Emmett Till's family reacts to Lil Wayne lyric

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A cousin of the late Emmett Till wonders if Lil Wayne understands just how damaging it was when he rapped a vulgar reference to the black U.S. teen whose death in 1955 became a significant moment in the civil rights movement.

Airickca Gordon-Taylor says Till's family would like an apology from Lil Wayne for the brief but disturbing lyric on Future's "Karate Chop" remix. But more than that, she'd like the platinum-selling New Orleans rapper to understand how his comparison of a sex act to the 14-year-old Chicago native's torture death in Mississippi is hurtful to the black community.

"It was a heinous murder," Gordon-Taylor said in a phone interview Thursday from Chicago. "He was brutally beaten and tortured, and he was shot, wrapped in barbed wire and tossed in the Tallahatchie River. The images that we're fortunate to have (of his open casket) that 'Jet' published, they demonstrate the ugliness of racism. So to compare a woman's anatomy — the gateway of life — to the ugly face of death, it just destroyed me. And then I had to call the elders in my family and explain to them before they heard it from some another source."

The Future remix with Weezy guesting was leaked on the internet over the weekend. Epic Records said Wednesday it regretted the unauthorized remix version and that it was employing "great efforts" to pull it down. The brief reference — just seven words — will be stricken from the song when it's officially released later.

The rapper made a crude reference to rough sex and used an obscenity. He indicated he wanted to do as much damage as had been done to Till.

Gordon-Taylor says Epic Chairman and CEO LA Reid personally reached out to her on a conference call Wednesday evening that included the Rev. Jesse Jackson to explain and apologize. Jackson said in a phone interview Thursday that Reid said on the call that Future and Lil Wayne were cooperative.

"Once he got the point he realized this was beyond the zone and he immediately pulled it," Jackson said. "And he talked with both artists, who agreed."

Weezy has made no comment, nor has he addressed the issue on his Twitter account. Gordon-Taylor says there's been no attempt to apologize so far.

Till was in Mississippi visiting family when he was killed for flirting with a white woman. He was beaten, had his eyes gouged out and was shot in the head before his assailants tied a cotton gin fan to his body with barbed wire and tossed his body into the Tallahatchie River. Two white men, including the woman's husband, were acquitted of the killing by an all-white jury.

Till's body was recovered and returned to Chicago where his mother, Mamie Till, insisted on having an open casket at his funeral. The pictures of his battered body helped push civil rights into the cultural conversation in the U.S. Bob Dylan even wrote a song about it: "The Death of Emmett Till."

Gordon-Taylor, founding director of the Mamie Till Mobley Memorial Foundation, said Lil Wayne's lyric was devastating to her family. Simeon Wright, Till's cousin who shared a bed with his relative the night he was taken by the killers, heard the lyric for the first time Wednesday night.

"And he said the Ku Klux Klan would be very proud of Lil Wayne," Gordon-Taylor said. "And as tough a man as he is, I could see the hurt and the anger in his eyes. It just demonstrates to our family just how lost are our youth."

Both Gordon-Taylor and Jackson believe the 30-year-old rapper could help with that problem if he chose. Jackson says he's met Wayne, whose real name is Dwayne Carter, before and that he "respects his art."

Jackson says the issue of a negative portrayal of the black community comes up from time to time, citing The Rolling Stones' "Some Girls," for instance: "We just felt they could make their point without grossly insulting people."

Music also has the power to uplift, he noted. Harry Belafonte opened eyes to conditions in Africa and the Caribbean, for instance. Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" helped Americans see the war in Vietnam in a new light. And Stevie Wonder's "Happy Birthday" helped clear the way for a national holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"We want artists who have considerable power to use their power to uplift and redirect," Jackson said. "It's not a matter of free speech, it's also speech that matters. ... These artists have culturally transforming power. Either they hurt or they help."

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Online:

http://epicrecords.com

___

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U.S. Approves First Method to Give the Blind Limited Vision

The F.D.A. Approves a Bionic Eye:
The Argus II allows Barbara Campbell, who lost her sight 20 years ago, to see the world through patterns of light. Scientists hope it is the beginning of even more treatments.

The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved the first treatment to give limited vision to people who are blind, involving a technology called the “artificial retina.”

With it, people with certain types of blindness can detect crosswalks on the street, burners on a stove, the presence of people or cars, and sometimes even oversized numbers or letters.

