1. Vomiting
2. Microphone feedback
3. Babies crying
That is according to the research of Trevor Cox of Salford University. discussed here in the New York Times. More info is at the project’s website. You can also listen to and rate the sounds. I didn’t, but I get to hear #3 often enough.
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i once read that our military determined the most excruciating sound in the world was babies crying–except in reverse. then they used high powered speakers to blast that sound into caves in Afghanistan to drive out al qaeda.
Actually, all three sounds are heard during my lectures.
The Irish accordian.
I doodle on a recorder and an ocarina from time to time to the dismay of my wife. But I recall as a child in the late 1930s when we lived in the Roxbury section of Boston, being awakened on a Sunday morning by a neighbor’s playing the Irish accordian. I wonder how a band would sound that included the Irish accordian, bagpipe, tin whistle, jaw’s harp, recorder and ocarina. A one and a two ….
And I heard #1 on a fateful November 2007 evening in DC…har har
Christina Aguilera in mid-melismic wail.
Dan: I believe you have some cell phone images to go with the audio, do you not?
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