Obviously, the goal is to have real time information so ensure smooth supplies of power, but the installation of smart meters are causing some concerns:
The health concerns about the smart meters focus on the phenomenon known as “electromagnetic hypersensitivity,” or E.H.S., in which people claim that radiation from cellphones, WiFi systems or smart meters causes them to suffer dizziness, fatigue, headaches, sleeplessness or heart palpitations. (At a recent Public Utilities Commission hearing on smart meters, an audience member requested that all cellphones be turned off as a gesture to the electrosensitive people in the audience.)
The two most recent government reviews of available research found no link between health problems and common levels of electromagnetic radiation. Both reports indicated that more research would be welcome; on that basis, opponents say the meters should not be installed until they are proved safe.
Although there is scientific data on the health concerns, the privacy worries can be answered only by assurances from the utility. And the groups most concerned about privacy — like the local Tea Party affiliate, the North Bay Patriots — tend to have little faith in corporate assurances.
At a meeting of the North Bay Patriots this month, Jed Gladstein, a 64-year-old lawyer, called the devices “the sharp end of a very long spear pointed at your freedoms.” Others have raised concern about how the utility would use the information about individuals’ home appliance use.
David K. Owens, the executive vice president for business operations at the Edison Electric Institute, the national association of utilities, has tried to allay such concerns. “We’ve always gotten information about customers’ usage and always kept it confidential,” he said, adding, “We’re going to honor their privacy.”
Protests related to health and privacy concerns have also blossomed elsewhere in the country. In Maine, for example, residents have waged e-mail campaigns and some towns have adopted moratoriums on installations.
I have no idea what electromagnetic hypersensitivity is, but I think it is reasonably fair to say if it is a real thing, and people really suffer from it, in this day and age, they are just screwed. We’re not talking about something as simple as putting up “microwave in use” signs, because the devices they claim cause problems are just pervasive and not going away. Hell, in my town of 300, I can pick up 6 wi-fi networks in my living room.
And while the tea party is for now probably over-reacting with their typical crazy, I would not be surprised to see the drug warriors trying to get at this information to determine who is using grow lights at home.
*** Update ***
Folks, I’m well aware that they use traditional meters to track pot growers- we’ve discussed it multiple times. I’m saying it might become much more widespread with the new instant meters.
shecky
For fucksakes… why do they think there’s a meter at all? How ’bout, they might use that information to… know how much to bill you?
Palooza
On this one, at least for the privacy matters, the Tea Partiers aren’t all too crazy. Privacy needs to be addressed in the smartgrid context, it is a real concern. Whether it is “the sharp end of a very long spear pointed at your freedoms,” well that is another issue.
twiffer
this is key:
not because i trust corporations, but because it’s true. the cops already try and bust people with high electric bills, thinking it’s grow lights. i remember when i moved in with my first g-friend, one of the conditions was to get rid of my red-tail boa. gave it to a couple of hippies who had a herptological rescue, and they had been raided twice by cops who thought the power use was grow lights. this was over a decade ago. having the same information tranmitted wirelessly isn’t going to change a damn thing.
evinfuilt
Don’t worry, all the research shows that these people are suffering from one of two things.
Unrelated fatigue due to life/circumstances (life is so complex, they just needed an enemy and pointed at EMF)
Tin-foil hat syndrome
Quaker in a Basement
I would not be surprised to see the drug warriors trying to get at this information to determine who is using grow lights at home.
Old news, dude.
The local constabulary paid a visit to a fellow I know who runs a couple of web servers out of his basement. Why? They wanted to know why he was using so damn much ‘lectricity.
Svensker
So the government reading all our e-mails and listening to our phone calls is a good thing that is Keeping Us Safe for Freedom!, but the gas company keeping track of our energy use continuously rather than monthly is ZOMG teh Commies iz in our Closets drinking our milkshakes?
I don’t understand this stuff.
Tom
You obviously don’t watch Ghosthunters. They’re always checking electromagnetic readings (they usually come from fuse boxes and other power sources) because it causes the symptoms described in the story, which often make people feel like they are being watched or there’s another presence in the room with them.
cervantes
“Electromagnetic hypersenstivity” is not a real thing, and people do not really suffer from it. It’s a delusion, in the same category as the evil monster under your bed. Utter, nonsensical, paranoid bullshit. These people don’t need a political movement, they need a psychiatrist.
wonkie
I don’t believe thhat there is a special sensitivity to electormagnatism. It’s just another example of how the Medieval menality persists into current times. Generalized uneasiness + gaps in one’s ability to think rationally = self diagnosis of being special and/or fear of the Other.
I suppose most people including myself are prone to jumping to conclusions in response to fear and the more nebulous the fear is the more likely the conclusion will be nonsensical.
I almost believe that the younger generation is engaged in a conspiracy to marginalize my generation by designing communication equipment to be smaller and smaller so only the young with perfect eyesight can use it.
Left Coast Tom
They probably already know about the grow lights from the fact that the monthly electricity bill is $1000+, or some such.
I personally don’t find my gas ‘smart meter’ data useful because the measured units (therms) are fairly large relative to my usage. kWh for the electricity smart meter is a more useful unit for examining daily and hourly patterns.
Tonal Crow
Actually, Republicans are the “sharp end of a very long spear pointed at [our] freedoms”.
That said, smart meters increase the amount of information available about how we’re using electricity, which means there’s more information that could be abused. If outrage over smart meters motivates us to tighten up data protection (such as by ending warrantless demands for information), then it won’t all be vain.
But I suspect the real reason teatards dislike smart meters is because they remind them that anthropogenic climate change is real.
aimai
What continues to astonish me is how easily some groups in this society are organized, or allow themselves to be organized, on the basis of what is no more than a series of extremely loudly worded chain letters/emails proclaiming the end of the world is near. If progressives could tap into this strain of exciteability and organizability in their own base we’d have a real progressive movement in this country in no time. Instead we end up watching on the sidelines as the lunatic right fringe essentially phishes its way to power selling the rubes
1) gold
2) guns
3) seeds for the post holocaust planting
4) tea party representtives
5) republican representatives
6) corporate bailouts and wars and destruction of civil liberties, the economy, the ecology and ss and medicare as far as the eye can see.
Why on earth can’t we figure out how to sell stuff to our voters like they sell stuff to their voters?
aimai
Mr Furious
I’m pretty sure tracking electrical usage is S.O.P. when trawling for pot dealers.
A quick search reveals this and this.
fasteddie9318
ZOMG TEH BLACKETY BLACK BLACK VOODOO MAN FAKE PRESIDENT IS GOING TO KNOW I MICROWAVED A BURRITO FOR LUNCH AND SEND HIS COMSLAMUNISTOFASCIST FOOD STORMTRUPPEN TO MY HOUSE AND MAKE ME GO TO FOOD LABOR CAMP!
