Europe Begins Noise Mapping Effort

Makarand writes "The European continent has begun its fight against noise pollution by initiating a program to map noise levels for cities in the European Union with more than 250,000 people. As placing microphones on every building in London or Paris to measure noise was not practical, data on the amount of traffic carried by roads and the noise levels was fed into computers to generate a model of noise levels across the city. The model's accuracy was verified by taking readings with microphones at 100 points in the city and was found to be accurate on average to within 1 decibel. The noise maps will allow planning to insulate the public from noise by directing traffic away from residential areas and making funds available to sound-proof thin walled homes."

Comments

Rich country?

[ObviousGuy]

Sometimes I wish the U.S. government wasn't spending so much trying to build up the military and instead redirect those funds to building up the national infrastructure.

It especially pangs me when I read about things like this where the British government is spending lots of excess government funds on sound-proofing people's homes.

Re:Rich country?

[Anonymous Coward]

The US has a lower population density than Europe. So noise problems are a bigger issue.

Re:Rich country?

[Anonymous Coward]

Put solar cells on your roof, buy a hybrid car, put in insulation that keeps sound out and heat (or cold) in. You'll get a little love from Uncle Sam too. Oh. You wanted a fucking hand-out? Well, you're not cutting in front of me, I'll tell you that much!

Re:Rich country?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm... Did you even think before you posted, or do you just like to bring politics into every possible discussion? Europe has a much higher population density, therefore you can expect noise problems to be worse. I'm from Canada, but I don't recall hearing people from the US ranting and raving about the "noise pollution". It's barely been touched on by the media.

Re:Rich country?

[RevMike]

Sometimes I wish the U.S. government wasn't spending so much trying to build up the military and instead redirect those funds to building up the national infrastructure.

It especially pangs me when I read about things like this where the British government is spending lots of excess government funds on sound-proofing people's homes.

Please explain this to me. Someone purchases a house with walls that aren't very sound proof. They presumably knew this at the time of purchase, it would be ridiculous to think otherwise. Someone else spends the time to investigate their choices, and eventually spends more money on a house with more sound proof walls. Why should the person who spent extra to buy a house with soundproof walls now have to pay additional taxes to soundproof someone else's home - someone else who didn't care enough about it to shop for that feature in the first place?

If you bought a four bedroom home, and your neighbor only bought a two bedroom home, would you expect that the tax man would come and empty your bank account so that you neighbor could get an addition built?

All this does is encourage people to do the cheapest thing possible, then use some ill concieved government program to clean up the mess afterwards.

Please note: I'm not talking about a situation where the government built an airport or some such thing near a previously quiet neighborhood. I'm talking about cases where the home-owner knew (or should have known) the conditions prior to purchase.

Re:Rich country?

[Anonymous Coward]

If I were a tax-paying British citizen I'd be outraged that "lots of excess government funds" were being used for this purpose. If I were a whining hippy always looking for a handout, I'd be outraged because my VW van wasn't eligible for sound-proofing.

Re:Rich country?

[ThogScully]

I know this is Slashdot, but don't you ever go outside? Not much you can do to sound proof your yard, is there. I assume you never open your windows either? Personally, I do both and if I were in England, I would hope the government would be spending a little effort to make living areas a little more liveable.

Now, I'm from the US, so I can't say if this is useful or not to the areas being investigated because I've never been there and don't know how loud it is. Realistically, there's the potential that this is more of a made up problem and people shouldn't be so concerned as the noise levels don't warrant it. However, just from this article, I'd say that's not an assumption I can jump to.

You seem to have no trouble jumping to it though.
-N

Re:Rich country?

[Noryungi]

Please explain this to me. Someone purchases a house with walls that aren't very sound proof. They presumably knew this at the time of purchase, it would be ridiculous to think otherwise. Someone else spends the time to investigate their choices, and eventually spends more money on a house with more sound proof walls. Why should the person who spent extra to buy a house with soundproof walls now have to pay additional taxes to soundproof someone else's home - someone else who didn't care enough about it to shop for that feature in the first place?

It's obvious if you live in Europe, where a lot of houses and buildings are old, and do not provide adequate sound-proofing.

If you add to this situation the fact that a lot of streets in large European cities are small and not made for cars (meaning medieval streets, not US-Grid-Style streets/boulevard), you have a recipe for a lot of noise and pollution, which many European cities are/were not designed to take into account.

Also, if you are lucky enough to find a cheap place to live in one of those cities (London and Paris -- for instance -- are among the most expensive places on Earth), noise control is going to be the least of your worries -- rent is a killer in those cities. And forget about space, since having more than one bedroom is going to deplete your bank account for the next 10 years or so.

Finally, I suspect most european governments are going to finance this simply by giving tax-breaks to people who will overhaul the sound-proofing of their flats and houses, and not tax other home owners.

Re:Rich country?

[gl4ss]

those houses were probably built decades ago. if they were built now they would have adequate soundproofing from day 1. it's more of a problem in old, big, central area buildings. these buildings have a lot of other problems as well though, but it's not the way you do things in certain countries that you would just demolish them and build them again properly(and sometimes it's wanted to keep the old buildings as heritage in the city picture). these buildings that are in the centres of the cities are sometimes 50 or more years old, and back then soundproofing wasn't viewed as necessity(there weren't that much noise anyways).

it's in goverments(the peoples!) intrest to protect the people from stress that comes from extra noise.. it costs money you know when people are unable to work for some reason or another. you could argue that it's in their(peoples) intrest to spend the money in nukes that are then stored in silos for 50 years and then thrown away as well, but i might not agree(the nukes don't up the productivity or enhance the living quality).

Re:Rich country?

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone purchases a house with walls that aren't very sound proof. They presumably knew this at the time of purchase, it would be ridiculous to think otherwise.

Actually there are a lot of houses built when traffic was minimal (I talking two or three cars an hour minimal here) which only sixty years later find themselves plonked only a couple of yards away from some of the busiest roads in and out of Central London. A lot of people bought these houses back when noise was not an issue, but have found that over the years the roads have been expanded and the traffic levels increaed until it has been a major problem. Councils have never allocated funds to improve the noise levels, either.

Before anyone gets all excited and tries to argue that these people should move, let me just say:

• Why the hell should they? They were there first.
• These are almost without exception older couples who have lived in the same house for sixty years. These houses are very much their homes.
• The resall value of their houses are pitiful (They're right on a major road!) and wouldn't provide them with even slightly enough money to purchase a similiar property anywhere else.

Re:Rich country?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wtf, if someone wants a soundproofed house they can bloody well pay for it themselves.

Keep your grubby little paws off my wallet.

Re:Rich country?

[stry_cat]

I know this is Slashdot, but don't you ever go outside? Not much you can do to sound proof your yard, is there. I assume you never open your windows either? Personally, I do both and if I were in England, I would hope the government would be spending a little effort to make living areas a little more liveable.

Most neighborhoods I've seen build near roads have large sound barriers that really cut down on the noise. In many cases where new roads are made or old ones enlarged, sound barriers are included in the construction. Of course this doesn't actually put the cost of the things on the people who benefit from them. The people who benefit from these things should be the ones paying for them not the public at large. A better solution would be to have the homeowners association pay for the sound barriers.

Re:Rich country?

[chrispl]

Maybe if you consider that spending money improving problems in residential areas (like doing stuff about traffic noise) that raises the value of the area and make it a more desirable place to live might have some beneficial, if not immediate effects for everyone.

At least that's what Sim City taught me.

Re:Rich country?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course this doesn't actually put the cost of the things on the people who benefit from them.

No, of course you don't charge homeowners extra money in order to run a motorway through their back garden. Are you insane? Even putting up a sound barrier probably won't prevent the value of the nearby property from falling, so actually you should be charging tolls on all new or enlarged roads and paying a proportion of those tolls to people who live nearby.

Re:Rich country?

[aallan]

Please explain this to me. Someone purchases a house with walls that aren't very sound proof. They presumably knew this at the time of purchase, it would be ridiculous to think otherwise. Someone else spends the time to investigate their choices, and eventually spends more money on a house with more sound proof walls. Why should the person who spent extra to buy a house with soundproof walls now have to pay additional taxes to soundproof someone else's home - someone else who didn't care enough about it to shop for that feature in the first place?

Welcome to the difference between a pure capitalist economy, and a one where some remenants of socialism still remain. The person buying the sub-standard house might not be able to afford a better one? Why shouldn't our tax money be used to improve their standard of living?

All this does is encourage people to do the cheapest thing possible, then use some ill concieved government program to clean up the mess afterwards.

No, it doesn't. The "ill concieved government program" is helping improve the country's housing stock. Eventually all houses will be well sound proofed and you've improved everyone's standard of living. What's wrong with that?

The problem with far right and the far left is that there are things wrong with both capitalism and socialism. Ayn Rand is just as bad a Karl Marx.

Al.

Re:Rich country?

[slashusrslashbin]

Those worst affected houses in London are in general not just decades old, they are well on their way to being centuries old!

Not only do they have no sound insulation, but they may also have little thermal insulation, and ill-fitting single-glazed windows and doors.

For some time it's been possible to get grants to thermally insulate a house, largely since it is only really economic to do so in the long term (the energy savings also contribute to cutting CO2 emmissions), and poorer people living in the poorer housing can't afford it, and are usually renting anyway.

It's great to hear that the government may be recognizing noise pollution as something which significantly affects people's health in the same way that it recognizes air pollution as doing so.

Noise pollution from traffic causes sleep-deprevation, stress and ultimately illness, and most of the people living in the worst affected housing have little choice in where they live; it's not a choice of moving to somewhere nice and quiet, because that's where all the rich people have moved to.

Re:Rich country?

[Gordonjcp]

50 years old is fairly new for a lot of buildings in European cities. The flat I live in is in a building that's only about 120 years old. My own house up north is about 400 years old.

Re:Rich country?

[RevMike]

I know this is Slashdot, but don't you ever go outside? Not much you can do to sound proof your yard, is there. I assume you never open your windows either? Personally, I do both and if I were in England, I would hope the government would be spending a little effort to make living areas a little more liveable.

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but the original comment was discussing the soundproofing of walls in homes. No matter how much money the government gives people to sound insulate their walls, it isn't going to help their yard. (Unless, of course, the major source of sound pollution is in their home. Turn the Stereo down!)

There are reasonable steps that governments can take to reduce outdoor noise pollution at its source. For many years now various agencies have been mandating the use of quieter jet engines. Highways are frequently built with noise barriers. These steps reduce all noise pollution, and allow people to enjoy their gardens as well as their homes.

Re:Rich country?

[RevMike]

Maybe if you consider that spending money improving problems in residential areas (like doing stuff about traffic noise) that raises the value of the area and make it a more desirable place to live might have some beneficial, if not immediate effects for everyone.

Certainly, but it would be much more effective to treat the cause rather than the effect. Would soundproofing people's homes really do that much good in improving the neighborhood if people couldn't open a window or sit in their yard for fear of the noise? Better that the noise be mitigated nearer to the source. Let people enjoy their yards and local parks to.

Re:Rich country?

[ThogScully]

No, you're not wrong... but the article is also about finding ways to adjust traffic routing to reduce noise pollution outside. The research this article talks about is likely useful for both applications, but to decide that the research is useless because it will justify the government buying people new walls is rather an odd argument.
-N

Re:Rich country?

[Brad]

A better solution would be to have the homeowners association pay for the sound barriers.

Within or near city centers many of the effected neighborhoods were built long before the road was expanded or even built. Many were boulivards carrying traffic at sedate speeds before their conversion to multi-lane super-highways that carry a greatly increased volume of vehicles at much higher speeds.

To follow a slightly different logic: The people using the roads should be the ones paying for them (forget about the lower taxes on diesel fuel used by the large trucks whose relentless pounding destroys the roads). As a direct result of the people using the new road, there is a large increase in noise. Therefore, as part of the roadway's construction or expansion, noise reduction needs to be included to try and mitigate some of the new noise pollution.

Re:Rich country?

[SubtleNuance]

Ive not read the whole of the posts here, but Im willing to bet there are allot of people crying "oh, this is pork, governments wasting money -- ha ha you Europeans pay tones of taxes and see it wasted ha ha suckers. bureaucracy run amuck with naval gazing. ha ha." kinds of attitude.

Really, how better to dedicate the resources of ones culture than the investigation of the cause/effect and remedy for general, shared problems? Why the hell not? I can think of no better things to investigate.

The masses are convinced -- almost without pause -- that spending money on single-serving yogurt-like snacks(ever *made* your own yogurt -- VERY VERY GOOD & EASY), RetiredBoxerBrand electric grills (whats wrong with your stove?), ZXY(TM) Brand $200 shoes, and blah blah blah is a good reward in exchange for my personal effort (the $ youve collected in exchange for work).. I say hogwash.

If Im going to sacrifice 40hrs of ever week, I damn well want something worth while in exchange for my Cached-Work($). Being the sucker in some capitalist's get-rich scheme, at the expense of the planet (pollution/waste/garbage) is not all that attractive -- but insead of paying for research like this (in taxes) people are usually DrivenByMindControl to buying SomeDamnedGarbage.

Where am i going with this? What is more useful? What is the greatest benefit of the product of our collective resources (the above mentioned consumer-garbage) **OR** some peace from the endless noise in a mechanized-industrial city....

I am willing to forgo buying some of that seemingly-benign-consumer-garbage in order to help pay researchers to think about something useful. Are you? Im betting most sane, normal people would agree. Instead of working to make Widgets (as I do), I wish there was a greater market for doing something WorthWhile. The Automobile that I contribute to manufacturing is not a goal I consider worthy of my time. I have no problem working, its the *goal* or product of my effort that is worthless. But, we live in a world with F'ed up priorities (we spend to much of our Cached-Work($) buying Useless Garbage, making the production of Useless Garbage a more common goal that most would like)

These kinds of 'decisions' and 'trade-offs' are taking place all the time (every thing you do has an impact on the world). Stop and think occasionally: "what benefit, at what cost is my decision having to bear on myself and my community? What responsibility do I accept or abandon that are the consequences of this decision? How can I make the world just a little better at Zero or No 'cost' to myself or my community?"

So, how far off topic is this?

Re:Rich country?

[jridley]

Please note: I'm not talking about a situation where the government built an airport or some such thing near a previously quiet neighborhood. I'm talking about cases where the home-owner knew (or should have known) the conditions prior to purchase.

I've seen the same sort of short-sighted buying in the US in rural areas. I've seen places where people have built new houses a half mile from a livestock farm that has been there for 50 years, then when they finally move in, they discover that when the wind is blowing the right way, there's a smell. Then they try to get zoning changed, or they sue, or some other tactic, to try to get the farm closed. What, you didn't think pigs smelled? Or did you even check to see who your neighbors were?

Re:Rich country?

[frinkster]

The US is spending some money on research for quieter roadways.
The Purdue Institute for Safe, Quiet, and Durable Highways

Just because it's not in the news doesn't mean it's not happening.

Re:Rich country?

[RevMike]

I've seen the same sort of short-sighted buying in the US in rural areas. I've seen places where people have built new houses a half mile from a livestock farm that has been there for 50 years, then when they finally move in, they discover that when the wind is blowing the right way, there's a smell. Then they try to get zoning changed, or they sue, or some other tactic, to try to get the farm closed. What, you didn't think pigs smelled? Or did you even check to see who your neighbors were?

My personal favorite are the people of Ozone Park (Queens, NY). Most of these people gladly purchased homes adjacent to JFK International Airport (one of the busier in the world) then complain about the jet noise.

Re:Rich country?

[RevMike]

Sometimes I wish the U.S. government wasn't spending so much trying to build up the military and instead redirect those funds to building up the national infrastructure.

So the Canadian hordes could come pouring in through our infrastructure unopposed? Screw that!

Re:Rich country?

[gfxguy]

I am willing to forgo buying some of that seemingly-benign-consumer-garbage in order to help pay researchers to think about something useful. Are you? Im betting most sane, normal people would agree.

I would hope most sane, normal people would agree that if you wanted to make that decision, then go ahead and make that decision for yourself and not everyone else. Or do you really think you're so much smarter than everybody else that your ideas should be mandated by an already fat government?

The Automobile that I contribute to manufacturing is not a goal I consider worthy of my time. I have no problem working, its the *goal* or product of my effort that is worthless.

So you've made the decision to work for a place that produces products contrary to your idealogical goals. That's your fault. Now you'd like government to come in and do... what? Force more regulations on your employer?

You need to do what YOU think is right, regardless of what people around you are doing. YOU need to set an example. We don't need the government forcing new regulations on us.

If you want to set an example by walking more or whatever, bully for you. If your employer CHOOSES to do something to quiet their vehicles, bully for them. There are choices for people trying to get away from noise, there are already solutions for people bothered by noise. I don't care what Europeans decide to do, but we don't need the government in the U.S. to interfere. More often than not, the hidden costs of regulations HURT the people they are trying to help.

