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English DJ Claims Wi-Fi Allergy
path0$ writes "British Ex-DJ Steve Miller claims that his Wi-Fi allergy is making his life one big misery
, forcing him to live in an iron-clad home far from any neighbors. According to the article, more and more people are suffering from an allergy like his. The only positive side to this is that at least Miller didn't think of suing anybody yet, like these people did,
who claim to suffer from the same condition and were mentioned in a Slashdot article in 2008."
Crazy people are everywhere. Stop giving them attention.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
What's left to say? Isn't this just a matter for psychiatrists and sociologists now? Engaging these idiots in discussions would just make your own IQ drop without affecting their worldview in the slightest.
Fiat Homos et Pereat Theos
From the 70s, man. Cordless phones. And baby monitors. And cell phones. RC cars are in the 2.4GHz band. And walkie-talkies like security guards use. Also power lines, radio stations, and other things cause EMI on other bands besides 2.4GHz. Man this guy's entire life must suck.
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And I got a nasty rash just reading the summary.
Put him into a room. Randomly switch on and off a WiFi-net and ask him to tell if it is on or off. If he manages to get more than 50 % right there might be something to it. He would also be the first person to manage this in years and years of testing.
Some people call him the space cowboy
Some people call him the gangster of love
Some people call him Maurice
Because he has to stay in a Faraday cage to block out the wi-fi signals he's allergic to...
A properly scientific proof of this would most likely qualify him for the JREF challenge. If he can physically detect relatively minor electromagnetic radiation on these frequencies, he could win himself a million dollars. http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html
I've heard of this before, and I've always been skeptical of it. Not because that I think it's impossible for people to absorb electromagnetic radiation, but because the first people to expose me to this sensitivity believed pyramid shaped crystals could fix them. I really blame them for killing all of the credibility this condition may have had with me, but it's their own fault. This always struck me as a powerful example of the placebo effect. People want to feel sick when electromagnetic waves are around them, so they do. I've had a few friends deeply wrapped up in holistic medicine, and you could pick any random ingredient on your soda (anything man made) and they give you a story of how they feel sick when they are in the room with that ingredient.
I'm not going to sit here and bash the people who think they have this symptom. You're going to get 50 posters who have done that thoroughly by now. Instead I'm going to offer them a suggestion. Find a person who exhibits a visible symptom when they're exposed to the types of radiation you object to. If we can take a person and reliably give them a rash with a wifi router, then we're in business. Until then you're...well this lady who had her house covered in tin foil.
"But beneath the coats of magnolia paint, she points out, the walls are lined with a special paper that contains a layer of tin-foil; and upstairs, the windows are hung with a fine, silvery gauze."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-450995/The-woman-needs-veil-protection-modern-life.html
Just because it's all in someone's head doesn't mean they aren't suffering from it.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
Absolutely. Yet if he does use a microwave oven, and you were to point this out to him, he would quickly declare that the WiFi transmissions must have some additional quality that makes them "bad" as compared to microwave oven radiation.
You must always keep in mind that you are dealing with people suffering from a psychological disorder. Logical arguments means nothing to them; they'll simply ignore what you're saying, or rationalize their behavior in one way or another. I've heard that some drugs for treating obsessive-compulsive disorder can be helpful in extreme cases, but these people are completely convinced that their ailments have physical causes, and will reject any suggestion that "it's all in your head".
He needs one of these. So he can always tell when he's in danger.
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
Why do we report bizarre claims to Slashdot without requiring the scientific method to be applied.
If I claim to be psychic and to be able to use ESP to read emails out of thin air, does qualify for the front page of Slashdot?
If you have to ask... you must be new round here.. :-)
"Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes
As a kid, I could actually hear some EM quite distinctly. It was only the stronger pulse-like stuff, like arcing transformer a hundred meters away, or lightning strikes within about 2km. I can still hear lightning strikes that are fairly close as a faint crack in my head, a second or so before the thunder, but this ability seem to be diminishing as I age.
Of course, there is no frickin way anybody can feel 100mW of 2.4GHz radiation from any distance, and not feel 1kW (although shielded, but leaking a lot more than 100mW) microwave oven.
FWIW take a look at this study (http://www.aehf.com/articles/em_sensitive.html) which shows after weeding out people who are affected by fake situations, that this is a real health issue. An M.D. is involved in the paper. After weeding out people who got faked out by placebos and "active challenges", they got 100% positive, 0% negative. (I just briefly flipped through the paper so read it more carefully please.)
This submission was posted by sampenzus which means it's just more idle crap polluting the front page.
You must always keep in mind that you are dealing with people suffering from a psychological disorder. Logical arguments means nothing to them; they'll simply ignore what you're saying, or rationalize their behavior in one way or another.
So, you're saying the mysterious wifi allergy disease is actually a religion?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger