French Woman Gets €800/month For Electromagnetic-Field 'Disability' 456
An anonymous reader writes: If you were dismayed to hear Tuesday's news that a school is being sued over Wi-Fi sickness, you might be even more disappointed in a recent verdict by the French judicial system. A court based in Toulouse has awarded a disability claim of €800 (~$898) per month for three years over a 39-year-old woman's "hypersensitivity to electromagnetic waves." Robin Des Toits, an organization that campaigns for "sufferers" of this malady, was pleased: "We can no longer say that it is a psychiatric illness." (Actually, we can and will.) The woman has been living in a remote part of France's south-west mountains with no electricity around. She claims to be affected by common gadgets like cellphones.
When The Lunatics Take Over The Asylum (Score:5, Insightful)
Subject says it all. It really is time to start taking lawyers and other bottom feeders to task. Mentally ill people should be treated for their paranoia, not have it confirmed.
Re:When The Lunatics Take Over The Asylum (Score:5, Insightful)
Subject says it all. It really is time to start taking lawyers and other bottom feeders to task. Mentally ill people should be treated for their paranoia, not have it confirmed.
I'm just happy to see it happen somewhere other than the US. Turns out other countries have nuts and greedy lawyers, too.
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Yeah, it's the lawyers' faults. Getting awards for bullshit diagnoses is just plain wrong. If you want to help this woman, get her some help with her mental health issues.
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Apparently, a law degree is not required to be a judge, perhaps you should apply for the job since you think others are so poor at it.
http://work.chron.com/qualific... [chron.com]
Re:When The Lunatics Take Over The Asylum (Score:5, Insightful)
From TFA:
"Several people in the UK have been diagnosed with electrosensitivity and received help for the disability but any financial allowance usually refers to a different name for the condition or a related condition," it [the court] said in a statement.
I'll bet the judge decided she was so delusional as to be unfit to work, and gave her benefits based on that. The "different name for the condition" could be delusional thinking (or whatever the correct psychiatric term for that is - IANAP). Mental illness certainly can be debilitating.
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Now, I know studies have been done, so such sensitivity almost certainly doesn't exist,
There are also studies showing the opposite.
Also: it is plain stupid (or simply uneducated) to believe such sensitives are not existing. After all the human body consists 70% of water. It is a no brainer that radio waves affect a human body. Hint: most modern communication is in the microwave band, which is easy to show that it indeed has effects on the human body.
Do you get "ill" from it? No idea.
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Wonko the Sane had it right, time to live outside the Asylum.
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Subject says it all. It really is time to start taking lawyers and other bottom feeders to task. Mentally ill people should be treated for their paranoia, not have it confirmed.
I have no problem with the lady getting assistance, but unfortunately the courts think they or a jury can decide what the cause is.
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Subject says it all. It really is time to start taking lawyers and other bottom feeders to task. Mentally ill people should be treated for their paranoia, not have it confirmed.
I have no problem with the lady getting assistance, but unfortunately the courts think they or a jury can decide what the cause is.
Based on just the title, I had no problem with it either. My first thought was how nice it must be to live in a civilized country that treats severe mental illnesses as a legitimate disability.
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Yep, Lawyers are a huge part of the problem.
Re:When The Lunatics Take Over The Asylum (Score:4, Insightful)
Like what?
Restless leg syndrome?
Non-24?
SAD?
PBA?
ADD?
All a bunch of bullshit invented to sell drugs that don't even WORK.
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Yes it is.
Ask anyone who ever worked at a bowling alley.
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Re:When The Lunatics Take Over The Asylum (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:When The Lunatics Take Over The Asylum (Score:4, Interesting)
All a bunch of bullshit invented to sell drugs that don't even WORK.
So the conditions are fake and the drugs don't work??
I'm curious.... how would you know if the drugs were working?
Re:When The Lunatics Take Over The Asylum (Score:4, Insightful)
So the conditions are fake and the drugs don't work??
I'm curious.... how would you know if the drugs were working?
It's pretty simple.
Step 1) You remove her from all electromagnetic fields and see if her symptoms change.
Step 2) You put her back in electromagnetic fields and provide her with drugs in two different periods (One using real drugs, one using placebos) and see if her symptoms change accordingly.
Since no one even bothered with step 1 according to the article (There is still sunlight in that remote area she is living in so she is still exposed to EM fields much stronger than we can produce on earth) and they refuse step 2 outright, we can conclude she has no sensitivity to EM since clearly her symptoms change while still being influenced by the same fields the entire time.