Here's a scenario: low cost housing doesn't have adequate sound insulation.

Solution: require builders to include sound insulation. Result: low cost housing is no longer low cost, and more people with marginal incomes can't afford a house.

Solution: government subsidizes sound insulation. Result: income taxes and/or property taxes increase to accomodate. Result: more people with marginal incomes can't afford a house either because of the income tax burden OR the property tax burdon (higher property taxes on a more expensive sound proofed house).

Solution: government allows tax break for people upgrading their houses. Result: people are encouraged to upgrade their house. It shouldn't be limited to sound proofing, but also things like new air conditioning and heating units (more efficient), new windows (more efficient), air purification systems, etc. The difference in income taxes with people writing off these expenses in minimal. Meanwhile, the companies doing the upgrades increase revenue dramatically - the taxes balance out. Everyone is happy, more people are employed, and the government can actually stand to make MORE money.

As usual, LOWERING taxes (or, in this case, giving tax breaks) not only helps homeowners but helps employment and generates MORE revenue for the government and makes everybody happy. Regulation or subsidies has the opposite effect.

Re:Rich country?

[gfxguy]

Did SimCity also teach you that, when you have moderate taxes and everywhere on your map is "nice", that the residents are bitching about low-rent housing?

There is a problem here that more government regulation and taxes will not solve - marginal home owners will not be able to afford the houses. Instead of forcing them to wait or not buy a house at all, how about leaving the choice with the people?

Re:Rich country?

[gfxguy]

Welcome to the difference between a pure capitalist economy, and a one where some remenants of socialism still remain. The person buying the sub-standard house might not be able to afford a better one? Why shouldn't our tax money be used to improve their standard of living?

Because then they wouldn't be able to afford a house AT ALL.

Re:Rich country?

[Breakfast Pants]

You didn't respond to the poster AT ALL. Giving tax breaks to those who overhaul still doesn't solve the problem of "why punish the person who investigated his purchase first and already accounted for soundproofing in his expenditures." Everytime someone makes a stupid purchase the government should give them a tax break to help equal them out with those who made a good purchase? WHAT?

Re:Rich country?

[GlobalEcho]

Noise pollution from traffic causes sleep-deprevation

You almost, but not quite, gave us the delicious malaprop of sleep depravation.

/me heads of for a depraved little nap....

Re:Rich country?

[drinkypoo]

On one hand, you're right. It's unfair to the individual to expect those who planned well to support those who did not. On the other hand, that's pretty much what society is. It's probably a lot cheaper to soundproof homes (or provide financial incentives to those who will do it) than to, say, restrict cars from these streets which were built not around the automobile, but foot and horse traffic, with the occasionall carriage.

The goal of modern societies is to provide for all its people. Sometimes the most cost-effective way to do this is to give them public welfare, and sometimes it isn't. If you're worried about cost, consider what other methods might have been considered.

A better long-term solution is to encourage people to move away from gasoline-powered automobiles, at least moving to hybrids. Or, they could use MDI's air car, perhaps, or EVs. If you're talking about people who seldom drive very far at all, the short range of such vehicles is rarely going to be any kind of problem to them. I should think that the UK's insanely high petrol prices (though we pay that price in lives, and from our military budget, instead of having people just pay it at the pump, which I think is really quite daft) would have done this already but I guess not. The average displacement of cars in the UK is certainly less than it is in the US, though as the old V8-powered beaters are replaced with four bangers here, that gap is certainly narrowing.

Re:Rich country?

[Politburo]

I guess you don't talk to people in the NYC area, where the population density is quite high. Noise pollution is an issue here.

Re:Rich country?

[reidbold]

What? What is that supposed to mean? Does everyone paying taxes imply poor people going homeless?

Re:Rich country?

[eyeye]

Whats a homeowners association?
I live in europe (uk), maybe I have just never heard of them.

My house isnt particularly noisy except for extreme traffic noise, A bus passes about 8 metres away every 20 minutes (though not at night). Worse are the dickheads in their small cars that they have fitted a noisy exhaust to.

"The people who benefit from these things should be the ones paying for them"

This attitude is why I am glad to live in Europe, people try to look after each other a bit more.

Re:Rich country?

[gfxguy]

If you increase the value of the house, then fewer people will be able to afford it. Moreover, if the house is more desirable because of sound proofing, then property taxes will increase.

People who are only marginally able to afford a house now would not be able to afford that same house with higher initial cost and/or higher property taxes.

This is a problem with many of the "social" initiatives - the hidden consequences that tend to make matters worse.

What you have here, if the value of the house is raised, is more loans that social activists call "predatory". In other words, in order to be able to loan a marginal candidate money to buy a more expensive house, the interest rate will be higher and the loan will be for a much longer term.

It simply doesn't work. If you allow people to buy the houses they choose, then give tax breaks for housing upgrades (including, but not limited to more efficient heating and cooling, sound proofing, and air purification), then more people will be able to get their foot in the door, and then upgrade when possible. Otherwise they'd be "victems" of predatory loans OR they'd have to wait years before being able to afford the house.

Re:Rich country?

[Noryungi]

why punish the person who investigated his purchase first and already accounted for soundproofing in his expenditures.

Maybe I was not clear enough in my answer. What I was trying to point out is that a lot of buildings in Europe are old to very old and never incorporated sound-proofing at all.

It's not a stupid decision to buy an old house or a flat in an old building: sometimes, it's just really hard to find a modern building, either downtown or in the suburbs.

In any case, giving a tax break to X to put sound-proofing materials is not "punishing" Y for purchasing a sound-proofed home. It just means that X now has enough money to sound-proof his/her home, while Y has lost nothing.

This is not a case of the government bailing out someone who has made a bad decision: this is a case of the government recognizing that some cities are too noisy (because they are/were not designed with cars in mind) and giving citizens incentives to sound-proof their homes. It sounds to me like a good investment.

Finally, please remember that taxes are very high in Europe. So giving tax breaks to promote certain beneficial policies makes sense...

Re:Rich country?

[drp]

In any case, giving a tax break to X to put sound-proofing materials is not "punishing" Y for purchasing a sound-proofed home. It just means that X now has enough money to sound-proof his/her home, while Y has lost nothing.


Actually, he has lost one of the most fundamental and important of his possessions - his hard-earned money.

Your original argument is invalid - the fact that there aren't enough soundproofed homes should only have the effect of reducing their relative price to those with the premium of soundproofing. Thus, when you buy an 'old' house, you spend your money to upgrade it, if noise is a problem for you.

I find it quite difficult to find a mint conidtion 1960's jag E-type - my life would be much better off if I had one. Should taxpayers foot the bill for me to afford one, since they're so expensive? Essentially, this is the same question.

How about people who buy houses on the sides of volcanoes? Should the government tax average people to repair these houses when they get run over with lava? How about people who knowingly build on a fault line?

Re:Rich country?

[benzapp]

What are you talking about. It is new buildings which HAVE inferior soundproofing. Thats because plywood and sheetrock doesn't reduce the impact of your neighbors belching, let alone traffic.

Have you ever lived in an apartment building? its pretty common knowledge you want to avoid new buildings, unless they are luxury apartments with concrete in the walls, BECAUSE they are so noisy.

Old buildingss were constructed of brick and plaster, which is essentially soundproof. I know, I used to live in a 100 year old apartment building in Manhattan. It was nothing fancy, but it was quiet.

This is also true of houses. Middle class townhouses from the 1880-1900's are all over New York and Brooklyn, tens of thousands of them. They require minimal exterior maintenance (tuckpointing every once and a while), and are constructed entirely of brick and stone. Do you really think the average crap house being built today will be standing in 120 years? Not a chance. Plywood, 2x4s and sheetrock simply will not last that long.

People do not know HOW to construct proper housing anymore. Further, constructing a house which would last 120-150 years would cost a lot of money. The only way houses can be affordable for the masses is if they are constructed to last 50 years maximum. There are major economic consequences of this. One of the primary ways you could enrich your family over time was by giving your house to your children. Today, if you live your entire adult life in a house, it will be essentially worthless to your children (the land might have value though). Some would argue this is one reason the middle class is getting poorer over time, a reverse of economic trends from 1700-1950.

Re:Rich country?

[lowmagnet]

We Usonians tend to harp on noise pollution only when a bass/fart pipe car is heard driving down the road. I tend to have a bigger problem than most. I like my quiet. I had my first house insulated with foam because it had a 20dB reduction in outside noise.

Re:Rich country?

[Alan Partridge]

On average.

Re:Rich country?

[lowmagnet]

Actually, I bought a house that had no insulation at all (it was a tile-based wall structure built in the '30s, so I should have known better) and I insulated it via injections. There was a 20dB reduction in mid-frequency sound. It still didn't keep out the 20Hz frequencies though.

Re:Rich country?

[argStyopa]

Eventually all houses will be well sound proofed and you've improved everyone's standard of living. What's wrong with that?

And the money comes from where, again? Trees?

"Eventually..." you're right, but at the cost of capital which would have been spent on other things. This is what it comes down to: some people (Liberals in US parlance, Social Democrats just about everywhere else) believe that Government can do more good with everyone's money than everyone could do for themselves individually, and I simply don't accept that.

Where does it stop? I have an annoying neighbor, who raises tension in the whole neighborhood - can we have the gov't tax everyone a little more to hire a hit man to get rid of him? Clearly, this should be paid for out of my OWN pocket. ;)

Re:Rich country?

[Lars T.]

Europe has a much higher population density, therefore you can expect noise problems to be worse.

Yeah, especially in big cities. WTF is up with you people, +4 insightful? Did the noise blow away your brains?

Re:Rich country?

[GoatPigSheep]

In Canada, we call "noise pollution" AMERICAN TOURISTS. Why do you have to be so loud?

Re:Rich country?

[lowmagnet]

Homeowner associations take care of things like the community pool, the community fence, park areas, sidewalks and paving in a subdivision. A subdivision is a small section of a city developed in phases by a development group.

There are also Condo Associations which cover all landscapes, building exterior maintenance, etc.

There are also townhome associations which are an amalgam of the above concepts.

Homeowner associations are the cheaper than townhome associations, and condo associations can be, but are not always, more expensive. I say not always, because my condo association fee, $156/month, is far less than a townhome association nearby which pays nearly $260/month!

Sure it's an added cost, but it's the only way you can live in most neighbourhoods around me.

Re:Rich country?

[TGK]

It never ceases to amaze me how completely unaware of the world around them my fellow US Citizens can be.

London (by most accounts) traces her founding to Roman times, around 43 AD to be specific. Now, the widespread use of the automobile doesn't really occur until the early 20th century. By my count that gives the people of London approximately 1,857 years (give or take a few) to build houses with the reasonable expectation that the loudest thing they'd hear would be "clip clop clip clop."

In the United States the rage is a little less stark. Here we've had since about 1600 or somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 years with the reasonable expectation of "clip clop" noise pollution and little else.

Obviously this is a somewhat sarcastic way of explaining this. My point is that not everyone has the choice to build their homes around the interstate highway plans (or the M? for you Brits) of the government.

I guess this is one of the many examples of European liberalism. You know, the political ideology that expresses the radical notion that the government should look out for its citizens rather than spending all its money bombing someone else's.

Re:Rich country?

[radish]

In the UK all those things are the responsibility of the local government (council) and are paid for out of your regular council tax.

Re:Rich country?

[tommck]

Finally, I suspect most european governments are going to finance this simply by giving tax-breaks to people who will overhaul the sound-proofing of their flats and houses, and not tax other home owners.

What's the difference? Still, the other people are paying proportionately more tax for having bought a better home. Lowering one person's taxes is the equivalent of raising everyone else's.

Re:Rich country?

[vbfg]

A still better solution would be to require the people who wanted the construction to pay for it, rather than offloading the cost of your project on to whoever happens to live nearby.

Re:Rich country?

[radish]

Until you understand how european cities work you just won't get this. Most of the buildings are old. This makes them (a) unlikely to be soundproofed, (b) expensive to add soundproofing to and (c) historic and therefore valuable to the society as a whole. What you are proposing is the current situation - let people sort it out themselves. This leads to several problems. Firstly, people who can't afford to soundproof their homes either have to move or live with the noise (which may not have been an issue when they moved in, due to rapidly increasing traffic levels). So they've been punished for not doing anything wrong. Secondly, you may well live in rented housing - unless your landlord decides to soundproof you are sunk - again you'd have to move house. Thirdly, if you are an owner you may be tempted to knock down the old buildings and build a new one. This would be a disaster as many nice old buildings would be lost. This is already happening in many cities as it becomes cheaper to build new than renovate old.

So the idea would be to provide tax incentives to encourage owners to preserve their old buildings, and renovate/sound proof them, rather than rebuild entirely. It will also help people who cannot afford to sound proof, to stop them having to move away. This is good because it preserves the local community.

Re:Rich country?

[radish]

Indeed, although in most UK cities 50 years is very young for a building :) In the north the majority of housing is from around the turn of the century (the 19th that is!). Tends to be a bit younger in the south, but major civic buildings will all be at least 100 years.

Re:Rich country?

[catfry]

But this discussion actually reveals one of the core differences between the european and the USian mindset. While on one hand the european thinks that, given a problem that is experienced by a sufficiently large number of the population, then it is a problem that should be solved by the society as a whole, the american on the other hand, believes that it is the individual's responsibility to cope with most problems even though they aren't neccesarily problems that are easily remedied by single persons. (Crass generalisation I know)

Re:Rich country?

[Rotten168]

Ummmm, offtopic? Besides the US infrastructure is built up quite a bit.

Re:Rich country?

[radish]

All buildings in europe are stone/brick and mortar. The wood based construction so popular in the US is entirely unheard of there. BUT, buildings are still noisy. This is mainly due to things like single pane windows, thin doors, proximity to major roads. They also have slate roofs, which are not very solid. As the cities were designed before the advent of cars, many houses are only a couple of feet from really busy roads. This doesn't seem to happen in the US as much. The closest I've seen is in Queens coming back from JFK, where people in those little wooden houses are like 10 yards from a 6 lane highway. That must suck.

Re:Rich country?

[Lars T.]

Investigate what? That the house their grand-parents build would someday be right besides a noisy street? That the new airport runway would suddenly put their hideaway house in the hills right into the path of starting planes every couple of minutes?

Re:Rich country?

[guiscard]

The U.S. always seems to use their tax-payer's money to make lots of noise in other people's countries.

Re:Rich country?

[reidbold]

I think the situation you have pointed out is grossly extreme and quite unlikely.

I don't really know how property taxes are based, I would have assumbed it's based mostly on land size, population density and the relative desire to live in a particular area. Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm just assuming.

I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that quieter homes would jack up the desire to live in a particular area to such a degree that people would be forced out of their homes.

Re:Rich country?

[jhunsake]

Well, ok, then the NYC government should be addressing the problem, not the US government.

Re:Rich country?

[jhunsake]

Really? The city comes and mowes your lawn and fixes up exterior defects on your house?! Gosh, you Europeans have it so great over there! That or you're full of it.

Re:Rich country?

[jhunsake]

Firstly, people who can't afford to soundproof their homes either have to move or live with the noise

Oh cry me a river. People who can't afford cars have to learn to walk or take the bus. People who can't afford new clothes have to shop at thrift stores. People who can't afford to eat out have to stay home and eat Raman Noodles. Need I go on?

Re:Rich country?

[RevMike]

It never ceases to amaze me how completely unaware of the world around them my fellow US Citizens can be.

London (by most accounts) traces her founding to Roman times, around 43 AD to be specific. Now, the widespread use of the automobile doesn't really occur until the early 20th century. By my count that gives the people of London approximately 1,857 years (give or take a few) to build houses with the reasonable expectation that the loudest thing they'd hear would be "clip clop clip clop."

In the United States the rage is a little less stark. Here we've had since about 1600 or somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 years with the reasonable expectation of "clip clop" noise pollution and little else.

Obviously this is a somewhat sarcastic way of explaining this. My point is that not everyone has the choice to build their homes around the interstate highway plans (or the M? for you Brits) of the government.

I guess this is one of the many examples of European liberalism. You know, the political ideology that expresses the radical notion that the government should look out for its citizens rather than spending all its money bombing someone else's.

If you're going to use sarcasm, so am I :)

You are absolutely right. I will immediately write any MP I can find, telling them that I support a program which will help original owners of Roman era homes upgrade the sound proofing.

I agree that if people had no reason to foresee the kind of development that creates this noise (building a highway where ther was none, for instance) they should be in some way compensated. My point is that if I move into a home next to a highway or airport or factory, I've made a choice to live there. I'm responsible for that choice. I shouldn't expect the taxpayers to take up a collection for me to mitigate a circumstance I chose for myself.

