The Times Online has an article about how the apparent IQ level in UK schools has dropped sharply.
More correctly, the IQ of parents, teachers and governors has apparently dropped. The head-teacher of Ysgol Pantycelyn comprehensive school said:
“The County Council and central government told us that wireless networks are perfectly safe”
But they ripped their wireless network out of the school anyway.
Yes, you’ve guessed it, somebody has put two and two together and come up with 802.11 about wireless radiation from WiFi networks.
Now, it’s not that it’s ever been conclusively proven that mobile phone radiation does anything more than locally heat your cranium when the phone itself is pressed against your head. This however does not stop parents and teachers getting all excited and going into the classic British media-fueled group hysteria when somebody realises that both mobile phones and WiFi networks produce forms of ‘radiation’.
Indeed, in the Times Online article, one teacher describes symptoms felt in the classroom which he ascribes to wireless radiation which would have most sane members of the population going to get their blood pressure and heart checked.
Of course, the parents are up in arm’s too. No doubt they will have been calling each other on their mobile phones to discuss this, or perhaps even their cordless landlines to tell each other to confiscate their children’s Xbox 360s which have 2.4Ghz controllers and to bin their children’s Mobile phones which allow them to share pictures and ring-tones via Bluetooth also in the 2.4Ghz band. These parents will also presumably be crossing the Nintendo Wii and Playstation portable off their children’s Christmas lists too for their inclusion of 2.4Ghz based technologies.
Seeing as WiFi units which work on just a couple of watts of output power cause such concern to parents, teachers and governors alike, presumably these same people will soon be campaigning for the dismantling of the multi-kilowatt television transmitters which cover much of the United Kingdom, permeating almost every household with radiation. They must be banishing their offspring from the kitchen whenever their Microwave is in operation lest any of the leaked 2.45Ghz radiation should touch them. Perhaps they should campaign against the sun and perhaps even the moon too which reflects so much deadly radiation at their children.
“The masses have never thirsted after the truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.”
It’s not that I’ve ever read The Crowd written in 1895 by Gustave Le Bon but it certainly makes for a good quote.
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