The source of technological innovation [ZEAL], [JOY], [CREATIVITY], [AUDACITY]

From Forbes.com.
Exerpt:

[Creative innovation] started with interesting problems and people who wanted to solve them, exercising technology to its fullest because exploring new ideas was fun. I call these people "alpha geeks." They are smart enough to make technology do what they want rather than what its originator expected.

So don't follow the money. Follow the excitement. The people inventing the future are doing so just because it's fun.

O'Reilly Insights

Where Real Innovation Happens

Tim O'Reilly, 02.03.09, 06:00 PM EST

Don't look for the gilded road to fortune. Look for passion.

Conference:

Web 2.0 Expo

Training:

Learn From the Experts

Blog:

The Future at Work

SEBASTOPOL, Calif.--Forget Silicon Valley. Traditional wisdom is that it represents the model for American innovation: a hotbed of young entrepreneurs with easy access to capital from a large pool of savvy investors.

Think again: The World Wide Web was started by Englishman Tim Berners-Lee because he was frustrated with how hard it was to share information at CERN, the huge physics lab in Switzerland where he worked. Linux was developed by a Finnish college student who wrote the operating system "just for fun" and is only one example of thousands of open-source software projects begun around the world by people who were writing software to "scratch their own itch" and giving it away for free. Even the personal computer revolution, which took root in Silicon Valley, began with a bunch of hobbyists at the Homebrew Computer Club.

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It turns out that many of the great waves of creative destruction that have reinvented Silicon Valley didn't start there. More important, they didn't even start with the profit motive.

Rather, they started with interesting problems and people who wanted to solve them, exercising technology to its fullest because exploring new ideas was fun.

I call these people "alpha geeks." They are smart enough to make technology do what they want rather than what its originator expected. The alpha geeks exercise an idea or a gadget, pushing it past its current limits, reinventing it and eventually paving the way for entrepreneurs who figure out how to create mainstream versions of their novel ideas.

I've watched this process now for better than 30 years as a computer book publisher, conference producer, technology activist and early-stage investor. I learned early on that many of the innovations behind my best-selling books weren't coming from companies but from individuals. Their ideas spread through a grassroots network of early adopters and tinkerers long before entrepreneurs and investors appeared on the scene to figure out how to make money from the idea.

The Internet developed in this early adopter Petri dish for more than 15 years before entrepreneurs and venture capitalists clicked on their first e-mail. I was publishing books on free and open-source software in the mid-1980s; Silicon Valley didn't get the open-source message till 1998.

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Even recent venture booms, like the one around Web 2.0, a concept that my company popularized in 2004 to remind people that the Web had continued to evolve after the dot-com bust of 2001, missed the story till it was well underway. Key ideas and projects were born during the years when investors had given up on the Web. Only developers driven by a strong personal vision kept at it.

So where's the alpha-geek innovation happening today?

I see it bubbling up in areas like manufacturing, open-source hardware, sensor networks and robotics.

Yes, there are start-ups in these areas, but, more important, there's an enthusiast boom. The Maker Faire, an event O'Reilly Media launched in 2006 to celebrate the people playing at the interface of digital technology and the physical world, last year drew 65,000 attendees, including many families, to view the work of the 500 exhibiting "makers."

Or consider synthetic biology, where high school students are exploring the frontiers through events like the International Genetically Engineered Machines competition. When high-schoolers are doing genetic engineering, you know the future holds some big surprises!

We see innovators working from the outside to put flesh on the vision of government transparency articulated by the Obama administration. Software "hacks," like chicagocrime.org, one of the first Google Maps mash-ups, are becoming a prototype for how government data can be turned into new consumer services by start-ups like everyblock.com.

Tools for investigative journalism put together by nonprofits like the Sunlight Foundation presage the work of start-ups like Apture and Evri. And of course it's hard to ignore the fact that tools for grassroots activism, born out of political enthusiasm by a few "hackers" working for Howard Dean in 2004, turned into real products that helped win the national election only four years later.

How about the energy crisis? Yes, some of Silicon Valley's biggest investors are going after this opportunity. But even here, serendipity and personal curiosity play an unexpected role.

Consider Greenbox, a start-up founded by Jonathan Gay, one of the creators of the ubiquitous Flash technology for online video and animation. After retiring following the acquisition of Macromedia by Adobe (nasdaq: ADBE - news - people ), he built an "off the grid" house (mainly because it was too expensive to bring power to his remote location). He designed some tools to visualize and manage his home power consumption--then realized that they could become the basis of a new business.