I myself live adjacent to a commercial zone. I probably saved 50,000 USD on my house because there is a car wash and a strip mall on the other side of my fence. I frequently hear the roar of the industrial vacuums at the car was as well as the smell of chines food from a restarant. I happily took the savings, and I have no right to expect that I should get both the savings and compensation from my neighbors.

I guess this is one of the many examples of American Conservatism. You know, the political ideology that expresses the radical notion that the citizens should look out for themselves as much as possible rather than the government making them poor with high taxes then giving some of it back.

Re:Rich country?

[gfxguy]

I had a long reply typed out that went really off topic, so I'll just try to keep this brief. Property taxes in a home you were living in wouldn't go up because of this. However, when the home is sold, it would sell for a higher price - not because it's a better area, but because there is more to the house. Just like a house with a better/newer air conditioner is going to cost more than an identical house in the same neighborhood with an older crappier, less efficient air conditioner.

After several years, the government reassesses houses, and part of the assessment is what houses in the area have been selling for.

Regardless of the impact of property taxes, the value of the houses increase and therefore become less accessible to people with marginal incomes.

I know if I was making very little, I'd rather buy a house without sound insulation if I could afford it then to have to wait to buy a house, or be victem of predatory lending (although I disagree with that terminology) in order to buy the house.

Just because it's better doesn't mean everyone requires it. A/C is NOT a requirement, even though lack of it could cause a lot more problems in certain climates. There's a lot of things that can be done to houses to increase standards of living. That doesn't mean everybody should be required to do them, and it certainly doesn't mean the government should start requiring them.

Re:Rich country?

[glesga_kiss]

It's obvious if you live in Europe, where a lot of houses and buildings are old, and do not provide adequate sound-proofing.

The rest of your post is spot on, but I have to disagree with this. Old buildings are made up from huge chucks of stone. The interior wall thickness in my flat is over a foot, the exteriour ones are at least a foot and a half, possibly two feet. The sound-proofing is brilliant, much better than a modern flat were the walls are often less than 4-6 inches between adjoining units. Install double-glazing, and you won't get much better, short of lining the outside of your home with eggboxes.

You could argue that they were built to last, though it's obvious that the lesser constructed buildings from the 19th century have fallen down, leaving only the sturdy ones! But yes, there are a lot of new buildings in the regions being looked at here as well.

Also, old building techniques make for good inter-appartment sound proofing. We are talking about the days before dumpsters and haulage, so any waste/rubble got dumped in wall cavities and ceiling space. I rarely hear my neighbours, and I've yet to have a complaint about my loud home cinema, or late night habits.

Combined with high roofs (>12 feet) and a little bit of class/history, old buildings are the way to go. The "coolest" areas in most UK cities (mostly "The West End" due to the prevailing winds) are all old areas with appartments/townhouses like these. Anything built in the last thirty years will be lucky to last the same again in servicable condition. There are 60s housing projects being torn down as I type, it was a terrible decade for archtechure in Great Britain. New homes are also of the cheap-ass-shit practically pre-fab variety.

If you add to this situation the fact that a lot of streets in large European cities are small and not made for cars (meaning medieval streets, not US-Grid-Style streets/boulevard)

Because of this layout, it means we rely a lot on "main roads" (don't know the US term), to carry the bulk of the traffic, usually two lanes in each direction. If you live near to one of them, expect loud diesel engine noises 24 hours a day. But the smaller backroads mean that locals can nip about using obscure short-cuts that cut the length of trips. It's quite an art, the taxi drivers are of course the best at it.

I'm also not convinced that the grid layout is superiour in terms of traffic management. Sure, it spreads the load but it's horribly inefficient. Many of the side streets on our main roads have been bollarded up to reduce the numbers of junctions, and increase traffic flow from A to B. Grid layout is a worse-case-scenario for this.

Re:Rich country?

[muzthe42nd]

Well, they don't mow your lawn unless you physically are unable to do so, then once a month or so, some men come round and do it for you, which is nice.
And they don't fix the exterior or interior defects on your house for you unless you're living in a council house (one that's rented from the local government for really rather cheap), but if you do, they do...

Re:Rich country?

[TGK]

Sarcasm aside, doesn't this have the unfortunate tendancy to drive down land values artificialy? Furthermore, as any SimCity buff can tell you, low land values tend to spread a great deal like mold.

I guess what I'm getting at here is that moving from neighborhoods that predate the automobile to those built on quiet streets that become not so quiet due to changes over time, where do you draw the line? Where does it become the government's problem to compensate and where does it remain the citizen's tough luck?

Obviously the government has the right to aquire property from its citizens should the need arise (tons of legal precidents for that). Should the government be therefore obligated to compensate citizens or to help mitigate the affect of lost property value due to goverment changes to the area? Following from that should the government have the responcibility to zone areas according to noise polution so the commercial area I live next to (which used to contain walk in shops with little or no parking) can't be turned into a parking garage or a car wash?

We're both pointing out the extremes here, which really do have obvious solutions to them. Of course the government should compensate me for noise insulation if they put a 6 lane highway through my back yard. Of course they shouldn't do so if I buy up land next to a six lane highway and build a house on it. The question is the middle ground. Where is the differentiation?

Re:Rich country?

[jhunsake]

Your grass must grow really slow.

Well what he was describing is frequently found in areas where the prices of homes are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Re:Rich country?

[Guppy06]

"Sometimes I wish the U.S. government wasn't spending so much trying to build up the military and instead redirect those funds to building up the national infrastructure."

What, wasn't there enough pork barrels in today's omnibus spending bill for you? Or doesn't an indoor rain forest in Iowa count?

Re:Rich country?

[Guppy06]

"It's obvious if you live in Europe, where a lot of houses and buildings are old, and do not provide adequate sound-proofing."

But there are also large swaths of Europe where you won't find a building predating, say, 1919 or 1945. Where does your philosophy stand on the areas that were subject to these two "urban renewal projects?"

The same can be said for the roads you mention. Some are still like that, others were lain out in "the insanity of right angles" after you cleared away the debris.

"(London and Paris -- for instance -- are among the most expensive places on Earth)"

Looking at the ol' the earth at night collage and how lumpy light distribution seems to be around those two urban centers, it would seem that living in those cities is more of a luxury and necessity, with decent amounts of real estate in the countryside available. It would seem that government spending on noise reduction for city dwellers really only forcefully subsidizes urbanization, a trend you should perhaps consider reversing (especially considering the current attitude towards environmentalism in the EU).

"rent is a killer in those cities."

High rent is usually more indicative of people wanting to live there and not necessarily needing to live there.

"Finally, I suspect most european governments are going to finance this simply by giving tax-breaks to people who will overhaul the sound-proofing of their flats and houses, and not tax other home owners."

That's really just a bait-and-switch tactic. It doesn't tax suburban and rual taxpayers directly, but they still see an indirect effect in their taxes by having to make up the loss from the tax breaks given to the urban folks.

Re:Rich country?

[lowmagnet]

Precisely. I bought a condo and took on the fees because I owned a house previous to this one which required mowing and maintenance and so forth. My condo cost $109,000, which is somewhat cheap for a two bedroom two full bath place in my necka. Yes, the condo association fees do add on to the cost, but all I really have to worry about is the furnishings, the fixtures (appliances and whatnot) and the fenestration. The windows are the only part of a condominium that the condo owner actually owns, since they can easily be broken. The exterior walls, boundary walls, floor and roof all belong to them, though. If I do wish to make a change, I have to put it through an architectural review board, mainly because no owner has the right to bring down the value of his or her neighbour's condo by collapsing the building. This I really have no problem with. It is quite like the local municipality taxes in the UK, so the great-grandparent of this comment is mostly right.

Re:Rich country?

[MurphyZero]

I've seen the same sort of short-sighted buying in the US in rural areas. I've seen places where people have built new houses a half mile from a livestock farm that has been there for 50 years, then when they finally move in, they discover that when the wind is blowing the right way, there's a smell. Then they try to get zoning changed, or they sue, or some other tactic, to try to get the farm closed. What, you didn't think pigs smelled? Or did you even check to see who your neighbors were?

My personal favorite are the people of Ozone Park (Queens, NY). Most of these people gladly purchased homes adjacent to JFK International Airport (one of the busier in the world) then complain about the jet noise.

My favorites are those who move next to Naval Air Stations and Air Force Bases. Military jets are pretty powerful and have a requirement for night training. Ever get woken up by an F-14/15/16 in the middle of the night? Of course my equivalent is waking up to paired sonic booms and thinking the house was about to fall apart then realizing it was just the Shuttle landing in the middle of the night and going back to sleep. I lived at least 10 miles away from the landing strip by the way. Haven't been woken up that way in quite some time now.

Re:Rich country?

[nyseal]

Try New York or LA...the gunshots are definately louder. Density or not, I'd rather duck.

Re:Rich country?

[famebait]

It noise reduction for city dwellers really only forcefully subsidizes urbanization, a trend you should perhaps consider reversing (especially considering the current attitude towards environmentalism in the EU).

Yeah, let's make Europe one big sprawl where you have to drive for miles do anything. That'll help.

Re:Rich country?

[Urkki]

• Actually, he has lost one of the most fundamental and important of his possessions - his hard-earned money.

I take it you do not have a family? I'd hate to think that you'd for example sacrifice your children just for money...

I also take it you don't know anybody who is seriously disabled, or going to die in a year from fatal illness...

But above all, especially if you're an American, you should know that your most valuable possion is freedom. Oh wait, yes, I belive that "freedom thing" is being revoked as we speak (DMCA, Patriot Act, a legal system where money for paying lawyer fees is more important than the truth). So maybe you're right, maybe in the USA the most fundamental and important possession *is* money. Yes, it all makes so much more sense now!

traffic.equals(noise) returns false

[Manos Batsis]

As placing microphones on every building in London or Paris to measure noise was not practical, data on the amount of traffic carried by roads and the noise levels was fed into computers to generate a model of noise levels across the city. Who says noise comes only from traffic?

Re:traffic.equals(noise) returns false

[Dr. Evil]

According to the article, 100 microphones do, and they agree within 1 decibel.

Re:traffic.equals(noise) returns false

[ThogScully]

As other replies have already stated, their measures have been shown accurate... but consider this...

The rest of the noise at any part is likely related to the amount of traffic at that spot. So, Times Square is louder than some random road in the middle of nowhere in Nebraska. Since this is a mathematical equation, it's plausible the equation is designed to estimate a little higher than just the sound of traffic, so that any other sounds are included as a dependant variable on the amount of traffic.
-N

Re:traffic.equals(noise) returns false

[thrillseeker]

According to the article, 100 microphones do [say noise comes from traffic], and they agree within 1 decibel.

So why not spend the billions developing quieter traffic? Put it into fuel cells and electric motors, for example.

Re:traffic.equals(noise) returns false

[Smallpond]

Good idea.

I just read an article about the Prius. Its one of the few cars that gets better mileage in city driving vs. highway, since the gas engine is off most of the time. Its also quieter in the city. Of course, US refuses to impose tighter mileage requirements, and I note that since SUVs are getting a bad name, the car ads are now pushing 7-passenger "mini" vans. Makes no sense.

Re:traffic.equals(noise) returns false

[ThogScully]

Thanks for the lesson AC. And it is estimating higher because linear regressions (I doubt it's linear, but I'll use your wording) are estimates and in this case, it's higher because they have to add in extra variables to cover the miscellaneous sounds besides traffic.
-N

Re:traffic.equals(noise) returns false

[w3svc_animal]

This is already going on in the western U.S...
Cities are laying down rubberized asphalt in lieu of building noise walls.

A quote for the pdf belowThe study concluded that there was an approximate 10 dBA reduction in noise with the rubberized asphalt compared with the chip seal asphalt.
In my experience - it has been rather effective.

Check Here and
Here

Re:traffic.equals(noise) returns false

[jandrese]

Uh, you may be surprised to hear this, but minivans have been around since the late 80s (earlier if you count the VW Microbus/Eurovan). They've never been small or particularly efficent vehicles, but they aren't considerably worse than the average 8 seat station wagon as far as pollution and gas milage go. It's not like a family with 6 kids will fit in a Prius.

Re:traffic.equals(noise) returns false

[tliet]

1 decibel louder can be twice as loud IIRC.

Re:traffic.equals(noise) returns false

[Tim C]

Because that will take time, and replacing enough noisy vehicles with quieter ones will take a very long time, and in the meantime everyone affected will continue to suffer growing noise levels.

This way, the governments help the citizenry in the short term, while others (academia and/or r&d depts of companies) can deal with the longer term. This work is complementary to that one - neither can replace the other.

Re:traffic.equals(noise) returns false

[jridley]

No. 3db = twice as much power. 10db = perceived as twice as loud.

In addition, the "twice as loud" perception is highly dependent on the type of noise. The 10db = twice as loud rule only works for pure tones at 1KHz. At other frequencies / types of sound, the perception is different.

So 1db is really quite close.

Re:traffic.equals(noise) returns false

[EnglishTim]

Well, unless you're nearby heavy machinery, where else will the sound come from? I sometimes wonder what cities must have sounded like before cars. In a city centre the dominating noise almost always seems to be vehicular noise, unless you're walking by a building site.

Re:traffic.equals(noise) returns false

[schwaang]

Agree - asphalt (and tires) make a much bigger impact on noise then gas vs electric.

In my area the elevated commuter train (BART) is the biggest noisemaker. I wonder if they made any dB-specific promises to local communities when it was built. By lack of maintenance it has only gotten louder.

Re:traffic.equals(noise) returns false

[ElGanzoLoco]

And even without going to such great lenghts, we could ban 2-stroke engines found in all european motorcycles and scooters, and replace them with 4-stroke equivalents.

Last summer I went in Cambodia (next to Thailand, if you're wondering) and they have cheap, little, 100cc, 4 stroke scooters that hardly do any noise. The streets are filled with these scooters (70% scooters, 30% cars), and they are virtually silent.
Most operate as taxis, (you can put 3 persons max: the driver, two customers; they have custom extended cushions for that); we were four, so we used two scooters; when traffic allowed, our drivers would drive one next to another, with a safe distance in between (1.5 / 2 meters minimum). My friends and I were able to speak to each other, without having to raise our voices, at 80 km/h!

Honda makes these kinds of scooters (can't find a link though), and so does Daelim, a Korean company (sorry, I can't link to the specific scooter model because of the Flash site, but the ones we used looked like the "CiTi Ace 110", only older.

With friends we guesstimated (i.e., "wildly pulled out a figure out of our asses") that one 2-stroke scooter crossing Paris from East to West in the middle of the night had good chances of waking as much as 20 000 people...

I really don't understand why we can't get these 4 stroke scooters when poor, third world, underdevelopped Cambodia can.

Re:traffic.equals(noise) returns false

[TwistedGreen]

What, are you deaf? Even if there is another source, that constant drone of traffic will drown it out!

Re:traffic.equals(noise) returns false

[sahonen]

1 bel louder is perceived as twice as loud. 10 decibels = 1 bel.

Re:traffic.equals(noise) returns false

[guiscard]

Want to hear what a city sounded like before cars? Try Venice. Missing the horses of course, but its a fair sized city and really quiet (though the tourists/students can be rowdy).

That's it, I'm moving.

[sirReal.83.]

The noise maps will allow planning to insulate the public from noise by directing traffic away from residential areas and making funds available to sound-proof thin walled homes.

I can't even get my landlord to shovel the 3 feet of snow in front of my apartment building.

Re:That's it, I'm moving.

[tomstdenis]

If you live in the US just slip and sue the mofo for like a million billion dollars. Then when you own the building you can... er... shovel the place lest you be sued!

Tom

Weird author's style

[Zegnar]

That article reads like a piece of prose... very nice, but not much good for a news article :) Anyway... I just play my music so loud I can't hear all the urban noise all around me... (London)... But then I guess that makes me part of the problem

cameras

[dan2550]

i heard the other day that london had the most hidden cameras in the world. is not being video taped good enough? i guess now they feel they need to get a 100.0 surround sound speaker system going too.

Re:cameras

[flewp]

100.0 surround sound?

They should go for 100.1 surround sound. Y'know, the .1 for that extra oomph from the bass channel.

Re:cameras

[scorilo]

I doubt that those microphones are really that accurate. They are probably good for measuring ambient noise, and possibly withstand harsh atmospheric conditions, but that's it. It'd be hard to include accuracy and hi-fi along with those design requirements. Anyway, here in Toronto you get your picture taken almost everytime you take a cab...

Re:cameras

[blane.bramble]

Yawn. Troll. The cameras aren't hidden, they are a combination of security cameras operated by businesses to protect their premises, and those operated by local cameras for traffic control, and where necessary, crime reduction in city centres etc. Yes, in London you are on camera much of the time. No, the cameras are not following you. The police can, after applying to the courts, ask for relevant tapes to solve crimes. Big f**king deal.

