It's noting earth-shattering, but hey: I heard on the news today that the police over here is looking into recruiting blind civilians to help them out in phone tap cases. Tapping someone's phone is a pretty far-going measure as it is here, and currently only members of the police can be involved in such cases. But they're working to change that so they can get the help of blind ppl. Why? Because blind ppl have a much better feeling for nuances and subtleties in spoken conversations, or recognize background noise better. A blind person, for instance, could tell much better than we do who the dominant person (ie the boss) is in a converstation. And that's obviously just one aspect of it.

Holland has been working like this for a few years already, and it's a success there. They have about 40 blind ppl assisting the police staff on and off.


Anyhoo, don't have a link, I just happened to pick it up. I just thought it's awesome that their skills are put to use. If you only have sound to go on, why not use a blind person? We'd feel 'hampered' in our senses, but they'd consider it a natural thing. Now to find something for the deaf.

I doubt letting deaf people work on phone tapping would be a succes though.

Maybe not, but they'd be good at where's wally!

heh that sounds pretty cool.

Lucky blind bastards. First they get guide dogs, now they get jobs too.

Lol, you'd almost think being blind was a handicap or something, aye?



Just thought of this as I was getting some milk: would blind people get off at watching (video) porn? I mean, the sound? Like, the on-the-act sounds, not some background lounge music. I know for a fact that watching porn with proper sound is a much better exoerience than watching it without any at all. So, would a blind person get excited at the sound?

In a way, it's not much different from his normal sexual experience (no sight), just like watching porn with sight+sound isn't different from an average person's experience. Regardless of my psychotic tought patterns to get to this question; it actually is pretty interesting if I may say so myself. I bet you could get a grant to research this at a uni, given the proper faculty (sexuology/sociology?) and a better research question. I.e., with a lot of big words and a very euphemistic way of speaking about sex and porn.

I dont see anything wrong with this. Infact it seems like a pretty good idea. I think there are more blind people in Holland than there are these jobs availble though. So not all blind people will jump into this. Obviously.

hehe, they'll just need to filter out the more intelligent blind people. Or use women, because they tend to have a better grasp of conversational subtlety. Then again, most criminals are men, so that subtlety might ne non-existant. =)

I say we pay the other blind ppl's handicap fees with the money made by the ones working for the cops. jk