So don't follow the money. Follow the excitement. The people inventing the future are doing so just because it's fun.

Tim O'Reilly is the founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, thought by many to be the best computer book publisher in the world. O'Reilly Media also hosts conferences on technology topics. Tim's blog, the O'Reilly Radar, "watches the alpha geeks" and serves as a platform for advocacy about issues of importance to the technical community. He can also be found as @timoreilly on Twitter.

Unhealthy TV-viewing habits - Read: Idleness and sloth

BBC online news, 3 October 2005

TV daily limit call 'unrealistic'

About half of children now have a TV set in their bedrooms

A call for imposed recommended daily allowances on television is unworkable and unrealistic, say experts.

Dr Aric Sigman, of the British Psychological Society, proposed limits after looking at published studies on potential health risks of TV viewing.

He says children under three should be banned from watching any TV, and older children restricted to viewing an hour a day of good quality programmes.

Teens should be limited to one and a half hours, and adults two hours a day.

There's nothing to be lost by watching less TV but a great deal to be lost by continuing to watch as much as we do Dr Aric Sigman

Dr Sigman says most of the adverse health affects documented as linked with TV viewing - ranging from "telly belly" obesity to Alzheimer's disease - occur irrespective of the type of programme people watch and are related to duration of viewing.

At age 75, the average British person will have spent more than twelve years of full 24-hour days watching television, he said.

The average six-year-old will have already watched more than one full year of their lives, he says.

When other 'screen time' is included the figure is far higher.

TV Nation

Children aged 11 to 15 now spend 53 hours a week - seven and a half hours a day watching TV and computers, an increase of 40 per cent in a decade.

About half of children now have a TV set in their bedrooms, research suggests.

It would be unrealistic to have limits such as this. Common sense should prevail Dr David Haslam of the National Obesity Forum

Dr Sigman believes this is too much and, therefore, needs to be regulated.

"Perhaps because television isn't a substance or a visibly risky activity, it has eluded the value judgements that have befallen other health issues.

"Yet it is particularly disturbing to still hear some academics urging 'caution in interpreting these studies' and warning of the risk of over-reacting."

He said enough evidence now existed to say 'better safe than sorry'.

"There is simply too much at stake not to be responsibly decisive now. In short, there's nothing to be lost by watching less television but a great deal to be lost by continuing to watch as much as we do."

An average 75-year-old will have spent 12 of their years watching TV

However, some argue that TV viewing can aid learning and improve health.

For example, research has suggested that it can aid speech and language development in children.

Educational programmes can also raise awareness of important health issues.

Doctors are also beginning to use interactive TV as a way to consult with patients who might not be able to travel to the surgery or hospital to be seen.

Dr David Haslam of the National Obesity Forum said that although TV viewing had been linked with obesity, it was leading a sedentary lifestyle that was the root cause rather than watching TV per se.

Someone who watches more than two hours of TV per night might still be very active during the day for example. Equally, some people watch TV while exercising in the gym.

Dr Haslam said: "Watching too much TV is one of the many, many factors that causes ill health. But it would be unrealistic to have limits such as this. It does not reflect real life at all.

HEALTH ISSUES LINKED TO TV VIEWING NEGATIVE Obesity Violent behaviour Back pain/bad posture Short-sightedness Early puberty POSITIVE Aid speech development Help with understanding and education Raise awareness of important issues and current affairs Help forge social bonds Television: Good for health? TV may speed up puberty

"It's like a bag of crisps - the occasional one is fine as long as you are not having them every day all day.

"Common sense should prevail."

Dr Kevin Browne, from the University of Birmingham, has studied the impact of watching violence on TV on child behaviour.

He said the critical thing for parents to be aware of was the circumstances in which their children watch TV. He said it was bad if a child watched TV on their own, unsupervised, for hours on end.

"What we need to be weary about is watching TV in isolation.

"TV where it is used as a focus for discussion amongst peers or to promote parent-child interaction can be a positive thing."

Last year, the National Literacy Trust commissioned a research review to investigate concerns that television might have a negative impact on language learning among children.

The research suggested that in the right circumstances, TV viewing among 2-5 year olds could be beneficial to language development.

The Department of Health was unable to comment.

Diet rich in plant foods reduces cancer risk, study suggests

BBC online news, 3 October 2005

Beans and soya beat lung cancer

Soya beans are a good source of phytoestrogens

Mounting evidence suggests eating a diet rich in plant foods such as beans and soya cuts the risk of lung cancer.