The artificial retina is a sheet of electrodes surgically implanted in the eye. The patient is also outfitted with a pair of glasses with an attached camera and a portable video processor. These elements together allow visual signals to bypass the damaged portion of the retina and be transmitted to the brain. The F.D.A. approval covers this integrated system, which the manufacturer calls Argus II.

The approval marks the first milestone in a new frontier in vision research, a field in which scientists are making strides with gene therapy, optogenetics, stem cells and other strategies.

“This is just the beginning,” said Grace Shen, director of the retinal diseases program at the National Eye Institute, which helped finance the artificial retina research and is supporting many other blindness therapy projects. “We have a lot of exciting things sitting in the wings, multiple approaches being developed now to address this.”

With the artificial retina or retinal prosthesis, a blind person cannot see in the conventional sense, but can identify outlines and boundaries of objects, especially when there is contrast between light and dark — fireworks against a night sky or black socks mixed with white ones in the laundry.

“Without the system, I wouldn’t be able to see anything at all, and if you were in front of me and you moved left and right, I’m not going to realize any of this,” said Elias Konstantopolous, 74, a retired electrician in Baltimore, one of about 50 Americans and Europeans who have been using the device in clinical trials for several years. He said it helps him differentiate curbs from asphalt roads, and detect contours, but not details, of cars, trees and people. “When you don’t have nothing, this is something. It’s a lot.”

The F.D.A. approved Argus II, made by Second Sight Medical Products, to treat people with severe retinitis pigmentosa, a group of inherited diseases in which photoreceptor cells, which take in light, deteriorate.

The first version of the implant had a sheet of 16 electrodes, but the current version has 60. A tiny camera mounted on eyeglasses captures images, and the video processor, worn on a belt, translates those images into pixelized patterns of light and dark. The processor transmits those signals to the electrodes, which send them along the optic nerve to the brain.

About 100,000 Americans have retinitis pigmentosa, but initially between 10,000 and 15,000 will likely qualify for the Argus II, according to the company. The F.D.A. says that up to 4,000 people a year can be treated with the device. That number represents people who are older than 25, who once had useful vision, have evidence of an intact inner retinal layer, have at best very limited light perception in the retina, and are so visually impaired that the device would prove an improvement. Second Sight will begin making Argus II available later this year.

But experts said the technology holds promise for other people who are blind, especially those with advanced age-related macular degeneration, the major cause of vision loss in older people, affecting about two million Americans. About 50,000 of them are currently severely impaired enough that the artificial retina would be helpful, said Dr. Robert Greenberg, Second Sight’s president and chief executive.

In Europe, Argus II received approval in 2011 to treat a broader group of people, those with severe blindness caused by any type of outer retinal degeneration, not just retinitis pigmentosa, although it is currently only marketed in Europe for that condition. In the U.S., additional clinical trials need to be completed before the company can seek broader FDA approval.

Eventually, Dr. Greenberg said, the plan is to implant electrodes not in the eye, but directly into the brain’s visual cortex. “That would allow us to address blindness from all causes,” he said.

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Dorner manhunt: Investigators work to ID charred human remains

After what LAPD Chief Charlie Beck called "a bittersweet night," investigators Wednesday were in the process of identifying the human remains found in the charred cabin where fugitive ex-cop Christopher Dorner was believed to have been holed up after trading gunfire with officers, authorities said.

If the body is identified as Dorner’s, the standoff would end a weeklong manhunt for the ex-LAPD officer and Navy Reserve lieutenant suspected in a string of shootings following his firing by the Los Angeles Police Department several years ago. Four people have died in the case, allegedly at Dorner’s hands.

Beck said he would not consider the manhunt over until the body was identified as Dorner. Police remained on tactical alert and were conducting themselves as if nothing had changed in the case, officials said.

PHOTOS: Manhunt for ex-LAPD officer

The latest burst of gunfire came Tuesday after the suspect, attempting to flee law enforcement officials, fatally shot a San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputy and seriously injured another, officials said. He then barricaded himself in a wooden cabin outside Big Bear, not far from ski resorts in the snow-capped San Bernardino Mountains east of Los Angeles, according to police.

"This could have ended much better, it could have ended worse," said Beck as he drove to the hospital where the injured deputy was located. "I feel for the family of the deputy who lost his life."