She basically claimed similar to "I experience pain while living in a house with a front door, so I moved into another house without a front door (She says while standing in the front doorway) and my pain went away! Clearly removing the front door that I didn't remove means the door was the cause of my pain"
In that made up example we have the same evidence: The claimed cause of her problem was present in both cases so should have the exact same symptoms, yet her symptoms do change, so clearly the cause is something else.
Re:When The Lunatics Take Over The Asylum (Score:5, Informative)
Do you remember a few years ago when stomach ulcers were "known" to be caused by excessive anxiety?
"Non-24" is stupid marketing around a problem that is entirely non-controversial. You'd have to be a complete moron to not suspect that blind people might not synchronize well to a light cue. By far, the more remarkable observation is that some totally blind people do synchronize to light cues.
SAD is non-controversial. The disorder is documented as is the treatment. The treatment isn't a drug, BTW, it's a bright light. Alternatively, you can make an effort to get more sunlight in the day (unless you're above the arctic circle, of course).
RLS and PBA are also non-controversial.
ADD is real but most of the kids diagnosed don't actually have it.
You've been confused by the disease mongering over-simplified commercials. They are real conditions that people actually have. The quick fix they offer may or may not be helpful and may or may not kill you with side effects.
Re:When The Lunatics Take Over The Asylum (Score:4, Interesting)
I dunno. Depression studies show that vigourous excercise several times a week is just as effective a treatment as the leading drugs at maintaining happiness and preventing suicide. Does that make Depression a real condition and disease, or just a result of our modern world allowing us to sit on our butts? If living a more simple lifestyle with more manual labor effectively cures your disease, is it even a real thing? We discussed this endlessly in biology. It's an interesting philisophical question.
Re:When The Lunatics Take Over The Asylum (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would it no longer be a disease just because it is easily avoided and is best cured by something other than drugs?
Re:When The Lunatics Take Over The Asylum (Score:4, Insightful)
The cure to the common cold is staying in bed, keeping hydrated and waiting it out.
Does this mean that the common cold does not exist as a real condition?
Re:When The Lunatics Take Over The Asylum (Score:4, Funny)
Fuck man, you must be a gas at parties!
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I have gas too...
Re: When The Lunatics Take Over The Asylum (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, in order for ADD/ADHD to not be real then the symptoms must not be real and no parenting technique will work any more than the drugs. Also the observed improvement attributed to the drugs must be fake too. So what is the true nature of the observed behavior if you are so certain it's not real?
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'Have you tried smacking your kid?'
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So you want the kid to fear you too? Don't they have enough shit to contend with already?
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I grew up when it was OK for parents to discipline their children. I had to pick my own switch once, and only once. My kids did as well. And guess what, they grew up to be successful in school and their careers.
Being taught to respect authority isn't 'contending' with anything. They aren't going to grow up and be mentally ill due to getting a spanking when they misbehave. I firmly believe a lot of problems with today's children/young adults are a direct result of being brought up knowing there are no conseq
Re: When The Lunatics Take Over The Asylum (Score:4, Insightful)
There are plenty of ways to discipline a child without hitting them. For example, negative punishment: take something away from the child that s/he likes, such as a toy, television, internet, etc.
Also keep in mind that punishment does not train behavior, it merely stops it. Training behavior is best accomplished with rewards.
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There are plenty of ways to discipline a child without hitting them. For example, negative punishment: take something away from the child that s/he likes, such as a toy, television, internet, etc.
Also keep in mind that punishment does not train behavior, it merely stops it. Training behavior is best accomplished with rewards.
Actually, negative reinforcement works best when it is administered promptly after the undesired action, every time it occurs, be it physical punishment or mental punishment. There severity of it is of less importance, but obviously can't be too light.
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I think what is missing from most parents is the follow through
This.
I hear constant streams of "if you don't do XXXX then I'm going to YYYY" from parents but they never actually seem to do it. If they actually do try to follow up the kid will scream for 0.0005 seconds and the parent instantly gets all apologetic.
Don't be afraid to let kids scream a couple of times. Totally ignore them when they do it. They'll soon figure out it doesn't work.
Pet hate #2 is parents who constantly ask kids what they want to do today, what they want to eat, or whatever. You don't ask kids
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I never used physical violence in raising my son. I also got him into self-defense lessons, and gave him permission to use that training in school. (He had been pushed down the stairs, which I considered a potentially serious incident. The principal wasn't real happy when I told him that, but her happiness wasn't my responsibility.)
