As some of you out there may know, I host a radio show at KZYX once a month. As a result I am on a list-serve for emails among programmers. Many times people with specific complaints about the other
people or the working conditions at KZYX use the list serve as a means of expression. One such programmer has been expressing his concern that having WiFi or cell use at the station is bad for his health. I don't often pay much attention - or even read - the KZYX chatter that comes through on my email regularly because I simply don't have time. But this input from another programmer who shall remain nameless caught my eye.
He wrote: "I detect logic in your e-mail and that has been known to cause pain,
suffering and even death. One need only read of the Inquisition, examine the
theories of 'Trickle down economics.' watch the movie 'Brazil,' or review
the seventies studies that warned of the looming 'Ice Age' to know where
logical thinking can get you. At every step it seems not so much the threat
that the individual may pose to themselves it seems more the threat that
other-busy bodies seem to think the individual poses to the amorphous
society at large. If something you do offends a handful of people then you
are the one that needs to amend their behavior, not the anal-retentive
hypochondriac doing the complaining. I have read studies, not funded by the
smoking industry, that claim that second hand smoke has less effect on us
than everything else that has been put into our breathing space. Cars,
BBQ's, factories and the fact that there are far more of us moving around
stirring up more particulate matter. But no, it is definitive, second hand
smoke, even the merest wisp, causes cancer. Ergo all legislation needs to be
focused on forcing those of us who enjoy lighting up to move farther and
farther out to the fringe. An easy target. I actually don't mind too much as
it moves me further away from the whiners, which is always a good thing.
It seems a simple thing to say that if you are worried about the effect of
WiFi don't bring it into your home. Don't use a cell phone, don't visit
places that have WiFi. But alas a few among us seem ever driven to wail and
moan of all the possible threats. It matters not that they participate in
daily dangers such as getting in a car, driving places, eating out at a
restaurant (check out the morbidity rates for choking, poisoning and getting
run over in a parking lot or even getting to the place to have such
happen.), walking in the wild with rattlesnakes, rabid skunks and who knows
what else. No, it is wireless that we all need to set up and pay attention
to. It matters not that we are all informed, we need to take action, now!
We are all going to have to deal with ever increasing spheres of wireless
coverage but so do I have to deal with you whiners' ever widening spheres of
kvetching about my second hand smoke, my eating of fast food, my driving of
a gas powered vehicle, my drinking of alcohol, my few extra pounds, my
ambivalence about war, my love of 'idiot and anvil movies', my habit of
killing some of the food I eat, my love of eating flesh, my ability to walk
out of Wal-Mart with my head held high with my purchases in hand, my
inability to see George Bush as any less evil than any other president we
have had in the last fifty years as well as any number of other moans I hear
on a regular basis. Feel free to let me know how you feel but please stop
the whining! You care, we may not. I am so ready to push for legislation
that would outlaw vegan, vegetarian, smoke-free, alcohol-free, organic, drug
and nuclear free zones because of the threat of second hand
sanctimoniousness. Judging from the world at large outside of this bubble,
it would pass in a walk."
***
On another subject, I did an informal check on the six child molesters who had been kicked out of the Ramada Inn earlier this month after the Daily Journal reported they were being put up there at state cost to the tune of as much as a couple thousand a month. Anyway, my blog on the subject later included a phone conversation I had with one of the child molesters, a man from Vallejo who told me he was calling from Sun House/Grace Hudson park. Someone in the parole system apparently read the blog too and the man was rearrested for being in a park, where he is never allowed and sent back to jail. The rest are, I understand, still probably wandering around Ukiah homeless.