Re:cameras

[dan2550]

dont shoot the messinger. thats just what i heard for all i know it could just be bogus

Re:cameras

[glesga_kiss]

The cameras aren't hidden, they are a combination of security cameras operated by businesses to protect their premises, and those operated by local cameras for traffic control, and where necessary, crime reduction in city centres etc.

Rest assured that when Total Information Awareness comes to fruition, the US system will be fully interconnected.

In some ways, having all this old legacy stuff is a boom for privacy. I'll only worry when they are networked with facial recognition capabilities.

Alternative Traffic

[fastdecade]

About time noise pollution was taken seriously. But I'd question the solution...Instead of just diverting traffic, hopefully they look at reducing noisy types of transport and encouraging more quiet forms ---- e.g. light rail, bikes.

Re:Alternative Traffic

[scorilo]

Most European countries are already doing this. There are lanes on the roads specially designated for bycicles, they even have special lights and special signs for bycicles. Some municipalities (Geneve, Wien, etc.) provide free bycicles (you only have to leave a deposit, which is returned when you bring it back) and you can rent a bycicle in nearly all train station (and almost every city has one), and trains have special compartments so that you can travel with your bycicle. Public transportation is usually subsidized, and they pay much more for gasoline then in North America. Paris has a rollerblade marathon (its reply to Pamplona, maybe?). It's really kewl, I nearly destroyed my rental rollerblades!

Re:Alternative Traffic

[lovebyte]

BIKES? I guess you do not mean motorbikes. Because of the increase in congestion in and around Paris, there are more and more people that use motorbikes/scooters. The result is a big increase in noise levels, no reduction in polution (bikes produce more polution than most cars, surprisingly) and a large increase in fatal accidents.

Re:Alternative Traffic

[Patik]

Because of the increase in congestion in and around Paris, there are more and more people that use motorbikes/scooters. The result is ... a large increase in fatal accidents.

I'm not surprised. When I visited a couple years ago the motorcycles seemed to be completely unrestricted, weaving in and around cars, butting to the front of the line at traffic lights, and completely disregarding lane lines and general traffic ettiquette.

Re:Alternative Traffic

[FesterDaFelcher]

bikes produce more polution than most cars, surprisingly

Per gallon of gas they prodcue more pollution, but a typical small motorbike gets 75-110 mpg. They produce WAY less pollution per gallon than a car that gets 30 mpg.

Re:Alternative Traffic

[straybullets]

Yeah well, bycicle lanes in Paris are really under developped. It's pretty sad to see and although it is slowly changing i wouldn't brag about it.

There are also far too many fast lanes in the city - generating the strange feeling that you live close to a freeway - and it's in all aspects a city crawling under cars, noise and the power of gazoline.

Public transportations are going to the dogs and on the brink of being privatised, which will certainly not arrange things. There is certainly no compartiments for bikes inside the inner city trains. Biking in Paris is like hell, i do it anyway but it's not very funny, cab drivers hate you and the cops will arrest you for "riding a bike on the sidewalks".

So yeah, there's a rollerblade marathon, but that's about all there is .

Re:Alternative Traffic

[lovebyte]

They produce WAY less pollution per gallon than a car that gets 30 mpg.
The point is that bikes do not have an exhaust that can filter as many pollutants as cars, so that, although bikes use less petrol, they produce about as much (and sometimes more) pollution as/than cars, modern cars that is.

Re:Alternative Traffic

[frinkster]

Light rail is quiet? Someone forgot to tell Chicago. Take a ride on the Blue Line out to O'Hare, or try to sleep in an apartment 3 blocks from the Red Line, which runs all night. They are very, very noisy.

Re:Alternative Traffic

[dkf]

We're not doing some kind of bizarre scientific experiment here. Traffic diversion, road pricing, better regulation of buses (a particular problem round here AFAICT), and promotion of alternate forms of transport are all techniques that should be applied. Maybe there are others too; I'm no expert...

Push-bikes aren't a good solution in all cities BTW. Some places are very steep, and unsuprisingly people don't like cycling there very much. Well, except for the velofanatics of course (you know, the people who wear full racing kit for cycling half a mile down the road to work.)

Re:Alternative Traffic

[ThosLives]

Ah, I know this is asking for retribution, but I can't resist:

"per gallon of gas they produce more pollution...They produce WAY less pollution per gallong than a car..."

I assume you meant to say "..WAY less pollution per mile..", not gallon.

Re:Alternative Traffic

[Zog The Undeniable]

CO2 emissions are lower for bikes, but since they have no catalysts, NOx, CO and HC emissions - the poisonous ones - are way higher.

By the same token, an average gasoline-powered lawnmower used for 1 hour emits as much of the above harmful pollutants as a new car driven for 8,000 miles.

Re:Alternative Traffic

[Jeffrey Baker]

In California motorcycles above a certain displacement are required to have an exhaust catalyst and be certified by the California Air Resources Board. I'd be a little surprised if the same wasn't true in at least parts of Europe.

Re:Alternative Traffic

[drinkypoo]

Harley-Davidsons come with a loud pipe. It's considered an element of tradition, and in fact they have patented their exhaust sound, which is especially stupid considering that you could make a new product and accidentally have that sound. However, you would likely not want it to be quite so loud.

Harley riders will tell you "loud pipes save lives". My retort is, tape your horn button down, and get a fucking muffler. Low-restriction exhausts reduce low-end torque, and you can beat most harleys off the line with a moderately sporty car. Of course, they're not about performance, but it seems stupid to waste what you've got on such a sloppy bike.

With that said, newer Harleys are getting better-designed, and quieter. And now they are making a pocket rocket (under the name of Buell) which besides every model for many years having some kind of life-threatening safety recall, is supposed to be quite a bike. (Though IMO if you buy the model with the monoshock in the frame at the bottom of the bike, you are a fucking idiot. It would be all to easy to scrape that thing off and then instead of riding home on a scratched up bike when you drop it, you're walking home and you gotta find someone with a truck and some muscles.)

Re:Alternative Traffic

[chihowa]

Actually, he meant per mile.

Re:Alternative Traffic

[doktor-hladnjak]

Yeah well, bycicle lanes in Paris are really under developped. It's pretty sad to see and although it is slowly changing i wouldn't brag about it.

My impression of France in general is that it's not nearly as bike-friendly as many other European countries, despite the appreciation there of biking as a sport (i.e. the Tour de France). I was once riding with a group on a trail that runs between Saarbruecken in Germany and Sarreguemines in France. We started in Germany, where the trail was in fact paved with asphault, smooth, clean and well taken care of. At some point on the ride, the road turned to pitted concrete, often covered with mudd and I asked a friend "Why did the road get change and get all cruddy?". To which she responded "Oh, we're in France now."

But seriously, even in a city like Paris or London, you don't get that feeling like in a city like Amsterdam that bikes are everywhere. The former two felt very much automobile-focused to me. Driving in Paris is scary because of the other drivers. Driving in Amsterdam is scary because of the bikes, the trams, and the pedestrians.

Re:Alternative Traffic

[doktor-hladnjak]

In California motorcycles above a certain displacement are required to have an exhaust catalyst and be certified by the California Air Resources Board. I'd be a little surprised if the same wasn't true in at least parts of Europe.

I would guess that pollution restrictions for cars in California are stricter than those in Europe actually. As far as I know, car inspections in Europe don't require a smog check. Catalytic converters only became legally mandatory in 1992 in Europe (1974 in the US). Also, leaded gasoline was not phased out until 2000 in the EU as a whole (1986 in the US) and it's still available in places (supposedly until 2005).

Re:Alternative Traffic

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

Bikes have two stroke engines and much simpler exhaust systems, so they produce a lot more pollution than you would think.

Re:Alternative Traffic

[gnu-generation-one]

"About time noise pollution was taken seriously. But I'd question the solution...Instead of just diverting traffic, hopefully they look at reducing noisy types of transport and encouraging more quiet forms ---- e.g. light rail, bikes."

In case anyone didn't hear about it, they introduced a "congestion charge" for driving into and around London, which has slashed the amount of traffic in the capital, and made it a much nicer, quieter place.

So yes, they have done something towards solving the source problem. Now if only the British people could get over their attitude of "anyone who doesn't own a car is a loser", they we might just get somewhere with the rest of the country.

As to spending money on measuring the noise throughout the land, think back to optimising code? Of course you spend the most money on benchmarking. Otherwise you waste a lot more money solving an irrelevant problem. So yeah, make the noise map first.

Re:Alternative Traffic

[anteater424]

There seems to be a new wave of two stroke scooters that must be the noisiest bastards ever made. Is it beyond the wit of man to build a quiet 2 stroke engine?

Re:Alternative Traffic

[glesga_kiss]

The UK is much the same. Cycle lanes are only really for show, they merge in and out of normal traffic lanes, buses and taxis ignore them. I read a study once that the real danger with cycle lanes are these merges, and the potential for accidents is actually increased by having a half-assed system.

Amsterdam has it nailed though. Only problem are the stoned tourists who aren't used to the road markings, and walk along cycle areas completely obvious to annoying the locals.

Re:Alternative Traffic

[glesga_kiss]

I'm not surprised. When I visited a couple years ago the motorcycles seemed to be completely unrestricted, weaving in and around cars, butting to the front of the line at traffic lights, and completely disregarding lane lines and general traffic ettiquette.

That's half of the appeal of bikes, the ability to jump traffic. Great for gridlock commuting. Don't you get bikes cutting between lanes of traffic in gridlock in the USA? It's most common in the UK on the motorways, which like most countries, crawl during rush hour.

Re:Alternative Traffic

[Patik]

Don't you get bikes cutting between lanes of traffic in gridlock in the USA?

Hardly anyone rides bikes for transportation, and motorcycles ride in the lane just like cars (they don't weave between other cars). I don't live in a city so I can't speak much for worktime rush hour traffic there, but during my many visits to New York City and Boston the traffic jams were cars-only, the same out here in the suburbs and small cities.

Re:Alternative Traffic

[fastdecade]

Yep, some cities just aren't made for cycling. But of the majority that are suitable, only a few (e.g. Amsterdam) actually approach the full potential.

There's a lot of things councils can do if they want to encourage it. Obvious things like cycling paths, unbroken lanes, integration with public transport facilities. There are also more radical interventions, such as wind-tunnels and bicycle pools, which need experimentation and should be part of this European project.

Re:Alternative Traffic

[Cederic]

>> Now if only the British people could get over their attitude of "anyone who doesn't own a car is a loser", they we might just get somewhere with the rest of the country.

Hmm. Most people I know (and I live and work in Britain, and am British) don't have that attitude at all.

What is common is a desire to be able to move freely and conveniently, and at the moment that tends to be best achieved with a car.

As an example: I live 54 miles from where I work. I could:
- catch a bus to work. But it'd be 3 hours each way
- catch a bus to the train station, then a train to the nearest station to where I work, then bus it from there. But that'd be 4 hours each way
- drive. 50 minutes on a good day, less than two hours on a bad day

Realistically, what option do I have?

Now, in practice, I'm staying with a friend just 17 miles from where I work. Again though, I'm driving - and again, because it saves me over an hour _each way_ compared to using public transport.

I'm also trying to sell my home so that I can purchase one within 3 miles of work. But that takes time..

So no, the attitude isn't "if you don't have a car you're a loser", the attitude is "give me suitable alternatives".

~Cederic

Re:Alternative Traffic

[gnu-generation-one]

"So no, the attitude isn't "if you don't have a car you're a loser", the attitude is "give me suitable alternatives"."

You say that just as my local bus service from home to work gets cut back to one per hour and unreliable. Insightful? Back to cycling it is then. 5 miles in winter.

Noise in America

[Nadsat]

I don't think America worried about this as much, as there was always more land, more space, more suburban sprawl. In European areas where land has turned more of a scarcity, then we see this interesting phenonom as a solution. Perhaps the same principals will be applied to more congested American cities too. It seems a good, bottom-up approach: re-routing traffic light signals and road development based upon environmental feedback.

Re:Noise in America

[joonasl]

You should come and see the urban sprawl here in Finland :)

Re:Noise in America

[flewp]

We have walls here in the US in some areas that partially block off the sound coming from the freeways. They're somewhat of an eyesore, but they do seem to help a bit. I always thought they should put a lot of vegetation around the walls to make them a little bit more aesthetically(sp) pleasing, but I don't know how the plants would do.

Re:Noise in America

[tomstdenis]

I live about a five minute walk from a fairly large nature trail [for where I live it's amazing cuz ARTLI factory cut houses are being put down like a five year old with lego!]. Even if you're say one km into the woods [and they're fairly thick] you can hear the dull sound of car tires [the somewhat high pitch noise they make when driving].

Anyways yeah, trees are better for other uses though, e.g. shade, slow down the wind, give us that nice oh I dunno breathable air. Where I live people will cut down trees that look at them wrong. It's very sad [at least at my house we have two f'ing huge maples! :-)]

Tom

Re:Noise in America

[drinkypoo]

The problem with putting trees around them is that you lose the benefit of a wide shoulder. Most places where they have built walls - at least in California - it's because there wasn't a lot of space. If you put a bunch of trees out there you either have to install a guardrail which makes the freeway narrower, or you will have people running into trees, which is not what you want.

Generally speaking, there's not room to put them on the other side either. Besides, any area right next to the freeway has usually turned into an industrial, commercial, or multi-zoned area anyway, and it's not that pretty with or without the wall.

Already spending a lot....

[Anonymous Coward]

"Sometimes I wish the U.S. government wasn't spending so much trying to build up the military and instead redirect those funds to building up the national infrastructure"

The US government is already spending billions and billions on infrastructure. The problem is that so much of the money is wasted, such as on overpaid union "workers" through scams such as the Davis-Bacon Act, designed just to waste a lot more money on government projects.

But what about the micro-noise climate

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this model take into account the guy two floors down in our apartment block who practices his drumming skills on Saturday and Sunday afternoons?

1 decibel what?

[Eponymous, Showered]

1 decibel what? A decibel is not a unit. It's a ratio. A power ratio to be exact. 1 dB SPL?

Re:1 decibel what?

[makapuf]

Well, it's nice for me to define an error margin with a ratio.

1dB = (10^0.1)*100 % error margin, (if i'm not mistaken) : exactly same meaning, sounds alright.

Re:1 decibel what?

[McWilde]

I guess they devided the measured power by the power predicted by their computer model and thus arrived at a ratio. They then decided to present this ratio in dBs.
They might also have presented the measured and predicted powers in dBs SPL, but then again, they might not have.

Re:1 decibel what?

[lcsjk]

Sound intensity is measured in db just like electrical power. The zero db level (Io) is defined as the threshold of human hearing for a 1000Hz tone, 10 ^(-16) watts per square centimeter.

Measured intensity is 10log(Inew/Io). However, the article said the calculated levels were accurate to within 1 db(average). That means the difference between calculated and measured was 1 db regardless of the actual level. Now, since the average was accurate within 1 db, that could mean 4 at 1/2 db difference and 1 at 3db difference for engineers. (.5+.5+.5+.5+3)/5=1

For politicians, it could mean that one was +42 and one was -38 for an average of (+48 -32)/2=1.
Beware of statistics.

Re:1 decibel what?

[imsabbel]

A decibell IS a unit.
Its not only 1/10 of the log10(x), but 1/10*log10(x/10^-12 w/m^2).

Finally, an anti-pollution project for Bush

[orthogonal]

As placing microphones on every building in London or Paris to measure noise was not practical

The Bush administration today announced strong support for the reduction of noise pollution in America. Environmental organizations, keenly aware of the administration's poor record on pollution, expressed shock at this surprise move.

Making the announcement for the administration were Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and (retired) Admiral John Poindexter. Attorney General Ashcroft explained that the Justice Department would generously fund a pilot project to monitor noise pollution in major urban areas known to harbor dissidents and Democrats. Ashcroft proclaimed that "Everyone, and especially the less-loyal elements in America, have a right to be free of the noise pollution caused by anti-war and anti-World Bank protestors, non-Christians, and really, anyone else who questions authority."

Re:Finally, an anti-pollution project for Bush

[orthogonal]

Slashdot is really making me sick lately as it has become home to Anti-American/Bush trolls... who get modded UP!

Brother, I'm by no means anti-American.

I've been an American patriot for as long as I can remember. I grew up reading stories of our Revolution against British tyranny, and memorizing -- just for my own edification -- the opening paragraphs of Mr. Jefferson's Declaration, and Patrick Henry's "if this be treason."

I've always been proud of my country's liberties, and my countrymen's willingness to defend that liberty.

And I'm no typical "liberal": I still cringe when I see Hanoi Jane Fonda, and I still wish Clinton had been impeached.

It is precisely because I'm a patriot that I miss no opportunity to point out how the current administration threatens to erode our liberties and our love for those liberties.

