Sir, - Three (silent) cheers for the enlightened founders of the PINT (Protection of Indigenous Noiseless Taverns) association. What bliss it would be if more pubs did not feel obliged to (as your articulate - if given a chance - contributors put it) "hunt down stillness and delete the moments of quiet in our lives".
A suggestion: could the remit of the association be extended to encourage cafes, restaurants and shops to resist the temptation to inflict noise upon us heedlessly? We could then have a few havens of peace in which to escape from walkmans; booming stereo boxes masquerading as cars; mobile phones (even in supposed sancta of silence such as university libraries); long-distance buses where one is subject for the entire journey to whatever banal babblings or music the radio tuner has selected; not to mention the embarrassing lovesick musical mush that infests our supermarkets and seems to reduce all there to stupefied singalong lipsynchers.
Why not even encourage certain music stores to quieten down? In order to talk to the music vendor, one must scream against whatever visceral thumping is shaking both building and people. Our conversational world has been mindlessly invaded; we won't produce many post-existentialist philosophers if we just as mindlessly take it. Now that we finally have the coffee, let's have the Cafe Society. Cheers. - Yours, etc.,
Catherine O'Beirne, Wilton Place, Dublin 2.