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City-Provided Wi-Fi Rejected Over "Health Concerns"
exphose writes "A small, hippie-friendly town in northern California, Sebastopol, had made an agreement with Sonic.net to provide free Wi-Fi across the downtown area. However, not everyone in town was pleased with the arrangement. According to Sebastopol Mayor Craig Litwin, citizens had voiced concerns that 'create enough suspicion that there may be a health hazard' and so they canceled their contract with Sonic.net. Some more details are at the blog of Sonic.net's CEO."
Its the only way to be sure.
It's time to lay off the weed, me thinks. WiFi signals are as harmless as any other radio signal. I suppose they may try to get FM and AM radio blocked, as well? I am curious, though, if these same people just happen to be carrying cell phones.
Bearded Dragon
If they're so worried, they should probably get rid of cell phone towers, and petition radio and television broadcasters to turn off their transmitters, too?
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Fortunately, non-free WiFi and non-open WiFi doesn't have the same kinds of health hazards.
When I'm downloading naked pictures of Bea Arthur
I record my sleeptalking
Great article on debunking the spurious claims of health risks from Wi-Fi can be found here.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
So, something with far less power than a cell phone system and you've bought the hype.
Quick, lets go sell them some electromagnetic wave blocking paint, we could make a fortune.
How many of these concerned citizens happen to smoke, I wonder...
.: Max Romantschuk
When I hear someone saying they can feel or be adversely affected by radio waves I want to yell 'quack' but I suppose that's not the right term for it. Just plain batty? I'd love to see her get some "professional evaluation" to quantify her state of mind. I suppose what you call it depends on whether you think they're just putting on a show, or honestly believe it.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Well hey, lets just get rid of microwave ovens, radio stations, television signals and police radios.
In fact this technology seems so dangerous I think we should just go back to living in caves.
Could it be that someone there is worried about their own FINANCIAL "health" instead?
Does someone there have a vested intere$t in making sure this deal fell through?
As with anything else... follow the money.
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
What about that Electrickery, man? No one knows how it really works, and it, like, leaks out of the cables if you don't plug something in at the socket. And then you have pools of it lying about your floor, except you can't see it. And everyone knows things you can't see are evil, man.
Turn that shit off back at the town limits. It's the only way to be safe.
Now where's my tinfoil bandana?
Well, since it seems to be the tinfoil crazy hat people that want to kill these sorts of projects, why don't we pass a law.
... maybe someone should tell them to stay away from those readers too.
Lets force everyone who obsesses about this sort of health issue to insulate their homes with a layer of tinfoil - it would really be in their best interests (according to their beliefs)...
I wonder if these people use paypass cards (RFID in credit cards, etc)
I find it ironic that the CEO makes a grossly inaccurate statement that actually hurts his cause:
Compare this to the mobile phone that you keep in your pocket, which is typically three to ten times this power level. When it's at it's highest power level, you hold it next to your head to conduct a conversation. Ever notice that your skin gets warm after a long call? That's the only side effect of RF energy - warming.
The warmth of a cell phone has nothing to do with RF. It is waste heat generated directly by the transmitter - it is not the result of RF energy being absorbed by the skin and converted to heat. Even low-frequency transmitters get very hot when transmitting. VHF and UHF mobile rigs, like those used by emergency services and amateur radio operators, have huge (relative to the size of the radio) heatsinks on the back to dissipate the heat so the final stage electronics are not fried. My amateur handheld (Yaesu VX-7R quad band) can transmit at 5 watts, and the magnesium case literally gets so hot at that output power that it is difficult to hold. That is transmitting at frequencies vastly lower than cell-phones (144-148 MHz) which pass right through skin. It's not the antenna that gets hot, or my head, it is the case housing the transmitter.
Also, batteries get warm when generating high amperage, especially really compact batteries like lithium-ion. So that also contributes to the warmth of a transmitting cell phone.
Better known as 318230.
Maybe they were thinking about http://www.sonicdrivein.com/?
But in their defense, I understand the hamburger wrappers make great tinfoil hats.
Let's hear it for signal to noise drowning them out. Not that they'd get the analogy, what with never using any RF devices.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Is there any way Sonic.net could sue these guys for backing out of an agreement for made-up reasons? This seems like someone not paying their bills because a unicorn told them to.
I've always been amazed by how surprisingly backward American metropolitans are. People are shitting themselves and preventing the deployment of city-wide Wi-Fi over imaginary health concerns? Similar systems have already been put in place years ago in cities outside the US and you don't hear of the populace suddenly being struck down by increased cases of cancer.
