Expensive Free Wireless

As one who has used public wireless in airports, coffee houses, libraries, and elsewhere, I found this article particularly interesting.

Public Wireless, or its Evil Twin?

The next time you’re in an airport, train station, bus station, coffee house, or other public place and decide to “jack in” to the Internet, you might well be exposing yourself to identity thieves — or worse.

Here’s how it works: the girl across from you in the airport coffee shop has a laptop in her briefcase that’s set as an ‘access point’, or a ‘WiFi hotspot’. She’s even given the access point a legitimate-sounding ID, say, something like “Free Airport WiFi”. You power up your own laptop, quickly browse for available networks, see “Free Airport WiFi”, note that it’s unsecured but ignoring that, you connect.

On connecting, her computer promptly proxies your access to the web and begins feeding your laptop with look-a-like pages for your banks, email access portals, or other sites. She’s recording everything that passes through her access point. She’s an “evil twin”.

I don’t understand how it can be done. But that doesn’t change that reality, does it?

If you use public wireless, you’d be well served to click the link to read the full article. It includes some safety tips and precautions.

Cellphone Radiation and Your Cells

So you’re thinking, “Not another anti-cellphone scare piece!”

Well, click the link and read the full article anyway. 🙂

How Cellphone Radiation Affects Your Cells

Radiation from cell phones is too weak to heat biological tissue or break chemical bonds in cells, but the radio waves they emit may still change cell behavior.

Scientists exposed 10 female volunteers to radiation at 900 megahertz from GSM phones to simulate an hour-long phone call.

[…]

This study shows that even without heating, molecular level changes take place in response to exposure to cell phone frequency electromagnetic radiation.

[…]

We believe the biological damage comes both from the modulated signals that are carried ON the carrier microwave and the carrier wave itself. However, they do their damage by two entirely different mechanisms. These modulated information-carrying radio waves resonate in biological frequencies of a few to a few hundred cycles per second, and can stimulate your cellular receptors causing a whole cascade of pathological consequences that can culminate in fatigue, anxiety and ultimately cancers.

[…]

Do you suffer from any of these common illnesses and ailments, which have all been scientifically linked to cell phone information-carrying radio waves?

  • Alzheimer’s, senility and dementia
  • Parkinson’s
  • Autism
  • Fatigue
  • Headaches
  • Sleep disruptions
  • Altered memory function, poor concentration and spatial awareness

[…]

To date, there are few alternatives to ensure complete safety, but there are some common sense recommendations:

  • Limit the amount of time you spend on the phone.
  • Limit your exposure to WiFi routers. Find out where they are located in your work environment and stay away from them.
  • If you have any land-based (non-cellular) portable phones, do NOT use anything other than the 900 MHz phones as the Gigahertz phones stay on continuously, blasting you with information-carrying radio waves 24/7.
  • Use the speakerphone instead of putting the phone to your ear; this is probably one of the single most important steps you can take other than not using your cell phone.
  • Use a wired headset to limit your exposure to the cell phone — ideally, an air-tube headset that conducts sound but prevents any radiation from traveling up the wire to your brain. Also make sure the wire is SHIELDED, which prevents the wire from acting as an antenna that could attract more information-carrying radio waves directly to your brain.
  • Limit calls inside buildings.
  • Use the phone in open spaces as often as possible.
  • Limit use by children and preadolescents.

That’s my public service announcement for today.

Disclaimer: I tend not to like cellphones, though I’ve owned one for years. (And we have three in our household-of-five.)

And now in the Thousand Words Department:

If a rat used a cellphone....

Note to SPCA and PETA: Regarding the above abused rat, I’m only the messenger. Thanks.

(I think SPCA stands for Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. I suppose they’re good pals with PETA — People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.)

March 17

On this day twenty-seven years ago, my wife celebrated her first birthday as Mrs. Roth.

1845 — rubber band patented

1942 — first Jews from the Lviv Ghetto (western Ukraine) gassed at the Belzec death camp (eastern Poland)

1966 — off the coast of Spain in the Mediterranean, the Alvin submarine found a missing American hydrogen bomb

Oh, and today is Evacuation Day in part of Massachusetts.

Sugar

Sugar . . .

  • tastes good and can be enjoyable to eat
  • gives an energy boost followed by a low
  • not enough can make some food unpleasant until you get used to it
  • doing without it usually isn’t deadly
  • has little or no nutritional value
  • tears down the immune system
  • can have an addictive effect
  • some people tolerate it better than others do
  • may not be a poison but it can be deadly

Scroll down for a shift in subject!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Does that also describe my music?

Too Cheap

I saw her face so often yesterday.

Dupre

As they say, she started to “haunt” me.

  • She could be my daughter. (I have two children older than she, and three younger.)
  • Why would she sell herself so cheaply?
  • What does she know about Jesus and His Gospel?
  • Who will help her?

So the governor of New York paid $1000 an hour for her “services.” I wouldn’t pay $10. It is just not worth the price.

Even so, she is worth that price. In fact, she sold herself far too cheaply. Even a rate a thousand times what Mr. Spitzer paid would be too little for this young woman. Or any woman.

“Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body” (1 Corinthians 6:13).

“As a jewel of gold in a swine’s snout, so is a fair woman which is without discretion” (Proverbs 11:22).

“Lust not after her beauty in thine heart; neither let her take thee with her eyelids” (Proverbs 6:25).

“Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the LORD, she shall be praised” (Proverbs 31:30).

“For by means of a whorish woman a man is brought to a piece of bread: and the adulteress will hunt for the precious life” (Proverbs 6:26).

“And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:13).

“Go, and sin no more” (John 8:11).

May the Lord redeem and renew Kristen or Kirsten or Ashley or whatever Miss Dupre’s name is.

Christian Teen Girls?

Here’s the news:

More than one in four U.S. teen girls is infected with at least one sexually transmitted disease, and the rate is highest among blacks, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Tuesday.

An estimated 3.2 million U.S. girls ages 14 and 19 — about 26 percent of that age group — have a sexually transmitted infection such as the human papillomavirus or HPV, chlamydia, genital herpes or trichomoniasis, the CDC said.

Forty-eight percent of black teen-age girls were infected, compared to 20 percent of whites and 20 percent of Mexican American girls. The report did not give data on the broader U.S. Hispanic population.

[…]

About half reported ever having had sex . . . .

And here’s more news (although almost four years old by now!):

About one-third of American teenagers claim they’re “born again” believers, according to data gathered over the past few years by Barna Research Group, the gold standard in data about the U.S. Protestant church, and 88% of teens say they are Christians. About 60% believe that “the Bible is totally accurate in all of its teachings.” And 56% feel that their religious faith is very important in their life.

Here’s the question about the teen girls in the first article: What percentage of these profess to be Christians?

(And, as a Mennonite, a sub-question: How many of them are Mennonites?)

As one who doesn’t live that way, maybe I should stop identifying myself as a Christian, eh? 🙄 (After all, so many people are giving Christian a bad reputation, a bad connotation, a bad name, etc.)

Oh, for the Christianity 101 comment, read this: God says the human body is for Him to inhabit and not to be used immorally.

Above all, love God!

since November 9, 2005