The Crazy Things We'll Do to Get on a Plane."  Peter is the Travel Editor for CBS News and says he travels 300 days a year around the globe.  I will be paraphrasing two stories from his blog here.

A friend of Peter's was booked from Lagos, Nigeria, to London on a 727. He received a hand-written boarding pass two hours before flight time.  When the flight was called, the crowd bolted onto the tarmac and ascended the stairs to the plane.  It crushed past the lone gate agent and one timid policeman.

Within two minutes, according to Peter, there were fifty people stranded on the stairs and tarmac who had boarding passes but no seats.  Punches were thrown and the army was called in.  A lone colonel arrived.  He shot his weapon into the air and the mayhem stopped.

"Everyone off the plane," he ordered.  "No exceptions!  Drop your carry-on bags under the fuselage." He lined up all the passengers under the left wing.  "Stay here till you hear me fire my gun again," he said.  "Then run completely around the plane once, grab your bag, run back under this wing and up the stairs.  The first 125 will get seats."

Which they did, even the little old ladies.  After 125 passengers boarded, huffing and puffing, the colonel barred the doorway, firearm ready.  The 50 "losers" had to wait two days for the next flight, when the colonel showed up again, just in case.

That story doesn't sound so crazy now, with the Ebola outbreak there!

In his second story, Peter tells of a flight scheduled to leave Beijing at 10:00 a.m. for Hong Kong.  The year was 1999.  Peter waited from 8:00 till 10:00 without any call to board.  AT 10:20 a.m. a Chinese gate agent announced, trembling, "Plane is very sick.  Please walk to next gate and we take that plane."

However there was no plane at the next gate.  Around 11:30 a.m., an aircraft landed and taxied to that gate. At 1:15 p.m. the same gate agent stuttered, "Very, very sorry again.  This plane more sick than other plane...so we take...other plane."

All the passengers, including Peter, boarded the first "sick" plane...and took off. "Why in the world did I do that?" Peter is still asking himself.

Which reminds me of a a flight Charley and I were taking from LaGuardia to Florida on Delta.  We had boarded and sat on the runway in a queue of twelve to take off. Half-asleep, we heard, "Sorry folks, we have to turn around."  That was it?  In the dark and in pouring rain we disembarked in some remote corner of the airport to take buses back to the terminal.  Dogs sniffed our luggage, strewn on the tarmac. Ambulances and fire trucks surrounded the plane. A phone call had threatened to blow up our flight!

We waited...and waited.  When no bomb was found, we were given the option to wait for a flight the next morning or re-board and proceed south.

We landed that night in Florida without incident but to this day we wonder, What were we thinking??

Link to Newspaper Article on "Fist Bumps"

Here is the link to the complete article on the study of hygienic fist bumps vs handshakes and high-fives:

www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/fist-bumps-hygienic-handshakes-scientists-article-1.1884534

Fist Bumps

Charley has been trying for at least two years to get me to stop shaking hands after tennis matches. He claimed that I was picking up germs during a handshake of even moderate strength that lasted for just a few seconds.

I watched the men doing their fist bumps after matches and told him I thought it would be insulting to finish a match and approach someone across the net as though I were going to punch her. The ladies give firm handshakes to be polite, win or lose. We don't want to be viewed as poor sports, and certainly not competitors with a wimpy grasp, even if wet and slimy. In fact, I seem to remember a rule in the Palm Beach County Women's Tennis Association handbook about the necessity of handshakes after matches.   There's a rule for everything else, so that must be covered, too.

"Suit yourself," Charley said.

Turns out he was right.

According to a study at the Institute of Biological, Environmental, and Rural Sciences at Aberystwyth University in Wales, fist bumps are 20 times more hygienic than handshakes and 10 times more hygienic than high-fives.  It's because the fists have a smaller area that touch each other during the bump.  Handshakes, on the other hand (ha ha), have an average of 24.4 square inches of contact and last an average of three seconds, longer than high-fives and fist bumps. An average of 124 million colony-forming units of E.coli were transferred during the three-second handshake in the tests.

That's right, researchers at the Institute actually donned sterile gloves and dunked their hands in "a soup of de-fanged Escherichia coli bacteria, then shook hands, high-fived, or fist-bumped with one another."
In addition, they used an instrument to measure the grip strength of various handshakes and found strong handshakes transferred the most bacteria.

Imagine a researcher coming home from work and the wife asks, "Did you have a rough day, dear?"

"Oh, it was lethal."

I'm still not convinced I could approach someone with my fist after a match.  So I have another solution.  Why not do the butt bump?  It would be a lot more fun and wouldn't transfer any germs.  I know I'd enjoy seeing NFL players doing the butt bump instead of handshakes!

Link to NY TIMES article about robot caregiving

Here's the link to Louise Aronson's article in the NY Times on Sunday, July 20, 2014, titled,
"The Future of Robot Caregivers."  It also links to her other publications on healthcare.

http://www.louisearonson.com/news

Granny's New Companion: A Robot Caregiver

The world of caregiving is physically and emotionally exhausting, stressful, frustrating, awkward, and sometimes dirty.  It can also be never-ending.  Yet it can be rewarding and stimulating, tapping into a whole range of experiences and challenges the caregiver never knew existed.

What will happen when there aren't enough caregivers for those who will need them ten years from now?  According to an internet report on the website www.retirementrevised.com, there will be a 48% increase in the need for caregivers in the next decade, with a 1% increase in the supply.

Enter the robots.  Many countries have acknowledged the reality of a dwindling supply of caregivers by investing in robot development, such as Japan and a consortium of European countries.  According to Louise Aronson in "The Future of Robot Caregivers" (NY Times, July 20, 2014), research in the U.S. has been slow to move in this direction.  Within the medical community here, the idea that machines can help fulfill more than just physical needs meets with skepticism and occasional outrage.

We see robots maneuver along hospital corridors to deliver meds.  We know they assist in surgery and rehabilitation and clean up afterwards.  Is it too much of a leap to believe that granny couldn't relate to a robotic companion that would answer her question, remind her to finish her meal and swallow her pill, and then read to her?  Is there a huge difference between that and millions of kids who sit in restaurants communicating with an electronic device instead of their human families?  Are they stimulated and satisfied?  Is loneliness and neglect (or even abuse by a human caregiver) a better situation?

As kids we talked to stuffed animals and dolls. We created a world of pretend and were stimulated.  We weren't lonely.  Today the animals and dolls can move and talk back!

"Imagine this," Aronson says in her article.  "Since the robot caregiver wouldn't require sleep, it would always be alert and available in case of crisis...It could do laundry and other household tasks.  When (the patient) woke, the robot could greet her with a kind, humanlike voice, help her get out of bed safely and make sure she was clean after she used the toilet.  It -she?-he?-would ensure that the patient took the right medications in the right doses.  At breakfast, the robot could chat with her about the weather or news.

"And then...the caregiver robot would offer to read to her.  And after a while the robot would say, 'I wonder whether we should take a break from reading now and get you dressed.  Your daughter's coming to visit today.'"

Will there someday be a world where the robot feels as much happiness as the patient?

Link to Joyce Wadler's Humor

At the beginning of each week I'll try to post a link to something that relates to the latest blog I posted. It may be humorous or informational or just plain interesting. This week's link is to Joyce Wadler's humorous column, "On the Road with Mothers," from the March 3, '13 NY Times, which I mentioned in my latest post.  If the link doesn't open, type in the entire name of the site.  It's worth it!


http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03booming/on-the-road-with-mothers.html?smid=pl-share