Magic in the 21st Century

It was Arthur C. Clarke who back in 1962 said: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".

Subsequent events have shown him to be prophetic.  Our gadgets have attained and surpassed some of his Sci Fi story creations as we simultaneously know less and less about what is "under the hood".  Probably this has always been thus, but the pace of change has for sure accelerated.

I recently made an impulse purchase.  Having enjoyed deer hunting enough to want to make it an ongoing venture I see a high priority for regular target practice.  And, spoilers, deer rifles are pretty darned loud.  Oh sure I could just slap on some of the shop hearing protection but in my discussion on matters hunting related several sage advisors recommended I get specific shooting related hearing protection.

These gadgets come in ear bud and headset styles.  Since I already have hearing aids the latter is clearly preferable.  As a big plus these things have selective amplification/dampening functions.  So basically when you are at the shooting range you want to be able to hear instructions.  No problem. And in the woods you want to be able to hear a careless deer stepping on a twig.  Also, no problem, these things have omnidirectional amplification.  And most importantly they respond to sudden loud noises like, oh I dunno gunshots, with a shut off of the amplification entirely...with a .002 second response time.  As deer hunting caliber guns have short but intense noise on the order of 150 db it is important to muffle this so as to preserve function.

This all sounded promising.  So I ordered a pair from an outfit called Walker's.  I was down in the basement workshop area when I unwrapped them and put in two teeny AAA batteries.  I put them on.....and heard a very odd sound.  What was that weird clink?

Well, it turns out that it was the sound of my wife setting down a coffee cup at the other end of the house and up one level!  Now this is certainly a better than expected performance because I had my hearing aids in as well, but still I was mightily impressed.  I suspect I'll not have the hearing aids on when I hunt, but still I considered this strong evidence that magic still exists in the 21st century.

Oh, and you won't believe what I just heard over at the neighbor's house!