The art of reading between the lines is as old as manipulated information.

Parisians overwhelmingly buy small cars. And it's not because people are petite, but because fuel is drop-dead expensive. Gasoline costs more than twice as much in Paris as in New York.

My own kids were with me in Berlin when Germany was reunited, and they were with me in Moscow when the Soviet Union collapsed. We talked about these things at the dinner table, at their schools, with their friends.

Our daily life is filled with electronic pianos, ring tones, the disembodied voice giving you your bank balance over the telephone. Even silence can be electronic, courtesy of sound-canceling headphones.

Buyers of powerful cars place a high premium on the exhaust note, and manufacturers spend a lot of money getting it right. At the same time, high-end cars are expected to filter out the sounds of the mundane world.

We all know that much of what we hear in life is not really so. Canned laughter and 'sweetened' applause have been TV staples for decades, and all the slamming doors, breaking glass and squealing tires you hear in movies are sound effects.