This is probably best enjoyed transgenerationally. That is, to say, with at least two people, one of whom is below 25 years of age, and another older than that. It is also more fun if you follow this in sequence, and not read the entire entry first.
The Experiment
Click on this link and it will take you to about a 20 second MP3 recording. If you are using Firefox, just right-mouse click the link and open it in a new Tab. That way, you can keep this window open, while listening to the clip.
Then come back and continue reading.
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STOP HERE until you have heard the MP3 clip
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The Results
Depending on the computer you were listening to this on, chances are that if you are under 30 years of age, or so, you heard a very annoying sound when you played the audio clip. But if you are over 35 years of age, you heard nothing.
I have experimented with many people on this. My 41-year-old brother heard the sound. Kids all clearly hear the sound and find it very loud and annoying. Dogs and cats can also hear the pitch/sound. Ted’s cat ran away when she heard it. His dog just perked up his ears.
I, on the other hand, could not hear it. And everyone from 40 and up (with the exception of my brother) that I have tested it on, could not hear it. With this exception: when I played it on a Micron laptop, to test a group of people, I heard it for the first time. So there must be something unique about their sound card, codec or something else that allowed me to hear it.
The Background
This sound, created by a British firm and dubbed “the Mosquito alarm”, was invented to drive teenage gangs away from shopping centers. It releases a high pitched tone, that only those below 20 can actually hear; due to age related deafness (presbycusis).
Teens, in turn, took the sound and converted it into an MP3 music file which they can use as a mobile ringtone on their phones. Cellphones are banned from schools (because ofthe distraction). But with this new ringtone, now dubbed “TeenBuzz”, the teachers have no idea that the students are still using their phones whilst in class.
I like this story because it shows how one group took something bad and turned it into something good. Much the same way that the word Yankee was first a perjorative term, coined by the British, to show their distate for the colonists (a letter written in 1758 by British General James Wolfe, expressing his very low opinion of the American troops assigned to him, is the first written use of this term). After Lexington and Concord, the colonists took the term and made it a badge of honor.
I think the same thing when I see license plates made out of chains. Taking an instrument of slavery, pain and death, Blacks have turned it around to be a source of memory and honor. I like that.
Nietzsche wrote “That which does not kill me, makes me stronger” (The Twilight of the Idols). And millions went gaga.
But thousands of years before, a young man, after burying his father, framed it a different way: “you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.” (Genesis 50: 20 link ).