No wonder terrorists love attacking America: cowards hold too much sway in government policy and are always looking for new things to be terrorized by.
I wonder if this town will next try and ban Dihydrogen Monoxide like the good folks at Aliso Viejo almost did.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
Seriously though, new technology always has unintended consequences, and even those of us who instinctively embrace every new thing, must admit that a taking a thoughtful moment before jumping into the volcano might be wise. Given that such general WiFi has not been done indicates that there may be good business, as well as hippie, reasons for it not to be.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
EM radiation of various forms has been a boogieman for a long time, and I'm sure it won't change. Hell we saw this at work. The campus is rolling out a new WiFi system with complete coverage. When I say that, I mean it. They are making sure you get a signal everywhere. This necessitates a truly amazing number of access points. There's somewhere in the range of 50-100 in our 5 story building. The placement of these is dictated by where they do the best for signal coverage, not by convenience (like hallways or electrical closets and so on). This means some are in offices.
Well, people bitched, and thus the APs has to be moved in the offices. They didn't like having them directly overhead, so they'd get moved to the side and such.
Now, you want the really silly part? I work for the electrical and computer engineering department. Yes, that's right, people with PhDs in engineering, who have all taken classes on this kind of stuff, are afraid of the radiation boogieman.
If people with extensive educations in related fields are going to bitch and ignore the facts, you can damn well believe that regular people with no understanding will do so.
I think maybe I should just get in to the market of selling whole-house faraday cages.
Damn Hippies!
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
That is just what the mind altering frequencies have PROGRAMED you to think!
-
The author, after asserting that only psychosomatic symptoms are evident, goes on to say: "Ever notice that your skin gets warm after a long call? That's the only side effect of RF energy - warming."
This statement is utterly idiotic.
The warming of your skin is from the phone itself generating its own heat from the circuitry and the discharging battery, NOT the so-called microwaving of the skin as this clueless author puts it.
You can't fight junk science with junk science!
Kriston
I've always wondered if this is why people feel some kind of effect from these 2.4Ghz devices. It also makes me wonder why that's the unlicensed band that we play with so much O.o
Then again, I'm no conspiracy theorist, but I do love coincidences and patterns...The bit about the hissing/ticking/knocking I swear I've been hearing more over recent years than I ever did, but that's hardly scientific evidence for any harmful effect, it is however an effect nonetheless. I believe that this deserves more study, honestly enough.
Graduate students and most professors are no smarter than undergrads.
They're just older.
The world is flat. If you sail westward, you'll fall off the edge.
The world is round. We'll sail westward and arrive in India from the east.
Think carefully before you choose a side.
"Service is available in parts of Santa Rosa, Petaluma, Airport Express buses to SFO, plus scattered locations around the bay area."
I wonder what brand of wireless router they use to provide service on the Airport Express buses? Because for some reason, a particular model comes to mind.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
I've never understood how some people can be so suspicious and concerned regarding something like this in terms of healt effects and then smoke dope like their a coal-fired power plant!
Or worse, cigarettes... guess they've fried their brains for good, if they ever had one.
Can I possibly be the first person to point out that O'Reilly (the tech publisher) is based out of Sebastopol? I would tend to think that a little more geek-friendly hippyness could be brought to bear on the local governement.
As an asides Sebastopol is also where Tom Waits lives.
____________________________________
-- I beleve you'll like this -->
Well, according to the agenda of the council meeting, this 'rethink' was requested by council member Linda Kelley (email: lkelley@sonic.net). Maybe a bit of physics 101 would help her to reconsider.
Disclaimer: I'm not among the "electrosensitive" crowd, and I couldn't care less about routers and cell-phones.
That said, I find the "but there's a big nuke overhead!!!" argument just as bunk.
The fact is: you don't get all the frequencies from that ball of light. There's this thick atmosphere, including such layers as the ozone layer and the ionosphere. Plus such things as the water in the atmosphere which are just as good there at absorbing a certain band of microwaves, as, well, when you heat water in your microwave. These things absorb almost anything to the left of infrared or to the right of UV-B.
Let's just say there's a reason why they worry about shielding the craft in which they'll send a man to mars. Or why the gamma ray telescopes are put in orbit, and not at ground level. Or why over-the-horizon radar can actually see beyond the horizon, by bouncing the signal on the ionosphere. It's just as almost-opaque to those signals from the other side, you know.
