The trick is to read the actual story behind the headline, and strip off the spin.
The HPA has called for nothing, and indeed has declined to back health fears claims. Instead a senior figure within it has been pressed to make a personal comment which has been taken out of context.
"Sir William - who takes a stronger position on the issue than his agency -"
"In a statement, the agency says its chair Sir William Stewart, is being "pressed by lobbyists to condemn wi-fi and is unprepared to do so. He has not taken a position on wi-fi"."
"The UK's Health Protection Agency, which has responsibility for dealing with radiation safety issues, has said statements attributed to its chairman, Sir William Stewart, in an article in The Independent on Sunday were not his and that he was not prepared to condemn Wi-Fi, even though he was being pressed by lobbyists to do so."
So the story seems to have been a slight embellishment of the actuality...
Maybe, but they're also expensive. Several states have organized "virtual schools" that are taught online over the internet. Locally, the skool district is experimenting with computer based remedial education for those that are falling behind in class.
This looks interesting (9 page). THE IMPACT OF COMPUTER-BASED SECONDARY EDUCATION
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"Thomas predicts that within the next three or four years, most high school students in the United States will take all or part of their courses from the Internet."
What's funny is that the primary incentive for internet based education is not coming from the cash strapped skool districts. It's coming from the side effects of legal action. In 1999, the ACLU successfully sued the state of Calif for failing to provide sufficient advanced placement curriculum for those that couldn't handle it anyway, but are somehow entitled to an advanced education (i.e. college). The result is that the state has provide online versions of these classes, probably because it was the cheapest way out of this mess. I don't have any info on the success of advanced curriculum for equal opportunity students aspiring to attend college, but I suspect it's dismal. Yeah, online education is a failure.
"The Clark study found that rates of participation in K-12 courses delivered via the Internet were highest in rural and small schools."
Translation: Those districts that can't find or afford decent teachers resort to online curriculum. The above URL goes into great detail on how this works.
"In the 1999-2000 school year, FLVS students posted higher AP scores than the national average in Biology, Computer Science, and English (Florida State University)" "For the 2000-2001 school year, FLVS AP qualifying scores exceeded the national average by nearly 9%."
So much for the latest report claiming that online education results in lower test scores. Remember, this is in an impoverished school district in Florida with no advanced academic history. AP is "advanced placement" also known as college preparatory classes.
The student comments on the bottom of Page 7 are very illuminating.
Speaking only for myself, I have trouble taking online classes. I've done three, with mediocre results. My problem is concentration. If I can avoid distractions, I can really get into the topic and really do well. However, if I get distracted, it's like punching the reset button. No electronic smog coming from my Wi-Fi hardware, but the tea kettle is over boiling....(yet another distraction).
"Recent research has linked radiation from mobiles to cancer and to brain damage. And many studies have found disturbing symptoms in people near masts"
First, there is also research that can NOT find a cancer link...but I'm not going to weigh in on that debacle.
Second, it mentions "disturbing symptoms" and cell phone towers. Anyone with basic RF propagation experience can tell you how low the signal is below the tower. Key clue phrases: "inverse square law" and "antenna gain patterns"
Bet you'll find many people will suddenly begin suffering from WiFi problems if told that blue painted shoe box with a piece of coat hanger sticking out box in the room is a WiFi transmitter.
Chuckle. I was once asked to look at a test chamber and 800MHz cell phone transmitter used in microbiological RF exposure testing. They were getting results but the numbers weren't very consistent or apparently repeatable. Everyone assumed it was something exotic like standing waves in the box, or frequency selective dead spots. I looked at the data before I started and agreed that there certainly were microbiological effects. However, when I attacked the setup, I soon discovered that the coax connector at the chamber entry point was shorted by a sloppy connector crimp. At no time was there any RF inside the test chamber. Yet, the researchers had numbers that showed a statistically significant correlation with reproductive rate, cell death, mobility, and DNA breakage. I later discovered that there were several cellular repeaters in the vicinity, which really messed up the test measurements. If you know what results you're looking for, you'll eventually find data to demonstrate those results.
Suprised they didn't run a bogus asylum seekers are bringing dangerous wifi with them or that wifi killed Diana :-)
Interesting that the Telegraph ran a front page story quoteing the head of one of the smaller teachers unions making some realy stuipid comments about wifi the main thing was an elderly teacher at a stowe (a public school) had complained - given his age I suspect that the school where trying to dump him for age/perfomance reasons- and wifi was being used to try and deflect the issue.
Rgds
ps the Daily Mail suported Hitler and Musolini pre WW2
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