The latest study involving more than 3,000 US people found those who ate more of these foods were less likely to develop lung cancer.

The protective effect, thought to be down to oestrogen-like compounds within the foods, appeared to reduce cancer risk by as much as 46%.

The research appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Phytoestrogens

The University of Texas Anderson Cancer Center researchers compared the diets of 1,674 lung cancer patients and 1,735 people of similar ages and sex who did not have lung cancer.

They used food frequency questionnaires to collect data on intake of 12 individual phytoestrogens - the plant-derived compounds believed to have oestrogenic properties and which have been shown to protect against some tumours in past studies.

It is essential not to forget that nine out of 10 cases of lung cancer and a quarter of all cancer deaths are caused by smoking Dr Kat Arney of Cancer Research UK

The questionnaires had been completed before the cancer patients had been diagnosed with lung tumours.

Overall, the lung cancer patients tended to eat far less phytoestrogen-containing foods than those without cancer.

Phytoestrogens appeared to cut cancer risk between about 20% and 45% in men and women.

Scientists believe the oestrogen-like compounds act on receptors in the body, which regulate cancer growth.

"These data provide further support for the limited but growing epidemiologic evidence that oestrogen and phytoestrogens are associated with a decrease in risk of lung cancer," they said.

Multifactorial

The findings back those of others who have noticed Asian populations who typically consume large quantities of phytoestrogens have lower rates of lung cancer than other populations.

However, the US team said more research was still needed to explore the link further.

FOODS CONTAINING PHYTOESTROGENS Soy products Pulses Grains Vegetables

Dr Kat Arney of Cancer Research UK said: "This research highlights the importance of a healthy diet in preventing cancer, and demonstrates the role that a person's lifestyle plays in the disease.

"Although this study is relatively small, it points towards the potential benefits of plant chemicals in preventing lung cancer.

"However, it is essential not to forget that nine out of 10 cases of lung cancer and a quarter of all cancer deaths are caused by smoking."

She said quitting smoking could significantly reduce a person's risk of cancer and other diseases, as could following a low fat diet, rich in fruit, vegetables and whole grains.

Immunesystem stronger in the happily married

BBC online news, 8 November 2005

Happy marriage 'helps fight flu'

Antibodies can fight off infection

Happily married people are more likely to fight off flu effectively, research suggests.

Conversely, the virus may be more difficult for those who are recently bereaved or divorced.

A team from the University of Birmingham found that stressful life events had an effect on the immune response to the annual flu jab.

This immune response is thought to be a good indication of the body's capacity to fight back against the virus itself.

FLU Flu is estimated to kill several thousand people in the UK each year 10-15% of the population develop flu each year 100,000 flu particles can be projected into the air with just one sneeze In 12 hours, the flu virus can invade 1 million nose and throat cells

The Birmingham team examined levels of antibodies - produced by the body to combat disease - in the blood.

A higher increase in antibody levels indicates that the body's immune system is better primed to fight off infection.

People who said they were happily married had much higher levels of antibodies in the blood than those who reported lower marital satisfaction.

Those that had suffered a bereavement in the year prior to vaccination had a poorer response than those who had not suffered bereavement.

More than 180 people aged over 65 from surgeries across Birmingham took part in the study.

Jabs important

Participants gave a blood sample prior to vaccination, then further samples at one month.

They also completed questionnaires to gauge exposure to stressful life events.

Lead researcher Dr Anna Phillips said: "We know that those aged over 65 are more at risk of the impact of flu.

"But this research shows that within that group, those that have been recently bereaved, or those that are single, divorced or widowed are more at risk that those who are in a happy marriage.

"It is especially important for these at risk groups to get their flu jabs.

"We would like to take this research further, to see whether interventions such as bereavement counselling or marriage counselling can improve the immune response in at risk groups."

Dr John Moore-Gillon, president of the British Lung Foundation, said: "Many things can affect the immune system, and this research suggests that the state of someone's mind may be one of them.

"It's always difficult to completely exclude the possibility that it's actually factors like subtle alterations in nutrition which are responsible for the differences seen in the immune responses.

"But the research certainly shows that we need to try and understand more about how the mind and the body interact in both health and disease."

(mirrored from my other blog)
An interesting study on how happiness transmits!
"Joy gives us wings! In times of joy our strength is more vital, our intellect keener, and our understanding less clouded." -'Abdu'l-Baha http://is.gd/mjnA

Another enlightening blogpost on this article can be viewed here.

