Friday, August 20, 2010
On balance, the irrational fear of cell-phone radiation has been good for
business. The sale of cell phones was virtually untouched by the news that
San Francisco was requiring retailers to post the "specific absorption
rate" of each model. On the other hand, all the businesses that profited
from the great EMF scare of the 90s are thriving again: there are EMF
detection kits, and an EMF protection pendant that blocks the harmful
effects. Even Microwave News, the newsletter Lou Slesin began writing 30
years ago to warn about microwave ovens, now seems cutting-edge. If your
only income comes from warning people about the danger of EMF, you aren't
going to find it getting any safer. In Ontario, a group of parents is now
complaining that Wi-Fi in the school is making their children sick, and
there's a warning that your bedsprings may act like antennas attracting
more EMF. Im beginning to feel a little queasy myself. It all began with
a 1989 article in the New Yorker by staff writer Paul Brodeur who, like
Slesin, has no science background. When microwave ovens stopped scaring
people, Brodeur switched to power lines; Slesin just goes where the action
is. A 1996 study by the National Academy of Sciences ended the power line
controversy, whereupon the ever-resilient EMF fear industry went back to
microwaves. The public doesn't really understand the difference between
ionizing and non-ionizing radiation anyway. People tend not to hear
anything beyond the word "electromagnetic."
Last week I commented about Conservapedia, which was created to counter
the "liberal bias of Wikipedia." As an example, I quoted from an item
about
relativity and Einstein. Physicist Don Langenberg, Chancellor Emeritus of
the University of Maryland, who happened to be reading "The German Genius"
by Peter Watson (Harper, 2010), remarked that the Conservapedia position
quite accurately echoes a view expressed in May 1924 by Nobel physics
laureates, Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark in which they compared Hitler
with the giants of science. This marked the emergence of "Deutsche
Physik,"
which eschewed relativity and quantum theory, arguing that they were too
theoretical, too abstract, and "threatened to undermine intuitive
mechanical models of the world." Langenberg wonders if its possible that
our rabid right might be pushing us toward revisiting the tragic events of
the early 20th century.
These surveys had become impossible wish lists for every kind of telescope
an imaginative bunch of astronomers could dream up. That's not smart. It
means someone else will make the decisions. This is a reasonable survey.
A lot of it has to do with extrasolar planets. But while we're thinking
big, what are the theoretical limitations? How much is it possible to see
with a telescope if I can build it as large as I want and put it whereever
I want in the solar system?
|