As a patriot, -- as someone who loves my country -- I consider it my duty to recall not only America's great ideals, but also those times we've fallen short of those ideals. To recall the acceptance of slavery written into our greatest documents, to recall the Alien and Sedition Acts, Mitchell Palmer, the internment of Japanese citizens, Joe McCarthy and J. Edgar's COINTELPRO.

Wake up and smell the jack-boots. It's happened before -- it's happened here -- and it's my duty as a patriot to point out "designated free speech zones", police investigation and intimidation of peaceful protestors, the indefinite imprisonment of U.S. citizens without judicial review, American government complicity in torture by foreign governments, warrantless searches, and the desire of John Ashcroft to have the power to revoke the citizenship of any American he distrusts.

If I really were anti-American, if I really wanted to see the American way of life and liberty banished from the earth, I'd be sitting back and cheering on the current administration.

Re:Finally, an anti-pollution project for Bush

[Lord_Dweomer]

Right, if our government did it, when they monitored the noise pollution, they'd also monitor all conversations and store them in their databases. /tinfoilhat.

Re:Finally, an anti-pollution project for Bush

[Ulven]

Which was, I think, the point of your parent.

Paris Noise

[lovebyte]

For those living in Paris or wanting to move there, there is a noise map available here.
I live in the noisiest part! Time to move to the country.

Re:Paris Noise

[Psychic Burrito]

Here's a nice table of noise levels. (And here's the query for it)

Re:Paris Noise

[Tiassa]

I live in the noisiest part! Time to move to the country.

... and then commute into the city, right?
Please tell me you'd use public transport.

Re:Paris Noise

[lovebyte]

... and then commute into the city, right?
Please tell me you'd use public transport.
Well, now I live in Paris and work outside of Paris!

Re:Paris Noise

[lovebyte]

I also live close Porte d'Orleans. Boulevard Brune in fact! Another slashdotter in my hood!

seasonal noise differences

[Savatte]

I hope they take into account the noise levels from different seasons. For instance, around where I live, summer and fall are much louder, simply because of the massive amounts of non-stop construction. And I can personally attest that you can hear a jackhammer from farther away than you can hear a police siren.

WHAT? HUH?

[winkydink]

SPEAK UP, WILL YOU???

Data gathering techniques

[The Ape With No Name]

As placing microphones on every building in London or Paris to measure noise was not practical, data on the amount of traffic carried by roads and the noise levels was fed into computers to generate a model of noise levels across the city

And an introductory remote sensing/GIS class would tell you that unless you have a Big Laser In Space(tm) you just take sample in accessible places that reflect both the landscape in general and prominent landscape features after that it is all overlay functions, baby. I am kriging as we speak!

Re:What next?

[HawkinsD]

Smell-data? That's a really, really good idea. Gathering data about noise is a good idea, I suppose, but it's really hard to actually DO sommething about it.

"Hey! It's really noisy here next to the freeway!"

Well, no duh, genius. And so what? Are you going to move the freeway?

But stench... I bet there are a lot of complicating factors, like wind direction and speed, air temperature, and the number of hogs per minute passing through the abbatoir down the block, that contribute to how bad it smells at a particlar place and time.

Now, THAT would be worth mapping, over time, because there might be simple things that could be done to alleviate bad smells for lots of people, which might not be apparent without a lot of data points.

Good idea!

Warning - Bad Joke.

[twitter]

As placing microphones on every building in London or Paris to measure noise was not practical, data on the amount of traffic carried by roads and the noise levels was fed into computers to generate a model of noise levels across the city.

Translation: Echelon did not co-operate so they had to get background noise from people's cell phones from their own telcos which incedently gave them great traffic data.

a specific example

[selderrr]

of how complex these issues are, is the national airport in Brussels-Belgium : being such a densely populated country, there's no practical way to have airplanes land & take off without flying over housing areas. And with both traffic and houses increasing, the problem has now reached proportions where people are starting lawsuits against the govt for noise terrorism. Some have dozens of planes flying over at low altitude per night. That's a plane every 10 minutes. You try to sleep with that. Even tripple-isolated glass & roofs can't stop the sound of a cargo airplane. Especially old, russian planes (who have now been ruled illegal for flight)

Allthough, personally i would find the noise the least of my worries : my mother in law lives near another airport (Oostende) After those huge, bulky cargo planes took off, there's a very intense kerosene odor that hangs in the streets for 15-30 minutes, depending on the weather. Yikes !

I don't understand how peeps in Singapore survive this (well.. i gues they don't...)

Re:a specific example

[selderrr]

well, in belgium things are a bit different due to the rapid growth of the airport (extending landing strips) and the ever increasing price of property. Near airport is one of the few affordable places

Re:a specific example

[skajake]

>> noise terrorism

Lol, boy you europeans are really trying to skewer the meaning of that word arent you. Anything to prevent supporting the campaign against terrorism...

Re:a specific example

[glesga_kiss]

You are a moron. As I type, there are around 20,000 families in Iraq who lost someone due to this war.

Now, will they be brought up to love america, or hate you? Tough choice. Remember the anger you felt on 9/11? They got that for several months this year, when the bombs rained down around them.

What does the next generation of terrorists look like? Send the marines to the Iraqi schools, because that's where they are. A country with no proven links to anti-US terrorism now hates you, and has made an ally of a former enemy, Al Qaeda, who are flooding into the country to take pot-shots at Americans (they can't afford F-16s, so they take what they can). Good going!! It is exactly this kind of agressive behaviour that produced the current generation of terrorists. They don't hate freedom or democracy. They hate the people who killed their fathers, brothers, priests & leaders. The reason, legitimacy and morality behind each US attack are irrelevant...hate rarely follows logic.

Re:a specific example

[glesga_kiss]

You are an anti-Iraqi moron. There are a lot more than 20,000 families who have lost family members due to Saddam's decades-old war against Iraq, in which he executed many thousands each year (including the ones who died this year becaused he used them as human shields by placing his military sites in civilian areas). However, his war is all but over. Thanks to Bush and a coalition of true leaders such as Blair who stand up for good instead of defending evil.

I'm not anti-Iraqi, just anti people with no common sense. How about the 500,000 we killed via sanctions (UN estimates)?

Oh, and how you forget how Saddam was once your friend, when he was using American sold chemical and biological weapons against Islamic people? How you sold him deadly strains of Anthrax? WTF were you doing breeding Anthrax in the first place? For a nation that whines about WMD, you invented them all!!

And they are still angry, most of them blaming Saddam as they should.

Nope:

"I hate Americans," he said. "I want revenge. I will wait, I will join a group, and, one day, I will kill Americans," - Ahmed Muthana, 14 year old Iraqi who's uncle was killed by crossfire in during an operation to surpress an anti-America demonstration.

Saddam's regime had proven links to terrorism against the US and other countries.

Nope. The only tenious link is that he once offered money to the families of suicide bombers in Israel, many years ago. Most of the IRA terrorist organizations funding comes from the US. Should the UK invade you for this?

Saddam and Al Quada were already friends.

Absolutely not! They were sworn enemies! Not all Arabs get along, it's not us vs. them by the way.

Retaliating to effectively stop aggression is not in itself aggression.

Tell that to the kids that'll grow up hating you. Remember, the root of anti-US terrorism is in response to thing the Americans did to them first. But we are digressing into "he started it" terretory now, which is pointless.

By your logic, 9/11 was not an act of aggression as it was retailation to other aggression perpretraited by you. Of course, you aren't taught US/Middle East history in school, and Jerry Bruckheimer ignores the subject, so you can be forgiven for not having a clue.

The terrorists, however, hate freedom and democracy, which is why they are terrorists.

No, they hate America. There are many other countries that embrace freedom and democracy more than the US (e.g. Europe), yet you don't see them lining up to kill us. Bush uses "freedom and democracy" as it is a time-proven method to get the US population behind the "war". "Armed robbery writ large", more like, to paraphrase your Tom Clancy.

Bush and the coalition are dealing with the root cause of terrorism: the regumes which create it.

Good! When do we invade Saudi Arabia, staunch US ally and also the homeland and primary source of funding for the 9/11 attacks? Does that also mean that Bush etc are all resigning? Go read some history moron, the US is the worlds number one supporter of terrorism. Google for "School of the Americas", or if that is too complex for you, click on this link.

As your anti-US and anti-Iraq rants prove.

Actually, I'm very pro-US. I just can't see her anywhere these days. There is someone about who looks like her, but is very different now.

Bush is a scandal. The shit will hit the fan, Enron style, and the US will be forced to appologise to the world for all this. Then people will eat your words and ask "how could we let this happen?"

Re:a specific example

[glesga_kiss]

Oh i forgot, free thinking is only encouraged when it agrees with you. Sheesh

Eh? You are blindly following the leader. That's not free thinking. And consider Bushes proclaimation of anti-war people being "unamerican" or "not patrotic"; that whole line of thinking is about as unpatriotic as you can possibly get. The US is built on the ability to hold your own views and beliefs, and the acceptance of others opinions. Where does "Freedom Fries" fit into this agument?

Bush is about as unAmerican as you can get, destroying almost everything that once made your country great. The Constitution, gone. Bill of Rights, gone. If I was American myself, I'd be mighty pissed about that.

Re:a specific example

[Insipid Trunculance]

I don't understand how peeps in Singapore survive this (well.. i gues they don't...)

Well the approach to changi is over the sea.And that area of singapore is mainly industrial anyway

Re:a specific example

[glesga_kiss]

You are either a troll, or a mindless lunatic. This conversation is over. You are so full of shit that's it unreal.

Go and buy some history books and get a clue.

Re:What next?

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it really funny that the American Slashdot users always pop up at the first mention of Europe and start posting "funny" comments like yours, yet the vast majority of you have never even left your home state, let alone gone to another country. Apparently ignorance is now something to be proud of these days, which is really very funny until you find yourself listed in the Darwin awards with a genuinely funny story about how you managed to kill yourself through an act of your your own stupidity.

If any of the words I used in this post were too big for you, just ask and I'll do my best not to answer any questions you might have.

Air Conditioning?

[__aagmrb7289]

I mean, not that I wouldn't be interested in such an investment myself, but should France get some air conditioning for their elderly first? Who sets the priorities for expenditures in the E.U. anyway?

Re:Air Conditioning?

[tommck]

Seriously, what kind of "rich, developed country" can have that level of people die because it's hot outside! It's unbelievable!

Re:Air Conditioning?

[cens0r]

If a heat wave similar to what happened in france where to happen in seattle, I guarantee you would see a similar death rate here. When it doesn't get very hot somewhere people tend not to install air conditioning. It sometimes will hit 90 degrees here and that makes things very uncomfortable. If we had weeks of 100+ degree heat people would drop like flies.

Re:Air Conditioning?

[tommck]

Wouldn't they just go to to mall? :-)

Re:Air Conditioning?

[__aagmrb7289]

This has happened in the last ten years in Portland, OR, and I can tell you for a fact that this DID NOT HAPPEN here. The weather conditions, while slightly warmer, and a little less wet than Seattle, are still very moderate, and 90+ temperatures are rare, while 100+ are unheard of. So, no, it WOULDN'T be duplicated here.

Re:Air Conditioning?

[cens0r]

You didn't understand my point. I said if we were to have similar conditions (i.e. 100+ for many consecutive days) the out come would have been similar. Right now that is unheard of here, 90+ days are rare and because of that not many people have A/C. But the problem was, that kind of weather was also unheard of in france. It was freaky there, and if something similar to that were to happen here people would suffer similar problems. Just like in france though it would be elderly people who rarely leave the house who would bear the brunt.

Re:Air Conditioning?

[__aagmrb7289]

Actually, I did understand what you were saying, and I am stating an almost identical heat wave happened in Portland, OR, and less than 100 people died (probably a high figure, I'd have to look it up). Anyway, the whole community freaked over all the deaths, but that is less than 5% of the death toll in France. Understand why I see a correlation?

Re:Air Conditioning?

[cens0r]

how many people live in Portland? How many people live in France? Extrapolate. I'll even do it for you. 243,537 people live in greater Portland. France has about 60 million residents. In france 14,000 died which would be the equivalent of 56 people dying in Portland. So, equivalent things do happen here. We're just spared greater numbers because of our low population density and the fact that weather is a fairly localized phenomenon. But in 1988 between 5,000 and 10,000 people died in the US due to a heat wave.

Re:Air Conditioning?

[__aagmrb7289]

Okay, I'll go in another direction then, since I don't have time to do all the research and provide links, correlations, etc. Want to comment on the fact that Germany and Italy were under the exact same conditions and didn't have even a fraction of the number of deaths?

Re:Air Conditioning?

[cens0r]

My guess would be that germany and especially italy are more frequently under those kinds of temperatures. Therefore more of their population had A/C and even more importantly their power grid was designed to handle that many people using A/C. Think of it this way. If it got to a 100 degrees in portland for a week straight all hell would break loose. But when I was growing up in Oklahoma it was 100 degrees every day for an entire period of June to August. The difference is that in Oklahoma that kind of weather isn't out of the ordinary so they prepare for it.

Re:Air Conditioning?

[__aagmrb7289]

Sorry, again I'll be more clear. The affected regions in Germany and Italy that are being referred to enjoy the same weather conditions as those in France. I'm not arguing that it was the degree of change that did it, just that the death toll was excessive for a country that is supposedly as wealth as France (wealthy enough to consider the original proposition).

Caveat Emptor == noop()

[4of12]

Someone purchases a house ["PIG"] with walls that aren't very sound proof ["POKE"]. They presumably knew this at the time of purchase, it would be ridiculous to think otherwise.

Not it's not ridiculous to assume otherwise.

In case you haven't noticed, there are a lot of buyers out there that

• do not thoroughly investigate their purchases,
• are easily swayed by the superficial.

not to mention sellers that are financially motivated to

• not disclose or to minimize hidden or long-term problems,
• to emphasize the superficial attractiveness.

Despite 2000+ year old advice and plenty of unscrupulous sellers, there are still plenty of unwary and stupid buyers.

We could just say that stupid and unwary people get what they deserve. But I'd hate to live in a society where we encourage intelligent people to learn to profit by deceiving the less intelligent.

Since it's impossible to legislate people into being smarter, it's probably reasonable to legislate awkward regulations that require the home seller to check boxes disclosing substantive issues with homes or to get inspections that include decibel profiles during a week.

Re:Caveat Emptor == noop()

[jandrese]

There is also the matter of the fact that the housing market is very tight, so there just might not be many homes on the market with adequate sound protection. Not that you would have time to find out anyway, since the homes sell in about three days after going on the market. If you find a good deal, it's not like you have a lot of time to research every aspect of the house before someone else snatches it up. The world is brutal, and sometimes unfair; that's life.

Microphones?

[Junior J. Junior III]

Why microphones? Why not a decibel meter? Surely that's the proper tool. Ubiquitous microphones sounds like the seed of yet another Orwellian nightmare.

Re:Microphones?

[Pepebuho]

I agree on this. Why do I feel kind of warm thinking about that many microphones sitting around the city recording every sound (your conversations too) Sorry, I feel kind of paranoid about it. dbMeters are fine, microphones no.

Re:Microphones?

[drinkypoo]

Is this a troll? A decibel meter has a microphone in it. I'm thinking they said "microphone" and not "decibel meter" because most people have no idea wtf a decibel is.

Re:Microphones?

[Reverberant]

Why microphones? Why not a decibel meter? Surely that's the proper tool. Ubiquitous microphones sounds like the seed of yet another Orwellian nightmare.

When the article says "microphone" I'm sure it's just shorthand for "sound level meter." Alternatively, they may have recorded sound at all of the positions using calibrated microphones and determined the actual sound pressure levels in the laboratory.

Re:Microphones?

[lcsjk]

They're called SOUND LEVEL METERS. However, it is much easier (and cheaper) to setup a microphone and circuit to record data to a flash memory that can be collected and carried back to the lab than to have a rather expensive sound level meter that needs direct connection to a computer for data acquisition and retaining it for later comparison usage.

Professionalism means that I don't have to use three letter "cuss-word" abbreviations to make myself understood.

Bah

[Anonymous Coward]

Europe the continent != the EU, in the same way North America != the USA.

Re:Marx inspired the killing of tens of millions.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Holy Bible inspired the crusades, the inquisition and the murder of thousands through sectarian violance. Kings and leaders throughout known history have claimed God as inpiration as an excuse to murder and pillage. Does that make the Bible any less valid as a guide to how to live your life and a general learning tool?

"Marx inspires them to go out and kill tens of millions of people. "...is a fact. Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin, and even Milosevic had Marx as their main inspiration.

Oh sure, they all claimed to be Marxists. I can claim to be a Libertarian and go out and claim state benefit, or claim to be a pacifist and then start a war. Big deal. The very fact that not one single person you actually list never enacted a true Marxist society proves quite easily that they were not Marxist.