Exerpts:

A next-door neighbor's joy increased one's chance of being happy by 34 percent, but a neighbor down the block had no effect. "You have to see them and be in physical and temporal proximity," Dr. Christakis said. ...when people changed from unhappy to happy in self-reported responses on a widely used measure of well-being, other people in their social network became happy too. Another surprising finding was that a joyful coworker did not lift the spirits of colleagues, unless they were friends. (MORAL: We've got befriend the people around us! - A.B.)

Strangers May Cheer You Up, Study Says

By PAM BELLUCK

How happy you are may depend on how happy your friends' friends' friends are, even if you don't know them at all.

And a cheery next-door neighbor has more effect on your happiness than your spouse's mood.

So says a new study that followed a large group of people for 20 years — happiness is more contagious than previously thought.

"Your happiness depends not just on your choices and actions, but also on the choices and actions of people you don't even know who are one, two and three degrees removed from you," said Dr. Nicholas A. Christakis, a physician and social scientist at Harvard Medical School and an author of the study, to be published Friday in BMJ, a British journal. "There's kind of an emotional quiet riot that occurs and takes on a life of its own, that people themselves may be unaware of. Emotions have a collective existence — they are not just an individual phenomenon."

In fact, said his co-author, James H. Fowler, an associate professor of political science at University of California, San Diego, their research found that "if your friend's friend's friend becomes happy, that has a bigger impact on you being happy than putting an extra $5,000 in your pocket."

The researchers analyzed information on the happiness of 4,739 people and their connections with several thousand others — spouses, relatives, close friends, neighbors and co-workers — from 1983 to 2003.

"It's extremely important and interesting work," said Daniel Kahneman, an emeritus psychologist and Nobel laureate at Princeton, who was not involved in the study. Several social scientists and economists praised the data and analysis, but raised possible limitations.

Steven Durlauf, an economist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, questioned whether the study proved that people became happy because of their social contacts or some unrelated reason.

Dr. Kahneman said unless the findings were replicated, he could not accept that a spouse's happiness had less impact than a next-door neighbor. Dr. Christakis believes that indicates that people take emotional cues from their own gender.

A study also to be published Friday in BMJ, by Ethan Cohen-Cole, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, and Jason M. Fletcher, an assistant professor at the Yale School of Public Health, criticizes the methodology of the Christakis-Fowler team, saying that it is possible to find what look like social contagion effects with conditions like acne, headaches and height, but that contagion effects go away when researchers factor in environmental factors that friends or neighbors have in common.

"Researchers should be cautious in attributing correlations in health outcomes of close friends to social network effects," the authors say.

An accompanying BMJ editorial about the two studies called the Christakis-Fowler study "groundbreaking," but said "future work is needed to verify the presence and strength of these associations."

The team previously published studies concluding that obesity and quitting smoking are socially contagious.

But the happiness study, financed by the National Institute on Aging, is unusual in several ways. Happiness would seem to be "the epitome of an individualistic state," said John T. Cacioppo, director of the University of Chicago's Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience, who was not involved in the study.

And what about schadenfreude - pleasure in someone's misery - or good old-fashioned envy when a friend lands a promotion or wins the marathon? "There may be some people who become unhappy when their friends become happy, but we found that more people become happy over all," Dr. Christakis said.

Professor Cacioppo said that suggested that unconscious signals of well-being packed more zing than conscious feelings of resentment. "I might be jealous of the fact that they won the lottery, but they're in such a good mood that I walk away feeling happier without even being aware that they were the site for my happiness," he said.

The subtle transmission of emotion may explain other findings, too. In the obesity and smoking cessation studies, friends were influential even if they lived far away. But the effect on happiness was much greater from friends, siblings or neighbors who lived nearby.

A next-door neighbor's joy increased one's chance of being happy by 34 percent, but a neighbor down the block had no effect. A friend living half a mile away was good for a 42 percent bounce, but the effect was almost half that for a friend two miles away. A friend in a different community altogether can win an Oscar without making you feel better.

"You have to see them and be in physical and temporal proximity," Dr. Christakis said.

Body language and emotional signals must matter, said Professor Fowler, adding, "Everybody thought when they came out with videoconferencing that people would stop flying across the country to have meetings, but that didn't happen. Part of developing trust with another person is being able to take their hand in yours."

