November 2011
5 posts
6 tags
Night Noise Guidelines For Europe
Lightning Storm Over Boston
The World Health Organization’s working group on environmental noise, headed by Dr. Rokho Kim, has now made available its new night noise guidelines for Europe (pdf). This is an extraordinarily comprehensive and ambitious document that merits attention from anyone interested in the impact of noise on a host of physiological systems, and the kinds of measures that must...
7 tags
Hyperpalatable Sound
A very nice essay from Judith Shulevitz in The New Republic gives the back-story of the current salt glut in our diet. Fundamentally, we find that we’re more prone to consumer saltier foods, even when we’re not hungry. But salt, as Shulevitz writes is only one-third of the ”unholy troika of ‘hedonic’ ingredients” along with fat and sugar. She recaps research from former FDA commissioner David...
2 tags
What's Changed in the Sound of the World?
Eénwielige motorfiets | Nationaal Archief
One of the arguments my book puts forward is that while the world may not be noisier today than it was 100 years ago, we are, paradoxically, living in a world with less silence. By this I mean that while in, say, late Victorian London one might well have been living nearer to a loud factory than any one in the developed west is likely to be living today,...
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The Extended Resonance of a Little Quiet Time
Bare foot boy wearing a hat, Powerhouse Museum Collection
Okay — this research isn’t exactly talking about the effects of silence on mental health; but I would argue that it’s pointing to the equation of perceptual experiences that most of us think about when we imagine quiet time. Here, they come under the slightly off-putting (a little righteous and assertive) rubric of “green...
4 tags
We Don't Do Silence: Restaurant Noise Redux
I recently spent a little time trying to track down when it was that intentionally loud restaurants began to be perceived as an issue on the urban dining scene. The earliest reference to the subject I was able to find in a major newspaper was “De Gustibus; Restaurant Noise: Does it Spoil a Good Meal?“ an article by Marion Burros published by The New York Times in October, 1983. Although Burros...