Hearing loss

I found these ultrasonic ringtones on the Science Made Cool website via Tangled Bank #102 which was hosted by Further Thoughts. Wow. That was complicated. Actually, I think that ultrasonic is defined as 20kHz and above. Eight, 10, and 12kHz were almost unbearably loud. 14.1kHz was comfortable, and 14.9kHz was audible, but quiet.

Bill's daughter came in so I tested it out on her. She could only hear up to 16.7kHz.

I booted up our PC because I wasn't sure that the speakers on this laptop are very good. I could hear up to 15.8kHz with those speakers. Barely. Bill's daughter yelled from the back of the house, "Are you still messing with those ringtones?" She could hear it from two rooms and a hallway away.

My son, his girlfriend, and his friend Will wandered in on their way to San Francisco, so I used them as guinea pigs, too. My son and his girlfriend could hear up to 16.7, and his friend Will could hear up to 18.8kHz. Most of the sounds hurt Will's ears.

I am really not surprised about my obvious hearing loss. I have a really difficult time hearing people speak if there is any background noise. I blame the various bands I've played in since I was 13. Particularly because I usually sit in front of the trumpet sections (Sorry, Andrew).

I tried testing this out to see how well the other animals in the family heard it. I put the laptop on the floor between Smokey and Fang, and played all the notes. Smokey looked on, mildly interested and Fang started falling asleep. Neither one made so much as an ear twitch. One of the other cats, Alice, came over to investigate, probably more because it is fairly unusual to see me sitting on the kitchen floor than the noises.

Oh, and Bill couldn't hear ANY of them. Not even the 8kHz. I keep telling him he's getting really deaf. Now I have proof. So he's not just ignoring me! I hope.

Beelzebufo

Illustration by Luci Betti-Nash / Associated Press
I love that name. Really cool name for the worlds largest known toad. Unfortunately it's extinct, because I agree with PZ Meyers, I want one as a pet. Probably just as well. Fang, Attack Rabbit is probably just the right size for a nice snack. The females got up to 10 lbs and 16 inches long. They are related to the currently popular Pac-Man frog, and Kenneth Chang of the New York Times quoted discoverer Dr. David Krause as saying that the female Beelzebufos were “lady Pac-Man frogs, on steroids.”

I read several articles about it, but this quote from a story in the Los Angeles Times caught my eye:

“Krause, along with Susan Evans and Marc Jones of the research department of cell and developmental biology at University College in London, painstakingly removed Beelzebufo's fossilized parts, like an ancient jigsaw puzzle, from deep sediment that dates to the late Cretaceous period, 65 million to 70 million years ago.

That was the time of the dinosaurs, and Earth was a young -- and very different -- place.”

The Earth was young?? The Earth is about 4.54 billion years old plus or minus 1%. Seventy million years ago, it was still ~4,470,000,000 ± 45,000,000. In other words, the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old now, and 70 million years ago, the Earth was about...4.5 billion years old. Sixty-five or 70 million years is a drop in the bucket, geologically speaking. I’ll give them “very different.”

As one of my coworkers said when I pointed this out, "Another confirmation that our science education in the US sucks..."

This blog post was continually interrupted by a total eclipse of the moon! I had to run outside every five minutes. Unfortunately, I don't own a camera that could take a picture of it.

Fang, Attack Rabbit

This is Fang, attack rabbit or rabit as my son used to spell it before his girlfriend found him the sign, because apparently you can get into COLLEGE in this country without knowing how to spell. Fang (no relation to Phyllis Diller) is also known as Bun Bun, Mr. Bunny, and sometimes Mr. Evil Bunny, but he probably thinks his name is, "No, he is NOT a rodent!" because my husband knows how to push my buttons. He's half English Spot and half Norwegian Dwarf, so he's not very big.Smokey doesn't look too concerned.

Fang currently resides in the kitchen, because my son went off to college, and we were afraid he would die of starvation or thirst if we left him back in my son's bedroom. He has my husband wrapped around all of his lucky little feet. All Fang has to do is balance on his hind legs and roll his eyes pathetically at Bill, and Bill says,"Look! He's hungry. Poor little rodent" (actually he says poor widdle wodent) And while I'm saying, "He is NOT a rodent, he's a lagomorph" Bill is getting a treat out of the fridge, and Fang is racing happily around his cage. He doesn't even try it with me because he knows he won't get anywhere. My son recently found a rabbit toy ball with a bell, so now he also can be really annoying and ring his ball when he thinks we're not paying him enough attention. The ball takes the place of his favourite chew toy - electrical cords. No cord is safe if Fang can get to it. My son either had them strung up on the wall, or behind the bed. I think he likes the mild electric zap he must get as he chews through. Many of the cords in the house now look like this:

I say. Do you mind getting that camera out of my face?