The injured deputy is expected to survive but it is anticipated he will need several surgeries. The names of the two deputies have not been released.

TIMELINE: Manhunt for ex-LAPD officer

Just before 5 p.m., authorities smashed the cabin's windows, pumped in tear gas and called for the suspect to surrender, officials said. They got no response. Then, using a demolition vehicle, they tore down the cabin's walls one by one. When they reached the last wall, they heard a gunshot. Then the cabin burst into flames, officials said.

Last week, authorities said they had tracked Dorner to a wooded area near Big Bear Lake. They found his torched gray Nissan Titan with several weapons inside, the said, and the only trace of Dorner was a short trail of footprints in newly fallen snow.

According to a manifesto that officials say Dorner posted on Facebook, he felt the LAPD unjustly fired him several years ago, when a disciplinary panel determined that he lied in accusing his training officer of kicking a mentally ill man during an arrest. Beck has promised to review the case.

DOCUMENT: Read the manifesto

The manifesto vows "unconventional and asymmetrical warfare" against law enforcement officers and their families. "Self-preservation is no longer important to me. I do not fear death as I died long ago," it said.

On Tuesday morning, two maids entered a cabin in the 1200 block of Club View Drive and ran into a man who they said resembled the fugitive, a law enforcement official said. The cabin was not far from where Dorner's singed truck had been found and where police had been holding news conferences about the manhunt.

The man tied up the maids, and he took off in a purple Nissan parked near the cabin, the official said. About 12:20 p.m., one of the maids broke free and called police.

FULL COVERAGE: Sweeping manhunt for ex-cop

Nearly half an hour later, officers with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife spotted the stolen vehicle and called for backup, authorities said. The suspect turned down a side road in an attempt to elude the officers but crashed the vehicle, police said.

A short time later, authorities said, the suspect carjacked a light-colored pickup truck. Allan Laframboise said the truck belonged to his friend Rick Heltebrake, who works at a nearby Boy Scout camp.

Heltebrake was driving on Glass Road with his Dalmatian, Suni, when a hulking African American man stepped into the road, Laframboise said. Heltebrake stopped. The man told him to get out of the truck.

INTERACTIVE MAP: Searching for suspected shooter

"Can I take my dog?" Heltebrake asked, according to his friend.

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First lady plugs 'Beasts of the Southern Wild'

WASHINGTON (AP) — Michelle Obama on Wednesday gushed over the Oscar-nominated film "Beasts of the Southern Wild," calling it one of the "most powerful and most important" movies in a long time in a ringing endorsement delivered less than two weeks before this month's Academy Awards ceremony.

The first lady commented during a Black History Month workshop at the White House for about 80 middle- and high-school students from the District of Columbia and New Orleans. The movie was set in Louisiana.

Students saw the film, then got to question director Benh Zeitlin and actors Dwight Henry and 9-year-old Quvenzhane Wallis. Wallis stars in the mythical tale of a 6-year-old girl named Hushpuppy struggling to survive in the southern Delta with her ailing father as a storm approaches. Her world consists of a tight-knit, shantytown community on the bayou with wild animals, both real and imagined.

The film won four Oscar nominations, including for best picture, best actress and directing.

Mrs. Obama said she saw the 93-minute film over the summer with a large group of friends and family who ranged in age from 3 to 73, and they were enthralled by it.

"It's rare these days to find a movie that can so completely and utterly captivate such a broad audience and that was one of the things that struck me about this movie," she said. "It managed to be beautiful, joyful and devastatingly honest."

The first lady said "Beasts" makes viewers "think deeply about the people we love in our lives who make us who we are" and shows the strength of communities and the power they give others to overcome obstacles.

"It also tells a compelling story of poverty and devastation but also of hope and love in the midst of some great challenges," she said.

Mrs. Obama also said it was "cool" that "there are so many important lessons to learn in that little 93 minutes."

"That a director and a set of writers and producers can say so much in just 93 minutes," the first lady told the students. "And it doesn't always happen in a movie, quite frankly, but this one did it, and that's why I love this movie so much and why our team wanted to bring it here to the White House and share it with all of you."

Mrs. Obama also used the film to inspire her young audience, noting that Wallis was just 5 years old when she auditioned for the part and Henry, who runs a bakery, had never acted a day in his life.

"You all have to really be focused on preparing yourselves for the challenges and the opportunities that will lie ahead for all of you. You've got to be prepared," she said, urging them to go to school, do their homework every day and follow her husband's example by reading everything they get their hands on.