It's the peaks which count

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with traffic noise, I would maintain, is not its absolute level (up to a limit of course), but rather the relative difference between minima and maxima.

Example. I would rather live in a tower block looking onto the bvd Peripherique in Paris than in a street-facing apartment in the 5e. Why? Because the sound of traffic on the periph. is fairly constant, whereas if you live in what is generally a quiet street, the sound of some fsking teenager zooming past on a scooter with a tin-can for a silencer will wake you out of any sleep.

The last study done on this concluded that the noise of one scooter crossing Paris at night interrupts the sleep of 250,000 people.

Start by punishing the selfish gits who ride scooters or Harleys. That would eliminate 50% of all complaints about traffic noise.

Re:A thorough understanding

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably not. If you are in Europe, then you are in a country that is somewhat more socialist than the United States. However, even in Western Europe, most of the economy still remains in the hands of the people, not the state.

Nobody is ideal. The current rulling political party is Labour. The Government has control over some large sections of this countries infastructure. That's Socialist. You're right, it isn't Socialism in the sense of Eastern European communism, but then you appear to be using the Americanism of interchanging Socialism & Communism freely, when in fact they mean very different things here in Europe.

Which ones? Specifically?

I don't know. That's why they're guesses.

Anyway, here are some specifics

Because socialism is all about improving the standard of living for government elites.

Clearly demonstratably false and not even based in reality. Even if the poster could show me a PolSci text with this claim in it, they're still talking bollocks and should know it. Clearly and demonstratably false. Socialism is all about improving society through social reform and support. This includes providing improved housing for the lower classes (Witness the slum clearences of the 50's and 60's). This may or may not cause rises in house prices and better housing at the top of the chain as a side effect, but that is totally irrelevent as to what socialism is "about".

What is wrong with it is that the government meddling ends up pricing the houses higher and higher.

Several years ago the Chancelor handed control of Interest Rates to the Bank of England. A period of unequaled low interest rates and high borrowing has pushed house prices here in the U.K far higher than any EU initiative to provide sound insulation ever could. I've recently purchased a 30 year old 3 bed house with no central heating for 120,000UKP. The lack or presence of sound insulation wouldn't have made the slightest bit of difference to me.

Marx inspires them to go out and kill tens of millions of people.

Again, crap and the poster knows it. Nowhere does Marx prescribe totalitarian rule or the murder of millions. Just because some bastards claimed Marx as a in influence doesn't mean anything; OBL claims Allah as an "influence" yet the vast majority of Muslims are quick to disagree with him.

Blame the road surface not the drivers

[Andy_R]

a large portion of 'traffic noise' is due to bad road surfaces.

So, rather than annoying drivers by making them go a longer way round (and therefore increasing congestion and pollution) mending the roads would be a better solution.

Here are some statistics from the Hong Kong govt who are already doing this:
http://www.epd.gov.hk/epd/english/environme ntinhk/ noise/data/road_surface.html

Re:Blame the road surface not the drivers

[jridley]

a large portion of 'traffic noise' is due to bad road surfaces...mending the roads would be a better solution

I'm with you. There are some highway surfaces that are miserable to drive on. I've been cruising on the interstate and come to a newer, much quieter section, and only then realized how incredibly loud the road noise was; my ears ring afterwards. Can't be good for you.

Re:Blame the road surface not the drivers

[sbadelt]

I agree, in part, although the over-use of excessivly-deep treads doesn't help.

link to the Noise Level map for Paris

[wwwillem]

This is the Paris web-site, mentioned in the article:

http://www.paris.fr/FR/Environnement/bruit/carto_b ruit/default.ASP

Re:link to the Noise Level map for Paris

[wwwillem]

And for those not mastering French, click here to get to the maps. Especially the 3D modeling part is pretty cool.

Re:A thorough understanding

[aallan]

This likely differs your country from the truly socialist societies that existed in Eastern Europe, in which the state, not the people, controlled the economy.

Err, you do actually understand the difference between Communisit and Socialist, right? Depsite what McCarthy had to say on the subject there is a big difference.

Al.

One more reductionist argument

[ianscot]

This isn't the simple argument you're making it into at all. Maybe you should go and look at a specific example of how one local government responds to noise around airports.

Criminy. I look down the message tree and see people talking about how "socialism" only makes the problem worse. Okay, let's just let the private airlines decide when and where their planes fly, unhampered by any (socialist) regulation, and then we'll allow the market to decide whether houses under those routes are soundproofed, and how valuable those houses are.

All this does is encourage people to do the cheapest thing possible, then use some ill concieved government program to clean up the mess afterwards. We have some highway construction near my home right now. Part of the project involves some new noise barriers -- walls. Believe it or not, the civil engineers working on the project know about how the acoustics of those walls work, they've done some serious homework about how the local topography will affect bouncing sound, how cars might tend to accelerate and decelerate in certain areas, and so on. Where they're making a somewhat lower wall for a church, they've planted some evergreen trees in a pattern that will soak up as much sound as possible for residents right by the church. And -- gasp -- they let the residents come to city hall to talk about the changes and how they'll affect them.

Welcome to a mixed economy, in which the government has some influence over private industry in the interest of the common good. I kind of like living here; maybe you'll take to it. Or maybe you'd like to have the private airlines put in a new runway and start bringing 747s in low over your back yard, with no power to do squat about it.

Re:One more reductionist argument

[RevMike]

Welcome to a mixed economy, in which the government has some influence over private industry in the interest of the common good. I kind of like living here; maybe you'll take to it. Or maybe you'd like to have the private airlines put in a new runway and start bringing 747s in low over your back yard, with no power to do squat about it.

Be very careful about your argument here. The details are important.

If I own a piece of residential property, and an airline buys up nearby land and builds a new airport, I have every right to receive redress. The activity from the airport has reduced my ability to enjoy my own property.

If, however, I buy property close to an existing airport, I should have been able to foresee that noise might be an issue. I should have no recourse.

I purchased a house on a border line between a residential zone and a commercial zone, so this is not theory for me. I've become friendly with the owners of the car wash that partially abutts my yard. He told me one day that he was getting complaints from some people in the neighborhood about the noise from his (industrial size) vacuum cleaners and blowers. I told him that I bought the house after he was here, I knew he was operating a car wash, so I have no right to complain.

Re:One more reductionist argument

[gfxguy]

There's a difference between living in a quiet area that then has something noisy added, and CHOOSING to live in a noisy area.

When something is ADDED to an existing residential area, then the entity creating that addition certainly has a responsibility to the residents, but beyond that, too bad.

Most major airports have been around for many decades. In the U.S., the last statistic I heard on the matter (a couple of years ago), was that homeowners own a house for an average of seven years. If you do the math, the vast majority of people living in noisy areas CHOSE to live there.

I don't know what's going on W.R.T. noise pollution in Europe, but I shudder when people suggest yet another program like this in the U.S.

Soundproofing 'R US

[strictnein]

I'm curious about all the posts stating that the US should help sound insulate houses too. If you live in a house near any of the many major aiports in the US, it is likely that you are living in a home that has been sound insulated, with the bill being picked up by federal and state governments. I currently live in one (renting) and it's amazing the difference it makes.

Surprise results

[UnknowingFool]

Incidently, the study will find that the level of noise pollution increased significantly when Cmdr Taco visited London and ate beans and toast. This visit also coincides with the highest level of the greenhouse gas, methane, over the city.

Sure... do it "for the children"...

[Orne]

Why is it that the first thing I thought of was nation-wide audio surveilance network? Maybe that's because I was paging through a copy of Futureland... It starts small, but once you have a noise recording network, maybe you can record the audio amplitude spike of a gunshot, and dispatch police to the "crime" . Right now, it's only "10 to 15 computers ... are at work", but once the infrastructure is in place, who's to say they can't re-purpose the system in the future? Right now, its just average amplitude, but crank up the sampling rate, and its a NSA wet dream...

1 decibel is quite a lot

[misterpies]

Decibels are a logarithmic scale: an increase of 1 decibel actually corresponds to a 30% increase in noise levels.

Actually I'm surprised it's even that accurate. Traffic levels only get you so far -- the urban environment (architecture, trees) is also extremely important. Under my apartmenet block there's a raised arcade that basically serves as a resonator, making traffic sound louder.

Re:1 decibel is quite a lot

[Reverberant]

Decibels are a logarithmic scale: an increase of 1 decibel actually corresponds to a 30% increase in noise levels.

Well it's more like a 13% increase in pressure level ( 20Log10(113/100)=1 dB )

Even so, it's generally accepted that most people can just barely detect a 1 dB increase/decrease in sound only in very carefully controlled laboratory experiments. For all practical purposes, a 1 dB increase or decrease in SPL is insignificant.

better idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't they just build roads and highways far away from cities to keep people from hearing them?

Big deal

[DirtyJ]

I began my nose-mapping effort years ago.

Oh wait... nevermind.

All for it

[sbadelt]

Personally, I get annoyed by the sound of a Honda Civic with an open-throat muffler and the constant hammering of Harley's. I'd love to see some enforcement of reasonable noise pollution violations... not just a random smathering of acoustic foam.

Re:I'm not a Marxist

[ahillen]

I am not among that overwhelming majority of Marxist scholars who interprets Marx's writings to support dictatorships as per Soviet Russia and Cuba. I'm not sure how they do it.

I don't know whether the majoriy of Marxists scholars (what is a Marxist scholar? Someone who as carfully read Marx' works?) supports dictatorships. But I'm quite sure that most of those who do had their Marxist 'education' in former (or current) communist states. If you are not only reading Marx' (or any other author's, for that matter) writings but are also taught how to interpret them, it is no wonder if you get the same ideas...

Yet, whenever it is applied (either by Leninist-Stalinists, or kindhearted Social Democrats in western Europe), it means making the ruling class stronger (from taking over health care or taking over much land down to outlawing non-government-approved religions).

Hmm, in Germany health care was implemented by the state under Chancelor Bismarck around 1880. He was by no means a social democrat, quite the opposite. (He is quoted as calling the social democrats as a 'menacing band of thiefs'). The current (Social Democrat) government is at the moment considering to further reduce the standard of the general health care, putting more emphasis on private provisions.
Oh, and I don't know any religion that was outlawed by the 'kindhearted Social Democrats in western Europe'.

I think you live in your own black-and-white world...

Re:What next?

[ScottCanto]

Actually, the city I live in is in the process of collecting information about smells. Why? The city's landfill boarders a sewage treatment plant as well as a landfill from another city, all within a five mile radius.

I used to live around this area some time ago, and I can say that, besides the rare occasion when the wind blew just the right way, smell was not a problem. Seems to me just another waste of money, but maybe there are others that are effected greater than I.

Re:Space in USA is not an issue

[Jeffrey Baker]

Hrmm... The land area of Texas is 670 million quarter acres. So *if* the mean worldwide family size was 10, your proposal would take up the entire state. By the way, a quarter acre is not enough to agriculturally support an entire family.

Mopeds

[cheezit]

I've been to European cities a number of times. They don't need microphones and noise studies. Here's my comprehensive plan:
1. PUT SOME FRICKIN' MUFFLERS ON THEIR MOPEDS.

Re:Mopeds

[Dukael_Mikakis]

Yes, I live in San Francisco, in a relatively busy area, but just off the main road so my street can be pretty quiet (think residential streets in NYC).

It seems that some of the noisiest drivers, the motorcyclists, choose to take my street, even though it likely isn't altogether necessary or even really easy (since I live on a pretty steep hill. You'd think that a big hill would deter motorcyclists, but they seem to enjoy taking that hill and gunning the engine like nothing else right outside my apartment.

Other than that, most of my traffic is emergency vehicles likely trying to avoid traffic, or taxi drivers (who take my street for some reason or another).

It seems like any efforts to divert traffic mightn't work because those that want a sensible route likely already take such routes. Those that want to drive through neighborhoods ... well, nothing's stopping them, especially since they'd likely kick a fuss over not being able to use public roads.

The solution isn't trying to change behavior (a hard thing to do, especially since people are accustomed to, and like, their routes), it's employing methods that reduce noise no matter what the behavior (better roads, engines, stricter laws, etc.). At least San Francisco has electric buses, which run very quietly, otherwise, I'd have gone made long ago.

Is this the right solution

[Fjord]

Noise is not just a nuisance, it's a health issue. And victims are often least able to afford quieter surrounds.

A WHO report estimated that 40 percent of EU residents -- 150 million people -- are exposed to road traffic noise exceeding 55 decibels and that over 30 percent suffer noise levels at night that disturb sleep.

I understand that these people can't afford sound proofing, but are earplugs really that far out of reach for them? If my sleep was disturbed by cars outside, I would buy some.

Re:Is this the right solution

[nytmare]

That's like telling people to hang up on telemarketers, or just delete the spam from their mailbox. It's only a mild work-around and doesn't solve the problem. Earplugs are neither practical nor comfortable to wear 24 hours / day.

Re:Is this the right solution

[Fjord]

I agree that it isn't ideal, but I just don't feel tax money should be spent on this. I'm often a welfare apologist but I still think this is a little out there.

RTFA?

[SoupaFly]

So why not spend the billions developing quieter traffic? Put it into fuel cells and electric motors, for example.

From the article: "By year's end, one-quarter of Paris' 416 garbage trucks will run on natural gas, 50 percent quieter than current diesel models, City Hall says."

Money is being spent on quieter vehicles.

More planes!

[GlobalEcho]

>That's a plane every 10 minutes. You try to sleep with that.

Have you ever seen the Blues Brothers? Then the solution should be obvious...campaign for more airplanes!

Jake:
How often does the train go by?
Elwood:
So often, you won't even notice.

It has to be said again

[Loundry]

it's in goverments(the peoples!) intrest

"A state, is called the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly lieth it also; and this lie creepeth from its mouth: 'I, the state, am the people.'"

Nietzsche, "Thus Spoke Zarathustra"

Re:What Marx said

[aallan]

Read Marx on the subject, and see his use of the terms. You equate Marx with McCarthy? How....odd.

No I just fundamentally object to the normal American practice of equating the mild, left leaning, Socialism of the Western and Northern European states with encoroaching Communism. Hence my reference to McCarthy.

Al.

Re:Socialism makes it worse.

[Urkki]

Ah, a troll, I'll bite!

• Because socialism is all about improving the standard of living for government elites.

Look at USA politics right now. Think of Enron. Think of Microsoft and SCO (and their unknown but assumed link). Think where GWB got his campaign donations and correlate this with what is going on in Iraq. Then think of everything that must be going on in the background, unnoticed or at least unreported by major media.

So, to me it would very much appear that capitalism is very much about making "the elite" richer and richer at any cost. That it's the "invisible" corporate elite that is at the top, instead of the visible "government elite" in communism only makes it even more worrysome, but I guess it's the only way to do it in a country with freedom of speech... But fear the day when you notice your freedom of speech starts to be really restricted.

I mean, seriously, if you're American, think abou this...

Then be thankful that at least the interests of the corporate elite don't mostly conflict with interestes of average American (as long as they keep giving money to RIAA and buying bigger and bigger SUVs and all that, but that's a national duty of every patriotic american, isn't it?)...

Typical Leftist/Collectivist irrational garbage

[Loundry]

Really, how better to dedicate the resources of ones culture than the investigation of the cause/effect and remedy for general, shared problems? Why the hell not? I can think of no better things to investigate.

Because the resources that are being dedicated are being seized at gunpoint. Furthermore, while you may not be able to think of better things to investigate, there may be millions of people who want to exercise their freedom and hard-earned money on what they want exercise it on. What gives your opinions so much priority that they justify looting?

The masses are convinced -- almost without pause -- that spending money on single-serving yogurt-like snacks(ever *made* your own yogurt -- VERY VERY GOOD & EASY), RetiredBoxerBrand electric grills (whats wrong with your stove?), ZXY(TM) Brand $200 shoes, and blah blah blah is a good reward in exchange for my personal effort (the $ youve collected in exchange for work).. I say hogwash.

Sure, it's hogwash. For you. For someone else, it's very important. What makes your tastes better than yours? Are you going to trot out your subjective feelings which is exactly what those who buy $200 Indonesian-made shoes use to justify their tastes? While I think many people spend money on pure junk, I still find them more respectable than I find you because at least their desire to spend money doesn't include taking my money.

If Im going to sacrifice 40hrs of ever week, I damn well want something worth while in exchange for my Cached-Work($).

There is nothing preventing you from doing this in a captialist society. You work, you get paid, and you spend your hard-earned dollars on what you want to spend it on. But that's not what you're describing here, is it? I think what you mean to say is, "If I work in any capacity, then I want the government to seize other people's property and spend it on that which I have decided is Good and Right."

