Peculiarity

[phinnia]

Okay, so in the realm of Stuff I Don't Comprehend:
There is a tendency among certain portions of the blind population to sign their emails or what have you as not just themselves, but including the name of their service dog. Now unless someone has taught these dogs to type (I did hear of someone who was convinced that they could read signs, but typing is a real new one on me) they have no part in the email, yes? They did not write it, send it, compose it ... even Lassie couldn't type.

So WHY DO THEY DO IT?

I don't put my cat's name in MY email. I don't even put my KID's name in my email.

WHAT THE HELL IS WITH THE DOG THING?

Seriously, this is torturing me. No one knows. It seems so utterly random and pointless and I have never recieved a good explanation. Theories, of course, but no good explanation.

(This is probably the same contingent that have make-believe weddings for their guide dogs online, too. We won't even get into that kind of weird yet.)

Comments

Hoooo boy.

[tallin.livejournal.com]

That's kinda the $65,535 question. As for Seaners, I'm reluctant to make that sort of judgment call on his behalf ... thhough I suppose, in a sense, it's a judgment call we have the power to make. Ouch, question with philosophical ramifications like this give programmer headache. I can answer for myself though.

I'm curious about all new things—New York (or, at least, I was, then I went to New York, and am no longer curious), Africa, sight, what it would be like to fly an airplane. Now, each of these curiosities can be satisfied with varying amounts of risk, with New York probably being the most minimal. The problems with having artificial sight hardware installed appear to look something like:

• Relearning to do everything. Ouch. I'm an impatient sort. The notion of having to take six months off or so for rehab makes me twitch. I don't KNOW if it makes me twitch enough to totally abandon the notion, but ... *twitch*
  
• Brain rewiring tweaks me out. What's up there works reasonably well. Again, if they could guarantee me that, yes, they could install this hardware with absolutely no chance of rendering me unable to maintain my current level of mental function, we'd talk.
  
• I'd want an off switch. Certainly for the first while, it would be far easier for me to do things the way I'm accustomed. Having said that, given my tendency to adapt to new situations (OK, so switching from PC to Mac is different than this sort of thing, but, the way I'm looking at this, a new toy's a new toy, be it an iBook or Borg implants), I'd probably pick up the usage of the machinery ... and would be more likely to, given the fact that I could fall back on what for me is more "standard operating procedure" if I absolutely needed to get something done in a hurry.

So ... short answer? It's something I thought about, because I'm curious about that sort of thing, but I'd want both risk and personal downtime to be at a bare minimum, and I'd further want it to be a trifle more generally accepted that this sort of "restoration of sight" doesn't automatically imply, as though it were some kind of "repair operation", immediate knowledge of how this whole sight thang works any more than your suddenly being endowed with the gift of telepathy would qualify you to instantly understand the thoughts of others, even if you could perceive them.