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UK Schools Bans WiFi Due To Health Concerns
Mantrid42 writes "Schools in the UK are getting rid of their WiFi network, citing health concerns from parents and teachers. The wireless emanations, parents fear, may be the root cause of a host of problems from simple fatigue to the possibility of cancer. A few scientists think younger humans may be more vulnerable to the transmissions, because of thinner skulls. From the article: "Vivienne Baron, who is bringing up Sebastian, her ten-year-old grandson, said: 'I did not want Sebastian exposed to a wireless computer network at school. No real evidence has been produced to prove that this new technology is safe in the long term. Until it is, I think we should take a precautionary approach and use cabled systems.'"
What doesn't cause cancer?
I hope these kids don't have televisions, wireless phones, or god forbid cellphones. I also, for the sake of the CHILDREN, hope they don't go outside ever where they will be bombarded by RADIATION from a gigantic nuclear furnace! The horror!
I would say they should stay indoors but then they are still susceptible to all those cosmic rays!
Obviously, the only solution is to move everybody to New Zion right above the Earth's core.
Give me a break, this kind of thinking is why 3 year olds die from food posioning every year because its a political impossibility to get irradiated meat on shelves sans a gigantic radiation symbol.
Its ill-informed knee-jerk thinking of the most insipid kind.
Sounds like the grandmother needs the schooling at least as much as the kids. I suggest starting with a list of RF-producing devices, then move on to the inverse square law...
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
No matter how many studies one has that fail to detect a hazard, there is always a chance that the hazard was too subtle to be statistically detectable, or was of a type of hazard that wasn't investigated (e.g., hearing loss or arthritis).
It's the old saying - you can't prove a negative. Actually, you can't prove anything in science. You can only present evidence.
Fortunately, us stoopid Brits do understand enough statistics to know that drawing conclusions about the whole population from a sample of one is unlikely to give reliable results. :-)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
What fud!
This is not a concern of pretty much all UK schools, their pupils or their parents.
The reason behind the story is simply that newspapers sell papers based on how sensational the issues are. If they could convince people to believe parents won't sending their children to school because of fears of radioactive textbooks, they would print that also.
"The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim."
Did you know you can fertilize your lawn with used motor oil?
Bathed in radon, no doubt.
The solution is to try to teach people exactly what radiation is, what its effects are, and what causes it. People also need to understand that we are *constantly* exposed to radiation from any number of different natural background sources. People also need to understand that exposing something (aka meat) to radiation does not make it radioactive or dangerous in any way (well, unless it gets contaminated by a radioactive material, but that's about as likely to happen in a meat plant as getting contamination from a smoke detector in your house). If they understood that irradiating meat isn't much different from putting it in a microwave, then maybe the irrational fear would go away...people just fear what they don't understand. Understanding the difference between particle and electromagnetic radiation would be a start. Oh noes, light is electromagnetic radiation, it's just like gamma rays only lower frequency! The horror! *runs and hides in the dark basement* Wait, as another poster pointed out, that's not even safe, there might be radon there!
From the BBC:
"However with church attendance on the decline and only 7% of Christians in the UK attending church, the figure seems remarkably high."
So I'm going to say that based on your stat and this one, a significant (majority?) of people in the UK are culturally christian, but not epistemologically christian...
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Or, all that fatigue, cancer, hyperactivity, confusion, stupidity, fat, and behavioral problems could be caused by being poisoned by sugar water. Sugar is one hell of a toxic substance to the human body... empty calories that rob the body of nutrient to process it, do not provide a continuous supply of energy for the body, are addictive, and when drunk in excess cause hyperactivity, then depression, hypoglycemia, getting fat, and eventually, diabetes. Add hefty amounts of caffeine into the mix (which is actually a poison given off by the coca plant) and you've bot one toxic mix.
After 20 years of drinking and being addicted to this crap, I've found out the hard way. Throughout those 20 years its tore up my life, made me think I was insane, chronically fatigued, confused, unable to concentrate, and eventually gotten down right sick.
Its not the wifi, its the sugar water.
Numerous studies on the toxicity of sugar to the body can be found on the net. No, refined sugar is not the same as blood glucose, and no, you body does not need refined sugar to function. Healthy vegtables, meat, water, and fiber. Zero sugar. Zero caffeine.
Yeah I noticed that too. Whenever there's some dick tailgating behind me chances are good that they'll have some Born Again insignia or We Support Our Troops magnets.
With the Born Agains, I guess they are just too focused on their eternal reward in heaven to give a fuck about some plain day-to-day courtesy on Earth.
Happy people make bad consumers.
That will never work. It depends on people being able to think for themselves. To paraphrase Dan Akroyd as Ray Zalinsky in the movie Tommy Boy: What the average person doesn't know is what makes them an average person. Look at how many people buy lottery tickets every day.
(Yes, I know the article is about a school in the UK while the original quote was about the American public. Hence "paraphrase". Same principle still applies.)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.