Social Justice in Acoustics and Soundscape Research

I recently listened to a great episode of one of my favorite podcasts - 99% Invisible - that I just can't get out of my head. The episode was called Home on the Range - if you have yet to hear it, you should go listen to it now.

The episode is a profile of a suburb of Cincinnati, a majority-Black town neighbored by a gun range used by the Cincinnati police department. For a variety of structural and historically racist reasons, the town had to build housing incredibly close to the gun range.  The focus of the episode is mainly on the reasons why that came to be, how the situation has gotten worse over time, and, finally, a possible resolution to the issue. 

What struck me about this was that it seems clear to me that this is a type of social justice issue that the community of people who work in the field of acoustics and especially those in the field of soundscapes should have been aware of years (or decades!) ago.  Some people in the acoustics research community may have heard of this town and the noise situation, but for me, it was a totally new story.

I don't mean to compare this to the story of Black Wall Street in Tulsa, OK - but I definitely feel echoes of that history in my reaction to the podcast episode.  When I think of soundscapes as related to social justice, I can think of examples of airplane flight paths over low-income neighborhoods and I can think of examples of urban soundscape research with possible links to increased health risks, but I feel that I don't have a handle on the state of soundscape work and where there are opportunities to use acoustics to make people's lives better.

If anyone out there does this sort of work, let me know!

Something I'm reading intersected with stuff I"m listening to

Around the end of the year, I listened to this episode of 99% Invisible which featured a story about how emergency vehicle sirens use higher sound levels than they historically did. The podcast mentioned the story was a part of the book "Golden" about the theme of silence in the world today. That sounded interesting, so I purchased the ebook to read.

I've been reading the book and enjoying it. The book is less about the acoustics of silence and more about the psychological aspects of searching for silence (or peace) in a loud and chaotic world. Still, it has been a worthwhile read so far.

I was a bit surprised to find an episode of Twenty Thousand Hertz also titled "Golden," which was also based on the book.  It, too, was a really great episode - I recommend checking it out.

Link dump from "Back to Work" podcast (episode 605)

I've listened to the "Back to Work" podcast since it started. If you have never listened to this podcast, it's a bit hard to explain. Initially, it was about productivity at work. Over time it has become less about that and more about all sorts of issues related to existing in the varied environments that we all exist in. The topics cover a wide range: work, home, online, offline, hobbies, Apple, markdown, and productivity.  This particular episode had a great set of shared links that I wanted to remember. My favorites from the episode were:

• List of common misconceptions - Wikipedia — This is quite a long list from many different fields. The whole page is like the top of a thousand rabbit holes into which I could disappear.

• The Cabinet of Wikipedian Curiosities – Sam Enright — Mostly a bunch of really strange bits of history documented on Wikipedia.
• Pluralistic: Tiktok’s enshittification (21 Jan 2023) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow — Really great essay by Cory Doctorow, which explains a lot of how/why online services that start great end up becoming terrible.
• The Thoughts of a Spiderweb | Quanta Magazine — I am saving this article mostly to come back and follow up on the links it contains related to how spiders use/detect vibrations.

Why does Rice play Texas?? A podcast episode about Kennedy's moon speech.

This episode of the podcast "It Was Said" has been in my playlist for months now.  I've listened to pretty much the whole episode, and I think it's great. I'm biased, though, as a complete fan of Kennedy's "We choose to go to the moon" speech. I just wanted to be sure I could find this episode for sharing with students in physics or astronomy class.

The value of doing science - a podcast recommendation

I listen to a lot of podcasts - so many that I'm usually weeks (or months) behind on several that I subscribe to. A fairly recent episode of Radiolab definitely caught my attention, though.

This episode started by introducing listeners to the "Golden Fleece" Award, a made-up award by a long-time senator from Wisconsin. The premise of the award was that there were scientists squandering taxpayer money on frivolous research. Having seen and heard politicians do this for as long as I have been involved in science, I was bracing for bad news. At best, I figured that the episode would debunk the idea of frivolous studies but then go back and say that the politicians have a duty to make sure the money is not wasted.

The episode was so much better than that. 

I don't want to spoil it for you if you haven't heard it already - just go listen to it! There's stuff to share with your students if you teach or your family if you do (or just love) science. I learned about a type of snail I had never heard of, the cone snail, which is just super fascinating! 

Apple didn't like my homage to Nate Dogg

This is a screenshot of the podcast customer review page in the iTunes Store for one of the podcasts I listen to regularly. If you go read the reviews in iTunes right now, you won't see my review. It was removed, probably by Apple, most likely because of the critical comment I made about how someone at Apple did not like my full review of the podcast that I had tried to post before the one in the screenshot was posted.

When you write a podcast review on iTunes, you are presented with five "Tips for writing a great review":

• Keep them short and to the point. Average iTunes customer reviews are about 200 words.

  Mine clocks in at 238 words. Granted, it is formatted a little differently and looks longer, but it's no significantly longer than what Apple calls average.
  

• Praise podcasts on their own terms, not at the expense of other podcasts or the audience of other podcasts or genres.

  My review is nothing but praise, and says nothing about other podcasts or audiences of other podcasts.
  

