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Tin Foil meet Hypochondriac???
Is this a case of the tin foil brigade meeting with the hypochondriacs or is this real?? I think it is a bunch of BS, but it looks like a lot of people think this is true. Kind if like Manbearpig. I let you decide.
The woman who needs a veil of protection from modern life
Last updated at 00:38am on 27th April 2007
No, she’s NOT a beekeeper. This woman believes that her bizarre headgear can save her from the dangerous electrosmog all around us. Can she possibly be right?
Before knocking on Sarah Dacre’s door, I take the precaution of checking my mobile phone. It’s switched off, as she has requested.
"Last time someone came to visit," she warns, "I started feeling awfully nauseous. It turned out he had a picture phone with him and had left it switched on. A picture phone!"
She pauses, looking genuinely horrified. Apparently, this type of mobile automatically sends signals to a local base station every nine minutes – "No wonder I felt so sick."
We sit down in the living-room of the airy, north London house that, for the past two years, has been Sarah’s refuge from modern life. Save for the absence of a television, it looks ordinary enough.
But beneath the coats of magnolia paint, she points out, the walls are lined with a special paper that contains a layer of tin-foil; and upstairs, the windows are hung with a fine, silvery gauze.
These aren’t idiosyncratic decorating decisions, though. All these silvery layers are here for a purpose: to keep the 21st century at bay.
Sarah, 51, is one of a growing band of people who claim to be experiencing extreme – and incapacitating – sensitivity to electrical appliances, as well as to certain frequencies of electromagnetic waves.
"Wi-Fi, or wireless broadband networks, seem to be the worst thing," she says.
"Closely followed by mobile phones – particularly if they’re being used in an enclosed space – the base stations of cordless telephones and mobile phone masts.
"I have to restrict the amount of time I spend on the computer or watching television, and make sure I don’t have too many household appliances on at once, because that sets me off as well."
This may sound bizarre, but there is no doubt that Sarah’s symptoms are real.
To date, they include hair loss, sickness, high blood-pressure, digestive and memory problems, severe headaches and dizziness.
They strike with such ferocity that, since diagnosing herself as "electrically sensitive" in May 2005, she has been marooned at home.
She can’t work. When she wants to phone friends, she has to use a land-line – a significant advancement, it turns out, because she was so ill at one stage, she says, that she couldn’t even touch an ordinary receiver without feeling a violent shock pass up her arm.
Food shopping is done as rapidly as possible, once a week, at a time carefully chosen to avoid younger people and their permanently switched-on mobile phones.
And she can venture into built-up areas only if she is swathed in a net-and-hat ensemble made from a special "shielding fabric" that makes her look like a bee-keeper.
"I’m sure people laugh," she says, "but I don’t mind as long as it keeps me well."
Finding her own solutions – however outwardly bizarre – has been essential because, for the moment at least, the medical establishment does not even accept that her condition exists.
Fortunately, some individual doctors have been sympathetic to her plight.
Dr Sarah Myhill, who is registered with the General Medical Council and practises privately in Wales, says: "There is no doubt that electrical sensitivity is a real phenomenon – I have seen too many people affected by electro-magnetic radiation (EMR) to think otherwise.
"Clinically, I nearly always see electrical sensitivity in people who are already suffering from chemical sensitivity.
"There are many symptoms that can be switched on by electrical sensitivity, and it appears that almost any electro-magnetic frequency can be the cause."
Even so, I cannot help feeling a little sceptical. Is there any suggestion that ES could be a psychosomatic illness, I ask Sarah (who, in fairness, does not seem to be particularly highly-strung).
"Inevitably, people suggest that," she says, with a flick of her auburn, Farrah Fawcett-style hair.
"But at one time, ME sufferers were accused of having psychosomatic symptoms and were ignored as a result. Now, the illness is formally recognised.
"Before this, I’d barely had a day ill in my life – I’ve always been a very energetic, dynamic person.
"I had a career in banking, then in events management, and then I ran my own television production company.
I was always busy and I was always out doing things – skiing, tango lessons, looking after my son, Josh, who’s now 17. I had a very active life and I loved it.
"Now, I have no income because I can’t work and I have no choice but to devote all my energies to fighting to find out more about my allergies."
The first symptoms started about five years ago. At first, Sarah ignored them, hoping they might be due to tiredness or stress and would simply go away.
Gradually, though, her condition deteriorated. And about two years ago, she says "everything hit at once, like a car crash. As well as the exhaustion and nausea, I even lost the sight in my right eye."
A stream of doctors, complementary practitioners and Chinese herbalists all failed to alleviate any of her symptoms or come up with a diagnosis.
Instead, she found an answer on Google – through websites such as electrosensitivity.org.uk.
