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Wi-Fi Illness Claim Doesn't Impress New Mexico Court
McGruber writes "Arthur Firstenberg, the Santa Fe, New Mexico man who sued his neighbors, claiming their Wi-Fi made him sick, has lost what might have been his final round in court. According to the Santa Fe New Mexican, state District Judge Sarah Singleton ruled that no scientific study has yet proved that electromagnetic stimulus adversely impacts personal health. While he lost the lawsuit, he did score a victory: the neighbors he sued have moved out of Santa Fe."
Basic sanity wins once in a while. Maybe one of every 50 cases.
Sanity. We haz it.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Have they found an 'electrosensitive' who's prepared to go double-blind on which of a selection of ten telephones/routers is actually switched on yet?
A certain Mr Randi has a million dollars waiting for the first person to do it. Maybe he should apply for that so he can buy a new house in the woods (or even buy the neighbors house and make them go someplace else). Problem solved.
No sig today...
If he actually did feel any symptoms they would probably just psychosomatic.
TBH I would not be surprised if there was some feud between them and he just went full retard. Someone who sues because of WiFi probably is not entirely there to begin with.
Wasn't there also some public school district that was suffering legal trouble from the same claims?
Gentlemen we found Magneto's cousin, ElectroMangeto. His powers are retarded though.
I will offer my entire life's savings to anyone who can tell, greater than random chance, whether a device is on or off.
Randi's already offered $1M.
But these people are wackos. They don't understand why a 50% detection rate demonstrates nothing.
Not when there's a sea of assholes just waiting to step on their back
Now there's a fine visual for you.
Well, he can always start eating lots of microwave popcorn and try it that way. $7.2 million isn't bad, is it?
"Popcorn lung" makes it sound funny; but that one is actually a pretty ugly story(at least for the production workers and some of the QA guys at the plants, this guy must have really been a big fan to inhale that much). Let's just say that "constrictive bronchiolitis obliterans" is almost as much fun as it sounds like it would be. A much rarer disease; but the macro-scale symptoms are pretty similar to emphysema.
The matter first came to broader attention when NIOSH looked into a cluster of occurrences of this(usually quite uncommon) condition at a microwave popcorn plant. As it turns out, diacetyl, the usual artificial butter flavoring component, causes a delightful progressive, irreversible, destruction of lung capacity(pretty much what 'bronchiolitis obliterans' sounds like it does, it does.) The most severe cases require permanent supplemental oxygen or lung transplants to survive. Less severe cases experience ongoing shortness of breath and respiratory difficulties(whether only under exertion, or even when idle depends on the severity of the case).
As usual with these cases, the story of the discovery is littered with OSHA dragging its feet, popcorn producers skipping cheap protective measures like extractor fans to keep exposure down(25k to install fans, or slow death for the workers in the mixing room... Hmm, which is better for shareholder value?), and similar depressing anecdotes. Since consumer exposure is much, much lower than flavor-mixing exposure, the FDA has twiddled its thumbs about any questions of reconsidering the present regulatory status of 'safe' give to diacetyl as a food ingredient; but some are a bit concerned...
TBH I would not be surprised if there was some feud between them and he just went full retard.
You never go full retard.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Went through something similar (though it didn't go to court) in my old flat, which I moved out of earlier this year. Middle-aged couple living downstairs, got on fine with them for years, then the woman's late-teenaged daughter from a previous marriage gets kicked out by her father and moves in with them in the summer of last year (putting 3 people in a flat which is, to be honest, a little small for one person and downright cramped for 2).
This is one deeply troubled youth - clear mental health problems and surrounded by a constant stench of strong cannabis. She can also - in her mothers' eyes, do no wrong. Anyway, my life very quickly becomes absolute hell. First it's the complaints about noise. I take these seriously at first and do everything I can to limit the noise I'm making. Doesn't help, indeed she calls the police on multiple occasions, though they don't actually do anything. She loses access that particular trick after she calls the police over a weekend when I'm away visiting my parents - they force open the door to my flat and find it empty. After that, they stopped responding to her calls.