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Follow Darlene Superville on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/dsupervilleap

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Well: Straining to Hear and Fend Off Dementia

At a party the other night, a fund-raiser for a literary magazine, I found myself in conversation with a well-known author whose work I greatly admire. I use the term “conversation” loosely. I couldn’t hear a word he said. But worse, the effort I was making to hear was using up so much brain power that I completely forgot the titles of his books.

A senior moment? Maybe. (I’m 65.) But for me, it’s complicated by the fact that I have severe hearing loss, only somewhat eased by a hearing aid and cochlear implant.

Dr. Frank Lin, an otolaryngologist and epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, describes this phenomenon as “cognitive load.” Cognitive overload is the way it feels. Essentially, the brain is so preoccupied with translating the sounds into words that it seems to have no processing power left to search through the storerooms of memory for a response.

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Katherine Bouton speaks about her own experience with hearing loss.

A transcript of this interview can be found here.

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Over the past few years, Dr. Lin has delivered unwelcome news to those of us with hearing loss. His work looks “at the interface of hearing loss, gerontology and public health,” as he writes on his Web site. The most significant issue is the relation between hearing loss and dementia.

In a 2011 paper in The Archives of Neurology, Dr. Lin and colleagues found a strong association between the two. The researchers looked at 639 subjects, ranging in age at the beginning of the study from 36 to 90 (with the majority between 60 and 80). The subjects were part of the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging. None had cognitive impairment at the beginning of the study, which followed subjects for 18 years; some had hearing loss.

“Compared to individuals with normal hearing, those individuals with a mild, moderate, and severe hearing loss, respectively, had a 2-, 3- and 5-fold increased risk of developing dementia over the course of the study,” Dr. Lin wrote in an e-mail summarizing the results. The worse the hearing loss, the greater the risk of developing dementia. The correlation remained true even when age, diabetes and hypertension — other conditions associated with dementia — were ruled out.

In an interview, Dr. Lin discussed some possible explanations for the association. The first is social isolation, which may come with hearing loss, a known risk factor for dementia. Another possibility is cognitive load, and a third is some pathological process that causes both hearing loss and dementia.

In a study last month, Dr. Lin and colleagues looked at 1,984 older adults beginning in 1997-8, again using a well-established database. Their findings reinforced those of the 2011 study, but also found that those with hearing loss had a “30 to 40 percent faster rate of loss of thinking and memory abilities” over a six-year period compared with people with normal hearing. Again, the worse the hearing loss, the worse the rate of cognitive decline.

Both studies also found, somewhat surprisingly, that hearing aids were “not significantly associated with lower risk” for cognitive impairment. But self-reporting of hearing-aid use is unreliable, and Dr. Lin’s next study will focus specifically on the way hearing aids are used: for how long, how frequently, how well they have been fitted, what kind of counseling the user received, what other technologies they used to supplement hearing-aid use.

What about the notion of a common pathological process? In a recent paper in the journal Neurology, John Gallacher and colleagues at Cardiff University suggested the possibility of a genetic or environmental factor that could be causing both hearing loss and dementia — and perhaps not in that order. In a phenomenon called reverse causation, a degenerative pathology that leads to early dementia might prove to be a cause of hearing loss.

The work of John T. Cacioppo, director of the Social Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Chicago, also offers a clue to a pathological link. His multidisciplinary studies on isolation have shown that perceived isolation, or loneliness, is “a more important predictor of a variety of adverse health outcomes than is objective social isolation.” Those with hearing loss, who may sit through a dinner party and not hear a word, frequently experience perceived isolation.

Other research, including the Framingham Heart Study, has found an association between hearing loss and another unexpected condition: cardiovascular disease. Again, the evidence suggests a common pathological cause. Dr. David R. Friedland, a professor of otolaryngology at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, hypothesized in a 2009 paper delivered at a conference that low-frequency loss could be an early indication that a patient has vascular problems: the inner ear is “so sensitive to blood flow” that any vascular abnormalities “could be noted earlier here than in other parts of the body.”

A common pathological cause might help explain why hearing aids do not seem to reduce the risk of dementia. But those of us with hearing loss hope that is not the case; common sense suggests that if you don’t have to work so hard to hear, you have greater cognitive power to listen and understand — and remember. And the sense of perceived isolation, another risk for dementia, is reduced.

