Man Sues Neighbor For Not Turning Off His Wi-Fi 428
Scyth3 writes "A man is suing his neighbor for not turning off his cell phone or wireless router. He claims it affects his 'electromagnetic allergies,' and has resorted to being homeless. So, why doesn't he check into a hotel? Because hotels typically have wireless internet for free. I wonder if a tinfoil hat would help his cause?"
Seems oddly like... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:litmus test (Score:3, Interesting)
I have a way to be fair to this guy, as well as punish people abusing torts. It's very simple:
a) If he can demonstrate his ability to detect electromagnetic fields under reasonable experimental conditions, they'll consider his case.
b) If he can't demonstrate his ability to detect electromagnetic fields under reasonable experimental conditions significantly more than chance, he owes the plaintiff the same amount he's seeking.
I call this the `put up or shut up` principle. Although, it might be more widely known as the `Let's not be flaming idiots` principle.
There's a few issues here. First, the man may just be suing for equity, as in suing to obtain an order of restraint requiring his neighbor to disable his EM emissions. As well, there are situations where a court considering some complex issue where an order of restraint may result in unfair damages against the other party to have the initiating party place a bond against such damages.
This guy faces an uphill battle, since he has to prove to a better than 50% confidence that his neighbor's EM emissions are causing him injury. That's the important thing, the law does not require him to prove 100%, or to a reasonable scientific certainty that his claims are valid. He has to prove to either a judge or a jury that it's more likely that his claims are true than his opponent.
Two Words (Score:3, Interesting)
Intel has equipped entire floors at Jones Farm with these (even coatings on the Windows). Yes, it makes cell phones unusable on those floors.
It'll be interesting to see if this goes on long. (Score:3, Interesting)
I mean, hey, my neighbor was just fined tens of thousands of dollars by the FAA for launching a homemade balloon. They're serving jail time now. I don't want to mess with organizations matching the F[A-Z]{2} regex.
Sean
Allens (Score:2, Interesting)
One time, um, I read this trilogy of books by Timothy Zahn called Conqueror's Pride, and the aliens in it were susceptible to radio waves. So they thought the humans were attacking them, but really we were just communicating with radio waves, but it was hurting them so a war started. It was mostly a good trilogy. Mostly.
Re:Retard. (Score:1, Interesting)
The key difference being that we have ample evidence to suggest people can be allergic to things (cats, peanuts, pollen, ect), but controlled attempts to prove that that electromagnetic sensitivity is real have turned up flat. [skeptoid.com] ES is BS, or at the very least, it is a psychological thing, not a physiological condition. This bears all the marks of the nonsensical woowoo ideas out there built upon anecdotal stories that real science can't confirm.
Re:Retard. (Score:3, Interesting)
I call bull.
I'll put up $1,000 as a bet that you can't tell when xrays are passing through you in a true blind test. Find a hospital that will do the test, call me and I'll gladly put the money into an escrow. My email address is:
mr naz at hot mail dot com
If you're not BSing, then put your $1,000 where your mouth is.
Re:Retard. (Score:4, Interesting)
Many allergic reactions (like my own seasonal allergies) don't come and go like a light switch in the presence or absence of the allergen.
Right, because your immune system is actually being agitated by the actual allergic response to the actual allergens, and it takes time to come down, plus there are probably still actual allergens like pollen stuck in your sinuses and continuing to irritate you.
Speaking of light switches, all I can think of is the case of a cell phone company that put up a new tower, and all the advanced [angryflower.com] folks in the neighborhood by it complained that the tower was irritating their EM allergies and giving them headaches and whatnot.
The company's response to their complaints? "Gee, we can only imagine how bad it's going to get when we actually turn the tower on!"
The tower wasn't on. There was no EM radiation that could have provoked any hypothetical allergy response. It was all in their extremely advanced heads.
The ultimate kicker to this story would be if the neighbor had actually turned off their wi-fi weeks ago but told the guy they hadn't just to keep cheesing them off and to show how the "allergy" only exists as long as they think there's evil wi-fi. Unfortunately I'm sure that's not true, because the neighbor probably finds their wi-fi useful and why the hell would you stop using a useful and harmless tool because the nutjob next door thinks it's bad for them?
As far as the "weird unexplained things happen!" reasoning... Yeah, weird things do happen, but it's not like wi-fi itself is some unexplained phenomenon. We know what the power densities of it are at any given range, and unless you believe in homeopathic E-M radiation, there's no way it's having the effects people claim. High voltage power lines? Maybe there's something to that. Wi-fi? Yeah fucking right.
Re:Retard. (Score:3, Interesting)
Others have pointed out your reaction to light is not an allergy. But even if it was...