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Don't be afraid to let kids scream a couple of times. Totally ignore them when they do it. They'll soon figure out it doesn't work.
The message is quite the opposite.
If I have trouble and need my parents: they don't care.
ask kids what they want to do today, what they want to eat, or whatever. You don't ask kids what they want, you tell them
The message again is quite the opposite: you are worthless shit, you eat what i give you, you do what I tell you.
You put whatever it is everybody else is eating on a plate
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being a parent of a child who was diagnosed with ADHD and put on ritalin for nine years, I can absolutely say with conviction that the condition is (or was in his case at least) caused by environment. I didn't like the idea of him being on an UNTESTED medication, one which had and to this day remains UNPROVEN efficacy, and made fucking huge amounts of noise to determine the cause rather than skimming over the symptoms. He himself found (he's 18 now and ugly enough to make his own decisions and deal with the
Re: When The Lunatics Take Over The Asylum (Score:5, Informative)
I have ADD, and I've had it for many years.
The name is horrible. It's not that I lack the ability to pay attention, so much as I am required to pay attention to multiple things at once. To make an analogy to computers, my brain must run multithreaded. If I have to focus on a single task, a part of me is bored, and I can feel it. In a child, that frustration often leads to misbehavior, which is why the "bad parenting" myth persists.
It's worth noting that many medications function by shutting down that extra part, but often they don't relieve the discomfort. Sure, the ability to focus improves, but it doesn't make the subject any better.
I've taught myself to cope with the condition, usually entertaining myself with tactile puzzles or other fiddly bits while my more-conscious attention is watching the more important task. As I type this, for example, I have a triple-tap adapter [hardwarestore.com] nearby, that I periodically pick up and toss around while consciously thinking about my words. That's enough to satisfy the need to do something else. Similar techniques get me through the day at work, where I've been able to use the wide focus to me advantage, being able to troubleshoot several problems at once.
Re: When The Lunatics Take Over The Asylum (Score:5, Insightful)
That isn't ADD, it's being bored, whether due to intellect, knowledge, or interest level in the subject. Everyone deals with boredom. It's like the weird dream of driving a car from the back seat. It's an astonishingly common dream, but most people think it's strange because they haven't heard another person talk about it before. You're not special, sorry.
Re: When The Lunatics Take Over The Asylum (Score:4, Interesting)
It's important and completely lacking in the psychology field to actually validate behavior models and such analogies against physiology. It doesn't happen, and is specifically why your false analogy can seep through the cracks as useful.
Not this shit again... (Score:5, Informative)
Done in one.
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Re:Not this shit again... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Not this shit again... (Score:2, Insightful)
But, paying to settle sets precedence. That can be more costly in the long run.
It should be very easy to verify whether people have this 'sensitivity'. Put subjects in a faraday cage and test whether they can detect RF or not in a blind study.
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Not in France. Some countries have laws that are written by experts, not made up on the fly 'cause a judge had a bad poop this morning.
Re:Not this shit again... (Score:5, Funny)
data, facts, statistics, double blind studies, and science.
Re:Not this shit again... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Not this shit again... (Score:5, Insightful)
> Anything with a double-blind requirement falls well short of settling an issue because it is subjective.
That is nonsensical. A test has a double blind requirement because it's the standard in removing bias from the equation.
The question of exactly what you're testing and to what degree, is not subjective either. What you are saying (badly) is experiments are often used to justify application in out-of-context scenarios (see Chemotherapy). That is a separate socio-political issue, outside of the realm of science and has nothing to do with subjectivity, but a lot to do with ignorance and malfeasance.
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Do you feel confident that you could detect this whine under controlled experimental conditions, without any external information about when they turned the power on or off? And if not, what would that say about your actual ability to perceive that whine vs your beliefs about that whine?
That said, I don't disbelieve you about the whine. We ca
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That's so many orders of magnitude of power removed from unintentional radiators that it's completely irrelevant.
A victory for her lawyers (Score:2)
Robin Des Toits, an organization that campaigns for "sufferers" of this malady, was pleased.
But not probably as much as their lawyers.
Where's my disability money? (Score:5, Funny)
I suffer from hyper-sensitivity to delusional stupidity. I'm living on the same planet as this woman and it's crippling me.
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I just spewed iced tea through my nose
Ah, that's a well known condition. Don't forget to apply for your disability money.
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sorry commenting to undo bad mod
The voters vote themselves bread and circuses (Score:2, Insightful)
What do you expect from a "modern" welfare state?
