"We respectfully disagree with the hands-off — see no harm, hear no harm — approach that we have witnessed so far concerning the relocation process and the people affected," wrote 15 members of the Class of 1978, and two of their siblings from other classes, in the Oct. 6 letter.
Beyond harming hearing, chronic exposure to noise increases the risk of cardiovascular disease.
Damage from noise that doesn't seem all that bad in the moment — such as the music in spinning class and the buzz of a lawn mower — can accumulate slowly, harming hearing in ways that may not reveal themselves for years.
It's obviously a virus that harms hearing and biases cognition, thus rendering the sufferer immune to contrary information.
Sung en masse, the sound is loud enough to be heard from fishing boats and "loud enough to harm the hearing of other marine animals," Erisman and Rowell write in Biology Letters.
Mr. Perry's opponent in the Republican primary, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, also questioned what harm the hearing could do.
The frequencies of sound produced by the corvina fell within a range that could harm the hearing of seals, sea lions and dolphins, or even deafen them, the duo concluded.
The blasts could affect the migration patterns of these animals, and potentially harm their hearing.
Still, Maugham's story is eminently entertaining, a weird mixture of Horatio Alger and Noel Coward, and it does no harm to hear it again.
