Music to the Ears, or Not
1. "Alice Springs town song to play in public toilets"
<http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/03/19/2194264.htm>
"The Alice Springs Town Council has moved to make public toilet
experiences more pleasant - with music."
2. "Turn that noise off: The use and misuse of sound"
<http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=10711614>
"Campaigners say that it is unfair to subject the young to a
discomforting sound that only they can detect -- older ears are no
longer sensitive enough to detect the Mosquito's din."
Meanwhile in Australia...
"Anti-loiter device makes kids 'guinea pigs'"
<http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/02/20/2167362.htm>
"A civil liberties group is opposed to the use of high-pitched devices
to deter youths from loitering at Ceduna in South Australia's far west."
3. "Bear convicted for theft of honey"
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7295559.stm>
"The case was brought by the exasperated beekeeper after a year of
trying vainly to protect his beehives. For a while, he kept the animal
away by buying a generator, lighting up the area, and playing thumping
Serbian turbo-folk music."
4. "Inaudible song is 'top of the pups'"
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/15/wdog215.xml>
"A song that is completely inaudible to humans has become such a top-
selling hit in New Zealand it is about to be released globally."
There's even a music video.
5. "Music special: Five great auditory illusions"
<http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/dn13355>
6. "Pitch perception skewed by modern tuning"
<http://technology.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg19526194.100>
"Gitshier speculates that since orchestras tune to A over a range of
frequencies, exposure to this may widen people's 'A category' and make
them lump together adjacent notes "
7. "The Geometry of Music"
<http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1582330-1,00.html>
"Borrowing some of the mathematics that string theorists invented to
plumb the secrets of the physical universe, he (Dmitri Tymoczko) has
found a way to represent the universe of all possible musical chords
in graphic form."
