You Know How Your Hearing Sucks After a Loud Concert? That's a GOOD Thing

You know the feeling I'm talking about:  it's like your hearing the world underwater. Everything is all muted and dull and you promise yourself that you'll never, ever go to another show without hearing protection. But then three days later, your hearing is back to normal (or so it seems) and you do it all over again.

Turns out that this sort of hearing loss is actually a good thing.  It's a way for your ears to protect themselves after being exposed to some kind of sonic shock.

The Mail Online reports on some new research from Australia:

Scientists at the University of New South Wales in Australia believe that short-term hearing loss after being exposed to loud noise may be the body's way of coping.

However, they warn that this defence mechanism cannot help against a sustained high frequency assault on the ears - such as that caused by listening to loud music through headphones.

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Another Music-and-Medicine Story: Live Music Soothes Premature Babies

Okay, so you have to be careful with what kind of live music.  Taking a premie to a Tool show is probably out of the question.  But a little gentle acoustic Beatles?  That works.  From the New York Times:

Even the Beatles would have had trouble recognizing their peppy song in the lullaby that Andrea Zalkin sang to the tiny, fragile baby clutched to her chest in the neonatal unit. But there was something unintentionally poignant in the title she chose for her son: “Eight Days a Week” is more time than can fit on the calendar. Ms. Zalkin’s baby, Hudson, born 13 weeks early, has had too little time.

As she sang, monitors showed Hudson’s heartbeat slowing and his oxygen saturation increasing. Effects like that were among the findings of a new study on the use of music as medicine.

Continue reading.

Best T-Shirts Spotted at Coachella

How's this for a photographic assignment?  More at the Dallas Observer.

Brain Cyst Discovered After Girl Started Singing Out of Tune

Eloise Mills liked to sing.  But one day, her grandparents noticed that the nine year-old's singing was flat, sharp and just generally wrong.  They felt that something was amiss.

To be fair, Eloise couldn't walk in a straight line anymore nor could she ride her bike.  But it was the singing that tipped them off.

They took her to the doctor who ordered a brain scan.  Inside her head was a cyst the size of an orange.

Read the full story here.

The Piano Staircase

How do you get people to take the stairs instead of the escalator or elevator? Volkswagen came up with this idea in 2009.  (Thanks to Stu for the link.)