/teatard
Downpuppy
Like the drug warriors aren’t already using utility companies as stoolies.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
Electromagnetic hypersensitivity, to echo other above is probably made up:
skepdic.com/electrosensitives.html
Uloborus
I do not find ‘electromagnetic sensitivity’ remotely difficult to believe. The nervous system is insanely sensitive. THE FULL MOON affects it, for pity’s sake.
But the evidence has spoken. As unlikely as I found the full moon to be, the numbers said it happens (certain barometer changes, too). As likely as I find electromagnetic fields to be, the evidence says it doesn’t.
The essence of science is ‘fuck what makes sense, whatever the tests say is true, is true.’
Chyron HR
People with brains that can receive wi-fi signals? Sounds like Newtypes to me. Let’s put them in giant robots and send them to Win The Future in Afghanistan (or possibly Egypt).
ant
I would worry about people hacking into the network, and using the data for crime.
cyber-warfare is our future.
browser
Side note: The then-head of the Smart Meter program had to resign last November when it was discovered that he used a fake name to try and join one of the protest groups:
azlib
Privacy is a potential concern, but the utilities have been indirectly collecting this information for quite a while. In my case I have a smart meter. since I am on a peak demand rate plan. I pay for peak demand during the day. The old meter recorded this information which the meter reader dutifully copied from the meter every month and then entered in to the billing database.
The only change with the smart meter is the data is downloaded hourly and I can logon to a nice website and see my daily usage. I am sure there is a bit more detail captured, but this sort of data has been in the utility’s database for quite some time.
On a relative scale I’d be more concerned about the privacy of credit card purchases. Anyone who can get a hold of that information can put together a pretty accurate dossier of your lifestyle habits and movements. Cell phones with built in GPS are also a bigger privacy concern than utility usage information. If you enable the GPS on your cell phone, people can track your movements in real time.
trollhattan
See, this is a Clash of Empires in which baggers rail against an investor-owned utility (organized like god intended) because they instead think of it as a proxi-gummint and not a by-gawd profit-makin’ enterprise.
The unfolding San Bruno gas line investigation amply demonstrates why it’s a good idea that your utilities keep profit margins at the forefront and profit-eating safety and quality assurance activities to a minimum. Falsifying and “losing” important records are also Very Good Ideas.
Why do Teabaggers hate America?
aliasofwestgate
@Chyron HR: Gundam reference FTW. :D
artem1s
@aimai:
What continues to astonish me is how easily some groups in this society are organized, or allow themselves to be organized, on the basis of what is no more than a series of extremely loudly worded chain letters/emails proclaiming the end of the world is near. If progressives could tap into this strain of excitability and organizability in their own base we’d have a
real progressive movement in this country in no time.an endless supply of energy sort of like screams and laughter was for Monsters, Inc.fixt
Crashman
Sharp pointed spear pointing towards cherished freedoms? Sounds almost pornographic.
Violet
From the article:
Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Seriously? When have teatards been concerned with what corporations do wrt privacy? They trust corporations. It’s the government they don’t trust.
As to electromagnetic sensitivity, it may not happen to a lot of people but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. I remember reading an article in the Wall St. Journal about a cancer drug. It was experimental for a certain kind of cancer. Studies showed it didn’t help, so the FDA told the pharmaceutical company to stop making it. Problem was, it was helping some people. The article was about the desperate search for the medication and how the patients were stockpiling it, along with help from their doctors, so they could have a few more good years. But you know, “studies showed” and “statistically” it didn’t help people.
Superluminar
A teahardist would microwave a dirty mehsiccan BURITTO? Unpossible. Just think how many beheaded people were needed to make the filling…
And seriously? Have these people ever encountered electricity before? It’s not like EMFs didn’t exist before WiFi.
JoyceH
Is anyone else getting a bleeping ATT ad that goes right over the blog text and can’t be closed?
chopper
my nervous system is hypersensitive to ‘idiots on the internet’.
Punchy
Do these fuckers ever go a single sentence without uttering the word “freedoms”? WTF does the above statement even mean? Where are these freedoms roaming around my backyard, and why cant they easily dodge a slow and antiquaited spear?
Wait….a minute. Spear? Gov’t? Black man in charge? Do I hear a dogwhistle?
mr. whipple
This just proves there is a link!
gnomedad
If this continues they’ll be keeping records of the phone numbers we dial!
trollhattan
@Punchy:
FTW.
aimai
@artem1s:
A surprisingly great progressive movie, btw.
aimai
Robert McClelland
Electromagnetic hypersensitivity syndrome is similar to wind turbine syndrome; they’re both fictitious afflictions suffered by rightards that are allergic to anything that has even the faintest whiff of environmentalism attached to it. Watch for electric car syndrome to be the next fictitious malady to make an appearance.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Violet: The problem with those people is that there were probably a large number of things they were doing to help with their cancer, not just the drug. The drug may – and probably did – have little to no effect. But when you’re desperate to find something to help, having something taken away is not what you want.
As for the teatards, they may hate corporations, but when you start talking to them…oh yeah, ABORTION! KENYAN!
Nerull
@Uloborus: There has never been any real evidence of the ‘full moon effect’. Many studies have been done, only a handful have ever claimed to find anything, the ones that do disagree with each other, and most of those use suspect methodology.
Nerull
@Violet: People also pay thousands and thousands of dollars to sit in uranium mines because people tell them it will help. That doesn’t mean it does.
The placebo effect is also a powerful thing. They would have hoarded sugar pills if they were told it was medicine.
catclub
@cervantes: Just don’t tell them about black body radiation.
…and how much they have been bathed in from the sun.
catclub
@Nerull: “There has never been any real evidence of the ‘full moon effect’”
Is that a sunburn when you fall asleep buck naked, as in the movie, ‘A River runs through It’?
Keith
Why don’t they just put (more) aluminum foil on their heads to block out the signals?
Turbulence
@azlib:If you enable the GPS on your cell phone, people can track your movements in real time.
Technically, you don’t even need to do that. Phone companies can track your location in real time even if you have a dumb phone that doesn’t have a GPS chip. They can do that because in places where your cell phone can communicate with multiple towers, they can compare signal strength at the different towers and triangulate your location.
Violet
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Well, I don’t know. The patient was doing it in conjunction with her doctor. And the article outlined how they’d tried other medications that were recommended for the cancer and those didn’t work. There was no indication that anything else had changed, such as lifestyle, etc. The doctor was interviewed in the article and his views were represented as to how this drug helped his patient.
The doctor felt the drug helped his patient, but the pharmaceutical company quit making it once the FDA determined it “didn’t help.” The pharm company’s decision was about financial gain not helping patients. If the pharm company couldn’t make money from manufacturing the drug, which they couldn’t once the FDA withdrew their approval, then they weren’t going to make it.
I didn’t get the impression the person’s health improvement was tied to anything except the drug, and from the article, the doctor felt the same way.
Edit: There were substantial measurable improvements in the patient, via blood tests, etc. It wasn’t just that the patient “felt better” and it was a placebo effect. Unless the placebo effect can happen with bloodwork results.
