Wi-Fi vote is TONIGHT!

[Sasu]

TONIGHT Tuesday Mar 18 7 pm at the Teen Center (Youth Annex) the council will vote on Sonic's wi-fi offer.

There is a lot of energy with this both from opponents and from Sonic as they want to continue their "deployment" of wi-fi and consider people with health concerns fearful and irrational. If you signed the petition and you don't want Sebastopol to become a wi-fi hotspot come express your political will and attend tonights meeting!

[PeriodThree]

Deployment is the technical term for what Sonic wants to do.

Putting the word into scare quotes bothers me as a misuse of our shared consensus of how we use language. It seems divisive, and makes it harder to have constructive conversations.

[Sasu]

"Deployment" is Sonic's terminology exactly.

[One Music]

the following is a note i sent to all of the City council members:
PLEASE VOTE NO on Sonic's proposed Wi-Fi for this town. I am unable to attend the meeting due to my severe chronic health condition. . I am one of the hundreds of people who have signed a petition to stop this bad idea. There is NO PROOF that this is safe, however, a lot of evidence to the contrary. As for poor people being able to have "free" internet access this way, how many poor people do you know that can afford a laptop computer? We need more accessible computers in libraries and schools, as well as grants and free computers to qualifying individuals and families, instead of blanketing an entire town with radiation that poses serious health risks to many in our communities, including the elderly, disabled and children, as well as domestic and wild animals and birds.
Thank you for considering the health of the community before corporate profits.

[nbolmer]

Did you actually write "how many poor people do you know that can afford a laptop computer"?

the following is a note i sent to all of the City council members:
PLEASE VOTE NO on Sonic's proposed Wi-Fi for this town. I am unable to attend the meeting due to my severe chronic health condition. . I am one of the hundreds of people who have signed a petition to stop this bad idea. There is NO PROOF that this is safe, however, a lot of evidence to the contrary. As for poor people being able to have "free" internet access this way, how many poor people do you know that can afford a laptop computer? We need more accessible computers in libraries and schools, as well as grants and free computers to qualifying individuals and families, instead of blanketing an entire town with radiation that poses serious health risks to many in our communities, including the elderly, disabled and children, as well as domestic and wild animals and birds.
Thank you for considering the health of the community before corporate profits.

[smithers]

Congratulations on demonstrating the power of fear and ignorance.

First, is wi-fi harmless? I don't know. I do know that free wi-fi is likely to be no more or less harmful than all the secured wi-fi hotspots blanketing the town to which the public has no accessl.

"As for poor people being able to have "free" internet access this way, how many poor people do you know that can afford a laptop computer"

I am a poor person that has a laptop. I wasn't always poor. I've managed to hold onto some of my stuff. I am currently living in Santa Rosa Gospel Mission. I use my laptop to look for work and for school. I am attempting to use it to move from poverty to some form of prosperity and use free wi-fi for access. In my opinion, you are a snob.

"We need more accessible computers in libraries and schools, as well as grants and free computers to qualifying individuals and families, instead of blanketing an entire town with radiation that poses serious health risks to many in our communities, including the elderly, disabled and children, as well as domestic and wild animals and birds."

Good luck with getting government to use more of our tax dollars to benefit anyone other than the corporations you rail against. Look at what's happened to the mental health system in this county. Santa Rosa Memorial Hospitals Fulton Campus will be shut down in April. They have a psychiatric ward there that will be gone with it. A nurse acquaintance of mine told me that anyone with a mental disorder who needs to be hospitalize will be shipped out of the county.

There is a lot of very real suffering going on. Suffering that is not theoretical. I was suicidal at one point and there was help for me that will no longer be there. I suffer from depression. If I didn't have school and access to the internet to help me find help and support my efforts towards health, happiness, and a future with a job where I can support myself, I probably would've ended up in the obits.

