Sounds of silence under attack

By David Zizzo

Published: September 15, 2008

What's that? Could you speak up? Sorry, I can't hear you because I'm blasting sound into my ears with my MP3 player.

I don't own an MP3 player. Oh yeah, I got my lousy hearing the old-fashioned way: rock concerts, fireworks and power tools. Today's young people don't have to bother with all that, though. They have many more opportunities than previous generations to abuse the little hairs in their inner ears.

Sound systems in theaters are louder, and the number of flaming explosions required for a film to qualify as an action movie has risen sharply. Public address systems in stadiums and arenas have been cranked beyond the threshold of pain to the enhanced interrogation setting. And boom cars are waging "audio terrorism” on remaining refuges of quiet.

If any of us still find ourselves threatened by silence, we can still whip out our iPods, pop in our earbuds and blast away.

A British study found that 14 percent of people spend up to 28 hours a week barraging themselves with tunes. And according to the Journal of Sound and Vibration, wave propagation in a thin fluid layer bound by a rigid surface leads to the incorporation of the fluid viscosity and elastic loss into the wave equation.

Other experts who speak English say young people, even without the benefit of cherry bombs, table saws and Magnum handguns, could go deaf up to 30 years earlier than their parents.

Until then, young people can enjoy their ability to hear high-pitched sounds the rest of us can't, perfect for those bumblebee ring tones for secret phone calls you don't want adults to know about. Of course, that temporary high-pitch capability means you're vulnerable to the "Mosquito,” a device used to annoy teens.

Fortunately, young people, you can set your cell phones to vibrate so you won't miss that urgent call about a sale on Cayman Crocs. If you suddenly find you can't hear anything, no prob, jst txt.

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