Judas Escargot
@shecky:
RE: this quote:
Others have raised concern about how the utility would use the information about individuals’ home appliance use.
Right-Wingers seem to have this fear that Liberals in White Lab Coats are going to come to their houses and confiscate any non-Ecostar appliances owned by the Real ‘Merkins.
Imagine someone’s grandpa, on a stool in the kitchen, knuckles stretched white across his shotgun: you can have his 35 year-old avocado-green fridge when you pry it from his cold, dead hands, you filthy enviro-soshulists.
Dystopia: You’re soaking in it.
J sub D
@cervantes:
Ding! Ding! Ding!
We have a winner.
Vaccines don’t cause autism either.
John, you are traveling into chem trail territory here.
Dork
@Robert McClelland: Also, uromysitisis
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@aimai:
This is tagworthy, for the Leni Riefenstahl meets QVC + Nigerian bank scammer flavor alone.
ed drone
@Superluminar:
Wrong! Taco Bell has shown how to make a taco/burrito filling that’s only 32% meat! *
Ed
Actually, * that figure is probably spurious. The corporation says they use a filling that’s 80% meat, and I suspect they’re telling the truth.
Violet
@Nerull:
Does the placebo effect extend to blood work results? Can it extend to cancer tumor shrinking? If so, then perhaps this was a placebo effect.
soonergrunt
@shecky: Yeah. because it’s not like one o’ them revenooers couldn’t walk up there, look at the meter and read it back in the old days and figger out that Uncle Jesse was runnin one of them illegal stills makin kickapoo joy juice!
We have privacy from our lectic meter things back then!
matt
E = h f
Nerull
@catclub: It’s the claim that the full moon makes people crazy, generally. Increase in crime rates, hospital visits, etc. Lots of anecdotal evidence but when you actually do the statistics there is nothing there.
The few effects that are real disappear once you compensate for nighttime light levels.
Mnemosyne
Anyone ever seen the Todd Haynes movie Safe, with Julianne Moore as a woman with multiple environmental sensitivities? Really good, and just ambiguous enough that you’re never quite sure if her allergies are real or if they’re the result of the stresses in her life, or even a combination of both.
Redshift
@Violet:
It can, actually. Placebo effects are actual effects, not just “feel better” illusions.
(It seems to me that there ought to be more study of how to harness placebo effects, rather than just accounting for their effects in comparative studies. Maybe there are and I’ve just missed them.)
klondike
Already happening, has been for years. Don’t need a smart meter for that though they’ll make it easier.
The Moar You Know
They don’t have to “get at” the information. Two of the three major utilities in California have been voluntarily providing the drug warriors this information for at least fifteen years (it’s not hard to do even without a smart meter, it just takes longer). PG&E in particular is the largest offender.
Loneoak
Keep your mind reading waves outta mah dishwarsher!
Violet
@Redshift:
Then in that sense the drug was “working” even if it was her placebo. However, if she was given another drug, told it was the same one she took before, and it didn’t work as well, what would that be?
Cris
But that’s the problem: they *are* too crazy, they’re just crazy about a legitimate concern. And the risk is always that the crazy will paint over the legitimacy, and as a result nobody will ever address the real underlying issues.
The Moar You Know
@cervantes: Succinctly put. And seconded.
Kryptik
OT: Don’t look now guys, but Israel isn’t happy. Gov’t and punditry are basically calling Obama a traitor for allowing Mubarak to be overthrown.
It kinda puts a point to the absurd relationship we have with Israel I guess.
SLKRR
@Nerull:
AKA homeopathy. A worldwide industry built on the placebo effect.
General Stuck
Am I supposed to care about this? I tried, but it’s just not there.
pragmatism
the utilities and PUC/PSC entities are doing a horrible job of explaining what the “smart” in smart meter really means.
Brachiator
The Silver Surfer rides on hypersensitive electromagnetic waves.
Regular human beings, no big deal.
Really? How?
Loneoak
@Violet:
Cancer genomics is turning up some pretty remarkable differences between people who technically have the ‘same’ cancer (I’ve seen some of the research coming out of cutting edge labs and our thinking about cancer is about to change dramatically). As we move from diagnosing cancers by location and visual inspection toward diagnosing it molecularly and genomically, we are going to start thinking of chemo as we know it now as a brutal and generalized attack on the body. That some drugs work in certain patients and not others really shouldn’t be surprising because their cancers are different. That the FDA doesn’t yet fully recognize this in its regulations isn’t a problem with statistics, it’s a problem with the FDA not catching up to cancer science. And it certainly isn’t reason to cast generalized doubt on other scientific endeavors.
aimai
@Violet:
Yes, the Placebo effect can happen with bloodwork. Patients often go into remission for reasons that are not well understood. One patient, one Doctor, simply isn’t sufficient to make a determination about a drug that will be used by/sold to millions of patients. Its also very common for people to become unrealistically attached to a given treatment–or a given doctor–without there being any real improvement as a result of the treatment. Only big, long term, double blind studies can give us reliable information and even that can only give us probabilities in the case of any one patient.
aimai
Loneoak
@Brachiator:
Lots of human systems are linked up to the moon, most notably the menstrual cycle. It makes a lot of sense, since the moon is a conspicuous signal of time moving. We are animals that evolved over billions of years in a world with two big lights in the sky, after all.
Ecks
@Violet: The problem with these things is knowing WHO the drug helps. If you can tell who it will help then you can prescribe it for them only. But if you can’t then all you can know is “no net effect” could mean “no effect at all” or “helps some, hurts some, we can’t tell who.” These guys THOUGHT the drug was helping them, but how could they know? Cancer either recur or it doesn’t, you can’t tell on an individual basis what is causing what.
@aimai: Read the article, a bunch of those crazies are on the left end of the spectrum (mostly the “EM sensitive” types). The problem is that it’s very hard to harness this energy for anything useful, because it’s primary defining trait is flying off the handle about random unsubstantiated crap. Glenn Beck’s genius is his ability to shape their paranoias around things that are either dumb but lucrative to him as a huckster (gold), or by tying them to broad political narratives that can be tapped into by batshit insane politicians (a la Bachman).
Zifnab
This is just one of those absurd demands that make crowds look stupid. We can’t find anything that would cause you harm, but we’re not allowed to move forward until we prove EM can’t hurt you… are you fucking kidding me?
A) You can’t prove a negative.
B) What on earth are they seriously hoping to find? Like John said – at this point, if you really are sensitive, you’re completely screwed. Don’t ever leave your house.