John

[Barry]

Wireless disruption

Sebastopol officials reject offer of free Wi-Fi downtown due to health concerns; proponents say that's ridiculous

Daniel Osmer works on his laptop computer
connected to a Wi-Fi network in a Starbucks
coffee shop in Sebastopol on Sunday afternoon.
Osmer, founder of the group Science Buzz Cafe,
plans to hold a panel debate on the
health effects of Wi-Fi.
Christopher Chung / The Press Democrat

By ROBERT DIGITALE
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
March 24, 2008

Concerned about possible health effects from wireless Internet networks, Sebastopol officials have reversed course and turned down a free Wi-Fi area network.

The City Council voted 4-0 last week to rescind an agreement with Sonic.net that would have allowed the Santa Rosa-based Internet provider to install the network in the city center as it has done in the downtowns of Santa Rosa and Petaluma.

Sebastopol Mayor Craig Litwin thanked Sonic for a "very nice gesture" but said citizens had voiced concerns that "create enough suspicion that there may be a health hazard."

Sonic CEO Dane Jasper said his company is sympathetic to those who blame radiofrequency signals for their health problems.

But he maintained that the exposure from a Wi-Fi network would be "a drop in the bucket" compared to the amount that people receive daily from TV, radio and cellular phone signals.

Moreover, he said, downtown Sebastopol already has plenty of businesses emitting Wi-Fi signals. In a one-block radius around the town's central intersection of Bodega Avenue and Main Street, Jasper detected 25 such signals. His company had proposed to add one more signal at that intersection.

"Wi-Fi is pretty much everywhere," he said.

Jasper and Wi-Fi critics strongly disagree on what is known about the possible health risks from radiofrequency, or RF, signals.

Jasper cited the World Health Organization. Its Internet site concludes: "Considering the very low exposure levels and research results collected to date, there is no convincing scientific evidence that the weak RF signals from base stations and wireless networks cause adverse health effects."

But critics said good studies exist that show ill effects to both adults and children from such signals. And they disputed Jasper's contention that one more wireless network will have a negligible effect on Sebastopol residents.

"A little bit more is going to cause a little more problems," said Jeffrey Fawcett, president of the Sustainable Health Institute, an educational nonprofit based in Camp Meeker.

Last fall the council reached agreement with Sonic to install the network, which would allow wireless Internet connections for people with Wi-Fi-enabled devices, such as laptop computers and cell phones.

Sebastopol resident Sandi Maurer gathered support to persuade the council to reconsider the matter.

Maurer, who said she is sensitive to electricity much as some people are sensitive to chemicals, worked with others to gather roughly 500 signatures from people concerned about the effects of Wi-Fi signals.

Sebastopol Councilwoman Linda Kelley requested that the issue come back to the council last week, giving Maurer and other critics a chance to successfully plead their case.

"I feel very grateful to the City Council, to Linda Kelley," Maurer said.

You can reach Staff Writer Robert Digitale at 521-5285 or robert.digitale@pressdemocrat.com

[nbolmer]

How frustrating. Now we are blanketed in just about the same amount of boogie-man rays, without the benefit. I assume the people who fought this have no TVs or computers emitting exactly the same zombie-rays.

[Barry]

There was another article today about the Sebastopol Wi-Fi debate that mentioned WaccoBB.net!!! You can see it on the PD or on WaccoBB.

[PeriodThree]

Nbolmer,

There has been debate about how much the amount of exposure would change if public access points were added to the community.

Sonic and other propenents have made the claim that people would not add access points, and might even remove some, if there was a public alternative.

Sasu and other opponents assert that exposure would increase, since no one would switch to a public access point from their current private one.

The number of public access points is going to increase as a result of this vote, as an alternate and uncontrolled network grows.

As for the question of 'Zombie Rays.' As near as I can tell, the opponents of wifi have general issues with more or less all (or maybe just all human created) electromagnetic fields.

I think, and I would happily correct this, that the opponents are concerned about the frequency of the EMF source, and the modulation of the source.

(I have read Sasu claim harm from devices operating at 120Hz, 8000-20000Hz (8-20Khz), 600,000,000-1,800,000,000Hz (600-1.8Mhz), and 2,400,000,000Hz (2.4GHz).

They also appear to believe, and again, I welcome correction, that putting digital data onto a frequency makes it more harmful. (Actually, I would really like to see correction or confirmation of that point).