So, yes, you have a big nuke over your head, but you also have some hundreds of kilometres of damn good shielding between you and it. Most frequencies outside the visible spectrum, or nearby, you're _not_ getting the full radiation of that nuke. You're getting them in homeopathic doses, if at all.
Even briefer: It doesn't prove what you think it proves. Sorry. It's as irrelevant as saying that heat can't kill because you have billions of tons of molten lava under your feet and it hasn't killey you yet.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Sounds like a great place to open a hat store - of the tin foil variety.
The Truth About Wireless Devices
As told by Wellington Grey.
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
This reminds me of a canister of chemicals I saw at one point:
"May cause cancer in California"
:wq
They know that citywide free wi-fi would lead to cameras being easily put up all over the place intruding on their privacy.... and likely also watching their, ummmmm, shall we say, botanical hobbies.
This article reminds me of one from 2003 here in Illinois. There was a school district that got sued by a group of parents in Oak Park over the school installing WiFi, claiming a large body of evidence linking exposure to WiFi microwaves and human health.
Link: http://wifinetnews.com/archives/002496.html
Thank you, Sebastopol and her lunatic fringe, for proving that the Right doesn't have a monopoly on idiocy!
Don't forget to make a new tinfoil hat every day, because the cosmic background radiation may be a health hazard, too!
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
is of course Internet Addiction.
Because the mind is a terrible thing to use.
As a citizen of the People's Republic of California, and former long-time Bezerkeley Resident, I have known or observed many strange people holding even stranger beliefs. One observation- if you want to generalise- the crystal-power-people are teetotalers. Please don't equate this nonsense with dirty old hippies like myself. Every one knows that drugs interfere with the Cosmic Forces flowing through the universe.
"Sandi Maurer is an electrical pollution and electrical sensitivity researcher."
She can feel the deleterious effects of magnetism? I would give odds that she hasn't taken anything more potent than chamomile in her life.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
That even here in California, we have illiterate fearful ignorant people that want to sit in a bunker an wait to nuke the commies. TKFTs alive and well in the state of California. I wonder if they called to complain on their cell phones, or perhaps from a wireless phone in their house? Perhaps when they get in an accident they use their On-Star to call for help... hmmm... No, i'm sure they just sit there in their caves wondering if they should bathe this week.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
OK, it's easy to mock the old hippies for being afraid of radio waves. But in a nation that has been told that asbestos, thalidomide, red dye #2, aspartame and Vioxx are harmless I don't begrudge them their suspicion.
Rather than engage in derisive laughter, why not send them some helpful and relevant information that might assuage their concerns? If half the posters here wrote them a letter with a significant reference or two they might actually learn something. Remember, "Knowing is half the battle."
It is a town full of hippie-chondriacs. I have to add that to Urban Dictionary.
Since the beginning of time man has yearned to destroy the sun. I will do the next best thing...block it out!
We didn't want you in our internet anyway.
I like WiFi as much as anyone else. But making comparisons with stuff capable of killing might not convince a suspicious mind.
The reason the sun don't kill us outright is because we're evolved to handle it. (Mind you, oxygen is a crazy reactive element and a different life form might consider breathing it as much fun as swimming in hydrocloric acid.)
If people worry about man-made sources of electromagnetic radiation, soothe them with stories of how infintesmal it is.
I lost my sig.
To me this is a reflection of the state of progress in America today. We can't do anything without someone coming along, regardless of how far off on the fringe they may be, pointing out some detrimental impact on health, nature, historical value, way of life or one of a million other things. These people manage to cause enough of a stir to delay projects indefinitely, or get them cancelled outright, even if the benefits of these projects far outweigh any negatives.
I can think of close to a dozen such projects in my area that will likely never see the light of day even though they would be a boon for almost everyone, all thanks to people who I feel, quite frankly, are nothing but whiners. People claim to want change, but what they're really looking for is security from change. It's like progress and change has taken on very unfavorable connotations for many people.
people from Sebastopol are not hippies
they are what we call "latte lappin Liberals"
get it right
Wi-fi interferes with the crystals and prevents one from being able to channel the spirits. That's the real issue that no one wants to talk about.
The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power. -- Daniel Webster
Having grown up in Sebastopol, I can say a few things for and against it.