Mnemosyne
@Kryptik:
Jesus, what assholes:
Apparently telling a guy who’s ruled with an iron fist for 30 years that he can’t massacre people in the streets is mere “political correctness.” Who knew?
martha
@J sub D: This. But, what they really don’t want is what smart meters will change: utilities will have the ability to charge customers for what electricity really costs in real time–it’s more expensive at 4:00 p.m. on a hot summer afternoon than at 2:00 a.m. so you’re going to pay more for that lovely A/C when you want it NOW. I would think true conservatives would like that market-based pricing…
aimai
@Judas Escargot:
They are still bitter about the removal of phosphates from dishwasher detergent and bitching about left wing attempts to clean up your drinking water so, yes, I imagine that somewhere out there some teahadist is sitting in front of his old, worn out, inefficient refrigerator–protecting it with his latest model shooter–for fear of the white lab coated environmentalists.
aimai
Redshift
@Violet: Dunno, that stuff is pretty weird. I’m not saying it’s impossible that it could have been helping her. (For example, Ms. Redshift has some medications for which the generic version simply doesn’t work, including not causing the side effects, even though it’s supposed to be chemically identical.)
The tough situation is that regulating based on collecting data on effectiveness is about the best arrangement we have. Without it, pharma companies would gladly make money by selling stuff they know doesn’t work (witness the number of cases just in the past few years where they’ve suppressed data of ineffectiveness or harm.) It’s unlikely patients would get the most effective medicines in that case.
martha
@pragmatism: Ding ding ding we have a winner! Good grief they’re terrible at it. And, they’re getting killed because lots of smart meters are more accurate than the old analog or digital meters they replaced, so customers think their bills went up because of smart meters when it was just because the utility finally replaced the darn meter with something better!
Warren Terra
@Uloborus:
If only you’d stopped there; I thought you had some brilliant snark going. Problem is, you seemed in the rest of the comment to be sincere in what I can only call your lunacy.
@Violet:
Assuming the studies were done properly, those patients (and doctors) were simply wrong, or at least had no way of knowing they were right. Such delusions are why we have large scale, highly regulated double-blind trials. Do you really think the drug company should have sold them more drug, exploiting their fears desperation, and confusion for a few bucks? Given how serious cancer is, it’s quite likely that this demonstrably ineffective drug had nasty side effects. Their doctors had no business humoring them, and probably should either have set them straight or given them placebos (only for that failed drug, not for the rest of their treatment). I’ve known a couple of oncologists, and they spend a lot of time, some of it quite heartbreaking, explaining to their patients about how woo merchants and worse are conning them.
On the subject of electromagnetic sensitivity, Bob Park has really said all that needs saying. It doesn’t exist, the physics of it makes no sense, and tests haven’t found evidence for it. The potential for misuse of all this information by corporations or the state could be troubling, but the nonsense of EMF sensitivity should neither be humored nor allowed to discredit the genuine concerns.
aimai
@Ecks:
Yes, Ecks, I agree that plenty of these loons would otherwise be on the left end of the political spectrum–like the weird meeting of minds the far right and the far left have about “unschooling” and the anti vaxxers. Usually for the far left the villain is corporations while the far right sees the villain as being big government or government by atheists and black people whichever. As someone pointed out way upthread public utilities are also a natural place for these two different groups to start to come together around a new form of craziness because no one seems to quite be able to figure out whether utilities are public or private–you can hate on them because you think they are a feature of big government *or* because you see them as corporations run amuck. Somebody should totally do an ethnographic study of the people who show up at these public meetings (which is another vector for crazy/undermployed people as well) and try to study the ways in which these two different groups do or don’t work together on a common delusion.
aimai
fasteddie9318
@Kryptik:
Of course Israel isn’t happy. Hosni reliably does whatever they want for fear that they’ll tell on him to the US, and their closest experience to Arab democracy resulted in Hamas controlling the Palestinian Legislative Council. Notice, though, that as soon as the Likud Lobby rang the bell, their neocon tools turned on a dime from “WHY THE FUCK IS OBAMA ABANDONING THESE BRAVE WARRIORS FOR FREEEEEEDOM?” to “WHY THE FUCK IS OBAMA ABANDONING OUR LOYAL ALLY MUBARAK TO THE PEASANT ISLAMIST HORDE?” I’m amazed they don’t all have fucking whiplash at this point.
trollhattan
@General Stuck:
Yup, not nefarious but rather, the beginning of data-gathering to determine how much flexibility consumers have in shifting their electricity use to non-peak times of the day (after incentivizing them with lower spot rates). Sure, I can run my clothes dryer at midnite but I don’t need my A/C then, I need it at five-o’clock like everybody else.
Longterm, utilities need to build generation or contract for peak-period power, and the more they can get us to shift our usage to low-demand times the less generation capacity they need to build. When plug-in electric cars number in the hundreds of thousands, it’ll be doubly important. Channeling Martha: “It’s a good thing.”
catclub
On the placebo effect: There was a Newscientist article called something like “13 things we do not understand.”
many of them were about the placebo effect. The one that amazed me:
1. Induce pain in volunteers.
2. Relieve pain with morphine injections.
3. Replace morphine with water, pain is still relieved.
4. Add a morphine blocker to the water in injections,
pain is no longer relieved.
…
9822. Profit!
(I added the profit part.)
Violet
@Loneoak:
Yeah, I don’t claim to know anything about cancer. I just thought it was interesting in the sense that “studies showed it wasn’t helpful” and yet it did help some people.
However, to address your last point:
What about the concept that something like EMH could be a case of science not catching up with the differences in people. Just like with your cancer illustration, we are moving toward diagnosing and treating cancers in a very different way than we did ten years ago. Why? Because science has evolved and we have new tools to use. Perhaps at some point down the line new tools will be developed to identify some things we now think are crazy.
BTW, I’ve never even heard of EMH before today. I have zero beliefs on it one way or the other. I’m not trying to claim anything wrt it specifically. Mostly I’m saying that I think there are things we still don’t understand and don’t have the tools to understand yet.
trollhattan
@aimai:
(Not making this up, honest) the latest wingrant(tm) I’ve endured (via wingnut father of a friend) is that the bedbug resurgance would never have occurred if only we hadn’t banned DDT. he didn’t explain the nearly forty-year time lag.
Hob
I’m in the Bay Area and know a lot of people in Sonoma and Mendocino counties. I think the Times article distorts things a bit by implying that this is all about woo-woo EHS concerns (which I agree are not well founded).
They write:
First, it’s just not true that the protests started out with people just being concerned about their bills, and then got taken over by other people (or “cadres”– WTF?) with political or environmental concerns. It was all three mixed together from the start.
Second, the problem with inaccurate billing was real, even if it was more about PG&E’s general fuckedupedness than about the new meter hardware. The Times refers to PG&E being “overall” exonerated by “studies”, which they link to only in the form of a PG&E press release; if you read the actual study, it’s clear that there were multiple fuckups in installation and billing.
But the elephant in the room is that PG&E has a long history of being an incompetent and dishonest monopoly, so many people’s default position is not to trust them even if they say the sky is blue.
Loneoak
@aimai:
I believe this is what you are looking for.
Yes, I live there, and yes, people put up posters on all the lamp posts about chemtrails.
pragmatism
@martha: all they have to say is 1) less costly to operate; 2) allows you more “local control” as a consumer; 3) transparency through faster (but not more or private) information; and 4) should lead to fewer commodity price increases.
