?@*%^? Teens and young adults aren't mosquitoes

[kpete]

Teens and young adults aren't mosquitoes

by Eric Fidler • September 2, 2010 11:20 am

If you're under 25, you're not quite welcome in Chinatown. A new "Mosquito" device at the street level of the Metro entrance at 7th & H Streets in Chinatown is emitting shrill noise at 18 KHz, a high frequency that only young people can hear.


Photo by aliciagriffin on Flickr.

Similar devices have been installed in Britain with the same purpose of discouraging young people from congregating outside shops. According to Councilmember Jack Evans, the founder of the Gallery Place development had the device installed on his company's Gallery Place building.

These devices are wrong and most likely illegal as well.

This device was placed at a popular Metro entrance and just a few feet from a popular bus stop. Toddlers, teenagers, and young adults waiting for the bus or emerging from the Metro will now have to endure a shrill screech purposely aimed at annoying them and driving them away. WMATA's Lisa Farbstein voiced concerns about this to the Post.

more wtf?
http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post.cgi?id=7008

[pstokely]

1. This assumes that adults have bad hearing and kids have good hearing

What if their iPods have damaged those kids ears so much this won't work?

[mike_c]

3. it's almost universal-- as we age, the organ of corti hair cells lose sensitivity...

...at the high frequency end of the spectrum. It's essentially an atrophy process. We CAN hasten it by damaging those cells with high decibel sound, but age alone is generally sufficient.

[mike_c]

2. LOL-- there's a lecture hall on my campus that used to drive students crazy...

...because of a high-pitched screech that came from the air handling system or something. I taught in that room for years and never heard it. Not once.

[Winterblues]

4. I remember a story here not too long ago about cell phones and certain ring tones

Kids soon learned there were some tones that could not be heard by adults, yet the kids could hear them just fine. Probably the same tone as the bug killer.

[Radical Activist]

5. "Get off my lawn!" goes high tech.

Wow.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

6. Destroy the device...then there is no problem

monkey wrenching is a perfectly valid tactic