All her symptoms seemed to match those of people who believe they are allergic to modern life.
She lists some of the offending items that were in her home: "I had a burglar alarm emitting microwave radiation, I used a mobile phone constantly, I had two cordless phones and countless appliances – all of which have an electromagnetic field associated with them."
Convinced that she had almost certainly found the cause of her illness, she ordered, from the internet, some special rolls of foil wallpaper and a fabric called Swiss bobbinet – a netting made from polyester filaments dipped in silver.
Both promised to "shield" her from any emissions from phone masts or wireless broadband systems.
Within a few weeks of the wallpaper going up and the windows being hung with netting, she began to feel better.
So much so that when she suddenly had an offer on her house, which she had been desperate to sell for seven months, she decided not to sell after all.
Since then, she has gradually managed to find other ways to help her cope.
She can use her computer for up to three hours a day, "but only if I keep myself absolutely detoxed all the time, drinking plenty of water and revolving my meals so that I don’t become sensitive to certain types of food as well."
Her long-term (some would say long-suffering) boyfriend, Rod, a gold and silversmith who lives in Kent, has been sympathetic, she says. But there have been unexpected setbacks that might test the happiest of couples.
Last month, she had a relapse and started to panic.
"I’d been feeling quite bright and energetic; then suddenly, for three nights, I couldn’t sleep," she says.
"I really felt it was back to how it was in the beginning, when I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I was exhausted, developed bladder problems, felt ill. That’s when I decided to run some tests."
Using an "electrosmog detector" – the name given to a device that can apparently register levels of electromagnetic activity – she checked her bedroom.
"And there was radiation streaming in through the one wall that I thought I hadn’t needed to protect. We have some new neighbours, and I think they must have installed wireless broadband."
To ensure a good night’s sleep, Sarah now takes the precaution of swathing herself in her special silver netting.
She is concerned by the increasing spread of wireless networks.
"I think it’s a terrible mistake," she says. "Is Wi-Fi going to turn out to be the tobacco, asbestos or Thalidomide of the 21st century? It’s looking that way.
"And instead of testing it out properly, what are we doing? We’re putting it into schools, exposing small children to it all day long, and opening up entire Wi-Fi areas – they’ve just created a giant new Wi-Fi zone in the City of London.
"It horrifies me to think of people in small houses or flats who might be affected by several overlapping wireless networks at once."
Yet the scientific case for electrosensitivity (ES) is threadbare. The World Health Organisation’s position is that "there is no scientific basis to link ES symptoms to EMR exposure.
"Further, ES is not a medical diagnosis, nor is it clear that it represents a single medical problem."
This week, Professor David Coggan, a member of the Health Protection Agency’s advisory group on non-ionising radiation, told BBC’s Newsnight: "There is quite a lot of evidence now accumulated on mobile phones and health – and the balance of evidence overall doesn’t point to problems.
"There’s still uncertainty and there still needs to be further research, but so far we don’t have a concern.
"And on that basis, the concern about Wi-Fi is much lower on the scale than, say, that about pan-global influenza."
Other research has backed the view of the medical and scientific establishment.
In one "provocation" study, a number of people who claimed to have electrical sensitivity were placed in a room with a mobile phone and not told whether or not it was switched on.
Asked by a researcher how they felt, they failed to establish any link between physical symptoms and the alleged trigger.
Sarah Dacre believes that this is because the tests were carried out in an area with high background electrosmog.
"Once you are sensitised," she says, "that’s it.
"It’s like having a glass of wine – it’s cumulative in your system.
"You don’t stop being drunk once you have finished drinking, so you can’t then be tested sober."
She continues to campaign for electrosensitivity to be recognised as a valid medical complaint linked to electromagnetic fields.
"While I’m up and about," she says a little sadly, "I’m going to do something about it."
Islamist Stand-Up Comic Arrested in London
Courtesy of National Review OnLine:
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Islamist Stand Up Comic Arrested
Courtesy of National Review OnLine:
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Leaping Shampoo!!!
Really cool award-winning video from Netherlands scientists. Strange things called the Kay Effect happen when shampoo is poured in a stream to a surface below. It’s interesting and beautiful.
Julia h/t to Johan at NRO
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Death Threat to Knut
Not only do the environmentalist wackos think that he should be dead, someone sent a death threat to this loveable polar bear.
Polar bear cub Knut is pictured during its first presentation in Berlin zoo in this March 23, 2007 file photo. Germany’s celebrity polar bear cub Knut has received an anonymous death threat, causing alarm at Berlin Zoo on Thursday and prompting heightened security. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke/Files
Berlin’s polar bear cub Knut receives death threat
By Madeline Chambers
BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s celebrity polar bear cub Knut has received an anonymous death threat, causing alarm at Berlin Zoo on Thursday and prompting heightened security.