SLKRR
@Loneoak:
Since women menstruate at different times and with different frequencies, menstruation is not linked to the moon AT ALL.
income tax calculator guy
technology…. when will it ever stop?
Jim Kakalios
Matt (comment no. 50) is right. E = hf, indeed.
Most chemical bonds are held together with an energy of one electron-Volt
(1 eV). Expoure to X-rays (energy of 1000 eV) and gamma rays (energy of 1,000,000 eV) will break many chemcial bonds and cause extensive cellular damage. Even ultraviolet light (energy approx. 10 eV) can cause skin damage.
You, Fearless Reader, by virtue of being at a temperature of 98.6 degrees, emit infra-red radiation. The infra-red radiation has a lower frequency than visible light, and has an energy of about 1/1000 eV, that is, a thousand times weaker than visible light, which is on the order of the strength of chemcial bonds.You put out about as much energy as a 100 Watt lightbulb, but you don’t notice it because you’re just too cool! (Sorry). But this is why you can be seen in the dark with infra-red detectors – you put out more energy than the room temperature surroundings.
Radio waves have a much lower frequency still, so that the E = hf energy of radio wave photons is 1/10,000,000 eV, that is, about ten thousand times weaker than the infra-red energy you yourself emit, due to being at or above room temperature.
I’m not saying it’s impossible for a sensitivity to exist – but given the common sense issue of energy scales – one would need extra-ordinary evidence to prove a claim.
After all, in all of recorded history, no one has gained super-powers by standing too near a radio transmitter tower.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Physics Professor,
Jim Kakalios
Loneoak
@Violet:
The big difference between the changes in cancer science and the future possibility of demonstrating the reality of EHS is that EHS’s existence depends on the existence of a never before identified biological system–it’s not like we all have biological wifi antennas and in the future we might find some people just have stronger ones. Cancer science is getting more specific, electromagnetic sensitivity requires the world to be quite different than we have very good reason to believe it is actually like.
Mnemosyne
@trollhattan:
Bedbugs have been resistant to DDT since the 1940s because of — you guessed it — overuse of the chemical. They’ve done tests on the current species and they have retained the immunity to DDT.
So basically your friend’s father wants to use DDT on bedbugs even though it won’t kill them and may actually make them bite more because it will make him feel like something’s getting done.
Erik
A number of you don’t think EMF sensitivity is legitimate. Fine, that’s a reasonable argument to make. (I would respectfully disagree, and argue that it’s likely some form of an NO/ONOO- cycle disease. The biochemistry of this is very complicated, and is only starting to be understood).
What I don’t understand is the jokes about tinfoil hats, etc. Why do you feel the need to make fun of people in pain, whether that pain is real or imagined? Do you also mock people with PTSD?
Svensker
@aimai:
Although I have to say, the switchover in northern NJ was awful. We have very hard water and overnight the dishwasher became a built-in very large dish drainer. No point using it to wash dishes, because all it did was spread chunks of soap powder around, and those chunks were almost impossible to remove from “clean” dishes except with vigorous application of steel wool. The liquid detergent didn’t make chunks, but it couldn’t get the dishes clean with the hard water. Maybe the detergent companies have figured out something by now (we moved) but it was terrible. I still have a bunch of glassware that I can’t get the soap film off.
Violet
@Warren Terra:
It’s not about what I think. I was merely trying to explain what was a really good investigative article. It looked into the FDA approval process, how clinical trials affect patients, how medications might work for some and not others, and how it works on a personal level. It has stuck with me because it illustrated so well what is a very difficult process for all involved. The patient is suffering physically and financially. The doctor is trying to help. The FDA tries to do the right thing and approve drugs that are beneficial and not approve ones that don’t help. The pharmaceutical company wants to make money (who knows, maybe some employees there also want to help). It’s a complex, difficult process and lots of thing come into play. The article was very good in illustrating how it can work and what happens if a patient gets caught in the middle somehow.
And, as someone upthread noted, our understanding of cancer and treatment is evolving. What we would have done a decade ago is not what we do now. So a treatment might work for one person and not for another due to the genesis of the cancer, molecular differences, and who knows, maybe a lot of other things we haven’t even identified yet.
Brachiator
@Loneoak:
What is the connection between the moon and the menstrual cycle, apart from coincidence? There are all kinds of lights in the sky. Why pick out two for special significance?
David in NY
What is it about wiring and waves and so on that is related to the crazy? I can’t tell you the number of prisoners (I’m a lawyer who’s done prisoners’ rights and criminal law for 35 years) who’ve complained to me about the terrible headaches they get from the wiring that the Warden has connected to their cells. And my uber-rational scientist uncle, who fell and suffered serious, but transitory, brain damage, who explained to me, just as he was nearing a return to normal from a much worse state, that the bandage on his ankle was connected to a power station just down the river from his rehab center. And I believe that the original “tin-foil hat” was a suggestion that those who ended up dealing such members of the public gave them, as a solution for the rays that were constantly being beamed at them from nearby towers. “Tell you what to do, just get a hat, and line it with tin-foil, and that will stop the rays.”
Robert Sneddon
Smart meters for electricity supply to homes and businesses are the key to the utility being able to ration electricity in the future when the generating systems can’t cope with peak loads. At those times you can bid in real-time for whatever electricity is available and the richest folks can run their aircon and keep their lights on at such times.
As for electromagnetic sensitivity, remember the big AM broadcasting stations in the mmiddle of the cities, pumping thousands of watts of RF into the neighbourhood 24 hours a day? The TV transmitters and the airport radars? A piddly half-watt of UHF radiation from a mobile phone is nothing compared to those old monsters but try telling that to the tinfoil brigade (P.S. you’d be better off with copper or gold foil, guys).
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
In other words: EEE! SOMETHING NEW! POKE IT WITH A STICK!
Yeah and if you check out things people KNEW were true about electricity or indoor plumbing or … Flouride in the water, you get the same level of whackiness. Can’t be helped.
@Tom: Glad to know I’m not the only one who watches.
Actually, you might need to leave your house and go live in a cave. Depends on the level of EMF your house puts out.
Violet
@SLKRR:
Yes it is.
Just one of various studies.
Punchy
That sounds like it….hertz.
/rimshot
I’ll be here all week! Tip the floor whores! Good nite!
Cris
This “weird meeting” is something I’ve observed for years, ever since moving to Montana. Anti-authoritarianism makes for strange bedfellows, and what becomes interesting is the tension between the common ground and the fundamental differences. (For one thing, a lot of people who distrust one form of authority are usually just fine with another kind. See: polygamists.)
Great comment overall, btw.
Hob
@Mnemosyne: Well, the “DDT could save us from bedbugs” line, despite being easily debunked bullshit, isn’t just random wingnut stupidity; it’s being pushed by the same columnists and think tanks who always push any piece of bullshit that they think will undermine environmentalist regulations. Their line used to be “DDT could save us from malaria” (ignoring the fact that DDT has not actually been banned for malaria control) but as soon as bedbugs started being in the news, they switched talking points.
