Banning Wi-Fi From Schools | Hacker News Reader

Banning Wi-Fi From Schools

theness.com

29 pointsdriverdan31 comments

I am always surprised by people's lack of critical thinking capabilities. I saw Michael Shermer (founder of Skeptic Magazine) speak at a conference recently. It was a little frightening how much data he has on the irrationality of our fellow man.

The thing that frightens me the most is the areas I personally exhibit irrationality in that I don't know about. I'm actually OK being irrational if I know I am (I can make decisions taking that into account), but I have little doubt there are places that I don't know, where I make stupid decisions.

In the meantime, we should all turn off all our electric devices, wrap our houses in faraday cages, filter all of our water, and wear respirators. Wouldn't want to be unsafe, now would we?

> wrap our houses in faraday cages

Hmm... I am concerned that the big solar flare might come one day and usher the world into a new dark age... or at least a victorian period of about 20 to 30 years.

You'll have to cut your access to your power supply and go on generator (anything outside the faraday cage risks frying anything electrical inside), you'd also have to disconnect any groundings to pipework. Long runs of copper will be inducted during a huge flare, so the ground/earthing connections can at best knock off all your breakers and your generator, but at worse can surge from ground->neutral (frequently connected as a double safety) and fry things that way (note: I only heard of this happen from a lightning strike, but we're talking end-of-civilization-solar-flare here so it's worth note).

If you need internet ensure it's connected outside your faraday cage, run the Ethernet through a surge protector (with the modem or other devices power supply, which is essentially just for kicks at this point) and run the Ethernet inside the cage and connect it to a wireless router powered from outside. Connect all computers via wireless and your systems will be safe.

However, if everyone elses shit dies, your screwed as it is. You'll be one of the only people trying to connect to HN.

Well if people are going to worry about solar flares, they might as well figure on EMP (electromagnetic pulse) protection from high altitude nukes too. Energy levels can be very high, and the very short pulse risetime results in energy extending to at least the VHF range. That means relatively short conductors can function as efficient antennas, picking up considerable energy. Solar events are lower frequency, so energy from longer conductors such as power lines is the first thing to worry about there.

It is silly for those people to be worried about WiFi, but some just don't have a clue as to the differences between ionizing radiation and electromagnetic radiation (and the importance of power levels). But the same folks will gab with a cell phone against their heads...

Curious is there is a transcript or video of the talk you mention...?

Not that I'm aware of, though it was pretty much a repeat of what he presented here (iTunes link): http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/michael-shermer-on-why-pe...

It sounds to me like a psychogenic illness similar to the Tanganyika laughter epidemic:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanganyika_laughter_epidemic

It is extremely unlikely that wifi would make kids sick. These same kids probably get wifi exposure at home too, even if it is just spill over wifi signals from their neighbor's homes. The parents clearly don't know enough about psychology or electronics.

Chances are the parents are inadvertently encouraging psychosomatic symptoms in their impressionable children.

From what I've read the main behavioral changes are dropping a grade point, falling out with friends, misbehaving in school or increased truancy.

During my day (I'm 22) this was called "falling in with a bad crowd".

For the actual medical symptoms, these are so average run-of-the-mill symptoms that it shouldn't be randomly attributed to wifi. I know in my school my greatest cause of nausea was fresh paint, a stink bomb going off or bad food in the caf.

IMO these parents are ignoring the simplest and most obvious answer: their kids are being kids and their illnesses are them trying to skip school. I had my fair share of nausea when new games came out; I even had a bout of 'nausea' during college when I picked up the Firefly box set (I'm from the UK, never saw it on TV but had a mega-huge recommendation from someone I trusted), I watched 1/4 of the first episode before I called in sick.

Mold can and does actually, scientifically speaking, make people sick. Associating that with unmitigated bullshit like the WiFi idiots is just degrading.

This is a bit tangential to the main point of the story, but I was a student at the school that was torn down the author mentioned. It's sort of an interesting story, you can read more about it at [1]. I think it was mostly politics, it took over 5 years from the initial temporary closing of the school for the new middle school to be built. In the winter of 2001 we got an extra 2 weeks during winter vacation because they discovered the chemicals in the ground and the new school wasn't built until 2006. Apparently the safety of the teachers and students wasn't as important as spending 3 years squabbling about where to build the new one.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/14/nyregion/new-term-nears-to...