VHF Television uses a lower frequency than wifi. 30 MHz to 300 MHz for the VHF bands (compared with about 2,500 MHz for wifi).

UHF is from 471.25MHz for channel 14 to 801.25Mhz for channel 69.in the 300MHz to 3,000MHz

How frustrating. Now we are blanketed in just about the same amount of boogie-man rays, without the benefit. I assume the people who fought this have no TVs or computers emitting exactly the same zombie-rays.

[Sciguy]

Folks:
I read this in the Press Democrat article:

"Sebastopol resident Sandi Maurer gathered support to persuade the council to reconsider the matter."

I don't know Sandi Maurer personally but I suggest that she (he?) and all the others who claim such exquisite sensitivity to electric fields should be put to the test (or invited to put themselves to the test if they truly believe what they say). I think many of them have reported all kinds of real reactions to exposure. Presumably they can tell when they are exposed.

Let's set up a simple double blind test. Let Sonic put up a wireless site on one side of a curtain. Put one (ultimately several) of the sensitives on the other side of the curtain. Synchronize watches and have the wireless transmitter go on and off for some unpredictable but reasonable time, such as a minute or a half hour depending on what the sensitive person claims to need to feel the signal. Make sure that there is no indication to anyone when the transmitter is on, such as a hum or a light. Have the transmitter off-on behavior controlled by someone in another location entirely, perhaps far away at Sonic if that is possible. Record all the times when the transmitter is on. Simultaneously record the statements of the sensitive person reporting when the transmitter is on. Afterwards the two reports can be compared. A statistician, perhaps at Sonoma State, can be tapped to determine whether the correspondence is better than random. This is known as science. It is the way that these disputes are properly decided.
Personally, I would expect that the so-called sensitive would not even have a clue when the transmitter is on. But I would have no way to affect the results with my bias. That's the beauty of double blind experiments. No one has any idea of how it is going while the experiment runs, until the data is collected.
If the sensitives refuse to participate, it will cast doubt on their sincerity and might be probative the next time the City Council considers the question. And if they do participate, and prove their point, we will all have learned something.
We might even want to have some runs when the transmitter is always on. And others when it is always off. Those might prove interesting to mix in with the on-off kinds of tests.
Recently some taste tests on bottled water were run with the labels missing. I understand that people who thought that nothing could ever be as good as their favorite water were astounded to learn that they had selected tap water as the best tasting. I heard about others who thought that (super-expensive) Grey Goose vodka was the best but were unable to pick it out of a lineup when the identifications were removed. And finally, I heard of a taste test in France where a bunch of French winemakers were astounded to learn that they had awarded highest marks to California wines, rather than French wines. Eliminating bias thru double blind studies can do wonders to prejudices.

Any takers???? I would volunteer to help set up the experiment. Maybe the Sebastopol Center for the Arts might provide a location.

Paul Palmer

[voxregalis]

Folks:
I read this in the Press Democrat article:

"Sebastopol resident Sandi Maurer gathered support to persuade the council to reconsider the matter."

I don't know Sandi Maurer personally but I suggest that she (he?) and all the others who claim such exquisite sensitivity to electric fields should be put to the test (or invited to put themselves to the test if they truly believe what they say). I think many of them have reported all kinds of real reactions to exposure. Presumably they can tell when they are exposed.

Let's set up a simple double blind test. ...

***************************************************8

Government Benefits, Grants, and Financial Aid


http://www.usa.gov/Citizen/Topics/Benefits.shtml

[Zeno Swijtink]

Folks:
I read this in the Press Democrat article:

"Sebastopol resident Sandi Maurer gathered support to persuade the council to reconsider the matter."

I don't know Sandi Maurer personally but I suggest that she (he?) and all the others who claim such exquisite sensitivity to electric fields should be put to the test (or invited to put themselves to the test if they truly believe what they say). I think many of them have reported all kinds of real reactions to exposure. Presumably they can tell when they are exposed.

Let's set up a simple double blind test. (...) Any takers???? I would volunteer to help set up the experiment. Maybe the Sebastopol Center for the Arts might provide a location.

