We can avoid this problem by getting a decent set of in-ear headphones that avoids the "broadcasting" issue for the most part. You can get this model:
JVC HA-FX33-B
...for under US$20 at most retailers, and for under US$30 you can get this model:
JVC HA-FXC50-B
...from Amazon.com.
As someone who never listened to music on the subway he rode daily until recently, I think people are amazingly thin-skinned these days. It’s a noisy subway car, barreling down a tunnel, not mass.
If I had “ear-bud leakage” people might learn something. I listen to audio books.
Back in the Eighties, I had an old station wagon. In it, I’d mounted an amplifier and an equalizer, and had it all wired to a pair of huge Electrovoice home stereo speakers in the back. I don’t/didn’t like my music loud, but I did like it clear and controllable.
I pulled up at a stoplight on Railroad Avenue in Pittsburg California, one day. Some youngster pulled up at the light, next to me, blaring some kind of noxious crap out of his stereo.
I responded with a full broadside of Bach’s toccata and fugue in d minor, beautifully done on a pipe organ in Ottawa, I think. It was the first and only time I ran that lash-up to it’s full potential. I had a headache after that for about a day and my ears rang for a bit longer.
The look on his face was priceless.
Hello, are you too young to remember boom boxes!
Ron’s a wimp. Why isn’t HE asking people to turn down their music?
The problem is that people like Ron are too timid to say “boo”.
What we need is a good miniature EMP generator that is capable of frying an iPod and/or cellphone from 10 feet away. Let Billy Mayes sell it for $19.95 and you would make a killing.....
Technology in that you no longer need to be a weightlifter carrying a BOOM box to be obnoxious in public. Now the passenger in the seat next to a 10 year old can be watching porn on his video player that fits in his pocket.
Popular Culture in that it simultaneously emphasizes 'do your own thing' AND 'you are a member of a victim class'. Thus a request for courteous behavior generates a rant about personal privilege and 'you don't like it because you is the man!"
If parents try teaching courtesy (as they most certainly should), they get trumped by peer pressure and popular culture. Schools gave up the idea as the 60s radicals started filling the educrat ranks (if not before). As for the other source of mores and values, religion, what go you think? News and culture emphasizes the bad like pedophiles and fraud because the reporters are trained cynics and antithetical towards moral absolutes.
I think the problem is deeper than simply annoying neighbors with too much noise, and its twofold. First, people are becoming more and more isolated from each other as they listen to headphones, text and talk on cells in public. Second, I think being plugged into music every waking hour is entirely unhealthy and unnatural... its an addiction.
“You know, that treble-drenched drone emanating from iPods halfway down the subway car.”
No, I don’t know. My nephew brought his Honda car ‘round for a timing belt yesterday, and, as we worked, commented on the quiet. 5 or 6 cars on the dead-end dirt road in 5 or 6 hours, birds at the feeder, and a deer snorting in the edge of the woods. We also heard a “my-opened-and-chromed-exhaust-pipes-are-my-penis” Harley rider on the paved 2 lane a half-mile away, but haven’t had to listen to jake-braked lumber trucks going down the same hill the Harley guy climbed since the beginning of Barney Frank’s Fannie’s recession. And public gathering places? I avoid ‘em like I avoid jury duty.
“Of all the daily discourtesies we endure, none to me is more irksome than headphone leak.”
I’d put a check in the box next to the option:
“Hateful bumper stickers that liberals have on their cars condemning George W. Bush and/or Republicans and/or conservatives and/or Christians.”
If you can hear music from an IPOD across a train car that person with the IPOD is either def or soon will be.
Does this guy really live in NY? Aren't the African suitcases issuing mega-amplified profanity a bit more annoying? Ditto the pimpmobiles riding around broadcasting the same trash.
ML/NJ