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ELF Knocks Down AM Towers To Save Earth, Intercoms
ScentCone writes "The ELF (Earth Liberation Front) has claimed responsibility for destroying the primary AM towers used by radio station KRKO in Washington state. From their statement: 'AM radio waves cause adverse health effects including a higher rate of cancer, harm to wildlife, and that the signals have been interfering with home phone and intercom lines.' The poor intercom performance must have been the last straw."
AM radio causes cancer?
...well maybe your home intercom *is* in danger... won't someone please think of the intercoms?!?
I'm from Jamaica, the show-me island. So show me you're blowing it out your fanny!
(obligatory Futurama reference)
I wonder if any of these ELF people understand physics... Radio behaves according to the inverse square law; in effect, your cellphone exposes you to much more power than all the cell towers around you, simply due to it being much closer. Similarly, any local transmitter you have (e.g. microwave ovens, CRTs, wifi APs, high-speed digital circuitry, etc) will expose you to more power than those far-away broadcast towers. Unless the AM radio tower is in your backyard, you are probably not in tremendous danger...
Ferrite cores. If you put them on the wires picking up the signal, it's supposed to stop the pickup.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Also, watch out for ground loops. If you plug your computer into your power strip, and then plug an amplifier into the analog audio out connector, and then plug your amp into the outlet, you've created a loop antenna in the ground system (there's a loop running from power strip to computer to amp to power strip, because the audio out cable has 2 single-ended signal lines plus a ground line). Getting rid of such loops can be hard (cutting the ground line in the audio cable doesn't entirely solve the problem and has its own issues, for example), but being aware of them and minimizing the area that they enclose can help dramatically.
I saw an example where the problem was exactly as above, and until they moved the power cables around to shrink the loop the local AM station always played on the speakers.
First off, "carrying capacity" estimates are all over the map. True, 0.5B may be the "low impact" carrying capacity, but even that's not a zero-impact - according to something I saw on TV, we have archaeological evidence that pre-Columbian Americans ruined fisheries and caused other localized environmental damage.
Second off, even if we were beyond capacity, the answer lies in encouraging low birth rates without resorting to China-esque techniques, more responsible stewardship of the natural resources we have, advances in science to feed more people with less environmental impact, and in the very long term, space exploration and colonization.
Mother Nature will also put in some degree of population control: As we have a few mega-disasters every century, each one will kill hundreds of thousands rather than the tens of thousands or thousands it would kill if we only had 0.5B spread roughly evenly around the habitable parts of the planet.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
You are obviously not a radio engineer, or you'd know that the maximum power a radio station is allowed in the United States is 100,000 watts, not 400,000 watts.
Further, since you're talking about a transmitter on a tower, the actual output is likely closer to 4,000 watts for 100,000 watts of EFFECTIVE radiated power, which is not the same thing as ACTUAL radiated power. It's all about height. That's part of the reason why satellite radio can cover the entire country with just 3,000 watt transmitters -- they're in space.
Also, the days of the 5,000,000-watt TV stations are over. The maximum power for station on channels 2-13 is now 10,000 watts I think. On UHF I believe it's around 60,000 watts unless the station gets STA from the FCC. I could be wrong about those numbers, though.
-- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."
KRKO only broadcast local sports, no political programming whatsoever. I feel compelled to add: "you gigantic idiot."
You could have spent 5 seconds looking that up, you know. It's not like the radio station's format is classified. Hey look, they even have a website: http://www.krko.com/
Comment of the year
How about a less anecdotal statement:
(emphasis mine) . Link here
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
In 2006 PETA found new homes for a grand total of 12 animals on a $31m budget. The rest were killed.
Source: http://www.nraila.org/Issues/Articles/Read.aspx?id=288&issue=021
The government can't save you.
The size of the loop makes a difference. Consider two devices connected by a shielded signal cable. If they are plugged into the same power outlet, the loop is no larger than the length of the power cords and the signal cable. The safety grounds come together at the outlet. There should be no significant current flowing in the power cord safety grounds.
Now plug the two devices into different outlets. The outlet safety grounds might not come together any closer than the electrical panel. In theory, safety grounds only carry current during a malfunction. In practice, there are induced currents and leakage. One outlet's ground may carry leakage from a furnace blower motor, and the other does not. Cable TV coax is should be tied to the electrical panel ground where the coax enters the house. This means that the coax shield forms another large ground loop when connected to any single-ended device with a safety ground, for example audio equipment.
Devices powered from different outlets should not be connected by single-ended signal cables. Professional audio uses balanced connections, and the shield is usually only connected at the input side. You can put a ground isolation balun in the cable TV coax where it connects to your TV. If all of your home entertainment devices are plugged into the same outlet, and you isolate the cable TV ground, you should not have hum. Keep the cable short, and you shouldn't have RF problems. Speaker cables are long enough to act as antennas, so if you live near a transmitter, you may want to put ferrite cores on the cables near the amplifier.
There is no 'ELF' and there's no way to arrange an alliance with them.
I wish slashdot would explain what 'ELF' is a little better when posting articles about it. They are a front. Something that exists solely so that people can attribute their actions to it. That is what 'front' means.
Usually, the fact a group is a front is a secret, but when it's in the name of the group, it means the organization doesn't officially exist, hence anyone can claim to be working for it. Groups spring up that claim they're part of it, because they share the same goals, and they attribute their actions to it, which keep them from having to expose themselves and state their goals. They can use the other, nonexistent group as a 'front'.
And there's a press office in DC that is not ELF, but the 'ELF press office', which will just simply repeat whatever message you send it. You don't have to actually work for 'ELF' to get them to repeat your message, because there is no actual 'ELF' to work for. (And they, quite deliberately, are operated with no knowledge of people actually doing the things, so have no way to confirm this stuff.)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?