Because while science documents that the body has receptors sensitive to light - most obviously the eyes, but also the skin - there are no receptors sensitive to radio spectrum EMR.
Re:Retard. (Score:5, Interesting)
You can't be "Allergic to wi-fi"
Put him in a room, and turn the wireless on and off. Guaranteed he won't be able to tell the difference.
Maybe that's not what it is.
My neighbour's phone was giving me a nasty headache. I thought it was food allergies, but one time I was in the backyard and his window was opened. I noticed the throbbing was pointing directly at that opening. I went over to his house and explained what was going on. He thought it was really strange, but let me in to look around. Once I figured out it was the phone(took all of 10 seconds to find it), I told him. He was happy to accept the new phone that I gave him later that day. No more headaches.
Best bet... some sort of frequency that I can *almost* hear, but nobody else can? The new phone was the exact same frequency, so I suspect his was somehow defective.
The guy suing could be a hypochondriac, or maybe there's more to it. I can hear CRT TVs - but that's pretty common. I can also hear circuit breakers, capacitors, power lines (I try not to get too close), LCD monitors, battery powered clocks, some watches, etc.; but none of that stuff causes me to have a headache. I have a Wireless G network with the signal strength ramped up - Tomato WRT54GL - but no headache.
I think my (superior?) hearing might be genetic. I have an Uncle nearing age 60, and he can still hear that annoying Mosquito ringtone that's supposed to be Teen-only.
What I don't get is, why would this guy sue? My first line of attack would be begging them to let me network their whole house, if it was real physical discomfort. If it wasn't physical - just something audible like being able to hear their TV - then who cares?
Re:Retard. (Score:2, Interesting)
I have an alergy to sunlight, usually when emerging from a dark room into bright sunlight my eyes water, my nose goes ichy and I sneeze sometimes. It lasts a few minutes until my eyes adjust. I always thought this was a natural normal reaction and thought nothing of it, indeed it makes sense that your eyes water in bright light. But no, when I mentioned to a professional, apparently it's common but not normal and has been diagnosed as an alergy.
You are 100% correct. Unfortunately, no amount of correctness gives you the right to be an asshole.
This guy's doctor probably said it was an allergy because that is exactly how it acts. I have the same problem, and my wife, who is also in the medical field, didn't believe me when I told her the problem was sunlight. She told me that I had to have some sort of allergy to something outdoors. Explaining that it wasn't a problem at night, on cloudy days, or when I wear sunglasses didn't matter. She said it had to be an allergy because it has all the symptoms of an allergy and no one has that type of allergic reaction to sunlight. It wasn't until she saw my brother and daughter have same issue that she finally believed me. Well, that and 30 seconds of googling.
So, just because this guys doctor said it was an allergy doesn't mean you have to go off on him or his doctor, at least not until you become a GP yourself. His doctor just found that this was as easy an explanation as any for something he really didn't have an answer as to why it happens that is not going to cause any harm.
Re:Retard. (Score:3, Interesting)
While laying in the CT machine with the spinning going on, while there is no xrays being emitted everything feels fine, but as soon as the xrays start I feel a tingling sensation on the side of my body closest to the emitter and it rotates around my body with it. The sensation isn't on the surface either, it is more sub dermal (about a cm or so deep I think).
After talking to the radiologist about it, he said he was fairly rare but some people do feel xrays.
Re:Retard. (Score:3, Interesting)
I can feel them, too. They aren't painful. In fact... Until today I didn't know that wasn't normal.
Now that I think of it, I don't think I feel them at the dentist. I wonder why...
I can also hear electronics when they break. It drives me crazy, because I'll hear a high-pitched squeal, at the very limit of my range of hearing, and I know that something is wrong. Also, there's a corner in Shimbashi (I live in Tokyo) that squeals, and I think it's the train track there. It's incredibly painful, but people are just walking around, not noticing anything. I was really happy when I found another person who heard the same thing at the same place.
So what I'm saying is that it is entirely possible for people to have differently-tuned physical sensations. There's nothing even slightly strange about pointing that out.
That is not to say that the guy in TFA isn't a nut. He clearly is. We're surrounded by radio waves all the time, and his next-door neighbor's WiFi is not really that strong. Does he have a cellphone? A wireless handset for his landline? A cordless keyboard? Come on.
There is nowhere he can go (Score:3, Interesting)
There isn't. No place for him to go where he could find relief, unless he builds himself a Faraday cage to live in. Doesn't matter what his neighbor does or not.
Cosmic microwave background radiation is broadcasting at 2.4Ghz. [wikipedia.org] There is literally no place outside of a Faraday cage in this entire universe he could be happy.
Also, this is a good article. [wikipedia.org]
Re:Retard. (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm betting that if the neighbor merely stopped broadcasting his SSID, the "allergy" would cease.