{"id":406,"date":"2009-02-08T22:47:34","date_gmt":"2009-02-08T22:47:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/?p=406"},"modified":"2010-11-23T18:07:34","modified_gmt":"2010-11-23T23:07:34","slug":"prophecies_soun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/?p=406","title":{"rendered":"Prophecies: sound-cancelling earplugs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ben recently made me aware of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theregister.co.uk\/2009\/02\/06\/troops_popstar_earplugs\/\">this article<\/a> about earplugs that protect the hearing of soldiers:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>British troops getting ready to deploy to Afghanistan are being issued with electronic sound-cancelling earplugs designed to let them hear what they need to &#8212; orders, conversations, enemy footfalls &#8212; but prevent hearing damage caused by explosions, gunfire and so on.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Science fiction author Larry Niven predicted this technology in 1975. From his story &#8220;The Borderland of Sol&#8221;:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Earplugs,&#8221; said Ausfaller, holding up a handful of soft plastic cylinders.<\/p>\n<p>We inserted them. Ausfaller said, &#8220;Can you hear me?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Sure.&#8221; &#8220;Yah.&#8221; They didn&#8217;t block our hearing at all.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Transmitter and hearing aid with sonic padding between. If you are blasted with sound, as by an explosion or a sonic stunner, the hearing aid will stop transmitting. If you go suddenly deaf, you will know you are under attack.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The real-world earplugs are slightly better than Niven&#8217;s; instead of cutting off all sound, they can simply reduce it to a safe level. (So you can hear the explosion without suffering hearing damage from it.) But apart from that detail, Niven&#8217;s description was spot on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ben recently made me aware of this article about earplugs that protect the hearing of soldiers:<br \/>\n <a href=\"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/?p=406\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prophecies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=406"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":430,"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406\/revisions\/430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}