A critical factor may be the way hearing aids are used. A user must practice to maximize their effectiveness and they may need reprogramming by an audiologist. Additional assistive technologies like looping and FM systems may also be required. And people with progressive hearing loss may need new aids every few years.

Increasingly, people buy hearing aids online or from big-box stores like Costco, making it hard for the user to follow up. In the first year I had hearing aids, I saw my audiologist initially every two weeks for reprocessing and then every three months.

In one study, Dr. Lin and his colleague Wade Chien found that only one in seven adults who could benefit from hearing aids used them. One deterrent is cost ($2,000 to $6,000 per ear), seldom covered by insurance. Another is the stigma of old age.

Hearing loss is a natural part of aging. But for most people with hearing loss, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, the condition begins long before they get old. Almost two-thirds of men with hearing loss began to lose their hearing before age 44. My hearing loss began when I was 30.

Forty-eight million Americans suffer from some degree of hearing loss. If it can be proved in a clinical trial that hearing aids help delay or offset dementia, the benefits would be immeasurable.

“Could we do something to reduce cognitive decline and delay the onset of dementia?” he asked. “It’s hugely important, because by 2050, 1 in 30 Americans will have dementia.

“If we could delay the onset by even one year, the prevalence of dementia drops by 15 percent down the road. You’re talking about billions of dollars in health care savings.”

Should studies establish definitively that correcting hearing loss decreases the potential for early-onset dementia, we might finally overcome the stigma of hearing loss. Get your hearing tested, get it corrected, and enjoy a longer cognitively active life. Establishing the dangers of uncorrected hearing might even convince private insurers and Medicare that covering the cost of hearing aids is a small price to pay to offset the cost of dementia.

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Katherine Bouton is the author of the new book, “Shouting Won’t Help: Why I — and 50 Million Other Americans — Can’t Hear You,” from which this essay is adapted.

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This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 12, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the location of the Medical College of Wisconsin. It is in Milwaukee, not Madison.

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Southern California home prices rise; foreclosures fall statewide

Southern California’s housing market in January posted strong median home price gains as new foreclosure starts plummeted dramatically across the state.

The six-county region's median home price rose 23.5% from the same month a year earlier to $321,000, according to real estate research firm DataQuick. Home sales rose 10.6% to 16,058 over the same period.

The rise in home prices came as foreclosure starts in California took a massive tumble. The foreclosure decline came as new state laws aimed at prohibiting certain aggressive bank repossession practices went into effect. 

The real estate website ForeclosureRadar.com reported a 60.5% decline in the number of default notices issued in California in January compared with December. The number of default notices — the first formal step in the state’s foreclosure process — fell 77.7% from December 2011. A total of 4,500 such filings were logged last month, the lowest number since at least September 2006, when the website’s records begin.

The website gave no explanation for the sharp decrease in notices of default, but noted that the drop coincided with a package of tough new laws that provide homeowners with some of the nation's strongest protections from bank repossession practices taking effect in January.

Most notably, the Homeowner Bill of Rights bans the practice of “dual tracking,” in which a lender seizes a home even while negotiating a lower mortgage payment with the owner.

Passed last year, the legislative package was sponsored by California Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris and written by 10 Democratic lawmakers.

The laws also outlawed so-called robo-signing -- the improper or faulty processing of foreclosure documents -- and would allow state agencies and private citizens to sue financial institutions, under limited conditions, for economic compensation and for additional civil damages of up to $50,000 if lenders willfully, intentionally or recklessly violate the law.

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Guantanamo witness testifies on courtroom eavesdropping allegations

FT. MEADE, Md. -- Top officials at the terror detainee prison at the U.S. Naval Base on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, began testifying in a pretrial hearing Tuesday about courtroom security and allegations that the CIA or other U.S. intelligence officials are secretly listening to private conversations between defense lawyers and five accused Sept. 11 plotters.

First to the witness stand -- in fact the first substantial witness to testify in the military tribunal case that is the only prosecution in the 2001 terror attacks -- was Maurice Elkins, an Army veteran who is the director of technology for the new courtroom built next to the prison compound that houses 166 detainees.

In a crisp gray suit, Elkins testified that it would be almost impossible for any outside intelligence officials, known by the ambiguous acronym OCA for Original Classification Authority, to tap into the private defense conversations, and less likely they could record them.