It is a nice town where these days just about everyone carries a cell phone. Not quite in the heart of wine country, but close enough. Thriving arts community plus there are actual manufacturing jobs in the area (weird huh). There is next to no high tech work in the actual city of Sebastopol (okay there is some arguably high tech manufacturing). Lots of agriculture still, including the weed mentioned in the parent post (not quite in the green triangle, but very close). Pretty good public schools kept together by a somewhat militantly defensive parents group.
It is the US home of O'Reilly publishing. Really, go look at the cover of your favorite book, London Paris Rome Sebastopol etc.. Cracks me up every time.
It is the home of a lot of aging, alarmist hippies/yuppies. Also the home to a fair number of country boy red-necks, amazing the mix you get out there.
It is still a 'nuclear free zone,' can't remember there being any dentists in town if you're wondering about x-ray sources, though that only occurred to me today. Serious hospitals are in the next major town (~15 minutes away). Ironic when you think about some of the stuff the artists are working with (really).
It is way less absurd than Berkeley (where I've also lived).
Btw - Sonic is a pretty good ISP, they've been doing the ISP thing for a pretty long time, and frankly they would probably take the biggest hit by providing Muni WiFi, they are the only serious ISP game in town. Much of the area is VERY rural, they seem to have a standing policy of trying anything practical, on their dollar, to go last mile to homes. Also, when it isn't going to work, they tell you. (I'm an ex-Sonic user)
-sk
If you google for "12 milligauss", you'll find references like this to a threshold over which a 50-60hz signal suppresses the parts of the immune system that protect against cancer. This is why correlations with cancer are so subtle. The 60hz signal by itself doesn't cause cancer - you need some other heightened risk (like maybe living in a natural stone house) for the lowered cancer resistance to make any difference. The cellular machinery in question operates mostly at night, so working around high 60hz fields (like electric utility workers) is not a problem. Most of the wiring in your house is below the threshold (as is the field from any high tension wires nearby). Actually, electric blankets *are* a problem, as are old fashioned clock radios next to your bed (where the clock is driven by the AC signal). Again, only if there is another risk factor present.
"I saw Bigfoot once - it made a sound I would not like to hear twice in my lifetime." or something like that.
Ignorant asshats are everywhere - the problem is not them, the problem is that we cater to ignorance, superstition, fear and stupidity in this country.
Why do we feel the need to let stupid people "have a voice" when it comes to things they have no earthly clue about? Superstition, ignorance, fear and stupidity stifle human intellectual and scientific development. It's frustrating.
"Life is not magic." Dr. Ron Weiss - "If we don't play God, who will?" Dr. James Watson
Having lived in Sebastopol for 15 years, and in Silicon Valley for 20 years before that, I feel compelled to make a few observations about the context of this decision by the city council (with which I disagree).
.)
... (wait for it) ... Sebastopol. It was founded by people from, and had its meetings at, O'Reilly.
1. "Hippie friendly" does little to convey the truly eclectic mix of people who live here. You name it, we got it: 5th generation farming families, refugees from Berkeley and the Valley, 200 acre commercial winemaking operations next door to the 2 acre "wine estates" of retired attorneys, a surprising number of geezer geeks (including me), a large gay/lesbian community, and, yes, a certain number of people wearing tie-dyed clothing and reeking of patchouli oil. About the only group in short supply here is neo-cons. (Thank
2. Speaking of geeks, some of you may have heard of a project call nocat.net. It uses off-the-shelf WiFi hardware to deliver broadband to places miles (and hills) away from the nearest cable/DSL connection. It was started by a group of people in
3. This area has higher-than-average levels of education and of political activism. I think these are good things. However, having a college degree and being willing to make yourself heard does not necessarily translate into knowing what the hell you are talking about. This is a universal truth.
4. People in general do not understand the technologies they use, and Sebastopol is no exception. I would bet good money that at least some of the people who are so vocal (here and elsewhere) about the dangers of WiFi are actually using a laptop that has--you guessed it--WiFi. Some of them may have actually decided not to have a WiFi router in their home "because of the radiation," but it's almost a certainty that they forgot to turn off the radio in their laptop. I'm not a radio engineer, but I seem to remember something about radiated energy falling off as the inverse square of the distance. Which means that, whatever the perceived dangers from the router, they are actually much more exposed to radiation from their own laptop. (Not to mention that little radio transmitter they nestle against their brain, AKA their cellphone.)
What does all of that mean? Hell, I don't know. I guess I was irked by the simplistic labeling from the original story.