Top-selling Bild newspaper said the zoo had received a hand-written fax from a suspected animal hater with the words: "Knut is dead! Thursday midday."
But that deadline came and went safely for media star Knut, who has been on newspaper front pages around Germany and the world for weeks. "He is safe and in good spirits," said zoo official Ragnar Kuehne after the time had passed.
Berlin police said they had investigated a letter containing a threat but did not believe it was serious.
Berlin Zoo’s business manager Gerald Uhlich said: "They told us prominent figures often have things like this happen but in this instance we need not be too worried."
Nonetheless, Bild said the zoo had trebled the number of minders responsible for Knut’s safety to 15.
"Death threat, police protection for Knut!" Bild wrote in bold letters on page one above a picture of the sad-looking polar bear cub peering out from behind a tree branch.—Al-Reuters
Who in their right mind would want to harm this cute little animal.
This is just too strange.
A 30 old female posing as a 17 male abused a 14 female. Ok a female acting as a male abused a younger female. It just gets wierder and wierder every time you say it or type it.
Woman, 30, posed as teenage boy in sex case
Everett woman, 30, accused of assaulting 14-year-old girl, police sayCopyright 2007 The Daily Herald Co.By Jackson Holtz
Herald WriterEVERETT – An Everett woman who posed as a teenage boy was arrested Sunday for allegedly molesting a 14-year-old girl who believed the older woman was her boyfriend.
Lorelei Josephine Corpuz, 30, lived for more than a year as a 17-year-old boy named "Mark," according to papers filed in Everett District Court.
As "Mark," Corpuz persuaded the girl’s family to let "Mark" live in their home as the girl’s boyfriend. Corpuz claimed to be an orphan, police alleged.
It wasn’t until police arrested Corpuz on Sunday on an unrelated matter that the girl and her family learned that "Mark" was a woman – and almost twice the age they were led to believe, according to court papers.
That’s when officers were told that Corpuz allegedly had beaten and sexually assaulted the girl.
"The family was very surprised to learn that this female who had presented herself as a juvenile male was in fact" an adult woman, Everett police Sgt. Robert Goetz said Tuesday.
Police initially arrested Corpuz on a traffic warrant.
On Tuesday, she was being held at the Snohomish County Jail on $150,000 bail for investigation of third-degree child rape. No charges have been filed.
The case may leave lasting emotional scars for the girl and her family, experts said.
"This is an extremely unusual story," said Lucy Berliner, director of the Harborview Center for Sexual Assault and Trauma Stress in Seattle. "Female-on-female sexual abuse is the rarest category. It doesn’t happen very often at all."
The girl met "Mark" in September 2005 at a shopping mall, Goetz said.
They spoke over the phone and went on a date, according to court papers.
"Mark" told the girl and her parents that his mother died of cancer and his father killed himself, the papers said. —–HeraldNet
Another panty fetish freak.
Earlier I posted about a guy that stole women’s panties. Well, he is not alone. Here is another panty fetish freak. He also likes bras too. He had 93 pounds
H/T to BMEWS
Police: Man swiped 1,500 women’s undies
POSTED: 8:39 a.m. EDT, March 27, 2007
PULLMAN, Washington (AP) — A man was charged with theft and burglary after police said they found 93 pounds of women’s panties, brassieres and other underwear at his home.
Investigators believe Garth M. Flaherty, 24, took as many as 1,500 undergarments from apartment complex laundry rooms before he was caught, police Cmdr. Chris Tennant said.
A man was seen taking underwear from two laundry rooms Saturday, a witness recorded his license number, and Flaherty was identified from photographs, Tennant said.
Police found enough underwear in his bedroom to fill five garbage bags, Tennant said.
"He said he had a problem," Tennant said.
Flaherty has been jailed on 12 counts of second-degree burglary and one of first-degree theft.
Police had previously received 12 reports of underwear thefts in the northeast part of town, where Washington State University is located.
"We were kind of concerned about how to match up bras and panties with victims," Tennant said. "Based on the unique descriptions from a couple of women, we can tie him to those thefts."
The underwear will be held as evidence until the case is resolved, after which their disposition is uncertain, Tennant said.
"Would you really want them back?" he asked. "I would say not."
Another panty fetish freak.
Earlier I posted about a guy that stole women’s panties. Well, he is not alone. Here is another panty fetish freak. He also likes bras too. He had 93 pounds
H/T to BMEWS
Police: Man swiped 1,500 women’s undies
POSTED: 8:39 a.m. EDT, March 27, 2007
PULLMAN, Washington (AP) — A man was charged with theft and burglary after police said they found 93 pounds of women’s panties, brassieres and other underwear at his home.