Being the sucker in some capitalist's get-rich scheme, at the expense of the planet (pollution/waste/garbage) is not all that attractive -- but insead of paying for research like this (in taxes) people are usually DrivenByMindControl to buying SomeDamnedGarbage.

And you can choose not to be involed in some capitalist's get-rich "scheme". Can I choose not to have my hard-earned tax dollars go to some leftist's idea of what is moral? No! Why is that not also a "scheme"?

Furthermore, pollution, waste, and garbate do not harm the planet. They harm people.

Where am i going with this? What is more useful? What is the greatest benefit of the product of our collective resources (the above mentioned consumer-garbage) **OR** some peace from the endless noise in a mechanized-industrial city....

And it rears it's ugly head: collective resources In other words, everyting that an individual works to earn actually belongs to busybodies in the state (who are, of course, trying to buy votes and maintain power). Is there any reason at all that this vaunted "noise control" could not be addressed privately?

Stop and think occasionally: "what benefit, at what cost is my decision having to bear on myself and my community?

Your religion has defined private property and free enterprise as "evil". It is from these premises that you weigh these alleged benefits and costs. For example, my buying a George Forman Grill would only be falling prey to an Evil Capitalist's Get Rich Scheme. Well, how many people does that evil capitalist employ? How much business does the evil capitalist give to UPS/FedEx to ship their products, and how many jobs does that take? What about the raw materials that go into making the George Forman grills? That takes jobs, too.

Yes, I believe in society very much, just not in the way that you do. I believe that society functions most morally when people are not forced to live their lives for someone else.

Re:Typical Leftist/Collectivist irrational garbage

[Yer Mum]

Is there any reason at all that this vaunted "noise control" could not be addressed privately?

Yes. What are the chances of the majority of people across e.g. New York who feel that noise pollution adversely affects the forming an organisation, funding it, running a scientifically valid investigation, and then implementing a city-wide scheme to reduce it?

Nil.

I assume from your viewpoint that all US cities' mayors should be immediately sacked and any planning and services they were doing should be scrapped and the inhabitants left to do the job themselves as best they can? I give those cities less than a week before they fall into chaos.

Re:Typical Leftist/Collectivist irrational garbage

[Loundry]

Yes. What are the chances of the majority of people across e.g. New York who feel that noise pollution adversely affects the forming an organisation, funding it, running a scientifically valid investigation, and then implementing a city-wide scheme to reduce it?

Nil.

Probably because there is no demand for it. Your argument assumes that this is a problem about which something must be done. What if no one wants it? Should we assume that the government is so all-knowing and intelligent that looting is justified?

I assume from your viewpoint that all US cities' mayors should be immediately sacked and any planning and services they were doing should be scrapped and the inhabitants left to do the job themselves as best they can? I give those cities less than a week before they fall into chaos.

Strawman.

Should I assume that you agreed with everything else I wrote?

Re:Typical Leftist/Collectivist irrational garbage

[Stephan Schulz]

Your religion has defined private property and free enterprise as "evil". It is from these premises that you weigh these alleged benefits and costs.

Well, you can argue the noise problem from a libertarian point of view as well. By what right do other people, e.g. by driving on a public road, project noise into my hallowed home? If they want to drive/use the public (or even a private) road, they should better make sure that they don't affect my private property with their emissions, wether noise or CO2 or unburned Benzene.

Of course, enforcing such a view now would make our society collapse. It is not feasible. Instead, we recognize that some things are inherently shared ("collective property") and try to minimize the impact of the use of those resources collectively.

Unfortunately, if everybody tries to achieve the optimum individually, we don't get a global optimum. In fact, we might even all be worse off.

As for the noise example, if people become ill or depressed or go postal because of noise, we all have to bear a part of that burden. So it makes sense for all of us share the remedy. I'm very much amazed by people in the US who balk at paying $5/month in taxes for better police and schooling to reduce the crime rate, but think nothing of spending $5000/month for a walled condo that does nothing to solve the crime problem, but at best moves crime somewhere else.

Re:Typical Leftist/Collectivist irrational garbage

[Loundry]

It's nice to debate someone who can reason!

Well, you can argue the noise problem from a libertarian point of view as well. By what right do other people, e.g. by driving on a public road, project noise into my hallowed home?

I can see that a person who walks in front of my house with an air-horn blasting my windows is infringing on my freedoms. Your example leaves off too many other variables. What if, for example, I chose to live next to a busy freeway? Can I then start screaming, "These noisy cars are infringing on my rights!" The more complicated question is, "Are rights infringed upon when freeways are built near housing?"

Unfortunately, if everybody tries to achieve the optimum individually, we don't get a global optimum. In fact, we might even all be worse off.

If everyone follows their own rational self-interest, then I think we will have the most moral and productive society. The key is rational self-interest. A society of self-important thugs who fights for their own pleasure at the expense of everyone else is not a society worth living in.

As for the noise example, if people become ill or depressed or go postal because of noise, we all have to bear a part of that burden. So it makes sense for all of us share the remedy.

How will you know if a person becomes ill or depressed solely because of noise? Are you going to take the sufferer's word for it -- someone who is slobbering at the thought of getting a new house that someone else paid for if the correct diagnosis is acheived?

Re:Typical Leftist/Collectivist irrational garbage

[Stephan Schulz]

It's nice to debate someone who can reason!

Thanks.

Well, you can argue the noise problem from a libertarian point of view as well. By what right do other people, e.g. by driving on a public road, project noise into my hallowed home?

I can see that a person who walks in front of my house with an air-horn blasting my windows is infringing on my freedoms. Your example leaves off too many other variables. What if, for example, I chose to live next to a busy freeway? Can I then start screaming, "These noisy cars are infringing on my rights!" The more complicated question is, "Are rights infringed upon when freeways are built near housing?"

Indeed, it boils down to the question of who owns the property rights to the transmission of noise through my house -- if it makes sense to speak of those things as property rights at all. It's a similar problem with the transmission of EM radiation or even the plain consumption and pollution of air. It is inherent nearly impossible to parcel out these rights to individual owners - and if it were possible, the result would not be desirable, and the cost would be so high as to leave everybody off worse.

As an example, just consider each property surrounded by sound- and airtight plexiglas, with air exchange carefully controlled and metered, and accounted for by individual contracts between all neighbors. In addition to the incredible overhead and inconvenience, we would play havoc with the global climate, and probably all die off.

For that reason, we have to treat some things as shared resources (or collective property if you prefer that notion). And to avoid the tradgedy of the commons, we have to manage these shared resources reasonably. And exactly that is happening with the noise mapping and reduction.

Unfortunately, if everybody tries to achieve the optimum individually, we don't get a global optimum. In fact, we might even all be worse off.

If everyone follows their own rational self-interest, then I think we will have the most moral and productive society. The key is rational self-interest. A society of self-important thugs who fights for their own pleasure at the expense of everyone else is not a society worth living in.

I agree with your second sentiment, but with your first statement only to a very small degree. It entirely depends on the definition of rational self-interest. There are many examples were a locally optimal behavior leads away from the global optimum, even if we assume perfect information. I'll give you two examples (assuming you know about the classical prisoner's dilemma): Vaccination and cars.

In a well-vaccinated population, the risk from vaccination side effects is greater than the risk from the disease, because the disease has basically no way to spread (there are to few carriers). So my rational self interest tells me not to get vaccinated. If, however, everyone acts like that, vaccination levels sink, and suddenly the population is vulnerable again. One way out of this dilemma is to make vaccination mandatory. Another would be to pay people to get vaccinated. But both require a collective decision with some ability of enforcement.

For the second example, think about the current SUV wave. If everybody drives a reasonably small car, everybody is equally protected in car-car collisions. If I follow my self-interest, I decide to buy a bigger car (assuming that bigger cars are more secure, which for SUVs typically is untrue). Now I'm in a better position, but everybody else is worse off (they might collide with my bigger vehicle, which might smash their small tin cans). So they buy bigger cars as well. After one round of this, everybody has a big, heavy, over-engineered car, at great cost to our purses and the environment, but safety-wise, we have not gained anything. We only upped both protection and destructive force of our vehicles.

And unfortunately, we don

Re:Typical Leftist/Collectivist irrational garbage

[Loundry]

For that reason, we have to treat some things as shared resources (or collective property if you prefer that notion). And to avoid the tradgedy of the commons, we have to manage these shared resources reasonably. And exactly that is happening with the noise mapping and reduction.

I don't believe that is exactly what is happening with noise mapping and reduction. Since this involves the forced transfer of property from one group of people to another, there is an extremely high likelihood of vote-buying going on.

I'll give you two examples

And I'll proceed to use them against you:

In a well-vaccinated population, the risk from vaccination side effects is greater than the risk from the disease, because the disease has basically no way to spread (there are to few carriers). So my rational self interest tells me not to get vaccinated. If, however, everyone acts like that, vaccination levels sink, and suddenly the population is vulnerable again.

It is therefore in my rational self-interest to be vaccinated, as my refusal to do so may lead to graver consequences for me. This assumes that vaccination is effective.

Now I'm in a better position, but everybody else is worse off (they might collide with my bigger vehicle, which might smash their small tin cans).

Following rational self-interest would prohibit me from helping myself at the cost of anyone else's life, liberty, or property.

So they buy bigger cars as well. After one round of this, everybody has a big, heavy, over-engineered car, at great cost to our purses and the environment, but safety-wise, we have not gained anything.

You act as if there are only losses involved in purchasing a larger vehicle when there are actually other benefits that they bring. Environmentalism is, in most of its forms, superstition, and I ask that we leave that subject for a separate discussion. Furthermore, I dispute that a more "tank-like" car is necessarily safer. Risk theory dictates that the safest car is the one that has a sharp, metal spike protuding from the steering wheel pointed directly at the driver's heart.

The same way as I decide most things: By asking an expert or a group of experts.

I think this is insufficent. The government promises giving away a "free" house (the houses are paid for by seizing money from the people whose votes the politicians don't need) to anyone who is sufficiently "depressed" enough due to noise pollution. Immediately and inevitably, looters will claim "depression" so that they can get their hands on some "free" house. The bigger the potential giveaway, the bigger the throng of looters that will show up. So the government then hires some psychologists to verify that each of these looters is 1) depressed, and 2) depressed due to noise pollution. Is psychology an exacting science, free from subjective opinion? Certainly not! Not all "experts" are created equal. You can measure milligrams and volts, but psychologists still aren't sure what exactly causes depression and dozens of other current psychological diagnoses. Furthermore, how do we know that these "experts" aren't going to be motivated by ego and money rather than by reason and evidence? The "HIV==AIDS" fraud is an excellent example of the pain caused by blindly following someone because they are an "expert".

To the best of my ability, I rely on my powers of observation and my reasoning skills to make decisions. The necessarily-condescending god complex and many failings of many "doctors", "scientists", and "nutritionists" has destroyed whatever faith I had in those groups.

Reducing vehicle stereo noise

[phorm]

Really, it depends on the vehicle you're driving, and whether you have your windows down.

I've found that most noise from subs seems to escape out of the trunk, speakers don't really escape the car even with my 180RMS/270Peak pumping out a lot of tunes. With the windows open in summer, of course, this is a different story.

If you like some boom in your stereo but don't want to be a nuisance, why not pad your trunk with a little soft absorbant foam? Not hard to do, and it will help deaden the noise escaping from your car.

Of course, with a decent car, your stereo still isn't go to travel as far (noise-wise) as the guy beside you with a souped-up 6cyl and a few quarter-sized holes in his muffler.

If you wanted to be real nice, or just abide by noise bylaws (10pm/11pm noise reduction bylaw around here), you could add a kill switch to your stereo. Assuming you use an amp (deck power in most cases won't put out enough to be a problem anyhow unless you like distortion), between the low-volt "wake" input on your amp and the deck. Flip the switch when it gets late or you're in quiet residentials, you can still listen to music on your deck speakers, but at least killing the subs helps detract from overall noise pollution

Re:Cheap ways to reduce noise in cities...

[doktor-hladnjak]

Honestly, out of all the places I've been in the world (at least where people actually live) Germany and NYC have to be polar opposites noise-wise.

Four years ago, I was sleeping on a friends couch in Manhattan while visiting during a heat wave. Since it was so hot, the window needed to kept open at night. However, it was impossible to sleep, not because of the heat, but because there was jack hammering from road construction going on at like 2 or 3am!

This in comparison to many (all? most?) German cities, where noise is restricted not just after 10pm, but also during the middle of the day for people to eat lunch in peace.

Sound walls

[fiannaFailMan]

Gathering data about noise is a good idea, I suppose, but it's really hard to actually DO sommething about it.

"Hey! It's really noisy here next to the freeway!"

Well, no duh, genius. And so what? Are you going to move the freeway?

Build Sound walls.

Re:What next?

[PhoenixFlare]

I agree that the parent post is not a shining example of humor, but maybe you shouldn't try to speak for anyone else.

yet the vast majority of you have never even left your home state, let alone gone to another country

I'm an American, and yet i've stayed for lengths of time (not just passing through) 17 different states, as well as parts of Canada. I can think of several people I know that have done the same or more, including long stays in Russia, Japan, England, Spain, etc.

Travel is not a rarity here, despite whatever your myopic, ethnocentric, and otherwise prejudiced views may have lead you to believe.

Apparently ignorance is now something to be proud of these days, which is really very funny until you find yourself listed in the Darwin awards with a genuinely funny story about how you managed to kill yourself through an act of your your own stupidity.

I have plenty of European friends I talk to on a regular basis, but geez...It's idiots like you that make my opinion on the rest of the continent continue a downward spiral.

Stupid

[Bob Uhl]

Never mind that much of the charm of European cities is that there aren't 'residential areas'; people just live and work in the city. Try to shunt traffic away from where folks live, and you end up not allowing cars in town. Which is, I suppose, the secret dream of every penny-ante fascist around.

Re:Stupid

[MKalus]

You might be surprised, but in most european cities you don't need a car.

My parents had a car, they used it... A handful times a year, mainly to go on family vacation.

While I lived in Europe *I* didn't had a car and I was fine. Only since I am in North America I NEED a car because there is no mass transit and everything is so freaking far apart.

Most road traffic are people, but those are not the ones living and working in the city, rather people from outside, business and delivery trucks.

au contraire!

[tommck]

back then soundproofing wasn't viewed as necessity(there weren't that much noise anyways).

What about the guy rolling through town with a cart shouting "Bring out your dead!" and the lady beating the cat against the wall! That's a lot of noise if you ask me!

Re:au contraire!

[radja]

yes, but where soundproofing an entire building will take quite a few bricks and other stuff, the cat-lady and the corpsecart-guy's noise can be solved with a halfbrick each, applied to the head.

Help!

[Geburah]

We live a stones throw away from an ambulance dispatch center. If that isnt enough, the almost-adult-but-holding-on-to-my-beer-drinking-yo uth idiots next door have made it there goal to be as loud and retarded as possible. Loud is ok. But the being a tard is not. I swear to christ, the conversations I hear make me wanna hurt children. Loud would be ok if it had a little class or taste to it. Nope. Nothin. Just retarded rambling. Mabye if they turned down the -20db bass at 3:24am from the local hip hop station, they could find some time to kill themselves. Unless the ambulance got here before they lost all there blood. (sigh)

Privacy Snooping Conspiracy

[ebresie]

I don't suppose these listening sensors combined can be used to do some invasive listening or snooping on the public at large can they?

Low-sound asphalt

[catfry]

I remember seeing an article about an experiment with a special low-noise asphalt which had been applied to a perticularly noisy road here (Copenhagen). It was about a year ago, I wonder whatever happened to that, and has anybody else heard about anything similar? Any ideas as to how such an asphalt would work?

Rich Country? Let's talk about NY City!

[bs_02_06_02]

I agree... too many political motives. Here's my $.02

People live in NYC (or any other big city) made a conscious decision to do so. Why should I pay to make their lives more quiet? I didn't contribute to the problem. Why should I pay for the solution?
You want to live there, fine, you pay for it. Put a toll on the roads, whatever, but don't ask me to pay for it. If enough people don't like it, they'll move, and the problem will be solved. If enough people choose to pay an increased toll, you can have your soundproofing.

National defense is another matter. We all need national defense, we all should pay for it.
To ask me to subsidize your decision to live in a noisy city is extremely arrogant. I'm NOT going to allow my tax money to be spent so you can live without consequence.

If you really want socialism, move to France or Sweden, and let us know how much happier you are after you're gone.
Thanks for sharing.

Re:Rich Country? Let's talk about NY City!

[MKalus]

People live in NYC (or any other big city) made a conscious decision to do so. Why should I pay to make their lives more quiet? I didn't contribute to the problem. Why should I pay for the solution?
You want to live there, fine, you pay for it. Put a toll on the roads, whatever, but don't ask me to pay for it. If enough people don't like it, they'll move, and the problem will be solved. If enough people choose to pay an increased toll, you can have your soundproofing.

