Holiday Music Dosimeter

Folks at nuclear facilities wear badges that register the number of rays of evil that cross their chests each day. Highly exposed badges are a sure sign of a facility needing discipline, and wearers of highly exposed badges can earn a long or permanent respite from work that exposes them to the creepy bad stuff.

It seems to me that both of these advantages would be welcome during the annual onslaught of forced exposure to holiday audio "cheer".

The holiday music dosimeter would take advantage of the song-recognition technology being developed by our good friends in the recording industry. Dosimeter wearers would benefit from a service that classified holiday music into various genres and attributes, whose severity could be rated in advance by users (at a safely removed span of time before the holidays, to avoid adding the calibration-time dose to the December inundation). My personal dosimeter, for example, would respond most heavily to pop or R&B renditions of carols, and might actually register a negative dose for anything involving actual live human choruses, especially if they were singing something outside of the 8 or so McCarols we all know so well.

Volume would definitely be taken into account, and advanced models might apply multipliers upon detecting the heat and pressure of close crowds.

After a particularly serious exposure, dosimeter wearers could simply refuse to enter certain establishments, pointing gravely at the life-threateningly red levels displayed on their badges.

Large groups receiving more than a year's safe dose on a single day could sue to force establishments to display prominent warnings. Safety-conscious establishments could proudly display signs saying IT HAS BEEN __ DAYS SINCE OUR LAST OVERDOSE. Grouchy crowds in an establishment would have a new tool with which to signal management that a reduction in volume or a change in genre would be welcome, say, right now.

Cashiers at retail outlets could wear dosimeters calibrated to a union-negotiated standard, and receive hazard pay for service that exceeded this standard.

Epidemiologists could stand in parking lots, correlating aggressive and antisocial behavior with holiday music dosage levels.

Awareness, after all, is the first step in harm reduction.