Anyway, in the course of this, she gets to see inside my flat (while I'm not there, imagine how delighted I am) - and she notes the fairly large amount of electronic equipment. Her next move - a phone call to the council complaining that interference from the electronics in my flat is giving her headaches.
I get a very puzzled call from an environmental health officer. He's very apologetic about the whole thing and freely admits that he has no idea whether he has any legal basis to do anything. By this point, I've already got my escape in sight - I've finally, after 4 years, been able to save for the deposit needed to get a mortage and out of rental accomodation (and to move to a much better area in the process). So I'm quite prepared to be all reasonable and light. We agree that he can come and inspect my flat for anything that might be emitting either outside of the allowed spectrum, or high-pitched noises outside the normal hearing range (which can be a genuine issue for teenagers and for some adults - like me!).
Anyway, he comes, he waves a toolkit around and he agrees that there's absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. He sends my neighbours a letter telling them this. He and I then get a very angry letter back (or rather, he gets a letter, I get a copy pushed through my letterbox with something obscene scribbed on it as well) saying that, among other things, my wireless network is "beaming words through her head".
Two days later, I load my possessions into a van and move off to my new home. I've not seen or heard from her since. I still see my old upstairs neighbour, who works at a station I pass through on my morning commute (and who I always got on very well with). He tells me that she continues to make life unbearable for the new occupants of my old flat and has started to turn her attention to him as well.
It would have been interesting on one level to see what would have happened if I hadn't been in a position to move out - but I'm glad I didn't have to find out.
By the way, this all happened in London, so it's definitely not a US-only phenomenon.
Q: Do you have a cell phone?
Att: Yes
Q: Is it normally on?
Att: Yes
Q: Do you drive and talk with a wireless head set?
Att: Yes
Q: Do you use a computer in your office?
Att: Yes
Q: Is it a laptop?
Att: Yes
Q: Do you connect to cable to access email, or do you use wireless?
Att: wireless
Q: Can you explain how your client ever got within 100feet of you or your office?
A corporation is like a tree full of monkeys - when those at the top look down they see a tree full of smiling faces, but when those at the bottom look up all they see is a bunch of assholes.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
If you are bothering or disturbing your neighbors, it is understood that you will undertake reasonable efforts to rectify the situation. For instance, if you were playing your music extremely loudly, the proper response would not be to have your neighbor spend thousands of dollars installing soundproofing throughout their house in order to "deal with it themselves". The proper response would be to ask you to turn it down, and, if you refused, to call the police and have them issue you a citation for violating local noise ordinances. Similarly, if your water hose was left running for an extended period of time and had begun to flood your neighbor's garden, the proper response is not for your neighbor to go out and buy sandbags to obstruct the flow of water. Instead, they should just ask you to turn off the hose.
Essentially, your rights end as soon as they step on mine, so if you're causing harm to me or my property, or else causing a disturbance, I am well within my rights to ask that you cease doing so. And should you fail to respond, local ordinances will likely back me up.
The difference in this case is that we're talking about something that causes no demonstrable harm or disturbance.
There is also a sizable population of mental patients who think they are Joan or Ark or Napoleon.
Good thing physics does not care how many people believe in something.
How do they account for background radiation, or all the other various EM radiation we're exposed to every day?
Do they live in some kind of 100% perfect Faraday cage that blocks all forms of radiation; because I know some physicists that would love to get their hands on a building material that could do that.
I can see how government bureaucrats can incorrectly attribute headaches to cell phones.
The headaches are caused not by the cell phone, but the person on the other side.
this guy's not crazy, or sick. check for the blue meth.
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
Grant that, a dosage of wifi-wavelength radio emissions of sufficiently high wattage and duration, aimed at his cranium, *would* cause this man some mental health issues.
