Look! Do you hear that?

Of all the ways to revive this blog, I'm going to do it with an internet quiz.

But wait!  It's a pretty fascinating one, and like many other entries in this journal, is a vague application of the "madder" sciences.

So there's this new trend in cell-phonery wherein teenagers are using ringtones that take advantage of their aging instructors' deteriorated hearing.  They use ultra-high-pitched sounds: they can hear the tones, their teachers can't.  (MSNBC article <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13274669/">here</a>.)

Of course this works the other way around, too.  In fact, this idea was originally applied to <em>disperse</em> teenagers, not give them a way to foil their elders.  <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/wiltshire/content/articles/2006/04/04/mosquito_sound_wave_feature.shtml">Here's an example of a theater in the UK</a> where the same sounds that adults are blissfully ignorant about can serve as "youth repellent" to keep unwanted teenagers away.

Use the link below to find out how old your ears are.  I'm nearly 30, but am pleased to report that my hearing still rivals a 20-year-old:

<table width='350' border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=2 align=center><tr><td bgcolor='#AABBAA' align=center style='font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 14pt; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;'><div id='head'>You are about 20 years old</div></td></tr><tr><td bgcolor='#EEFFEE' style='font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Arial; font-size: 12pt; border: 1px; border-color:AABBAA;'><div id='text'>The teen repellent will no longer foil you, but you can still hear some pretty high tones.<br /><br />The highest pitched ultrasonic mosquito ringtone that I can hear is <a href='http://media.ultrasonic-ringtones.com/tones/16746.mp3'>16.7kHz</a></div></td></tr><tr><td bgcolor='#CCDDCC' style='font-family: Arial, Tahoma; font-size: 12pt;'><a href='http://www.ultrasonic-ringtones.com/'>Take the mosquito ringtones hearing test</a></td></tr></table>

Posted at 12:21PM Jul 21, 2006 by WILSON, JOSHUA in General  |  Comments[3]