I'm deaf in one ear, but I get by in life without a hearing aid. I recently started using AfterShokz headphones for my running, and was pleasantly surprised that I could hear stereo sound again through these headphones. I also started using an Android app at work called AroundSound which stops your music when someone starts talking to you and replays the last thing that was said through your headphones. So by combining these two, it's allowed me to hear the beginning of conversations better, when normally I would have to ask someone to repeat what they said before I could turn around and actively listen. It's not an all day solution, but I find it's helped me a bit in my day-to-day work life.

I really dislike Sony, and I never thought I would buy, much less recommend one of their products, but I am very happy with my NEX-5N. It fits great in my jacket pocked with the zoom lens, and in my pants pocket with the pancake lens. I almost always keep the zoom lens on it though, because not having a zoom is very limiting. I'm just finishing up a 2 week vacation traveling all over Germany, and the camera has been the best I've ever owned. I get very near DSLR quality photos, but it's no hassle to keep my camera with me. The only thing I miss is a larger zoom. The lens that I've seen so far for better zooming is huge, and hardly seems worth it to tote around. As the camera is now, it's very easy to use, and very easy to make some amazing photos.

I was just listening to this week's episode of Big Picture Science http://radio.seti.org/ where they addressed this issue, and the scientist they interviewed claimed that the toads that started this whole thing naturally migrate every year. Not sure who's right, but I'm more likely to believe it was a fluke until they can actually prove the ability to predict an earthquake before it happens, and not after.

Phil Plait has just put up a blog post explaining that it's probably a lot less likely than than these other guys have made it seem. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/06/05/flying-the-meteoric-skies/

They are working on it. http://www.psp-linux.org/