But people like this neglect to consider a little something I like to call the "inverse square law." Not to mention multiple layers of sheetrock and other possible cladding on the domicile.
Recently in San Francisco I saw a sign on a house with the text "Electromagnetic Harassment" in a red circle-slash, with lightning bolt symbols around the head of a stick figure man that was falling backwards. Wish I'd taken a picture.
O lord, bless this thy holy hand grenade, that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.
TBH I would not be surprised if there was some feud between them and he just went full retard.
Nah, he was full retard from day one. http://articles.latimes.com/2010/mar/28/nation/la-na-hometown-santa-fe28-2010mar28
My favorite parts: "waves of nausea, vertigo, body aches, dizziness, heart arrhythmia and insomnia returned -- all, he says, because she was using an iPhone, a laptop computer, a wireless router and dimmer switches." To stress this: he gets that sick from DIMMER SWITCHES 30 FEET AWAY. And it would have to be a damn fantastic dimmer to have wi-fi.
And: "Firstenberg said he was staying with friends and occasionally sleeping in his car." A dimmer switch in a house about 30 feet from his makes him sick, but he can drive (I assume) and sleep in a car about a yard from an internal combustion engine, alternator, and a lead acid battery.
Wasn't there also some public school district that was suffering legal trouble from the same claims?
You were probably thinking of: http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2012/07/wi-fi_lawsuit_against_portland.html
Or maybe: http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2003/10/60769
But there's been a LOT of places suffering legal trouble: http://www.smdp.com/resident-files-1-7b-claim-with-city-hall/
If you want to find more, look up Magda Havas. She's making a nice profit being an "expert" on how Wifi is killing you and UR BABIEZZZZZ. Then there's Barrie Trower. I haven't heard much about him except that he adds some conspiracy theory to the mix and meets interesting people like the king of Botswana (the country is a republic).
Where do you live? Because I want to move there.
Where I live (Vancouver Canada) we regularly get people complaining about the noise and inconvenience caused by the PNE (Pacific National Exhibition), not what these people completely ignore if the fact that the PNE has been going on for 100 years! So they knew the score when they moved to the area. The worst part, from my perspective, is that people listen to these whack jobs. The response should be "The PNE was here first. Here is a $250 fine for wasting my time."
I feel the same way about these "WiFi makes me sick" idiots.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
It has been demonstrated in the lab that exposure to terrhertz radiotion causes non-thermal changes in cellular development and signalling. a theoretical mechanism modeled and shows that low level terrahertz is capable of resonantly exciting bends and strand openings in Double stradded DNA. Since those are in fact the primary mechanisms of signal transduction at the molecular level it would not be surprising if this was the explanation for the experimental observations. However these studies are still at the preliminary stages. they are peer reviewed but there has not been a lot of other investigators yet to isolate and confirm the phenomena. Just a growing body of not fully chartcterized and explained observational phenonema of strong changes in cell regulation under low dose terrahertz. It has been noted to be frequency dependent which both is in line with the reonant effects argument and also could be why it is hard to study at this stage in a reproducible manner in different labs.
The reason this model is interesting is that, just as X-rays were thought safe until the mechanism of amplified effects from DNA damage became accepted, the problem is that terrhertz are individually too low in energy to break chemical bonds. Thus if there is means of affecting cells it has to be resonant, high field gradient effects, or something that works at a vibrational or rotational level in cells. All of these might have very different depths of penetration in multi-celluar organisms and their affects might be very indirect.
so it's not implausible, but is very murky.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Almost there but not quite. First step is to put up the dish, tower and antennas, then wait a couple weeks. Put up a yagi as well, pointed in the general direction of the neighbor, just for fun. When the complaints start rolling in, invite the authorities over and show them that nothing is connected to the antennas
old trick. works to discredit neighbors who complain needlessly.
interesting point as he self admits dizziness and vertigo (although for an unconfirmed reason) I would look to get his driving licence removed as a matter of public safety
can you also counter sue for legal costs and related expenditure?