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"Wi-Fi Refugees" Shelter in West Virginia Mountains
The 13,000 sq mile U.S. Radio Quiet Zone is an area in West Virginia where all wireless transmissions are banned because of the large number of radio telescopes located there. (This official page shows a map of the Zone; an old Wired article is fascinating reading.) These high-tech telescopes have attracted unlikely neighbors, people who claim to have Wi-Fi allergies. In recent years, scores of people have moved to the area to escape the "damage" that electromagnetic fields can cause them. From the article: "Diane Schou is unable to hold back the tears as she describes how she once lived in a shielded cage to protect her from the electromagnetic radiation caused by waves from wireless communication. 'It's a horrible thing to have to be a prisoner,' she says. 'You become a technological leper because you can't be around people. It's not that you would be contagious to them — it's what they're carrying that is harmful to you.'"
As if the hillbillies out in some of those valleys weren't batshit enough already, now they're inviting in a bunch of tinfoil-hatter paranoid schizos to stay. Expect a significant jump in alien abduction and anal probing reports (above even the current extremely high levels).
And before everyone gets all offended, I'm not saying EVERYONE is WVa is a hillbilly. But don't even THINK about pretending that *none* of them are. There are some fucking crazy dudes out in those hills, just ask the locals. Oh, not so much the doesn't-wear-shoes-and-makes/drinks-moonshine variety these days--more the has-a-shitload-of-guns-is-trigger-happy-and-makes/uses-crystal-meth types. Equally as violent/well-armed as their isolationist predecessors, but now they're tweaked up on meth and hallucinating too. Mixing those guys with a bunch of tinfoil-hatters who think radio waves are making them sick just cannot lead to happy-happy-joy-joy results. Though it is nice to cordon them off.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Sorry, Diane, but you are contagious. Just as you learned of this invented disease from someone else, you've undoubtedly passed it along to another hypochondriac. Just because it's not transmitted by biological vectors doesn't mean that it can't spread from person to person.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
but, how come nobody ever points out that when we started pumping out radio waves we had no idea what they might do to the body. I can't imagine that they DON'T have some effect on us. If magnets set on one side of the brain or the other cause us to lie or tell the truth? (is that really a real study? cause THAT one I have a hard time with lol)
I'm pretty sure we have no idea what wifi, cellphones, etc. are doing to us. It's like how mercury was first treated... we all just think it's fine and laugh at anyone who says otherwise because we don't experience the problem or haven't seen it with our own eyes. But, we really have no idea.
Really the best remedy would be homeopathy. What better way to treat an imagined allergy than an imagined cure?
Totally impossible? No. That's why we have scientific tests and double-blind studies; until I see a paper published in a respected journal indicating a positive result (the case study alluded to by TFA is seriously short on details, and apparently disputed), however, I'm happy to write this off as a psychological issue.
I can't find a reference, but I seem to remember my psychology class covering people that could get skin burns because they were touched with a piece of metal that they *thought* was hot, but really wasn't. If the mind can do that, it seems plausible it could cause other symptoms.
Yes, the brain of someone convinced of a fallacy regarding their health is capable of making them feel all kinds of symptoms. But it wasn't the piece of metal that caused the skin burns.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
It's neither. The reason is because the environments we live in have become less dangerous. There's only so many hours in the day to worry about things, so the more dangerous things take priority. As we've removed more and more dangers through scientific and social progress, it has freed up room in our busy schedules to worry about less significant things.
Think of it as a Maslow-style hierarchy of risks. You only start worrying about things higher on the hierarchy when you no longer have to worry about the things beneath it. At the bottom are things like "being eaten by bears." Then above that is "plague." Then above that is "being crushed by industrial machinery." And then above that is "peanut allergy."
Read my blog.
> "It makes little difference in either context... a minority of trials have found people CAN distinguish"
A minority of trials may have been setup badly (for example, not double blind). Also a minority of trials might've had positive results by chance. If people are completely unable to detect electromagnetic radition, then by pure random chance, you'd expect 50% of all trials to come up with results that are at least slightly positive, and 1 out of 20 trials will come up with statistically significant results.
Imagine it this way: you try to guess how many times you can guess whether a coin will come up head or tails. If you have no psychic abilities, then you'd average about 5 out of 10. There will be some random variation around that number, however, so sometimes you'll come up with 8 right guesses out of 10. This doesn't mean you're actually psychic, even though that trial (of ten coin flips) came up with positive results. (This is why you can't say "a minority of coin-flipping trials have found that people can predict coin flips".)
> What they need to do is filter out the ones who can't, and keep retesting the ones who can. All you need is ONE person that can do it a majority of the time.
That's a fair statement, but it seems at odds with your earlier statement that "a minority of trials have found people CAN distinguish", which is false since you haven't established that a minority of people can distinguish. Positive trials are positive due to some combination of bad methodology, random chance, and real WIFI detecting ability.