Using Ear Plugs Everywhere

Ear plugs do more than just protect your hearing; they will protect your very sanity! Naturally, there are those who don’t mind noise and commotion. But how about those who react badly to living like sardines in a can?

Get some ear plugs, that’s what! They’re cheap for getting something so precious back in return: your ability to hear yourself think. It ain’t just roommates, either, but neighbors – and not just apartment-dwellers but folks who live in houses: such is life in the big city!

So that’s where ear plugs come in. They’re not always going to solve the problem, but they are often helpful, minimizing the noise if not downright stopping it altogether. Most commonly available kinds, however, are only rated up to thirty-two or thirty-three decibels, an absurdly low level of prevention, one comparable to mild conversational tones. Those of better quality are not as easy to find and will require a bit of research to procure.

But it may be impractical to wear them continuously. Though many do get used to them, many also find them uncomfortable. Of course, they shouldn’t be necessary to being with. Good luck getting anyone in government to care, however. In fact, even in New York City, reputedly the one place in the entire United States with stringent anti-noise laws on the books, enforcement is often wanting due to not enough resources being devoted to the issue, particularly manpower. And ironically, the one greatest source of noise complaints, that between neighbors, is precisely what civic involvement tends to shy away from!

“Hell is other people,” noted the French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, and municipal authorities in Gotham are loathe to intercede between neighbors. But what do the laws on the books do, then? And what else does a call to 311 offer besides a chance to gripe to someone?

It seems like most people don’t mind noise. That’s the sad truth, in the final analysis: most folks just don’t mind it. Hence, some things will never change. Mental sanity is not something that’s highly valued; indeed, not many know what true sanity is nor how noise plays an important part in preventing it!

EMail and Blank Envelopes

This is what happens when computers take over. Bid farewell to blank envelopes! You won’t find them anymore. Never mind the standard sci-fic trope about computers controlling everything; the reality of it all is much more prosaic (so far!). On the other hand, it’s exactly that kind of a nightmare for those whose livelihoods have been lost on account of computer automation!

Now it’s true that technology has always changed our lives, often in a most disruptive manner, and blank envelopes won’t be made here again anyway – and even then, by machines. Whereas making paper was once a craft in its own right, it’s all done automatically by machines now. But even these overseas workers will be thrown out of work soon enough thanks to all the wireless communications that’s revolutionized just about every facet to how people interact.

Why write a letter and stick it in an envelope when e-mail and the like can transmit your message so much faster? Nothing to be printed out, no postage to fumble around for, and never a necessary wait on a response – never mind having to go out and do a drop-off at the nearest mailbox! Well, at least not unless one’s correspondent isn’t interested in communications anyway!

Demand for blank envelopes is at an all-time low these days. The situation has gotten so that they are often hard to find, and one frequently has to resort to a specialty store in order to obtain some. And it’s all due to the computer revolution that’s totally changed just about every aspect of our lives. It’s nothing like the first envelopes used by man, which would appear to us today to be more like pottery than anything else, made as they were from clay that were dried or even baked in order to be “sealed” – never mind the breaking necessary to be opened!

There is nothing new, then, to the impact of technology. But it isn’t often as visceral and immediate as those found in fiction. Therefore, instead of space travel, the year 2001 (as opposed to the eponymous movie by famed filmmaker Stanley Kubrick) offers us the worldwide web; instead of moon bases, we USAF Predator and Reaper drones; instead of artificial intelligence, we get cell phones.

So no more blank envelopes. That’ll be one of the most prevalent effects of computers taking over even more than they already have by now. Soon there won’t be any envelopes at all in the whole world!

Getting on the Blu Ray Media Bandwagon

In case it’s Blu Ray Media you want, just look to today’s superb variety offering anywhere from twenty-five to fifty gigabytes of storage capacity per disc! Wow, that sounds impressive all right, but really, what could one possibly do with all that space?? If you’re a geezer and plan on transfering over the past three decades’ worth of family home videos from VHS, well, fine, but for most folks it’s just about capturing some frisky gal pals on video and nothing much else But let’s face it: some guys do get all the luck, don’t they, and may need such capacities to properly document their harem!