People who complain of RF sensitivity are in the same category as people who complain of Multiple Chemical Sensitivity. They really do suffer from a disease that causes real symptoms. However the disease they have is a form of panic attack - which can in the case of MCS especially progress to something akin to agoraphobia. When you test people who are labeled as having MCS in a blinded fashion to things they are sensitive to, they don't get triggered any more often than placebo. (Expose them to placebo puffs of air and expose them to the chemical they are sensitive to but don't tell them which is which, and they can label them correctly no more better than would be expected from chance.)
However, the problem is that people with these really are tortured - they are truly convinced of this sensitivity and sometimes end up housebound and with ruined lives because of profound avoidance of perceived triggers.
The question is though, how do you address this in a patient and from a societal perspective. Say I have a person with RFS or MCS as a patient. If you say: 'Look, hon. You are a total whackadoodle. You need to just get over it and stop having panic attacks, K?' that may fix the problem in that they will not haunt your practice, but they will go to another provider who will further validate their phobias and be worse off. If however, you can engage the person in care, even perhaps give them medicines in what may be a placebo effect (and maybe in a manner that helps the basic panic attack), and help them gradually get over the symptoms and regain their life, you are doing a better thing. But that requires controlled validation of their experience, and it ain't something you are doing in a few months. This is a long haul thing... and its a lot of energy. I limit myself to only a few people who require this at any given time in my practice.
From a societal perspective, its the same issue: if a person with RFS or MCS says 'I can't access X public venue without Y accommodation' what do you do? Even knowing that its a form of panic disorder, that doesn't obviate the need for accommodations. We let people with mental health problems have a lot of accommodations not aimed at 'toughening them up' but aimed at making them able to fully participate in society. And like all accommodations, we have to balance the reasonableness of the request against the rest of societies needs. Expecting a wheelchair ramp on public buildings is very reasonable. Expecting that all buildings have lights turned off at 6pm is not. If a person with MCS needs a 'scent free space' in order to be able to go to college, that's reasonable... until a person with psoriasis is told she can't use her medications that control her disease. They can reasonably expect me to limit cologne use, but not things that are required to treat a serious health problem.
In this case, I actually think the reasonableness of the request doesn't balance out. Though there are other ways that it could be addressed. Talk to local businesses who already offer wifi, request that they take down their wifi if the city guarantees free and consistent access for their customers.
The thing is, there are people that make a living out of propagating this nonsense, and these people are better at getting their message of mistruth than the sci/tech community. Even the good old BBC's (usually respected) Horizon programme was duped. http://www.badscience.net/?p=418 We -you, me, everybody!- need to [somehow] get the message across to people that didn't pay attention in high school physics, but are impressed at mangled scientific theories when given by slick snake oil salesmen. Otherwise we'll be getting more and more of this (agenda-driven) stupidness in the future.
I'm sure that's what I was taught at school: that due to the tilt of the earth the hemisphere is (fractionally) closer to the sun and this that causes the variation in temperature. If someone had asked me 5 minutes ago I would probably have repeated that the same 'fact'. But, now that you mention it, it's clearly bollocks.
I also know the real explanation: that it's the affect of the Earth's tilt on the density of solar radiation across the surface.
The fact that they're both not mutually exclusive explains why the first idea survived for so long... along with who knows what else
Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
FDA does sudden U-turn on cellphone radiation stance: http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205901611
Coming from Europe, it seems that Americans have been completely kept in the dark about health risks from weak non-ionizing radiation like that from cellphones and wireless appliances. Over here the debate is raging with new evidence of harm from wireless radiation surfacing monthly.
Look up the BioInitiative report from 2007 here:
http://www.bioinitiative.org/report/
for the largest independent science review ever on the subject: 2000 peer-reviewed studies.
The conclusion: existing exposure guidelines are set 9000 times too high.
Also, see the ECOLOG report from 2000, that came to similar conclusions, here:
http://www.hese-project.org/hese-uk/en/niemr/ecologsum.php
Recently a new cell phone tower was to be placed on a public school property, and the owners of the tower were going to pay the school district a nice sum every month for allowing them to do so. It would have brought in thousands of dollars each month. Yet they company was denied to place a tower there because of "health concerns." It really makes me sick how people could be such idiots. I'd put my nuts on the line any day to improve the education of young people.