But, he conceded, “I do not know what the OCA’s capability is.”

Yet while acknowledging that outside intelligence officials are indeed monitoring the proceedings should any classified information be inadvertently disclosed, Elkins added, “No entity in the U.S. government has ever asked me for recordings.”

Though Elkins was a defense witness, his testimony largely mirrored the government’s position that confidential defense conversations are not being picked up by the CIA or other intelligence agencies.

However, under questioning from David Nevin, an attorney for alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed,  Judge James L. Pohl, an Army colonel, acknowledged that intelligence authorities could be listening in and recording.

When Nevin asked if it was possible the OCA was recording everything they were picking up, the judge stepped in and answered the questions. “Anything is possible,” he said. “Most witnesses would agree that anything in life is possible.”

Elkins put it this way:  "I wouldn't know OCA if I walked next to OCA on the street or played basketball with OCA.” He added,  “You’re asking me to assume they are recording, and I can’t answer that.”

The defense, however, filed an emergency motion to address the matter, claiming that covert intelligence officials are listening in on their private courtroom discussion, as well as to visits the lawyers have with their clients in the prison.

Also scheduled to testify Tuesday are Navy Capt. Thomas Welsh, the staff judge advocate at the prison, and Army Col. John Bogdan, the compound commander.

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Raindrops, gloomy skies can't stop Mardi Gras

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Despite threatening skies, the Mardi Gras party carried on as thousands of costumed revelers cheered glitzy floats with make-believe monarchs in an all-out bash before Lent. In the French Quarter, as usual, Fat Tuesday played out with all its flesh and raunchiness.

Crowds were a little smaller than recent years, perhaps influenced by the forecast of rain. Still, parades went off as scheduled even as a fog settled over the riverfront and downtown areas.

Police, who had to deal with massive waves of visitors — first for Super Bowl and then for Mardi Gras — reported no major problems other than Saturday night when four people were shot on Bourbon Street. A suspect has been arrested.

There was a heavy police presence in the tourist-filled Quarter, where crowds began to swell in the early afternoon and would be bursting at the seams by the time police on horseback declared the party over at midnight.

The family side of Mardi Gras unfolded along stately St. Charles Avenue, where some groups camped out overnight to stake out prime spots for parade-viewing. A brief rain shower as the final float in the Krewe of Rex parade passed by didn't dampen the enthusiasm there.

Cliff Kenwood and his wife, Jennie, of New Orleans, brought their two children — 8-year-old Ivy and 6-year-old Jack — to the festivities. Each was dressed as a skeleton and Cliff Kenwood wore a banner around his hat referencing the recent publishing changes to the city's newspaper — The Times-Picayune.

The costumes poked fun at the paper's decision to cut back from a daily publishing schedule to three days a week. "We're black, white and dead all over," Jennie Kenwood said laughing.

She said their family kept their subscription even though they thought about canceling. "We can't do it to them. We don't want them to die," she said.

Rain or shine, it was a last chance to soak in some fun during the Carnival season, which ends with the start of Lent on Wednesday.

The Krewe of Zulu led the festivities from city neighborhoods to the business district, followed by the parade of Rex, King of Carnival, and hundreds of truck floats decorated by families and social groups.

In the French Quarter, many revelers had drinks in hand before sunrise. Some donned tutus, beads and boas. Some hadn't been to bed since Monday's Lundi Gras celebrations.

"We'll be in the French Quarter all day," said Bobbie Meir, of Gretna, La., with feathers in her hair and fingernails painted purple. "The sights today are jaw-dropping. It's a ton of fun and the best party in the world. Nobody does Mardi Gras like we do."

On Bourbon Street, women wore bustiers, fishnet stockings, bikini bottoms and little else. Some flashed flesh to attract the attention of people throwing beads from balconies.

"We're a flock of peacocks," said Laura Komarek, a recent New Orleans transplant from Minneapolis who moved to the Big Easy for a teaching job. Komarek and a group of friends walked Bourbon Street wearing leotards and large colorful feathers on their bottoms.

Sipping a hand-grenade, one of Bourbon Street's signature cocktails, Komarek said this was her first Mardi Gras.

"This is a totally different experience than any other event I've ever been to in my life. I'm so happy, having a blast with my friends without a care in the world."