Camel's nose under the tent (Score:5, Insightful)
See, this is why you can't give pseudoscience an inch. Every little success validates it in the eyes of its own practitioners, and legitimizes it in the eyes of the public, until society tumbles down the rabbit hole of paranoia and irrational fear of the harmless on one hand, and blind trust in actually harmful practices on the other hand.
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Ironically, what you're suggesting is decidedly anti-science -- replacing inquiry with dogmas and taboos.
You're doing far more harm that good to your cause. You've already done more to bring about the apocalyptic scenario you described than that one French judge by outright rejecting science in the name of science.
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What? No, I'm not saying we should discard pseudoscientific theories without inquiry. I'm saying that after we test them out and find them to be bullshit, as has been done hundreds of times for electromagnetic sensitivity, we should use these findings aggressively to make decisions rather than allowing rumor and intuition as equally valid forms of evidence.
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The fact that you can't prove a negative does not qualify absolutely everything to be science. We can't disprove Santa, he is at least as scientific as EHS. EHS being much easier to test.
It's easy to separate pseudo science from science. If it hasn't been published in a peer reviewed journal it is at best science in process. To be part of the body of knowledge that is science (n) it has to have been published and reproduced, the reproduced part letting out most of 'soft science'.
The only lack of resolu
Re:Camel's nose under the tent (Score:4, Insightful)
By your argument, since scientific findings are always subject to revision in light of future data, they can never be used for decisionmaking. Well screw that, I don't want to live in a world where a double-blind placebo trial carries no more weight than a magic 8-ball.
I do agree with you on two things: first, that she should be given a proper well-blinded test for electromagnetic sensitivity, which I guarantee you she'll fail because *nobody* passes them except by chance ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov] ). And second, we agree that this lady "needs help as she is clearly suffering". How about we have someone use actual medicine to figure out what's actually wrong with her, rather than giving her a bit of money and letting her suffer for the rest of her life because she wrongly thinks the wi-fi is to blame?
Sunlight has a large electromgnetic field (Score:5, Interesting)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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I am sensitive to the background radiation from the big bang will i qualify?
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There is evidence that EM exposures at the level experienced by radar operators north of the arctic circle (who would stand in front of their antennas to warm up) does not produce a measurable increase in cancer. These exposures happened in the 1950s-1970s so most operators have been followed all the way to the grave.
They can see the cancer caused by soldering flux (same as all electronic techs), but no cancer caused by EM.
Wait until the next step... (Score:2)
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Now that they've started to gain ground, imagine the next steps: they start suing you because your Wi-Fi router is harming them, suing coffee shops and restaurants to remove Wi-Fi hotspots because of the harm it causes them, telecom companies to remove cell towers because it is harmful to them, etc. This will not end well...
Especially if they do get this classified as a disability and start trying to leverage Americans with Disabilities Act.
I have a whiny stupidity sensitivity (Score:2)
Particularly when combined with self-absorbed angst. Can I get a disability exemption from life? I'd like a weekly check.
I don't actually have a problem with this.... (Score:5, Interesting)
All available evidence on Electromagnetic sensitivity suggests that is actually a purely psychosomatic disorder, but belief is tremendously powerful thing and can produce real and measurable physiological changes in a person, causing immune reactions without any externally visible cause, change in hormone levels that should otherwise only be explainable by other external phenomonena, etc.
Treating serious psychosomatic disorders requires the person to not just be aware that the problem is all in their own mind, but it also requires that a person be aware of some pathway to a solution to their apparent problem. I have heard it best described by one psychologist as (althouh I am paraphrasing here, this is not a direct quote) "there's nothing actually wrong with your hardware, but basically the software in your brain is misfiring and telling your body the wrong thing.". A person with a psychosomatic disorder needs to learn a skill that is not necessarily easy to come by, and that is to learn how to ignore those essentially false signals that their brain is telling their own body, and causing it to react in ways that might otherwise be attributed to some external phenomena. This is why the person needs psychiatric help.
Simply telling an EHS sufferer that it's just all in their own head and they should be able to simply think their way out of their problem is only going to get you ignored, because their body may still be producing a real reaction to something, even if that something is only imagined.
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I wonder if it might start with false associations. Idiot boss calls during a funeral demanding numbers for the TPS report, feel a bit nauseous Idiot school principal calls complaining that 6 year old is acting like a child, feel a bit nauseous. Subconscious decides the cell phone is the problem.
