The Weak In Rock

I was browsing Boing Boing today and ran across this piece about a security consultant who had invented an effective auditory teenager repellent and my first thought was, “someone nominate this man for the Nobel Prize.”

Ten, maybe even five years ago my first thought would have been something like, “that’s outrageous, you can’t do that!” Oh how age changes us. Not only do I not find the idea of a sonic teenager barrier troublesome in the least, I think that there are wide applications for such brilliant technology:

• Movie theaters - place the devices in the front ten rows of the theater to reserve those seats for people who are actually there to watch the movie.
• During the holidays you could install them in department stores in the sections where the adults are trying to shop and the young hoodlums are just loitering around looking for opportunities to shoplift.
• Near benches and bollards outside of buildings. Instead of putting up those awful, unattractive barriers on things intended for use as seats so that skateboarders won’t rip them to shreds by using them for skating tricks you could install several of these devices.
• In coffee houses. Kids shouldn’t be drinking coffee in the first place. This will get rid of them so that we grown-ups can enjoy our frapuchinos in peace. This has the added side benefit of rendering employment in such establishments less attractive to kids which will generally improve the level of service we receive when we frequent them.
• On buses and commuter trains. Use them in the front of the bus and on select cars on the train so that we don’t have to deal with tomfoolery and shenanigans while commuting

This is, I’m sure, only the beginning. You could scale the device for a home version that would ensure that the kids stay out of dad’s den or workshop. A handheld version would also come in very handy.

Since the future ain’t what it used to be and we’re not going to be getting personal jetpacks or vacations on the moon any time soon, may as well use the technology we’ve got for something useful.

Last week as I was on my way home from work I tuned into NPR’s All Things Considered, like I do most of the time on my drive home. It’s a pretty good news show, but last week they aired an audio documentary called “My Lobotomy” put together by a man named Howard Dully for Sound Portraits. This program was one of the most jarring things I’ve ever heard on the radio.

I’ve always thought radio was a much more powerful medium than TV. Sure, TV can show you things, but because of all that showing and the focus on the visual it’s easy to miss important things said by the folks on camera or to not notice the nuances of emotion in someone’s voice. Not so on the radio. In this case the effect was staggering.

Mr. Dully is now 56 years old. When he was 12 his step-mother coerced his father into agreeing to let Dr. Walter Freeman perform a transorbital lobotomy on him. Her hope was to turn him into a vegetable so that he would have to be institutionalized and she would be rid of this step-child she not only did not love but did not want around her home at all. The operation didn’t turn Howard into a vegetable, and to listen to him speak it’s hard to notice anything wrong with him at all, but he makes it clear that since the operation he has never felt normal and that it has caused him great pain and trouble throughout his life.

Dully made My Lobotomy in an effort to understand why this was done to him and to try to learn about how society could even allow such a thing to be done to anyone, let alone a 12 year old boy. I admonish you to listen to this documentary. It will give you a peek into the world of psychotheraputics that I think most people are lacking. It will also most likely make you weep. It did me.

Thanks to Boing Boing for the links.