The costumes were plentiful. Many revelers were clad in the traditional colors of Mardi Gras — purple, green and gold. There were cows, bees, pirates and jesters. One reveler rode through the French Quarter on a bike dressed in a U.S. Postal Service jersey adorned with syringes, referencing the doping scandal for the famed cyclist.

Among the revelers wearing plastic breasts and buttocks over their clothes was Mardi Gras first-timer Phil Weipert, of South Lyon, Mich.

"This is one big awesome party," said Weipert, who also had on a purple boa and matching hat with a gold crown. "I'm going to have to give up parades for Lent. I was going to give up booze but I'm definitely going to have to give up parades. I've been to like nine of them and I'm hooked."

Parading started at dawn, led by 82-year-old clarinetist Pete Fountain and his Half Fast Walking Club. Fountain and his group were clad in garish red suits and feathered hats.

"This is my life," he said, referring to his 63rd parade with the group he founded. "We're going to make it before it rains."

Mardi Gras also took on a Super Bowl flavor.

Baltimore Ravens' Super Bowl stars Jacoby Jones and Ed Reed, both Louisiana natives, were aboard a Zulu float. Reed was wearing a traditional Zulu grass skirt.

Nearby, three men identifying themselves as the "Superdome lighting crew" dressed in jump suits with home-made patches reading "Entergy" and name tags saying Larry, Shemp and Curly, a nod to the comedy troupe The Three Stooges.

Peter Menge, 41, of New Orleans, said the power company was an easy target for lampooning after the 34-minute blackout during the Super Bowl. "The power just goes out here a lot," he said.

Mayor Mitch Landrieu led the Zulu parade on horseback in a black shirt and jeans, flanked by mounted police officers.

At Gallier Hall, the old City Hall, Landrieu went to the bleachers to toast the Zulu and Rex monarchs, dancing to the music with others in the stands, including Archbishop Gregory Aymond, clad in his traditional clerical uniform adorned with strands of Mardi Gras beads.

For some, Mardi Gras had an even more special significance.

Kristina Goodner, 30, and Ben Goodner, 45, of Los Angeles watched the parades outside a St. Charles Avenue bed-and-breakfast. The Goodners got married at Disneyland, where Ben Goodner works, but the wedding had a New Orleans theme, including a zydeco band, a second line dance and a king cake. They decided to turn a previously planned family vacation to New Orleans into their honeymoon.

"It's been fantastic," she said. "Aside from the drunk college kids, everyone here is so welcoming."

___

Associated Press writer Janet McConnaughey contributed to this report.

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Well: Straining to Hear and Fend Off Dementia

At a party the other night, a fund-raiser for a literary magazine, I found myself in conversation with a well-known author whose work I greatly admire. I use the term “conversation” loosely. I couldn’t hear a word he said. But worse, the effort I was making to hear was using up so much brain power that I completely forgot the titles of his books.

A senior moment? Maybe. (I’m 65.) But for me, it’s complicated by the fact that I have severe hearing loss, only somewhat eased by a hearing aid and cochlear implant.

Dr. Frank Lin, an otolaryngologist and epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, describes this phenomenon as “cognitive load.” Cognitive overload is the way it feels. Essentially, the brain is so preoccupied with translating the sounds into words that it seems to have no processing power left to search through the storerooms of memory for a response.

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Katherine Bouton speaks about her own experience with hearing loss.

A transcript of this interview can be found here.

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Over the past few years, Dr. Lin has delivered unwelcome news to those of us with hearing loss. His work looks “at the interface of hearing loss, gerontology and public health,” as he writes on his Web site. The most significant issue is the relation between hearing loss and dementia.

In a 2011 paper in The Archives of Neurology, Dr. Lin and colleagues found a strong association between the two. The researchers looked at 639 subjects, ranging in age at the beginning of the study from 36 to 90 (with the majority between 60 and 80). The subjects were part of the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging. None had cognitive impairment at the beginning of the study, which followed subjects for 18 years; some had hearing loss.

“Compared to individuals with normal hearing, those individuals with a mild, moderate, and severe hearing loss, respectively, had a 2-, 3- and 5-fold increased risk of developing dementia over the course of the study,” Dr. Lin wrote in an e-mail summarizing the results. The worse the hearing loss, the greater the risk of developing dementia. The correlation remained true even when age, diabetes and hypertension — other conditions associated with dementia — were ruled out.