Malraux
@Loneoak:
But they aren’t linked up. 28 days is a different number from 30 days. If the lunar cycle were affected at all by the moon, then you’d expect all women to be on the same cycle and that cycle to synced to the moon.
Violet
@Svensker:
Put the glasses in the dishwasher. Wait for the initial “sensing” to finish (if you have a modern dishwasher), then open and put a cup of vinegar in the dishwasher. Soap scum will come right off. Obviously don’t use an additional soap when doing this.
If you have an older dishwasher, you might want to add the vinegar during the rinse cycle.
mapaghimagsik
The American Radio Relay League (ARRL) has some great information around electromagnetic exposure. Basically it kinda goes at it with the idea that 1) People are like antennas, they resonate at different frequencies, based on height, mass, etc) and 2) Do not point your legal limit transmitter antenna at your neighbor’s house and 3) when it doubt, measure.
So yeah, there’s some uncertainty there.
Having said that, the level of transmission from any kind of mesh network is pretty darn small.
The big benefits I’ve heard about this technology has to do with 1) Customer choices by being given real time information about their usage 2) better service because when 1 meter goes down now, unless the customer calls, the power company doesn’t know about it until the meter reader goes out there and 3) In a police hostage situation, it would be really cool if the utility could shut the crazy man’s power off without having a utility employee get shot at.
Of course, 3 opens up a can of worms, which has security professionals around the country twitchy.
J sub D
@martha:
I don’t have a problem with peak pricing. Peak usage is what drives the building of generation facilities; of course it should cost more.
I wouldn’t mind peak pricing on toll roads for similar reasons.
R-Jud
@Loneoak:
LOLWUT? As a human that menstruates, I can assure you this is not the case at all. The length of the two cycles happen to be similar, and one got linked to the other via metaphor.
burnspbesq
@Kryptik:
Wait a sec. Obama a traitor to Israel? What loyalty does he owe to Israel?
[pause]
What are you laughing about?
Bill Arnold
@Quaker in a Basement:
The privacy issue with real-time readings is timings. Granularity of a month is qualitatively different than granularity of minutes (or whatever). If the readings are sufficiently frequent, they could for instance be used to spot heavy electric usage (e.g. grow lights (or snake warming lights, etc)) on fixed timers. With some sophisticated analysis the spying can be more intrusive.
(There is a class of attacks against cryptographic equipment that involves power usage analysis, though this involves higher measurement rates. Sensitive information could leak out of personal dwellings as well through differences over time in power usage.)
Violet
@Malraux:
Not all women, but enough to be statistically significant. See my post above. There are multiple studies that confirm it.
Cris
Because those two are much, much, much brighter than any of the others? Because those two bodies also exert significant gravitational pull?
I’m not weighing in on the menstrual/lunar connection, but if you don’t think the sun and moon are somehow special to life on this planet, you might be from a different one.
soonergrunt
@The Moar You Know: They don’t even need to talk to the power company. They can check heat emissions from the street with the same device firefighters use to find people trapped in smoke-filled buildings, hand-held FLIR sensors.
SCOTUS has already ruled on point about wide-spectrum emissions not being subject to privacy laws.
keestadoll
I was not surprised at all to see the swiftness with which these smart meters came to us up here behind the Redwood Curtain. We cannot get any kind of industry up here to take root beyond that which has been(literally)rooted since the late 60’s, and the only population influx has come in the form of nicely shaved gents in unmarked cars (way to blend in Special Agent Wojohowitz). So it makes sense that our local government would hurry to implement a metering system to undermine the one aspect of the economy that keeps the iconic tumbleweeds of despair at bay.
We are, if nothing else, a complex county.
SLKRR
@Violet:
…so 2/3 didn’t. And different mammalian species have cycles as short as 5 days and as long as 37.
It’s coincidence.
Mike in NC
@Mnemosyne:
Be that as it may, Glenn Beck is still as crazy as a bedbug!
This thread reminds me of how about ten years ago a lot of scam artists were scaring people (mostly seniors) into buying radon detectors so they wouldn’t suddenly die in their sleep.
Ecks
@Kryptik: But you see Israel is the only democracy in teh middle east and so it must be protected. Why, if other countries got democracies, that could be a threat to democracy.
David in NY
@soonergrunt: I’m not sure that you’re exactly right about the Supreme Court’s ruling. In Kyllo, they held that use of a device from the street to detect hot spots in a house violated the Fourth Amendment. cognitiveliberty.org/dll/kyllo1.htm
MikeJ
@mapaghimagsik: Wifi max power is 1w. Ham radio max power is 1.5Kw.
Svensker
@Kryptik:
Fuck ’em. Or is that too politically correct?
Tsulagi
But since I don’t have one, I didn’t give a shit.
However they did come for my water meter last year. When there was a leak between our water main and meter. They replaced the short line and swapped out the old meter with one that transmits usage numbers.
Makes sense. Save on labor reading meters that requires less skill set than flipping burgers, and can identify leaks before they cause little sink holes like at my place.
Somehow I just can’t gin up outrage that our water usage is being beamed out nor have any inclination to wrap our house in tinfoil to thwart electromagnetic rays.
Davis X. Machina
@Tonal Crow:
Just wanted to see that in print again….
Ecks
@Zifnab: Don’t stay in your house either. You’ve got everything from the neighbors wifi there to the enormous commercial radio transmitters that are currently, right now, at this very second, broadcasting Joe FM through your body with 10’s of thousands of wats of electromagnetic radiation.
Svensker
@Violet:
Tried that and the stuff seems to be baked on harder than space ceramic. And we didn’t even use the heated drying cycle.
Violet
@SLKRR:
From your link:
So in other words, it hasn’t been studied effectively. That doesn’t really disprove it.
Here’s another study:
Hob
@Violet: About the moon/period (or moon/madness) thing… this is something that’s always been confusing to me, and I really have tried to find an explanation online or I wouldn’t ask: in terms of physics, what would be the explanation for a full moon having any special influence on anything?
I mean, yes, it is directly in line with the Earth and Sun so there could be some gravitational difference– but the Earth is rotating too, so for a person in any given spot on the Earth, that particular gravitational vector only exists for a short time every day.
I’ve seen attempts to ascribe significance to the full moon based on the tides, but that makes even less sense to me– tides come and go several times a day, not once a month, and there is a spring/neap tide cycle but that happens around the new moon too, not just the full moon.
Violet
@Hob:
I think it’s a light thing. In traditional societies, the light from the moon would have been the majority of the light available at night. During full moons it would be very bright. And at other times, almost none at all.
We know that light is one of the things that affects our circadian rhythms and it’s part of what people with SAD are told to get to treat it, so why wouldn’t it affect other things too?
SLKRR
@Violet:
So one study says that menstruation occurs around the full moon (the light half of the cycle) and another says it occurs around the new moon. Oooookay.