Hippies are... incredibly backwards. I don't think you can *be* a hippie without a certain predilection to believe dumb crap merely because it goes against conventional science. I have had a hippie tell me that moles are actually colonies of microscopic robots that the U.S. government drops into the jet stream, where they fly around for a while before finally settling on our skin and in our bodies. Hippies believe in the healing power of crystals, they believe that hemp makes the strongest, most durable *anything*, they believe in astral projection, they believe the government is working tirelessly day and night to shut them up because they know the truth.
In short, the fact that hippies are even more anti-science, anti-rational, etc. comes as no surprise to me.
Klingon programs don't timeshare, they battle for supremacy.
Am I the only one who noticed that this city's name has a suspicious resemblance to the name of another entity that thought Wi-fi was giving them cancer?
Remember "little Sebastion"? Well, now it's "little Sebastopol"!
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/25/013213
TFS sets up the response by calling Sebastopol "a hippie-friendly town in Northern California", and it works.
But the town's is NOT a liberal approach; it is actually being conservative. The people don't understand, they are concerned that a technology outside of their realm of understanding may present unanticipated consequences, and so they chose to stick with the status-quo. And the tragic consequence of their lack of understanding? Their town remains unchanged.
Hoo boy, those stinkin' Cal-ee-fornia hippies. How dare they... err on the side of caution.
Here is the online petition with the email address of the buffoon who started it all (http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?mufifree). I actually ran into her at the whole foods in Sebastopol. Unfortunately I only politely declined to sign her petition. If I had it to do over again I would have radiated her with my pocke EMI generator and zapped her hair out!
Considering the fact that most City wifi antennas are on powerpoles, light poles or other such high-up places, a cellphone would be a higher source of radiation than wifi.
(Solar constant = 1366 W/m2; insolation at surface approx 1000 W/m2; limit according to FCC OET Bulletin 65, Appendix A, Table 1(b) for freqs up to 100GHz (assuming the same limit applies to sunlight) = 1.0 mW/cm2 = 10 W/m2).
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
I hear cameras are also banned within the city limits, lest you snap a photo of the townspeople and steal their souls.
I remember a few years ago there was a 20/20 or dateline or something like that special on whether or not there is a link to brain tumors and cell phone usage.
They did talk to one woman and they showed her brain scans - she had a tumor in her brain that was in the exact size of her cell phone antenna and was in the exact same position on her head where she held her cell phone. Now perhaps she was more prone to getting a tumor then most people or maybe she used her cell phone constantly or had an antenna that put out 5x the normal power - I don't know but it did leave an impression on me.
I've seen that, at a Coast Guard LORAN station in Alaska I got to tour years ago (1990?). The guy held a fluorescent tube next to the high-voltage power supply for the transmitter and it glowed pretty healthily, enough to show up in the picture I took of it.
12:50 - press return.
We had a similar controversy where I live about a cell tower. Even though the motivation to deny the permit was based on pseudo-science about microwave radiation killing your children, etc. I voted with the cranks because I like the fact that my neighborhood has very poor to non-existent cell coverage. It keeps people off their phones in restaurants and cars and leeps our sidewalks and public spaces from being turned in to phone booths.
Sebastopol, by the way, is where O'Reilly Publishing is headquartered and Tom Waits lives nearby.
Almost all of NorCal is "hippie friendly", what do they have to do with the article?
A few years back I was on a team developing a disk enclosure. A technician was giving a high level manager a tour of the lab and just happened to mentioned we had problems radiation containment. That afternoon the manager fired off a bunch of emails about our product being a radiation hazard and demanded we have radiation warning stickers placed on the product. Took about a week to get everyone calmed down.
I think there's an equal reason to be concerned about the health hazards associated with the pinheads on the city council, and whomever the incumbent ilec is who is undoubtedly the one behind the scare.
You are deliberately trying to decieve people. Microwave ovens have shielding in them, and the Federal laws only allow emissions which are about 1/1000th of what's allowed for wifi or cellphones in general.
Comparing the two is completely invalid.
Did they use their cell phones to call the Mayor? Maybe even a txt message? Do they use microwaves? Lets not forget about ohh.. Like, you know, solar radiation, solar flares, constant AM and FM bombardment, ohh do they stop every time they get checked by radar to complain that there might be a health hazard?!?!?!?!?!
If you ask me they are smookin up the Mayor as well. Bet one these cooks is his hook so can't mess THAT up can we.. OMG. Well yes THANK god they didnt get access. Just like someone said we are all better off without these crazies online... That was close
"You're aware that microwave ovens work in the 2.4-3 GHz range right? If that doesn't "affect us" I'm not sure how you define affect."