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I'm fine with this... (Score:2)
She can keep her money as long as she is agrees to live in a bungalow with no electricity, running water or plumbing and 500km away from the power grid.
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She can keep her money as long as she is agrees to live in a bungalow with no electricity, running water or plumbing and 500km away from the power grid.
Nevermind. I guess she sort of has (reading comprehension failure).
This is a case where... (Score:2)
The judge should pick up the plaintiff and her attorney by the belt and collar and throw them out the front door with a resounding "Et rester en dehors!"
A simple test is in order (Score:5, Interesting)
I did something similar to this with a friend of mine who claimed to be able to see infrared light from TV remotes. While he wasn't looking I removed the batteries from one, then called his name and when he turned around, pointed it at him and pushed buttons. He complained about how much that hurt his eyes, and how could I do that to him? Then I showed him the remote had no batteries in it. Needless to say he was somewhat embarassed. Still claims to be able to 'see' IR light though.
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Why no test (Score:2)
Send her into a Faraday cage. "sense anything, ma'am". If she says yes, experiment over. If she says now, have a cellphone or powerful RF transmitter inside an opaque box. turn it off and on.
If her guesses whether it is on are not are no better than chance, experiment over. If they are correct...well...that would be very interesting.
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Numerous double blind studies have conclusively shown that such sensitivity ultimately depends on what the subject *believes* to be true, regardless of whether or not it actually is. Whether she would still "sense" anything inside of the Faraday cage actually depends on whether or not she genuinely believes the Faraday cage will truly stop the signals she believes are harming her, and whether or not she believes those signals to be present.
In other words, its all psychosomatic.... and should be treated
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Vulnerability (Score:2)
"Former radio documentary producer" (Score:2)
Science is Easy. Justice not so... (Score:3)
What amazes me is that the courts resort to non-scientific rulings when the case is so easily scientifically tested. Ignorance of rampant.
Re:PBS show of cellphone cancer recently (Score:5, Insightful)
A documentary isn't a study.
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But, it was on TV!
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Even if cellphone radiation increased risk of head and chest cancers (and there is no evidence to demonstrate that, despite questionable and biased documentaries on the subject), such increased risk would have nothing to do with the lady's claimed symptoms, which include real-time maladies like headaches, nausea, fatigue, etc.
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You realize that not all of the phone is the antenna?
Re:PBS show of cellphone cancer recently (Score:5, Informative)
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A third-party documentary? Aren't they all?
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I saw a documentary made by the aliens who constructed the Pyramids.
Re:PBS show of cellphone cancer recently (Score:4, Informative)
Considering that the incidence of head and chest cancers of the past 20 years is available, why would you assume that the rates have been going up?
http://www.cancer.gov/research... [cancer.gov]
I would love to see any scientific evidence to show that somehow with the drastic increase of cell phones in society over that period of time, the incidences of cancers effecting the head and neck have gone down drastically.
I'm not sure what you mean by chest cancers, last I checked most people don't put cell phones against their chest frequently. Lung cancers however have been going down as well due to the reduction in number of smokers and places to smoke.
http://seer.cancer.gov/statfac... [cancer.gov]
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A third party documentary title Mobilize suggested cellphone radiation may be cause head and cheast cancers. ANd that telecom lobby was quashing research into this.
No you didn't. Documentaries typically describe reality (i.e. document something).
Re:That's 800€ by the way. (Score:5, Informative)
In English, Irish, Latvian, and Maltese, the Euro symbol is placed before the value. This is actually encoded in official European Union usage guidelines. [europa.eu]
Re:That's 800€ by the way. (Score:4, Insightful)
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I always assumed the dollar symbol being misplaced was due to the way it is said in normal speech:
"My lunch today cost ten dollars."
not
"My lunch today cost dollar ten."
Therefore when typing, it makes sense logically that is it 10$ not $10.
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That's not how language works.
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It doesn't mean that the issue doesn't have a logical and understandable explanation as I have detailed.
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Logic doesn't enter in to it at all. Neither in language generally, nor your explanation specifically.
Here, I'll give you an equally valid reason to place the sign in front: By placing the sign in front of the number, the reader immediately knows that the following is a monetary amount, eliminating any uncertainly before it begins. Therefore, it is only "logical" that it should be placed in front of the number. (See how silly it looks?)
Don't confuse your personal opinion with objective truth.
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So, how do you go outside? Are you saying we should all take up residence in our parent's basement?
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Only if you live in Washington DC.
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Only if you promise to live in some remote location, away from the rest of civilized society, like the woman in the article.