It’s a coincidence. Why would the moon only affect human menstruation and not that of other mammals?? Does the light of the moon not reach them?
(Nice selective editing on that link, by the way.)
aimai
@Violet:
This just makes no sense. We also know that women’s menstrual cycles *move* during the month as women who are in close quarters with each other synchronize their cycles. If there were some real effect you’d expect to see nuns and boarding school girls with their cycles moving rapidly towards occuring at the moon–is that the case? If not, why not? A difference can be “significant” in a small sample–and 826 is a vanishingly small sample, and smoothe out to vanishing point with a larger sample. This strikes me as a coincidence in search of a mechanism. Can you explain what is the mechanism that causes–what? the moon’s light? the gravitational pull? and over which parts of the woman’s hormonal and physical systems?
aimai
matt
@Jim Kakalios: Yep. Although I guess for completeness one should address classical E&M effects like the body acting as an antenna for longer wavelength radiation (as some have mentioned above). What magnitude would the induced currents have, and would they be felt?
Brachiator
@Cris:
“Special to life on this planet” is not the same thing as exerting special forces on the nervous system. You got anything specific and measurable in mind? Otherwise, some Balloon Juicers are demonstrating that they are as susceptible to ignorance and superstition as the average creationist. But if you want to talk about the “magic” of forces, here’s something much more astounding (Without the magic of relativity, a car’s starter motor would not turn):
Much more fascinating than crazy stuff about the sun and the moon.
Nerull
The only difference is light – it’s gravity does not vary significantly over the lunar cycle.
Hob
@Violet: Leaving aside the extreme vagueness of the phrase “traditional societies”, it’s still pretty safe to say that people 100,000 years ago were not spending a lot of time either awake or unsheltered during the nighttime. So why would it matter if it’s totally dark or just mostly dark? And why would the menstrual cycles of other primates, who are more likely to be outdoors at night, be even less close to lunar timing?
Ecks
@aimai: Agreed. And FYI
You probably know this already but they’re generally private companies that operate as heavily regulated local monopolies. Unless you have an enormous population density it makes no economic sense for competing companies to be laying competing sets of wires (or sewers, etc) to different houses on the same streets (and to unstring and restring those wires when people change firms), so generally the only a monopoly is viable. But if you let a monopoly exist with no threat of competition at all, they’ll start behaving like, y’know, a monopoly, with high prices and lousy service. So governments generally watch them like hawks, monitor their pricing, etc.
In any event, as people point out above, if the gov’t can already know which phone numbers you are calling, where your cell phone is at all time, read your email, and watch how much power you consume per month, what possible security threat is there from them knowing when your dishwasher is on? People have been using public laundromats for years without thinking that was a dire security threat.
Warren Terra
@Violet:
This could be a perfectly reasonable mechanism for the information of the lunar cycle to be transmitted to people. But note its corollary: this could explain why there once might have been a link between the lunar cycle and our biology, but it would also mean that such a link hasn’t existed for at least a century. It’s been a long time since the exposure of most Americans to light depended on the lunar cycle. And that’s leaving aside SLKRR’s excellent point that many other menstrual cycles aren’t synchronized with the lunar cycle, so the shared length of the human cycle probably is a coincidence.
Chet
@Svensker: You can buy the phosphates that used to be in detergent – it’s usually called “dishwasher glass cleaner” or something. I have a box of it. If you use it sparingly the environmental impact is negligible; the problem was everyone using it in their detergent all the time whether they needed it or not, and that put a lot of phosphorous in lakes and rivers.
Give that a shot and see if you can’t get the film off your glassware.
matt
@SLKRR: One could hypothesize that early man and other great apes copulated by moonlight.
azlib
@Turbulence:
Yes, the phone company can do that with less accuracy, since cell towers are typically miles apart while a GPS signal can track you down to within a few feet.
Then there is the old “trace the call” method for landlines which is a lot faster these days with electronic switches. Same holds for when you are online. If you can get a hold of the IP address assignment statistics, you can also trace a person’s movements with surprising accuracy. That is why the NSA’s sticking an interception device in the major Internet NAPs is so pernicious. It is not so much the content of the packets which is useful, it is the pattern of all those TCP connections in the packet flow.
trollhattan
@Chet:
Or…get a dishwasher mit buit-in water softener. Ours has it and I’m amazed how little detergent it requires (about a tablespoon/load). Our water isn’t terribly hard though–medium GH and low KH.
Also discovered the way to prevent glassware etching (different than scaling) was to use lowest temp setting.
Hob
@matt: There might be a joke in there somewhere about early man being more likely to copulate with other great apes when it was really dark… but I’ll refrain from interjecting it into a serious discussion of totally hypothetical biology.
Malraux
@aimai:
Which is why I was pretty skeptical of that 1979 study of a bunch of women in college together. Testing a bunch of individuals who are likely correlated together doesn’t strike me as great study design, nor does the apparently large variation in menstruation cycle periods across the human population make this even remotely possible.
Hob
@azlib:
In populated areas, cell tower triangulation can be surprisingly accurate – 200 meters is not unusual, and 50 meters is possible.
Brachiator
@aimai:
This is likely an urban legend. Also, no connection with the moon or other bodies here. But there is a good Wikipedia article and references on the supposed McClintock Effect.
The theory was plausible, but does not stand up to strict scrutiny.
300baud
@Tom:
Yes, because people never felt like they were being watched or that there was another presence in the room before we put electricity everywhere. [rolls eyes]
Exhibit A on why we shouldn’t even allow Ghosthunters on TV. Making money by encouraging ignorance and shoddy thinking should be criminal. Like cigarette advertising, people just don’t need any more help doing stupid stuff.
les
Old stuff: check Heinlein’s “Waldo.” A rare example of one of the old-line sci-fi writers worried about tech.
Won’t someone think of the chilluns?
Punchy
Did you hear about the crazy deaf physicist? His answer to everything was “watt?”
Still here….
Ecks
@300baud:
Oh, but that was different. It was demons and spirits that did it back then. And Guardian angels too, obviously.
Comrade Mary
@Svensker: How about CLR? (Base instead of an acid like vinegar.) If your dishwasher still works badly, it may need some disassembly and deep cleaning every now and then. Hard water creeps in everywhere.
I’ve found over the past year or so that my standard powder dishwashing detergent started working like crap. I tried every brand available and they all sucked. I used to be able to get heavy tea stains out of my mugs in one go, but then I started seeing the tea stains build and build, glass looked grimy, and cutlery — ick! A couple of CLR rinses helped dishwasher performance a little, and I used CLR on the stubborn hard water deposits to good effect.
But what really made the difference was buying those goddamned, cocksucking, motherfucking expensive tabs from [the evil household products company of your choice.] It’s a fucking conspiracy, I tell ya. Everything’s gleaming again, and only my lunar-induced Tourette’s is keeping me from sounding like a goddamned ad.
