England's commissioner for children and a civil liberties group are taking their jobs way too seriously:
According to the AP, they're mounting a campaign to ban the Mosquito -- a device intended to repel packs of yobs by emitting an intensely annoying high-frequency (17.4 kHz) tone.
Old people are immune to it, because the ability to hear high frequencies drops off as the birthdays mount.
"This device is a quick fix that does not tackle the root cause of the problem and it is indiscriminate," English Children's Commissioner Al Aynsley-Green said."I'm very concerned about what I see to be an emerging gap between the young and the old, the fears, the intolerance, even the hatred, of the older generation toward the young."
The British government subsequently told the BBC that it has no plans to ban the technology, though it stressed it should be used as a "last resort."
But in a delicious twist of irony, young people have found a way to leverage the technology to thwart oldsters.
High-frequency ring tones have been popping up in classrooms, where students are alerted to incoming text messages while the teacher remains blissfully unaware. Who would have thought you could use a lifeline during a Calculus test?
The website teenbuzz.org has more info about the phenomenon, plus a video that allows you to "hear" how old you are.
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