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Comment Great, make the Internet even more infantile (Score 3, Insightful) 104

Oh great, more tiny pictures chosen by some arbitrary process, so that everyone's expression becomes more the same and more like the plastic people in soap operas, and even less language proficiency. A whole generation of TV-watchers and Social Media Addicts already talks that way, and now we want to have symbols so we can express THAT more efficiently in WRITING? Exactly what we need..

I make me don't want Net Neutrality after all. I'm now willing to pay for an Internet fast lane that requires an IQ test.

Oh but wait.. Apple.. right.. who cares..

Comment Re:Frack! Propaganda, anyone? (Score 1) 104

> Whoa - And the dastardly RIGHT-WING controlled media has covered it ALLLL up!!!!

No, the companies are. I've been corrected, in an earlier reply, on the fact that there are many real trade secrets involved in fracking. But that was not my point in the first place. And yes, the environmental and health issues surrounding fracking have been widely covered up. They must have been, or I would expect noone would tolerate fracking, anywhere!

Now about "right-wing" and "left-wing" those are just what I call "pro wrestling" terms: They are intended to give the illusion of choice, but in the industrialised world today, those wings are often both attached to the same fuselage, forming one plane, and piloted by one group.

Comment Re:Frack! Propaganda, anyone? (Score 1) 104

> It's important to point out that McCarthy was right - there really were Communists in the State Department.

I'm sure there were. But am I reading correctly that you are reducing the whole phenomenon to "communists in the state department"???

So.. if the entire McCarthy era red scare witch hunt was really just about "communists in the state department", I'm curious to hear how you would describe the extermination camps of WW2, for example.

> Some conservatives regard the term as inappropriate and deprecate > what they say are myths created about McCarthy.
(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism)

Indeed.

Comment Re:Frack! Propaganda, anyone? (Score 1) 104

> You don't know what you're talking about.
That is an understatement: I don't know the ins and outs of petrochemical processes, at all. But that was not my point and I apologize for not making it clearer. My point was that I consider ANY investment in fossil fuels, of ANY level of sophistication to be a waste of money, that should have been spent in R&D on sources of emergy viable towards the future.

Now, I understand from your comment that you *do* know what you're taking about. So would you kindly share with us a few key figures about the fracking process, such as how much of what is pumped in, how much of it is recovered, and where the rest goes. I can find some stuff online, but if I quote that I suspect I'll get accusations of bad research and following propaganda, so.. enlighten us, please.

Thanks,
-f

Comment Frack! Propaganda, anyone? (Score 4, Insightful) 104

> The technology revolution that is "fracking" has created billions in
> wealth for states like Pennsylvania, Texas, Ohio and Wyoming.

This smells (PI) like corporate propaganda to me.

> Chinese firms are "aggressively" engaged in industrial espionage
> conducting espionage against innovative US firms

riiight.. McCarthy, anyone? And.. innovative?? Innovation? Involving fossil fuels? The only trade secrets they are likely protecting is the toxicity and environmental impact of fracking. So the next logical step is that the chinese or whoever steal the "secrets", realise how stupid phracking is, then cancel any such plans at home and invest massively in renewables.

So this is great news. The fracking disaster will end with the US.

-f

Comment Re:Why Fy? (Score 1) 260

I'm not sure if you're agreeing with me or not, except on the sports.
I agree not everyone can run wires all over the place, and that most studies are biased.

But that not everyone can run wires is like saying not everyone gets to escape air pollution: It's not fair, but it doesn't make air filters bad, or ridiculous.

Most studies are biased, but consider which bias is more likely: one forced by a billion-dollar wireless industry, or one invented by a bunch of scientists crying in the desert desperately risking their grants and careers trying to warn everyone ?

At what age did your friends start working on cell phone sites? The problem is especially acute for young children. But it's also a bit of a strange argument: We all know about the 95-year old uncle who has smoked all his life and is still going strong. There's always the exception, and there are many other factors at play in human health.