In an interview, Dr. Lin discussed some possible explanations for the association. The first is social isolation, which may come with hearing loss, a known risk factor for dementia. Another possibility is cognitive load, and a third is some pathological process that causes both hearing loss and dementia.

In a study last month, Dr. Lin and colleagues looked at 1,984 older adults beginning in 1997-8, again using a well-established database. Their findings reinforced those of the 2011 study, but also found that those with hearing loss had a “30 to 40 percent faster rate of loss of thinking and memory abilities” over a six-year period compared with people with normal hearing. Again, the worse the hearing loss, the worse the rate of cognitive decline.

Both studies also found, somewhat surprisingly, that hearing aids were “not significantly associated with lower risk” for cognitive impairment. But self-reporting of hearing-aid use is unreliable, and Dr. Lin’s next study will focus specifically on the way hearing aids are used: for how long, how frequently, how well they have been fitted, what kind of counseling the user received, what other technologies they used to supplement hearing-aid use.

What about the notion of a common pathological process? In a recent paper in the journal Neurology, John Gallacher and colleagues at Cardiff University suggested the possibility of a genetic or environmental factor that could be causing both hearing loss and dementia — and perhaps not in that order. In a phenomenon called reverse causation, a degenerative pathology that leads to early dementia might prove to be a cause of hearing loss.

The work of John T. Cacioppo, director of the Social Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Chicago, also offers a clue to a pathological link. His multidisciplinary studies on isolation have shown that perceived isolation, or loneliness, is “a more important predictor of a variety of adverse health outcomes than is objective social isolation.” Those with hearing loss, who may sit through a dinner party and not hear a word, frequently experience perceived isolation.

Other research, including the Framingham Heart Study, has found an association between hearing loss and another unexpected condition: cardiovascular disease. Again, the evidence suggests a common pathological cause. Dr. David R. Friedland, a professor of otolaryngology at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, hypothesized in a 2009 paper delivered at a conference that low-frequency loss could be an early indication that a patient has vascular problems: the inner ear is “so sensitive to blood flow” that any vascular abnormalities “could be noted earlier here than in other parts of the body.”

A common pathological cause might help explain why hearing aids do not seem to reduce the risk of dementia. But those of us with hearing loss hope that is not the case; common sense suggests that if you don’t have to work so hard to hear, you have greater cognitive power to listen and understand — and remember. And the sense of perceived isolation, another risk for dementia, is reduced.

A critical factor may be the way hearing aids are used. A user must practice to maximize their effectiveness and they may need reprogramming by an audiologist. Additional assistive technologies like looping and FM systems may also be required. And people with progressive hearing loss may need new aids every few years.

Increasingly, people buy hearing aids online or from big-box stores like Costco, making it hard for the user to follow up. In the first year I had hearing aids, I saw my audiologist initially every two weeks for reprocessing and then every three months.

In one study, Dr. Lin and his colleague Wade Chien found that only one in seven adults who could benefit from hearing aids used them. One deterrent is cost ($2,000 to $6,000 per ear), seldom covered by insurance. Another is the stigma of old age.

Hearing loss is a natural part of aging. But for most people with hearing loss, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, the condition begins long before they get old. Almost two-thirds of men with hearing loss began to lose their hearing before age 44. My hearing loss began when I was 30.

Forty-eight million Americans suffer from some degree of hearing loss. If it can be proved in a clinical trial that hearing aids help delay or offset dementia, the benefits would be immeasurable.

“Could we do something to reduce cognitive decline and delay the onset of dementia?” he asked. “It’s hugely important, because by 2050, 1 in 30 Americans will have dementia.

“If we could delay the onset by even one year, the prevalence of dementia drops by 15 percent down the road. You’re talking about billions of dollars in health care savings.”

Should studies establish definitively that correcting hearing loss decreases the potential for early-onset dementia, we might finally overcome the stigma of hearing loss. Get your hearing tested, get it corrected, and enjoy a longer cognitively active life. Establishing the dangers of uncorrected hearing might even convince private insurers and Medicare that covering the cost of hearing aids is a small price to pay to offset the cost of dementia.

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Katherine Bouton is the author of the new book, “Shouting Won’t Help: Why I — and 50 Million Other Americans — Can’t Hear You,” from which this essay is adapted.

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This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 12, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the location of the Medical College of Wisconsin. It is in Milwaukee, not Madison.

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