"A STENCH in the ear," wrote Ambrose Bierce, fulminating against noise in the long tradition of sensitive and thinking men. Marcel Proust was so fastidious about noise that he had his study lined with cork. Juvenal bemoaned the all-night cacophony of imperial Rome, observing that "most sick people perish for want of sleep." To Schopenhauer it was clear that "the amount of noise which anyone can bear undisturbed stands in inverse proportion to his mental capacity, and may therefore be regarded as a pretty fair measure of it."
Now noise-hating has suddenly gone democratic....
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