Tell me what you mean regarding that nuclear plant? It's a much different type of radiation.. I'm at 68.8 Km from the nearest nuclear power plant. It's such a small country that just about everyone is closer than 50 miles from one :-)

Comment Re:Why Fy? (Score 1) 260

While I certainly believe your experiment with the cigarette, and would expect cellphones, which are much closer (and much more powerful) to have worse effects, just like you would, it is far from certain that we may continue to rely on dose-response in the case of modulated microwaves. In some cases, lower exposure got worse results: some cellular defense mechanism failed to trigger at very low doses but damage still occurred.

Comment Re:Why Crazy (was: Why Fy?) (Score 1) 260

> You seem to be missing the fact that the sun produces more than just >visible light. Low-frequency RF, HF, UHF, VUHF, you name it -- the
> sun produces a ton of radiation of every wavelength, including the
> same type that a phone produces. If you walk outside, you will get
> hit by a thousand > times as much as a phone could ever produce.

That is not true on many levels. While the sun outputs a lot of
radiation at many walelengths, it does not produce all of these in equal
amounts, and while the bands we're talking about here (>800Mhz to say
4Ghz) are not absorbed much by the atmosphere, in the end, the amount of
energy reaching the earth's surface is still not that much.

The sun produces microwaves in several, specific bands, related to
different phenomena in different layers, but the most-studied appears to
be the 2.8Ghz solar flux.

For example, in the

Penticton/Ottawa
2800 MHz Solar Flux .. graph you see a peak at about 30 x 10^-22 W/m2 of 2800Mhz solar flux.

That's .000000000000000000003 Watt per square meter at its peak.

I took out my flux
density meter. It has a range between 0.0 and 2000.0 uW/m2 in the
800Mhz to 2.5Ghz range.

This makes sense because the most conservative norms at this point (the
norms that I'm using), the 2008

BAUBIOLOGISCHE RICHTWERTE (German) have less than 0.1 uW/m2 as an ideal situation
for a bedroom.

I have a general background radiation in that range of about .2 uW/m2 in our garden, in the radio-shadow of the house opposed to the nearest Cell Mast. the HFE35C has a speaker so I can hear an impression of modulation of what I'm pointing the directional antenna at. Mostly, it's Wifi, GSM, 3G, etc.. which I've
learned to recognize.

The neighbour's Wifi, after some careful targetting, is about 7 uW/m2 on
the first floor, through the open window facing them.

That's .000007 Watt/m2 measured through at least one solid wall and
about 15 meters of air.

That's 2.3*10^15 (2,333,333,333,333,333) times the microwave flux from the sun at it's peak, at 2.8Ghz.

When I take any of our laptops and enable the Wifi, at one meter from the device I'm off the HFE35C's scale (greater than 2000 uW/m2).

A cell phone registers as a kind of explosion and is obviously, many time off the scale. Most cell towers, in line of sight, are, as well, from 50m or more.

So those are worse than 6.6*10^17 more intense than solar microwaves at
close range.

But all of this doesn't even really matter. Even if the sun would irradiate the surface with effectively the same or higher amounts of microwaves, I would still not expect much or any biological effects becasue of the type of modulation (not) occurring on the sun's microwaves. Unmodulated microwaves have biological effects only though thermal effect, and that has been proven to be negligeable at low exposures.

If you bother to read the research, it's the MODULATION that gets everyone worried today: Biological effects occur for low-level HF exposure when the RF is modulated, especially with square waves.. e.g. digital data.. What is a laughably safe dose for thermal effect (solar, Wifi, DECT, Bluetooth, ..) suddenly shows serious impact when modulated with square waves..

Best Me With Research, not Ridicule.
It's a lot of work and I'm going to give up if I get more lazy answers.

Comment Re:Why Crazy (was: Why Fy?) (Score 1) 260

> There is far more radiation outside in sunlight than your pathetic WiFi router could *EVER* bathe you in.
> Go figure.

I sure hope so, or we would be in a bit of a global predicament :-)

But as you might discover when doing a bit of research, there are many types of radiation, and the biological effects are not the same for all these types (go figure :-)).