Most people living in the cities aren't the one who cause the noise pollution. It's the people from the outside who drive into the cities for work or entertainment because they can't get that in their subdivision.

So yes, you are causing it.

Re:Rich Country? Let's talk about NY City!

[bs_02_06_02]

I guarantee I'm not causing any noise in NYC. I don't live there. I don't drive there. I don't commute there. Therefore, I don't want to pay for the problems there.

If you read my post, you'll see tolls mentioned. Proper tolls will solve the commuter problem. Taking money from national defense will not. If the free market requires people to travel, they'll find the money to pay the toll. If they don't have the money to pay the toll, they won't use those roads, and there won't be as much need for insulation. I am not the problem, and I don't want to pay for it. I choose my charities. I don't want anyone else choosing for me.

Re:Not even

[symbolic]

A better solution would be to have the homeowners association pay for the sound barriers.

When I first moved into my current residence, things were relatively calm. Not quiet, but calm - I could easily handle the road(tire) noise from the cars that passed by, because it had an ebb and flow similar to the noise that ocean waves might make. Over the last few years, the city has issued permit after permit, filling in every possible empty space, adding apartment complex after apartment complex, more businesses, etc. Then some brilliant city planner decided that they'd re-design the park across the street so that instead of acting as a good medium for sound absorption (a sloped surface covered with rock), they'd fill it in and turn it into a grassy area. A natural and forseeable consequence has been a tremendous increase in traffic noise that I hear. And the boomcars driven by panty-waist little boys starving for attention - another headache. Lately, I've been hearing heavy diesel trucks, whose drivers just DELIGHT in downshifting as they come up to a stoplight at a nearby intersection.

All of this, I'd argue, is a result of poor city planning and ineffective law enforcement. I'm not responsible for creating the problem, so why should I have to pay to fix it?

Re:Socialism makes it worse.

[Urkki]

• No, it isn't: capitalism is about letting the people control their own destinies. The countries with the most powerful and rich elites (relative to the population) happen to be socialist countries like North Korea. In capitalism, the rich have their power limited by the accountability of free market choices. Socialism does not have any such accountability.

Actually it does have accountability, since effectively world market is a free market, and we're seeing communism disappear just because of that.

Capitalism, as the name implies, is about increasing capital, ie getting richer. The more you have, the more you can get. The less you have, the harder it's to catch up. It works fine as long as the differences aren't too big, but as more and more money starts to gather in fewer and fewer hands, the worse it works, until finally the country is ruled by that money in few hands, not by the people. And suddenly you are in a situation where you have "nobility" that inherits their position by inheriting their parents money, and a working class that has very limited chances of making it big *no matter their personal ability*.

You may call that a fine system. I call it middle ages, the nobility inhering their position and all that. And please explain the free market mechanism that somehow slows down this separation?

• They don't. The system is designed so that the corporations, through the direct democracy of the marketplace, act in the people's interest. If the corporations do not, they wither and die.

No. Corporations that don't make money wither and die. Sometimes it's working with people's interestes in mind, sometimes it's the opposite. Also, to those who have really understood the modern capitalism, a company going under or doing well is irrelevant, they just want money for themselves and move on to another company when the time is right.

• In a socialist country, if you don't agree with the government you get shot.

Well, I assume you mean "extreme left communist country" when you say "socialist country", since to me it appears that you are much more likely to get shot in the countries that are more on the right than those that are more socialist...

• • "as long as they keep giving money to RIAA and buying bigger and bigger SUVs and all that,"

  Since when does anyone GIVE money to the RIAA? As for SUV's, government regulations have made the regular car too small and unsafe, so the SUV is an opportunity to get a substantial, useful vehicle.

You give money to RIAA directly every time you buy a CD. Even if you avoid that, you indirectly give money to RIAA for example every time you buy a product that was advertised in the radio...

As to SUVs, you pretty much hit the nail in the head, though you probably don't realize it yourself. Hint: "government regulations"... Oh, the poor car industry, thay have to make "substantial" cars to meet the tough requirements.

In both cases, you see American democrazy at it's finest.

• You forget that the visible government elite (the true elite) are at the very top, above the rich capitalists.

Nope, they're not. The true political elite is those who have enough money to stay on the top. And they are owned by those who give them that money. I mean, just look at your president, for Christ's sake!

Granted, it's not quite like in the communist countries where there was just the party. There are perhaps more conflicting interestes among corporations, and they manifest themselves differently. However, the process is only superficially democratic, because there's so little hope of getting elected without corporate money, that those few who manage are powerless to make a difference. In essence you are limited to choosing which corporate interests have more representatives. And no, corporate interestes and interestes of the people do not match exactl

End noise pollution in stores and sports venues

[snStarter]

I cheerfully vote to end all unrequested music in stores and sports venues. Often it's loud, poorly reproduced (to make the distortion intolerable) and selected by a sick 15 year old. It could be selected by ANYONE...I just hate having music or any other unwanted sound blasted into my brain.

My vote for worst offender: Circuit City.

Re:End noise pollution in stores and sports venues

[Sabalon]

Best Buy - anywhere in (or sometimes near) the store, you can hear the car stereo section.

I was trying to compare two car cd players - the idiots salesmen in the are stood 4 feet from me as I was playing with settings, blasted some other unit and walked away.

my 2¢

[line.at.infinity]

Article said:
Paris already is taking action, covering more sections of the noisy ring road, directing traffic away from residential zones, building a tramway, and replacing City Hall vehicles with quieter models. By year's end, one-quarter of Paris' 416 garbage trucks will run on natural gas, 50 percent quieter than current diesel models, City Hall says.

Instead of rerouting ALL traffic away from noisy areas, how about giving quieter vehicles priviledged access, while rerouting only the old/noisy vehicles away? That would give the private sector more incentive to make the switch. Sort of like the diamond roads in the US.

There are skeptics. Peter Wakeham, director of Britain's Noise Abatement Society, said funds for mapping could be spent soundproofing thin-walled homes.

"Are they going to shut the nightclubs? No. Are they going to put in better traffic systems? No," he said. "Common sense tells you where the noisy places are."

I used to live right next to a bar last year, and it was surprisingly quiet. It might be because the bars can't serve alcohol after 1:00 a.m., or maybe the loudness of bars are over-rated. Proper walls are surprisingly adequate in keeping the noise level down.

Tompsett said that 10 to 15 computers, standard PCs with Pentium III or IV chips, are at work on London's map. Eight off-the-shelf PCs with expanded memories took nearly a year to do Paris' daytime maps.

Hmm.. a beowulf cluster, perhaps? But it took a year? wow.

Re:Rich Country? Let's talk about NY City!

[RajivSLK]

Why should I pay to make their lives more quiet?

Nobody is asking *you* to pay. People in NYC and other large urban centers pay taxes too. If they want to spend their tax money to quiten the city let them. Nobody complains about the miles and miles of highways built for tiny towns in the country.

You should help the cause by shutting up; you're making too much noise.

Re:Translation

[s.fontinalis]

Translation of government double-speak: "...be solved by the government". Government is not "society as a whole"

You've hit on the jackpot! Many Europeans view their government to be a product of society, not a seperate entity, diametrical opposed as do many Americans.

Sound comes from the inside too.

[Aetrix]

Soundproofing in residential situations isn't always about making the inside of the house quiet as a tomb. It's also about preventing noises from inside that house from escaping to the outside environment. That's not going to get rid of the loud and crowded streets noises, and the jumbo jets around airports noises. Soundproofing will, however, stop my neighbor from banging on the wall every time I play my stereo, AND it will help me from waking up every Sunday night at 2am when my neighbor comes home drunk to fsck his wife!

Re:Socialism makes it worse

[Urkki]

• You mean it turns into a socialist country? No, that is not how it works. The thing is, the money that the rich have is their own money they worked for and earned.

No, it turns to into a facist country. Oh, right, next you'll be claiming that facist == socialist...

And also I'm sure the ancestors of middle age nobility also worked hard for their money. The thing is, wealth accumulates, and if things stay stable it accumulates so much that you have separate nobility. Last time it took the industrial revolution to overthrow the power of nobility of that time. If things stay stable in the right way, wealth will accumulate into very few corporate hands and similar situation will develop.

• They should make cars to serve those who want to buy them, not government regulations that have nothing to do with anything. The poor car buyer, prevented by the government from getting the car they need.

And again you hit the nail in the head! Car industry should make cars like that. However, they don't want to, they want to make big cars they can sell for a lot of money and make more profits, while helping their friends in oil industry to sell more gas. So who's interestes the government is acting in when they make regulations that help car makers to make the kind of cars *they* want to make... Now that's a tough one! As a bonus, the government gets to boast how they have made the roads safer and act in public interests, and tell people that now they can get cars they want, "now go buy a new and safe car so you can show the car industry who's the boss!"

• Yes, I am. He is ruling in the public interest, For another year anyway.

No, he (GWB) is ruling in the corporate interests as much as he believes he can get away with and still have a good chance to be re-elected. He's also ruling in his own interests (like wanting to be "a war hero") as they match corporate interestes quite nicely. Public interestes are purely secondary. Next president may be under less corporate influence if he doesn't get re-elected, but that won't undo the things GWB has done. The president after that may again be under more corporate influence and more things will go the corporate way. It's a slow process, and the corporate money has time to wait, as it is not a "single entity", it's what is built into the capitalistic system.

• Yet, they do not decide. The voters do. The corporations can present a Steve Forbes all they want, but if the people do not want him, he gets no-where. In the United States, you pick the representative that represents your interests.

Ah, but the corporations present somebody like GWB, and he has a very good chance to get elected... Also, not sure how the senate or congress elections work, if there's more to chooce from in those, but at least in the presidental election you basically have 2 choices: democrats or republicians. If neither represents you, or even if both represent something you actively oppose, well, tough luck, no democracy for you.

A two-party system simply doesn't allow enough choice. It also gives too few routes to political power, so corporate money will easily rule both routes, allowing only the "right" people to make it to the political top, no matter which of the two parties they represent. Oh, there certainly are exceptions. But it's enough that most candidates end up being owned by corporate money, they don't need all, it's just better if

And it's not like it was in the communist system, there being a clear elite, their internal power struggles really internal and hidden. It's much more subtle, many corporations with slightly different interestes, some with more money==influence than others, and there's no clear line of where corporate rule begins and people's rule ends. So you can't just overthrow the system like happened in the Eastern Block at the end of the Cold War. On the other hand the corporate money doesn't have "absolute rule" since it competes with itself, and it still has to be able to cover up bad things so enough people stay happy enough to vote the same two parties every time. But that doesn't change the fact that corporate money rules the US, the people only have minor influence on the matter.

What I find interesting...

[StarKruzr]

... is that in Big Brother G.B. no one has thought of asking what anyone is DOING with the actual content of these recordings.

Although I suppose it shouldn't surprise us since they are all consenting to having the speed of their cars monitored by GPS and police surveillance cameras on every corner.

Re:What I find interesting...

[SideshowBob]

Decibel meters don't usually record sound, so I'm not sure why you'd bring up Big Brother, unless you just like to troll..

Re:Rich Country? Let's talk about NY City!

[CGP314]

So, when there is a flash flood, or a tornado where ever it is you live I don't have to pay for it right?

Jeez, I have no problem helping you when you need it, I don't see why you wouldn't help me when I need it.

Re:What next?

[denisdekat]

I knew it had to be done. Additionaly, I am surprised I was modded down to flamebait for this. I mean, I bet smells could provide interesting details on some things...

Re:Rich Country? Let's talk about NY City!

[MKalus]

Tolls are a great idea like they do now in London.

Problem with this is that it only works if you can get in the city by other means (e.g. Mass Transit).

This is a catch-22: Unless you provide alternatives all you do is drive companies and people away and soon you're left with an empty and decaying city.

I am sometimes suprised just how far some people are willing to take their "individualism".

As the other guy mentioned, people who hold believes like you should do the first step and cut themselves loose from anything from which they benefit without paying in full. If you surive: Good for you, if not I guess we have one person less to whine about how unfair it is for other to take their money.

Re:Rich Country? Let's talk about NY City!

[bombadillo]

"If you really want socialism, move to France or Sweden, and let us know how much happier you are after you're gone."

I lived in Europe for a couple of years and I was quite happy. After coming back to the U.S. I feel a lot less free. If it weren't for my family and love for the town that I grew up in, I would move back to Europe. I also now notice that a lot of Americans are under the impression that America is the only free country in the world and that the rest of the world is backwards and not as advanced.
"Why should I pay to make their lives more quiet? I didn't contribute to the problem. Why should I pay for the solution? You want to live there, fine, you pay for it. "

Taxes should provide solutions that better a society and that are not able to be accomplished by individuals. Did you go to a public school? I am sure there are a lot of rich people out there that don't want to pay for public education. After all they don't send their kids to public schools. Why should they pay for you're education?

1 decibel

[TildaBang]

1 decibel isn't a constant. Isn't it logarithmic? The difference between 1 decibel at the 10-11 range is different than 1 decibel at the 50-51 range.

Re:1 decibel

[misterhaan]

1 decibel isn't a constant. Isn't it logarithmic? The difference between 1 decibel at the 10-11 range is different than 1 decibel at the 50-51 range

actually a 1 dB change will sound the same to you no matter how loud the sound is to begin with. so it makes sense to use this scale for that reason. the decibel scale is 10 times the common log of a power ratio, so yes it is logarithmic. and you could say that it's not constant because if your sound intensity is 35 dB above the noise and you add 3 dB, that's not the same increase in power as adding 3 dB to 12 dB.

it also can help to remember that dB is a relative measurement--there really is no absolute scale for dB. if we are using it to represent the intensity of sound it's generally referenced to an accepted value that represents 'no sound'--essentially to say that noise is 20 dB means that it is 20 dB above that reference intensity.

Re:It is free thinking

[selderrr]

"Bush is about as unAmerican as you can get, destroying almost everything that once made your country great"

No, he is improving everything.

Best...
joke...
ever !

That single line just took down any correct argumentation you might have had (which fortunately you didn't)

Re:SUVs and safety

[Stephan Schulz]

We are getting off-topic here, but I'll give you a short reply:

SUV's are typically safer. You only get problems if someone is drunk or reckless.

Well, they are sold as being safer. However, all actual statistics I have seen deny the fact. They fare somewhat better in frontal collisions, but they do overturn easier. In sum, it seems a wash-out even in collision with normal-sized cars.

The cost to the environment is the same as with the small cars. And the more engineering, the better.

Both wrong. A bigger car uses more resources, in making it, in disposing of it, and in running it. It guzzles more fuel and damages the roads much more than a smaller car.

And an adequate amount of engineering is good. If you do much more, you waste resources better spent elsewhere. We don't build bridges from Titanium, but from steel and concrete. Titanium bridges would be "better" in a certain sense, but engineering to that level is plain unnecessary.

Re:SUVs and safety

[Stephan Schulz]

No, the actual statistics show that for good or better drivers, the SUV's are safe. It is only when you speed or drive drunk that you get problems with the rollover, which is worse than cars.

Unfortunately, about half of all drivers are worse than average.

Because the smaller cars hold fewer passengers and carry less cargo, you often get two smaller cars instead of one SUV, so it evens out.

Well, given that the average occupancy of cars is about 1.4 people, the cases that a bigger car is needed are very rare indeed.

...CAFE standards...

I agree that whatever standards gouvern normal cars should also hold for SUVs. But the reason for SUVs is much less "the need of the public" as the marketing of the car companies, who, of course, like to sell bigger, more expensive cars, wether needed or not.

Re:Rich Country? Let's talk about NY City!

[CentrX]

The point is if the federal government pays for it, everyone in the country, even if they're in the most rural area, pay a fraction that I or they should not have to pay.

Re:SUVs and safety

[Stephan Schulz]

The reason for SUV's is exactly the need of the public. This is what causes the companies to sell them.

Most people need an SUV as much as they need supersized fries at McD.

Decibel meters?

[StarKruzr]

I may be remembering incorrectly, but I don't think the article ever mentioned using decibel meters. All it said was "microphones."

Re:SUVs and safety

[Stephan Schulz]

Don't like SUV's? Don't drive one! And butt out of other's business, Live your own life, and do not control others.

Where have I tried to control others? You might want to reread the thread.

That said, I don't like SUVs, I think they are dangerous for other drivers, I think they cause an inadequate amount of cost to the community (e.g. by causing more pollution, using more resources, and damaging the roads more than smaller cars). I think our tax system should reflect that so that people who do want to (or need to) buy an SUV do bear the full cost of owning one, instead of getting a subsidy. Nowhere do I want to forbid them, though.

Unfortunately, we are not living on an infinite planet where our actions only affect ourselves. As we use to say: Your right to move your fist stops at my nose.