Paul Palmer

In the case of mobile phone such tests have been conducted: see below for a test involving people apparently few of whom claimed to have electromagnetic sensibility.

Now before you conclude that resistance to wi-fi is all nonsense, if you peruse the articles in this journal, Bioelectromagnetics, more, you'll see that the whole subject of impacts of EMFs on biological systems is highly complex and not well understood. It may all depend in subtle ways on the intricate structure of the EM field.

Other titles include: "Electromagnetic fields alter the expression of estrogen receptor cofactors in breast cancer cells," "Alimentary hyperlipemia of rabbits is affected by exposure to low-intensity pulsed magnetic fields," and "Acute exposure to low-level CW and GSM-modulated 900 MHz radiofrequency does not affect Ba2+ currents through voltage-gated calcium channels in rat cortical neurons".

I think both sides in this debate express a certainty the evidence does not yet warrant!

Happy Spring, Zeno

****
Perception of the electromagnetic field emitted by a mobile phone
Myoung Soo Kwon 1 *, Mika Koivisto 1, Matti Laine 2, Heikki Hämäläinen 1

Bioelectromagnetics, Volume 29, Issue 2 , Pages 154 - 159
1Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, University of Turku, Turku, Finland
2Department of Psychology, Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland
email: Myoung Soo Kwon (mskwon@utu.fi)
*Correspondence to Myoung Soo Kwon, Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, Assistentinkatu 7, 20014 University of Turku, Turku, Finland.

Funded by:
Finnish National Technology Agency (Tekes); Academy of Finland; Grant Number: project 205661

KEYWORDS
EMF • electromagnetic sensibility • electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS) • provocation study
ABSTRACT
Electromagnetic sensibility refers to the ability to perceive the electromagnetic field (EMF) without necessarily developing health symptoms attributed to EMF exposure. A large sample of young healthy adults (n = 84) performed two forced-choice tasks on the perception of the GSM mobile phone EMF (902 MHz pulsed at 217 Hz), Was the field on? and Did the field change? (3 conditions × 100 trials for each task, n = 600 trials in total). A monetary prize was announced for good performance (correct response rate 75%, n = 600 trials). The performance was no better than expected by chance, and thus none of the participants won the prize. Two participants showed extraordinary performance in one of the task conditions (Was the field on?, n = 100 trials), with correct response rates of 97% (P = 1.28 × 10-25) and 94% (P = 9.40 × 10-22), but they failed to replicate the result in the retest of six blocks of the same condition 1 month later. Six participants had reported being able to perceive the mobile phone EMF in the preliminary inquiry, but they performed no better than the others. This study provides empirical evidence against the existence of electromagnetic sensibility to the mobile phone EMF, demonstrating the necessity for replication in EMF studies. Bioelectromagnetics 29:154-159, 2008. © 2007 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

[LOÜ]

I think Wi-Fi is essentially harmless... Going outside for a bit is far more dangerous than having a Wireless modem next to you all day, at least from my understanding and experience.

Allow me to use a metaphor: Carefully taking cover from and flanking a sharp pebble in the middle of a WWI battlefield is utterly stupid. It should be the least of your concerns, but fretting about it will only slow your ultimate progress, jeopardize your objective and result in you not noticing and responding to actual risks, like machine guns, poison gas and sweeping artillery barrages coming your way...

Here some of us are freaking out about this tiny Wi-Fi network, wasting the Cities' time and effort, and failing to do things about real problems, such as education, pollution of all sorts, safety, acceptance and tolerance, and the improvement of the world for us and future life...

Do you want to cry over this Wi-Fi network or actually do something good?

-LOÜ

PS: I do, in fact, know *several* low income individuals who have laptops (Mostly older ones) but have problems connecting to the Internet, and would greatly like to have a public Wi-Fi network in the downtown so they could do research and stuff on something other than library computers, freeing them up for more people as well...