:P).
So wait...anything that makes use of radiation and affects people is capable of causing cancer? Kids, stay away from that fire, it'll give you cancer!
Microwave radiation becomes heat within a few inches of the surface of the skin. That's the entire premise of the new Less-Than-Lethal laser weapons under development. That's certainly an affect, but trying to link that in any way to cancer or any other long term damage is as absurd as trying to say that the heat from a fire will give you cancer (which I have little doubt California has already done
Oh, and people are wearing more sunscreen for one simple reason, they've been informated that it's a good idea. People are also going outside less, does that show that outside is dangerous? Solar radiation is harmful, that much is sure, but trying to say that another kind of radiation is just as dangerous using UV as an example is just stupid.
And I've never even heard of an EM sensitive person complaining about the sun. Care to back that one up? Not everyone is EM sensitive you know...
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
I know everyone that reads /. will think me an idiot. Well maybe I am. The truth is, if I use a cell phone up next to my head for more than about 2 mins my head starts throbbing. Whatever the cause, heat, emf, annoying party on other end, psycho somatic head trip, it hurts. Last night as a matter of fact I was speaking with a client (telling him how to start WinXP without starting up stuff in the Startup directory) my head was pounding right as I hung up, like the after effects of getting beaned with a softball or something. The pain was halfway between my temple and ear on the side I was holding the phone. The pain was bad enough I had to hold my head and close my eyes for a second or two.
With wifi the effects are not nearly as pronounced. I can surf the web and "work" all day on the computer if connected via wire, but if I'm connected via wifi I can last about an hour before I start getting dizzy and needing some fresh air.
Given these reactions, I avoid the cell phone and wifi when I can. I'm not militant about it, though when there is a convenient alternative to the woe inducing technologies I will use it. I won't let my baby daughter use a cell phone, and ask people in close proximity, like in a car, to refrain when possible. I understand that exposure decreases dramatically as distance increases, so I don't worry too much about all the people around me with transmitters on, but it does make me wonder.
I realize there are conflicting studies about health effects related to these emf exposures. For me, the decisions are purely empirical. It hurts, so I don't do it.
Active hams spend a great deal of their life around RF. Has there even been any suggestions that they develop certain illnesses more than the average population?
Every ham I've ever met was a total fruit-loopy geekazoid, and the longer and more involved they had been a ham over their lifetimes, the worse they got.
There was a study in Great Britain some time back (I can't find it and I'm too lazy to use Google) proving detrimental health effects of wireless equipment ...... regardless of whether the equipment was active or not.
One of the wireless operators in G.B. decided to do a blind (double blind) study on the effects of their operations. They selectively deactivated (or delayed activating new) cell tower equipment and checked on the subsequent reports of illnesses in the proximity of the sites. It turns out that the idea that an r.f. source might exist can actually cause verifiable physiological effects. There was, however, no demonstrable correlation between illness and actual r.f. radiation.
In other words, crazy people can actually make themselves sick worrying about things.
Have gnu, will travel.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Along with the "just-put-on-the-tinfoil-hat-and-it-will-be-all-better dept." I think this could be filed under the "cell-phones-give-you-brain-cancer-and-let-aliens-take-over-your-mind" dept. In all seriousness (if you can call it that) it should be co-filed under the "we-have-heard-this-on-the-news-so-many-times-it-must-be-true" dept. So many are confused because as is stated by other users comments, 50% firmly believe that you CAN get cancer from a cell phone and 50% say its bunk. This doesn't boil down to light bulbs and high power lines, RF and Microwave ovens or anything in the physics dept. This is all about fear of the unknown. I don't think that the town council wants any proof that its not a health risk, because if there is even Infinitesably small possibility that it could, they would probably reject the proposal anyhow. It only takes one to say "the sky is falling" and most others would have a "suspicion" that is may be.(suspicion, as used in the article.) One other thing. Compared to Chernobyl, 3 Mile Island and all the coal plants and nuclear waste in our environment, this also belongs in the "this-is-a-none-issue-don't-sweat-the-small-stuff-and-its-all-small-stuff" dept. Well I should go, my wife was surfing the net with the wireless laptop and just collapsed.
