The Perfect Voice

There is nothing worse to hear, at 7:40 am in the morning- on a relatively quiet commuter train – when you are trying to get some sleep, than the ring of the cell phone and then the annoying voice of someone planning out her nail salon appointment and talking about last night’s American Idol results. But I wonder if I would mind it less if the person had a “nice” voice? I think I would prefer someone with a subtle Southern drawl. I won’t enjoy the abhorrent acoustic craziness of a hillbilly, but I think I wouldn’t mind the amble pace and round sounds of the Southern land. I know for sure I would rather listen to that then the long ounnn sounds of lounga island [Long Island] accents or the sharp ahhh of the Baastan [Boston] accents. I even prefer the Southern drawl to the supposed “neutral” tone of the West Coast.

But what do I know? It looks like the Brits have the best voice. Recently, in a study commissioned by British Post Office Telecom, linguists have compiled the perfect male and female voice. Besides having British accent the voices were created “based on the combination of tone, speed, frequency, words per minute, and intonation.” After, listening to the voices I can confirm the voices are indeed a pleasure to listen to.

So are you wondering what this voice sounds like? Well find out for yourself though this bbc.com article. And next time you are trying to sleep on the train, bus, subway, or plane and you hear someone talking about his/her botox procedure gone wrong just imagine they are speaking in the perfect voice and things may not be so bad.

Go green or Go home

People are always bashed for being bandwagon fans. It seems that the society we live in gives tremendous respect to those who can spot a good thing before anyone else knows about it. In business foresight helps turn a profit; in sports it helps you win your fantasy league; and in food you get to be labeled with the sought after term “foodie”. But what good is it to be avant-garde if there is no one to follow you? Without bandwagon fans innovative ideas will be like a Milan Fashion show- yeah the cloths have never been seen before, but no one wants to see them ever again. So three cheers to the bandwagon fans and three cheers to the people whom you have made great.

And in case you are wondering what about the next wagon to jump into?  Well the super bowl wagon is gone and the NBA payoff’s wagon has not arrived yet. So May I humbly suggest we all jump into the global warming wagon.

Al Gore, it looks like your cause has reached bandwagon status. From multinational companies to multinational terrorists it seems like the best thing to do is jump on the wagon.

Here is a quick sampling of the new green Hybrid-bandwagon:

Green in the corporate world:

GE’s ecomagination campaign : I was watching Sunday night football on NBC in November and they actually turned off the studio lights and did a broadcast in the dark in an effort to go green.

Green’s brings harmony: Liberal Rev. Al Sharpton and conservative Rev. Pat Robertson sit down for a friendly chat to encourage you to care about the earth. wecansolveit.org

Even terrorists care about the environment shouldn’t you?

Al-Zawahri, Al-Qaida’s number two man, stated that global warming would “make the world more sympathetic to an understanding of the Muslims’ jihad against the aggressor America.” The link to the original AP story on yahoo.

Consider this a warning from osama and me: recycle or face jihad!