Today, for some reason, I have been particularly jostled by noise. My neighborhood has, perhaps, more than its fair share of sirens, barking pit bulls, screeching cars and echoing circle drums whose rhythms are shifted and dented during their downwind drift. I have at least three musical neighbors who host amplified band parties. My house itself is creaky, with lovely bits of bamboo striking the windows the way nails hate on a chalkboard. But what really got me today was all kinds of alarms going off. I unplugged an extraneous cordless phone so I could use its outlet to vacuum and an hour later it started bleating like its phony heart would break, just infrequently enough that it took me 20 minutes to locate the problem. A neighbor's mysterious device would not shut up. And three separate car alarms went off throughout the day, for no discernible reason (I went out and checked--each mewling car was alone, no one else in site for yards.) This reminded me of my friend Aaron Friedman's ballyhooed work against car alarms in New York City. According to Aaron, research shows that those loud honking car alarms do little to actually prevent theft, despite being a factory default "perk," the removal of which is often an extra cost at the dealership. Today I had the bizarre insight that all these alarms are, in fact, digital---their going on and off is dictated by a microcontroller, and the sound itself often involves a synthetically generated or recorded sound. So why not make them more articulate? When my car alarm goes off, at least let it tell me that it is, in fact, my carl alarm going off. (I wouldn't mind a Stephen Hawking voice declaring, "Saheli's Honda Needs Help! Saheli's Honda Needs Help!") My cordless phone could tell me, "Cordless Phone Requires Charge!" The neighbor's mysterious device could let me know what it was about to do. ("Rocket Cleared for Launch! Rocket Cleared for Launch!")

(After winning some legislative and programmatic victories in New York, Aaron went on to found an annual Summer Solstice city-wide music festival, Make Music NY, patterned after the French Fête de la Musique.)