Investigators believe Garth M. Flaherty, 24, took as many as 1,500 undergarments from apartment complex laundry rooms before he was caught, police Cmdr. Chris Tennant said.
A man was seen taking underwear from two laundry rooms Saturday, a witness recorded his license number, and Flaherty was identified from photographs, Tennant said.
Police found enough underwear in his bedroom to fill five garbage bags, Tennant said.
"He said he had a problem," Tennant said.
Flaherty has been jailed on 12 counts of second-degree burglary and one of first-degree theft.
Police had previously received 12 reports of underwear thefts in the northeast part of town, where Washington State University is located.
"We were kind of concerned about how to match up bras and panties with victims," Tennant said. "Based on the unique descriptions from a couple of women, we can tie him to those thefts."
The underwear will be held as evidence until the case is resolved, after which their disposition is uncertain, Tennant said.
"Would you really want them back?" he asked. "I would say not."
Do you have a panty fetish???
I normally don’t put these kind of stories on here, but this is just amazing. I know some people have a fetish about panties, but this is a little overbaord.
4,400 pieces of women’s underwear stolen by a construction worker are displayed by police in Hiroshima, western Japan, March 13, 2007. Police found more than 4,000 pieces of lingerie in the home of a Japanese construction worker who used climbing skills developed on his job to steal women’s underwear. (Kyodo/Reuters)
H/T to KISP
Green Sex
Ok, this has gone too far now. They are talking about people havein "green sex" now. Whatever the hell that means. I guess having sex with plants and animals now is considered eco-friendly.
Love-making gets green light from adult stores
Misty Harris, CanWest News Service
Published: Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Pleasure the planet … but please don’t smoke after
or
Planet-friendly love-making will make others green with envy
or
– – –
You’ve heard of green cars, green tourism and green weddings. Now Canadians should ready themselves for green sex.
For those who like to make love to the soundtrack of the global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth, Greenpeace has released a list of strategies for "getting it on for the good of the planet," suggesting "you can be a bomb in bed without nuking the planet." TreeHugger, an online magazine edited by Ontario’s Michael Graham Richard, has just published a guide on "how to green your sex life." The famed adult store Good Vibrations announced last week they would no longer sell sex toys containing phthalates, controversial chemical plasticizers believed by some to be hazardous to humans and the environment alike.
And throughout Canada and the U.S., people who want to pleasure the planet can now buy everything from bamboo bed sheets to organic lubricant and "eco-undies."
"Green living is getting sexy," says Jacob Gordon, author of TreeHugger.com’s recent green guide for the bedroom.
"Even a year ago, people wouldn’t have been nearly as receptive to this kind of thing. … But, as the importance of living green gains traction in our culture, people are willing to take things like that a lot more seriously."
Most environmentalists will agree the mainstream success of the Al Gore vehicle An Inconvenient Truth has helped give climate change the pop-culture sheen it’s currently enjoying. Indeed, global warming is a cause to which everyone from Diesel apparel to Vanity Fair magazine and Starbucks are pinning their marketing efforts.
And if shopping to save the planet is trendy, having sex to clear your conscience is at the cutting edge.
"It feels like people are just waking up to the fact the planet is suffering under our uses of it," says Rebecca Denk, business manager for the adult toy store Babeland. The U.S. company, which sells to Canadians via Babeland.com, just introduced an "Eco-Sexy Kit" featuring a phthalate-free vibrator, soy massage candle, a natural lubricant with no animal-testing or derivatives, and condoms.
"We have to look at every piece of our lives, including our sexuality, and ask: How is this healthy for me, and how is this healthy for the planet?" says Denk. "Hopefully, we’re all becoming better global citizens."
Other ways of "greenwashing" the bedroom, as outlined by TreeHugger and Greenpeace, include turning out the lights, not buying PVC or vinyl accoutrements, ensuring S&M paddles are made from sustainably harvested timber, using organic massage oils, showering together, using bamboo bed sheets (they come from a rapidly renewable resource and are said to be "super sexy"), and wearing lingerie made with renewable fibres such as hemp (Enamore), bamboo (Butta) and other organic goodness (GreenKnickers, Buenostyle, Peau Ethique).
Gordon notes there’s even an eco-friendly adult website dedicated to naked vegetarians, appropriately called Veg Porn.
Camille Labchuk, speaking on behalf of the Green Party of Canada, gives the movement two green thumbs-up.
"The general concern for trying to live lightly on our planet has transferred into all areas of people’s lives," says Labchuk, the Green party’s press secretary. "So, even though what goes on in our bedrooms as a nation is somewhat hidden, we know that’s somewhere people want to green-up."
Isn’t that lovely, eco-friedly dildoes and sex toys. I just want to get a pair of the "eco-undies"
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