PSS: I am a MASSIVE geek, and generally weird youth... I have never noticed any effects or EMS from my Uber leet High Performance Gaming Computer, other than the large addition to our electric bill... (700+ watt Power Supply, lawl)

[nbolmer]

700 watts? You call that a PSU? (I kid! I was an exec at OCZ before becoming a restaurateur). I completely agree with this point. From a purely pragmatic point of view, Sebastopol looks less attractive to those who don't wear tinfoil hats- I know that having free always-on wifi would be a very large draw, Google and others have banked on this. Moreover, it changes nothing with respect to the residents of sebastopol with wifi networks on at all times (scanning right now, there are a dozen private ones just in my laptop's range... and a public one... hmmm). Regardless of the number of public wifi hotspots around, there are a bazillion wifi routers in town, and other emf sources of all varieties. This has done precisely nothing productive for Sebastopol. It has not "paved the way" for other communities, but set itself as a laughing stock, and become a caricature of the already ... nutty ... reputation this area has. Again, unless you plan on never leaving your lead-lined walls, you will be subjected to the horrors of wifi and emf radiation. Whenever you pass the bazillions of houses with wifi routers, access points, other communities and cities. If you want to isolate yourself in a Faraday cage, be my guest, but wifi is everywhere, and that isn't changing- it's rapidly growing. This has been a monumentally misguided and ineffective waste of time, money, and neural activity.

I think Wi-Fi is essentially harmless... Going outside for a bit is far more dangerous than having a Wireless modem next to you all day, at least from my understanding and experience.

Allow me to use a metaphor: Carefully taking cover from and flanking a sharp pebble in the middle of a WWI battlefield is utterly stupid. It should be the least of your concerns, but fretting about it will only slow your ultimate progress, jeopardize your objective and result in you not noticing and responding to actual risks, like machine guns, poison gas and sweeping artillery barrages coming your way...

Here some of us are freaking out about this tiny Wi-Fi network, wasting the Cities' time and effort, and failing to do things about real problems, such as education, pollution of all sorts, safety, acceptance and tolerance, and the improvement of the world for us and future life...

Do you want to cry over this Wi-Fi network or actually do something good?

-LOÜ

PS: I do, in fact, know *several* low income individuals who have laptops (Mostly older ones) but have problems connecting to the Internet, and would greatly like to have a public Wi-Fi network in the downtown so they could do research and stuff on something other than library computers, freeing them up for more people as well...

PSS: I am a MASSIVE geek, and generally weird youth... I have never noticed any effects or EMS from my Uber leet High Performance Gaming Computer, other than the large addition to our electric bill... (700+ watt Power Supply, lawl)

[thewholetruth]

I applaud your honesty, and your observation is correct about how Sebastopol City Council is viewed by others in Sonoma County. I applaud Barry, as well, for allowing you to tell the truth here without deleting you or your post. Tin foil hats? LOL I've read that in several posts. LOL I love it. It's Sebastopol, in the world's eyes. And I grew up in Sebastopol, back when it was a nice, Conservative little apple town where everyone knew each other. Back before the hippies took over. It breaks my heart to see what it's become today: The Tin-Foil Hat center of the Universe.

700 watts? You call that a PSU? (I kid! I was an exec at OCZ before becoming a restaurateur). I completely agree with this point. From a purely pragmatic point of view, Sebastopol looks less attractive to those who don't wear tinfoil hats- I know that having free always-on wifi would be a very large draw, Google and others have banked on this. Moreover, it changes nothing with respect to the residents of sebastopol with wifi networks on at all times (scanning right now, there are a dozen private ones just in my laptop's range... and a public one... hmmm). Regardless of the number of public wifi hotspots around, there are a bazillion wifi routers in town, and other emf sources of all varieties. This has done precisely nothing productive for Sebastopol. It has not "paved the way" for other communities, but set itself as a laughing stock, and become a caricature of the already ... nutty ... reputation this area has. Again, unless you plan on never leaving your lead-lined walls, you will be subjected to the horrors of wifi and emf radiation. Whenever you pass the bazillions of houses with wifi routers, access points, other communities and cities. If you want to isolate yourself in a Faraday cage, be my guest, but wifi is everywhere, and that isn't changing- it's rapidly growing. This has been a monumentally misguided and ineffective waste of time, money, and neural activity.