What If The Gulf Oil Spill Happened In My Home Town? (IfItWasMyHome.com)

The website, IfItWasMyHome, allows the user to place the BP Gulf oil spill over any town or city in the world.  It is an enormously useful tool for visualizing the current size of the spill and the area it actually impacts.  The picture below is a screenshot taken with the spill centered on Washington DC.  For the interactive version of the site (where you can put the spill over your town, too), go to IfItWasMyHome.com or click on the picture below. 

Noise Only Teenagers Can Hear (Trainhorns.net)

Predictable jokes to the side (e.g. the sound of cash coming out of a wallet, the sound of pizza being delivered...), there are, apparently, sounds that are only audible to young ears.

Clever young people in the UK have turned this noise (which is also used as a deterrent in some stores) into a ringtone so they can fool teachers.

US students long ago learned to put their phones on vibrate to do much the same thing. I suspect it is the thrill of 10-15 students simultaneously getting a text message while in class as the teacher drones obliviously on that makes it worth the effort.

You can take the test yourself but you will likely need a teenager around to tell you what the noise sounds like. To be honest, if I concentrated quite hard on listening while in a quiet room, I think I heard a faint buzzing. In a normal situation, however, I am sure I would not even notice it.

• NB: This DOES NOT mean my ears are old, by the way. They are "mature" ears.

Created by Train Horns