A Broad Gap Between The Ears

Okay, so this isn't something you can go out and buy at your local electronics emporium, but put down your fancy cellphone and your shiny iPod and think outside your grubby little apartment for one sodding second.  Jeez. 

These impressive fellows are "acoustic mirrors", huge parabolic dishes that collect sound and focus it at one listening point.  The English built some so as to hear enemy planes approaching, in fact.  Now, the Sound Mirrors Project intend to resurrect the idea by building two of them, one on each side of the English Channel – listeners in France will be able to hear their English counterparts muttering darkly about the perils of soft, mouldy cheese and unreliable cars, while in turn those in England can hear their French friends mock their cooking, their women and their crappy weather.  Fantastic.

Sound Mirrors Project [via Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society]