• Take the time to copy edit your work so that you avoid embarrassing typos or grammatical errors.

  Good advice. Done.
  

• Do not use profanity or overtly sexual language.

  No problem here!
  

• Do not use language that can be construed as hateful, especially in regards to lifestyle, religion, or race.

  Nothing in my review has anything to do with religion or race, so that's a non-issue. With respect to lifestyle, I suppose you could make a case about the numerous references to drunks, but if you know anything about the podcast I'm reviewing, you know that the topic of alcohol and drunks comes up frequently in the podcast itself. In fact, it is often in the titles and descriptions of the podcasts as posted to iTunes. And, my review is not "hateful" with regard to any lifestyle, so I don't really see it as going against this tip, either.
  
  At the very bottom after you write your review (not to exceed 6000 characters, mine clocks in at 1200 characters) there is one more line:
  
  

  If a review is deemed inappropriate, it will not be posted to the iTunes Store.

  
  
  I did some searching online to see if there were other people who had their reviews rejected from the iTunes Store. The only relevant information I could find came from a FAQ for Podcast Makers on Apple's site:
  
  

  Can I have a review removed?

  iTunes does not remove reviews for editorial purposes. Reviews with profanity, hate speech, explicit/pornographic content, or commentary that is completely off topic are prohibited. To request removal of a review, click on Report a Concern for that review.

  Again, if you know anything about the podcast I was reviewing, you would know that every line in my review was completely ON topic for their show.
  
  My guess is that Apple doesn't want their Customer Reviews to become like the ones you see on Amazon. (e.g. The Story about Ping, Tuscan Whole Milk) Which is a shame. Because if fans of podcasts (or any content on iTunes) can't have fun to promote their favorite artists, everyone sort of loses an opportunity to discover something new.
  
  Anyway, the full podcast review that I wanted to post is here. My apologies to Warren G and Nate Dogg...
  
  [Andy:]
  Podcasters
  we podcast any speaking of his mind
  and we download em
  But you can't be any geek off the street,
  gotta be out of your parents basement, if you know what I mean, earn your keep!
  PODCASTERRS!!! MOUNT UP!
  
  [Broham:]
  It was a clear black night, a clear white moon
  Nick D was in the seat, trying to consume
  some talk in the eve, chattin' with a drunk
  I'm rollin in my ride, beers are in the trunk
  
  [Andy:]
  Just hit the Northside on the Kennedy
  on a mission tryin' to find Mr. Nicky D.
  Got a 'dog with fries and I need to chew
  all you drunks know what's up with 312
  
  So I hooks a left on Addison and Clark
  The Cubs are out of town so I said "Let's park."
  I jumped out the ride, and started to cough
  Nick went on a rant and my pants fell off!
  
  [Nick D:]
  Since Andy's tweetin' me I'ma check my phone
  Laughin' so hard that I start to moan
  Won'tcha load up your ipod with The Nick D Show
  You can do it right now or at your leisure, bro!
  
  [Andy:]
  He's speaking
  about a previous era
  Nick fans,
  Brew and view,
  I dare ya.
  Drunks
  Are in the News
  
  [Nick D:]
  Wisconsin's where they're from and the "winner"'s gonna lose
  
  
  Movies
  Music
  We brings
  Culture
  D-Funk
  where Chicago is home
  and home is Chicago

Sync an ipod with iTunes on a linux computer!

Back in March there was some excitement when one of the WINE developers got an ipod to be recognized by iTunes running on linux with WINE. He posted his patch, but it has yet to migrate to the binary releases. So, unless you fancy patching and compiling WINE on your own, iTunes with WINE is not a great option.

I learned about VirtualBox about the same time, and it occurred to me that I could have a small Windows XP guest OS running on top of my Ubuntu install.

I installed the PUEL (non-free) version from Sun and followed the standard installation procedure. After applying a ton of XP patches, so that I could get to the point where I could use the guest XP install, I was able to download and install iTunes. I followed the instructions on the ubuntu site to get USB to work so the ipod was recognized. Here's a screenshot:


I wanted the ability to share folders between the guest and host OS and after a bit of struggling was able to get that to work (see note below). The bonus of getting the folder sharing to work was that I had to enable mouse sharing, which allowed for the "windowed" mode that you see in the screenshot.

I know that this is not the "free as in speech" way to use an ipod, but I also have a Nike+ that I would like to sync with the runnerplus website on a more regular basis. It was starting to be a pain booting into Windows to sync the ipod to have my stats saved to the website. Also, I have yet to find a linux tool that handles smart playlists of podcasts correctly. So far, this option seems to be the closest to what I've been looking for. And, I haven't seen anyone else do this in linux, that I know of. :)

Some notes:

1. USB permissions are not persistent after reboot. Further, you need to set the permissions AFTER plugging in the ipod.
2. The linux host can grab control of the sound card making the XP guest unable to play music. One way to fix this is to shutdown the program in linux that grabbed control of the sound card (if you don't need to use it) and restart the XP guest.
3. Installing Guest Additions seems to be critical for folder sharing! (Some people have posted that it is optional.) In my case, I had to install it TWICE to get the folder sharing to work. (There are other people who report similar behavior.