This BBC News report, Wi-fi? Why worry?, talks about school (in Canada and in Chicago) banning Wi-fi because of fears of “the health impact of the 2.4Ghz radio waves used by wireless networks.” BBC News rightly reported that there is no heath concern and pointed out the obvious: “If the journalists were really concerned about the dangers of radio frequency electromagnetic radiation on the sensitive brains of the young, they should be calling for the closure of TV and radio transmission towers rather than asking us to turn off our wi-fi laptops.”

I had to laugh. It reminded me of something humorist and monologist Jean Shepherd said in a 1965 radio broadcast. Shep said, “Do you know that in the early days of radio, everybody blamed everything that happened on radio. In other words, in 1923 or something—it’s a historical fact—when KDKA when on the air or the early radio stations, of course this was like magic to every body, it was fantastic, they could hear stuff right out of the air. And then they began to worry about what was in the air! ‘What are these guys sending out?’ And people were beginning to say all these words that were in the air were beginning to be—were rotting their brains.”

Technology is scary. People are scarier.

[Sorry. Not new. Just editing fix.]

Love is… Listening, with your daughter, to hours of Celine Dion on your iPod playing through the music system in your car on a multi-hour ride home. Wait… And singing along. Singing along and enjoying it. Singing along and enjoying it just because she’s your daughter and she loves Celine Dion.

I read a Reuters’ story on CNN’s web site that CERN is using giant magnets in “First tests in a scientific project aimed at solving mysteries of the universe and the “Big Bang” which created it …” Now, aside from the leap in faith in this science (they seem to know that the “Big Bang”—emphasis mine, capitalization theirs—caused all this, clever “Big Bang” that it was), I am a bit concerned. The article goes on to say, “Researchers on the project, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), say this will recreate in miniature the conditions which existed nanoseconds after the Big Bang some 15 billion years ago and should allow them to see what happened next.”

See, I am more interested in what happened a minute or two before. I mean, what if it is the case that scientists in the previous universe were running just such an experiment? You see them all excited. “Okay. Steady. Ready to throw the switch in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and.”

KABLAM!

The stores and guns you laid up for Y2K won’t help you with this one. 🙂

There are many ways to tell amateurs from the pros. When traveling to a 5-day conference, the pro does not check bags. When watching someone give a briefing (and see, here is an area where my language has changes hanging working at APL. Formerly, I’d have said “give a slide presentation” or “give a talk.”), the amateur points the wireless mouse at the screen, rather than at the computer with the receiver.

We don’t call them “laptops” since they overheat and explode. Check these out, and don’t tell me that some of these sources are dubious! The photos are great. 🙂 “Exploding” Dell Laptop Destroys Truck, Imperils Outsdoorsmen; Dell laptop explodes at Japanese conference; Another PowerBook violently explodes.

As far as we know, a commercial jetliner has never been brought down by a notebok PC, but one can never be too careful.