Along with the "just-put-on-the-tinfoil-hat-and-it-will-be-all-better dept." I think this could be filed under the "cell-phones-give-you-brain-cancer-and-let-aliens-take-over-your-mind" dept. In all seriousness (if you can call it that) it should be co-filed under the "we-have-heard-this-on-the-news-so-many-times-it-must-be-true" dept. So many are confused because as is stated by other users comments, 50% firmly believe that you CAN get cancer from a cell phone and 50% say its bunk. This doesn't boil down to light bulbs and high power lines, RF and Microwave ovens or anything in the physics dept. This is all about fear of the unknown. I don't think that the town council wants any proof that its not a health risk, because if there is even Infinitesably small possibility that it could, they would probably reject the proposal anyhow. It only takes one to say "the sky is falling" and most others would have a "suspicion" that is may be.(suspicion, as used in the article.) One other thing. Compared to Chernobyl, 3 Mile Island and all the coal plants and nuclear waste in our environment, this also belongs in the "this-is-a-none-issue-don't-sweat-the-small-stuff-and-its-all-small-stuff" dept. Well I should go, my wife was surfing the net with the wireless laptop and just collapsed.
...because Sebastapol was on the cutting edge of WiFi and community wireless not too long ago. Home to O'Reilly & Associates as well WiFi guru, Rob Flickenger, this was the site of many of the first long-haul WiFi links and other rooftop tech. It's a shame that a community that was once on the forefront of wireless coolness is now putting on the brakes over something like this...
This sounds all too familiar, mostly because I grew up in Mendocino county (To give you an idea of how hippie friendly Mendo is, take this fact: "the marijuana industry is responsible for roughly 40% of all Mendocino County economic activity" -http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle-old/413/mendocino.shtml ) . It wasn't all to long ago when my mom and one of her close friends spearheaded a movement against the installation of a cell tower. Funnily enough, they both owned cell phones. It wasn't long until she moved on to blaming my computer for all of my problems, under the basis of EMFs (ElectroMagnetic Fields http://www.mercola.com/article/emf/emf_dangers.htm . These people in Sebastopol (Oh god, I only live a few miles away from this town at the moment: I live in Santa Rosa)are more than likely caught up in the EMF craze. ( To see how EMFs are being applied to wifi , just check out this http://members.aol.com/gotemf/emf/wifi.htm ) Personally, I think people like this should adopt a more well balanced perspective, instead of just feeding into modern societies fear tactics.
'create enough suspicion that there may be a health hazard'
A bunch of people thinking there is a danger doesn't make it so, idiots.
Here is a clue, how about some evidence..oh wait THERE IS NONE.
The studies ahve been done, many time.
There is no real world evidence of harm as well. Look at the millins that are exposed 24/7 and NO uptake in any cancer.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Yep, South Park is a major broadcast source on the i-hate-hippies wavelength.
I guess one way to make being gay seem cool is to point to a new target for all the kneejerk hate vibes they used to get.
"derka derka muhammad jihad" and all that.
Now here's a different (but also obnoxiously clever) gay dude who says the hippies were right!
Finally, someone who sees the light. Now, we must stop kids from eating tuna-sandwiches! Viva la Revolution.
/sarcasm
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
There is a sign outside of the town that says "Nuclear Free Zone"... I used to ride along with the local Police department as a youngin'. We went to a vandalism call one night stating that someone defaced the "Nuclear Free Zone" sign. Well they did. They replaced it with another sign (same size, same font) stating "Commonsense Free Zone". THat was 15 years ago... not much has changed.
They should be more concerned about getting a suntan, which has a much higher chance of causing cell mutation than any commercial EM radiation!
Here are their email addresses. I would suggest sending them an email to help them balance their decision making process, since they seem to be responding out of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.
Sandi Maurer (jspirit@sonic.net)
Melissa Weaver (Mweaver829@aol.com)
The answer is If the Phone Co. makes money on it its safe.
Look at cell phones, next to your ear nest to your head, safe.
WiFi routers on the roof, will kill you. What more is there to say?
Just who is create enough suspicion, is what I want to know.
And perhaps who is playing to have this suspicion created?
This is my "Hello World" sig. "Hello, World".
Oh for the love of-- Whenever I read what is basically this same story, time and time again, it makes me wish I had a man-portable microwave emitter. I go to this place and find the crazy goddamn technophobes responsible, and show them what a 'Health Hazard' really is! But then, they'd probably use it as proof of their maniacal rantings about how free wireless internet will cook the human brain in its own juices. In rebuttal I ask them this; what the fuck are _you_ worried about then?
I made this image yesterday as a response to something similarly stupid, but it works just as well for this.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*