Still, they said, it is not clear if increased communication via e-mail messages and Webcams may eventually lessen the distance effect. In a separate study of 1,700 Facebook profiles, they found that people smiling in their photographs had more Facebook friends and that more of those friends were smiling. "That shows that some of our findings are generalizable to the online world," Dr. Christakis said.

The BMJ study used data from the federal Framingham Heart Study, which began following people in Framingham, Mass., after World War II and ultimately followed their children and grandchildren. Beginning in 1983, participants periodically completed questionnaires on their emotional well-being.

They also listed family members, close friends and workplaces, so researchers could track them over time. Many of those associates were Framingham participants who also completed questionnaires, giving Dr. Christakis and Professor Fowler about 50,000 social ties to analyze. They found that when people changed from unhappy to happy in self-reported responses on a widely used measure of well-being, other people in their social network became happy too.

Sadness was transmitted the same way, but not as reliably as happiness. Professor Cacioppo believes that reflects an evolutionary tendency to "select into circumstances that allow us to stay in a good mood."

Still, happiness has a shelf life, the researchers found.

"Your happiness affects my happiness only if you've become happy in the last year — it's almost like what have you done for me lately," Dr. Christakis said. Plus, the bounce you get lasts a year tops. Better if your friends can spread out their happy news, and not, say, all get married the same year.

Another surprising finding was that a joyful coworker did not lift the spirits of colleagues, unless they were friends. Professor Fowler believes inherent competition at work might cancel out a happy colleague's positive vibes.

The researchers cautioned that social contacts were less important to happiness than someone's personal circumstances. But the effect of social contacts even three degrees removed — friends of friends of friends — was clear, and also occurred with obesity and quitting smoking. More distant contacts exerted no influence.

And people in the center of social networks were happier than those on the fringes. Being popular was good, especially if friends were popular too.

So should you dump melancholy friends? The authors say no. Better to spread happiness by improving life for people you know.

"This now makes me feel so much more responsible that I know that if I come home in a bad mood I'm not only affecting my wife and son but my son's best friend or my wife's mother," Professor Fowler said. When heading home, "I now intentionally put on my favorite song."

Still, he said, "We are not giving you the advice to start smiling at everyone you meet in New York. That would be dangerous."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7909464.stm

Long hours link to dementia risk

The stress of long hours may be a factor

Long working hours may raise the risk of mental decline and possibly dementia, research suggests.

The Finnish-led study was based on analysis of 2,214 middle-aged British civil servants.

It found that those working more than 55 hours a week had poorer mental skills than those who worked a standard working week.

The American Journal of Epidemiology study found hard workers had problems with short-term memory and word recall.

This should say to employers that insisting people work long hours is actually not good for your business Professor Cary Cooper University of Lancaster

Lead researcher Dr Marianna Virtanen, from the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, said: "The disadvantages of overtime work should be taken seriously."

It is not known why working long hours might have an adverse effect on the brain.

However, the researchers say key factors could include increased sleeping problems, depression, an unhealthy lifestyle and a raised risk of cardiovascular disease, possibly linked to stress.

The civil servants who took part in the study took five different tests of their mental function, once between 1997 and 1999, and again between 2002 and 2004.

Those doing the most overtime recorded lower scores in two of the five tests, assessing reasoning and vocabulary.

Cumulative effect

The effects were cumulative, the longer the working week was the worse the test results were.

Employees with long working hours also had shorter sleeping hours, reported more symptoms of depression and used more alcohol than those with normal working hours.

Professor Mika Kivimäki, who also worked on the study, said "We will go on with this study question in the future.

"It is particularly important to examine whether the effects are long-lasting and whether long working hours predict more serious conditions such as dementia."

Professor Cary Cooper, an expert in workplace stress at the University of Lancaster, said it had been long established that consistently working long hours was bad for general health, and now this study suggested it was also bad for mental functioning.

He said: "This should say to employers that insisting people work long hours is actually not good for your business, and that there is a business case for making sure people have a good work-life balance.

"But my worry is that in a recession people will actually work longer hours. There will be a culture of "presenteeism" - people will go to work even if they are ill because they want to show commitment, and make sure they are not the next to be made redundant."

Harriet Millward, deputy chief executive of the Alzheimer's Research Trust, said: "This study should give pause for thought to workaholics.

"We already know that dementia risk can be reduced by maintaining a balanced diet, regular social interactions and exercising both our bodies and minds. Perhaps work-life balance should be accounted for too."

English pronunciation gage

If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be
speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the
world. After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he'd prefer six months of
hard labour to reading six lines aloud. Try them yourself.

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

-- B. Shaw