Yes, I’ve STARTED my PERIOD and I’m CRANKY. I don’t get PMS (my bitchiness follows a random distribution), but just dealing with the extra, err, housekeeping that goes with yet another sign of womynhood is a right royal pain.
Steven Barnes
I don’t care about nut ball fears of EM radiation. I’m concerned about the fact that my electricity bill doubled after they installed a smart meter…
Jeanne Ringland
@Loneoak: Laughing at you. Menstrual cycles are linked to several things including their sexual partner’s perspiration (pheromones, I think) and that of other women in their tribe/village/workplace, but not the moon.
General Stuck
@Comrade Mary:
I usually don’t get PMS either, though when the prostate gets twitchy that can maybe be similar. Housekeeping, as we all know well, is wymens work, just like channel surfing is mens work. I use lemon joy dish soap for laundry, with a few dashes of discount bleach. Nuthin’ is left behind but the sparkly bliss of clean underwear which always puts a smile on my face. It works pretty good on the dog also too.
maus
I can’t believe anyone believes these people at their word. It is not a real thing and the media are terrible irresponsible for spreading this rot, like they do with the anti-vax and morgellons’ nutjobs.
@Palooza:
Do you believe your data is private, currently?
PIGL
@Violet: The doctors feelings count for nothing. You can’t derive evidence for a treatment effect with N=1. That’s all there is to it.
As for the broader claim that seemingly ineffective drugs may be helpful for some people, that’s true but vacuous provided a reasonable sized controlled study was done. In that case, the treatment effect would have to apply only to a group not represented as a factor in the sample (e.g. male/female, young/old), and said group would have to rare in the sampled population or else the treatment effect would be real but small for said group. Either way, that implies that there is no way to know that the treatment is effective for some group, because the group can not be identified.
The more justifable conclusion in such cases is that the observed effect is just random.In other words, not an effect at all.
maus
@Tom:
Hypersensitives have had doubleblind studies performed against them. They have no clue whenever there’s a large EM and wifi source (or none) placed adjacent to them behind a screen. They get it wrong consistently. There is no such thing as sensitivity in the levels they are all claimed to perceive.
Plus, those shows are absolute garbage I can’t believe anyone’s using them as an explanation for real phenomena. I had a friend who was a PA for some Court TV ghost show. They spend ~8 hours filming each location, where (obviously) nothing happened and edited everything together to appear spooky. It was one of the most dull jobs she’s ever had, and she’s now an accountant.
Martin
I’m seriously considering launching a line of foil-lined headwear, along with accompanying magnetic bracelets to ward off this evil radiation. Seems as though the target market is about 40% of the US population.
Cris
@Brachiator: I was just answering your question, man. You asked why the sun and moon should be singled out from any of the other “lights in the sky.” I’m saying the answer to your question is obvious.
maus
@Martin: prisonplanet.tv, infowars.com, http://www.wnd.com, dailypaul.com/ You have your demographic. Make a mint!
PIGL
@Jim Kakalios: of course this is a sound initial argument. But it’s not just the energy of the individual photons, some might say. It’s the Aelecton Flux multiplied by Time that gives the power. I suppose it’s just possible that some signal detection system exists in the body that could transduce these (low?) power signals into some balefull bioligical activity. Not likely, you’d think. Except we can read by starlight….
I’m going to stop now, before I talk myself into believing in unicorns. One way or t’other, this would be better resolvable with physical evidence as opposed to teh woo.
PIGL
@Loneoak: This.
Palooza
@maus: What data, and why does it matter what I believe. The smart grid will expose yet more data about individuals, and there is a legitimate concern and debate that should be had. Of course, the Tea Partier way of claiming the end of the world is nigh, is utterly ridiculous.
maus
@Palooza: I’m fairly privacy centric, I’m just curious about what information you’re most concerned about. Facebook integration? Sharing information about your usage with local government? I’m curious what you feel will change policy-wise with the smart grid.
PIGL
@Hob: My cellphone, a five year old razr, has archaic technology known as an “off-button”, backed up by a “removable battery”. When I am out smashing the state, I make use of this highly reliable tech.
Brachiator
@Cris:
And my response was that it depends on your frame of reference. The original craziness about “electromagnetic hypersensitivity,” or E.H.S., was not even referring to the sun or moon, but to “nearby objects,” cellphones, WiFi systems or smart meters. And even here the craziness does not consider atomic forces.
Jim Kakalios
@matt: Well, considering (a) the power of typical wifi is fairly low (someone said it is about 1 Watt) and (b) human beings are NOT electrical conductors, I don’t think any induced currents are significant.
People are electrocuted by the large current passing through their body, NOT the voltage. The electric chair requires many kiloVolts, and a shaved head with a salt water soaked sponge between the skin and the metal elecrrode – precisely because we are not good electrical conductors, and an effort must be made to overcome our not inconsiderable surface resistance ifa current is to pass through us. AC currents can be supported in insulating materials, but I find it hard to believe that at typical wifi power levels, that the effect is significant.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Physics Professor,
Jim Kakalios
Palooza
@maus: It opens up a bunch of data about what you and I do at home (when we are not on the Internet): voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2009/11/experts_smart_grid_poses_priva.html Is it a “Dont Tread on Me” moment, no probably not. Is it an issue that should be considered, well certainly.
maus
@Palooza:
I think it’s worthy of concern, but
is a bit of an exaggeration. It tells power consumption and times in which power is most/least consumed. I’m not aware of any grid-aware appliances (yet.)
Palooza
@maus: From the article I posted:
voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2009/11/experts_smart_grid_poses_priva.html
The reason you are not aware of grid-aware appliances yet is because we dont have a smartgrid, yet. You can bet bottom dollar that utility and appliance companies will be leveraging every bit of personal information they collect (and it will be monumental amounts of it). The whole “not yet” issue is why these matters should be addressed now.
Jeanne ringland
@Violet: The women in the study are all from the same “village” and some level of regularity could be related to that.
Jeanne ringland
@Violet: I was going to suggest that too. Vinegar works wonders on “sick” glass, as it used to be called by an antique dealer I knew.
Brachiator
@maus:
One day, appliances will all run on Android and will tweet one another about their status. Imagine a social network where the dishwasher tells a refrigerator across the world how many loads of dishes it cleaned that day. Silly humans will think that the refrigerator is benignly telling the grocery store what foods need to be resupplied, but the machines will be plotting their revenge.
mark
@Erik: don’t give me this b.s. Nobody deserves my sympathies because they fear science and remain intentionally ignorant of it.
If you’re informed, you realize:
1. Humans were not created 6000 years ago
2. Vaccines do not cause autism
3. Electromagnetic sensitivity is bullshit
Svensker
@Comrade Mary:
Interesting. I did try the dishwasher cleaning stuff, which didn’t seem to help. But maybe I’ll try again and then switch to the new tab things…if I ever have a dw again. Sigh.
Ha ha. So do not miss periods. There are some things that are great about getting old!