Happened in the UK, the same parents also overturned a ban on kids having cell phones.

Apparently it's vital for their safety that they keep a 1W 1.8Ghz transmitter glued to their head at all times, but it's lethal to have a 100mW 2.4Ghz transmitter in another room.

Not to mention all the 10-100 W 400-800 THz transmitters they have in all the rooms. Worryingly, there are two structures in children's skulls, near the brain, that are particularly sensitive to these frequencies!

And I expect the average child emits more electromagnetic radiation than a wifi transmitter. Children should obviously be banned from schools then.

Not a problem with "Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses"

To what Thz transmitters are you referring?

GP probably means high-bandwidth ones like these:

https://www.storesonlinepro.com/files/1974975/uploaded/Phili...

Yes, although in UK schools they tend to be the ones more like this: http://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/LAFL16.html

"Some parents in the Barrie, Ont., area say their children are showing a host of symptoms ranging from headaches and dizziness to nausea and even racing heart rates."

Maybe they're going through caffeine/sugar withdrawal away from home? I'd be interested to know what the rates of obesity are among these children and how much physical activity they get at school and at home. I don't think they should discount stress either -- from other kids, parents, etc.

Even if the fear mongers are right and wifi microwave radiation is carcinogenic (ok, no proof of that but let's just say there is for a moment) then banning wifi in schools is not going to stop other wifi radiation from entering the schools from neighboring buildings.

I love my mother dearly but she had the same concern at home when I suggested my parents get wifi a few years back. I pointed out that if I turned her laptop on she could already see that there were 4 wifi base stations emitting microwave radiation that was passing through her brain anyway. So not getting wifi wasn't going to stop any risks (if there were any).

So...are the children suppose to live in the school and never leave? Because the second they step out the door they are bound to run into a few rogue hotspots.

Even out in the rural areas of the US, you can usually find a wi-fi signal.

I remember seeing some research (with positive findings) that encoding techniques such as pulse-width modulation (PWM) create beats at ~10-20hz and can affect the brain. This was like 3 years ago. Has anyone read about this recently?

I want to know if i can iDose with my wifi...

I think that you are refering to binaural beats : http://gnaural.sourceforge.net/

You need a stereo headset to listen to this. There is a frequency in one ear and another one slightly off in the second ear. Your brain then merge the two sine waves and intepret both as a single, low frequency "beat" of the difference.

No, i'm saying that PWM-encoding data in microwaves produces low frequency beats in the final transmitted wave, similar to the frequency of binaural beats (~10-30hz alpha and beta brain wave range). I was joking that i could iDose with wifi in the same way as binaural beats. I'll try and find one of the papers.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15787706

I'm confused. What's the advantage to wifi in schools? Is it just saving money on wiring the school with ethernet? Are students being permitted to take laptops into school now?

I suppose the saving money argument is actually a pretty good one, but any new school will probably be wired anyway, so that should only apply to older construction.

I'm a teacher.

Couple of good things:

* We use laptops a lot in lessons, plus the kids can use their laptops/iPods/phones or whatever on the network as well.

* We can move round the room much more easily than when using the ethernet cables, useful when using dataloggers in Science.

* Useful for older parts of the school that aren't wired.

* Useful outside

Very interesting, thanks.

I can think of a lot of reasons: Teachers are able to use tablet computers without having to be tethered to the wall, classes that permit students to bring laptops or similar devices are able to use the internet, "mobile labs" (carts filled with laptops that can be brought into classes) are able to use the internet, students that bring iPod touches or other handheld internet devices are able to quickly look things up during class.

So, these people are the ones who will eventually teach science and critical thinking to students?

Can't wait for one big mesh (802.11s) to come standard on all devices - imagine a world where banning wifi and google/verizon cronyism are impossible (at least in metro areas).

Well, I can understand it from at least a security perspective (usually inter-connected wifi points use horribly unsecure setups), but this is pretty cute, their reasoning.

The solution is obviously to put every kid in a giant faraday cage

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