For sunlight, these have been studied much better than modulated microwaves have ever been, and this has shown some hazards, which is why noone finds parasols, protective substances to rub onto the skin, and finding shade a strange thing to do. Now some folks are concerned about modulated microwaves, even at the low doses you're trying to make fun about, and I would prefer to stay our of that particular sun until there are some definitive answers about that.

-f

Comment Re:Why Fy? (Score 1) 260

> Hey....how else am I supposed to watch football when I poop?
Don't even get me started on ball sports..

> Ever consider someone who works from home, and works on a computer?
Yeah.. because that's what I do 6 days out of 7.

> What's the point of not being in the office if you're still tethered to a location to work
Quiet, fresh air, own music, company, not commuting for hours, etc.. Also the wiring is just about everywhere.. I mean: I don't work on the ceiling, in the toilets, bathroom, entrance hall, etc.. nor do I really want to. Referring to your opening remark: I hate watching sports..

> Maybe I want to...I don't know...sit outside on a nice day and do some work.
And I do so at every occasion. There are Ethernet and power plugs at various spots in the garden..
most of these spots are still below 4uW/m2 in terms of microwave exposure, so I don't worry much about that, and I love being outside. We don't want to get to a point where we lock ourselves up: That would represent far too high a social cost.

> You're just one of those paranoid tin-foil hat types who probably only feels secure in a cubicle
I was wondering when the TFH would come up. As a matter of fact, I have refused jobs that required me to sit in a cubicle or on any type of open space with lots of noisy people, for years. So, no, sorry, don't feel secure in a cubicle.. Quite the opposite. Besides, those offices commonly have Wifi, DECT, lots of BT devices and colleagues on cell phones.. So not really my favourite place for that reason also.

> Technology has allowed us to no longer be tied to a terminal..or a room...or a building...or even a populated location
So.. because I've solved my particular needs for workspace freedom using wires, and you have solved it using microwaves, I'm more tied than you are? And how does the capability of that technology to work "anywhere" make it desirable or useful to do so? And especially: is that perceived freedom worth the health risks? If I were a rescue-worker, I would happily risk working with a microwave-based comms device on my head for hours, because in some situations, it's just safer to do that than to lose contact with your colleagues. But I believe those are extraordinary circumstances.

> I probably wouldn't want to associate with a paranoid job like you in the first place..
Sorry to hear that. I would humbly suggest you have a good night's sleep and read up on some modern research on biological effects of RF, and perhaps come back to this discussion afterwards.

-f

Comment Re:Why Fy? (Score 1) 260

> IOW, you don't know, but are happy to toss out an AC snarky comment.

That's right: I don't know, so I rely on research of others. I find serious concerns, compare the potential but likely health hazards to the cost and inconvienience of shielding, and conclude it's worth shielding, in our case.

BTW: Cool job, on the radars!

> What amount of that RF is being converted to heat in my body?
The heat doesn't matter at those doses.. Just about everyone agrees about that. We should stop hiding behind the thermal effect which is benign at low dose. It's the cell metabolism, endocrine, genetic, blood-brain-barrier etc.. effects that these scientists worry about.

Comment Why Crazy (was: Why Fy?) (Score 1) 260

So, if modern research casts serious doubt on both the dose-response and thermal interaction approach, suggests low doses may be dangerous and concludes that much more research is required to declare low level RF safe for humans, my family and I are perfectly fine with a shielded house, why is it crazy to avoid that risk? We're not losing anything (except the investment for the shielded paint and grounding accessories), and we're potentially avoiding a major health hazard to the best of our abilities (we're not walking around in tin foil hats or conductive hoodies or anything, but at least, in the home, we give our cells a break (pun intended)).

"Protection against Non Ionizing Radiation is based on a paradigmatic assumption: We know very well the interaction between electromagnetic fields and living organisms: it is a thermal interaction; thus the standards internationally accepted are adequate to protect people and workers. This is a fairy tale."

NON-THERMAL EFFECTS AND MECHANISMS OF INTERACTION BETWEEN ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELDS AND LIVING MATTER

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