Some Stony Point Elementary parents are worried about a plan to put a mobile phone tower atop the school, something about radio waves being scary. Wait until they find out that there are radio stations in town—they’ll freak. #
News and meta-news about Charlottesville, VA, since 2001.
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Police announced this afternoon that their investigation into what was initially believed to be a fatal fire on Rugby Avenue is now a homicide investigation. #
The Virginia Supreme Court has denied George Huguely’s appeal. His second-degree murder conviction will stand, WRIC reports. #
In a carefully worded story, and not citing specific sources, WTVR reports that forensic evidence belonging to Jesse Matthew Jr., the main suspect in the disappearance of Hannah Graham, matches forensic evidence collected during the investigation of Morgan Harrington’s 2009 murder. #
In the wake of Hannah Graham’s disappearance, and the evidence that came from private security footage, city officials are revisiting the question of installing security cameras on the downtown mall. #
Both Charlottesville Registrar Sheri Iachetta and former Electoral Board member Stephanie Commander have turned themselves in to the police on
foursix and four felony counts of embezzlement, respectively. #Ten years ago, the National Institutes of Health budget doubled and schools like the University of Virginia built massive new research facilities. A decade later, those buildings remain largely underutilized. NPR visits UVA in this story on the effect of federal binge and spurge spending in the sciences. #
In 2012, Council approved a new student housing complex on West Main—now some council members are questioning whether what they were shown matches what was built. #
The Architectural Review Board has approved a bike-themed mural on West Market, below the McGuffey Art Center, although at least one member expressed concerns that it might look like the bicyclists were riding away from Charlottesville’s downtown. #
City Police Chief Tim Longo is meeting with city leaders to work on protocols regarding the use of military surplus police weapons in Charlottesville. #
A 100-year-old Colonnades resident received military honors for her service in the WWII Women’s Army Corps #
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Perhaps somebody should point out to them that mobile phone towers don’t broadcast a signal directly down. That would be dumb.
I live in Stony Point, and I would happily send my kids to school under a mobile phone tower.
Actually, with the way such antenna arrays broadcast, you’d probably be hard pressed to have any actual phone signal standing directly underneath. Cue the “We’re right under the damn tower, why don’t I have any service?!?!” rants in 3…2…1…
I wish you wouldn’t ridicule people for fears like these. Microwave radiation communication is still a relatively new technology on the timeline of our understanding of human health and illness, and I expect there are still a few surprises in store regarding EM interaction with biological materials.
We need better science & technology journalism, sure, but I think some caution is justified when exposing youngsters to (evolutionarily) novel chemicals and radiations.
Hey, mechanized looms eat fingers.
I think these complaints are worthy of ridicule as I do anytime people are very loudly upset about something that they freely admit that they know nothing about. When Stony Point Volunteer Fire Department—mere yards from Stony Point Elementary—got new 800 MHz radios, there was no complaint. Why? What’s the difference? The difference is, of course, that cell phones are scary, the same way that vaccines are scary. And by “scary,” I mean “a cottage industry has sprung up around convincing parents to be frightened of these things despite only evidence to the contrary.”
Just this week, workers were walking around Stony Point Elementary with pesticides, spraying all over the place with some sort of poison to kill weeds or insects or Lord knows what. Now, we know that most of that stuff is bad for us. The quality of the ingredients used in school lunches is famously awful, a peril of the structure of the entire federal school lunch program. Kids’ wellbeing is being set back by eating some of this stuff. But, no, parents are protesting radio waves.
I hope these parents don’t have WiFi in their homes. Think of the children!
This kind of misplaced paranoia is a part of the current culture of fear – everything will kill you. I have news for you – SOMETHING WILL finish you off.
I’m a Stony Point parent. I feel like a traitor to my tribe, but I’m having a hard time working up my anxiety level over this issue. There are a million unknowns currently at work influencing my kids’ health–stuff in their food, their water, air pollution, stuff in the drugs they take when tehy get sick. They’re at risk on their daily commute up and down Rt. 20 (as they pass at least four roadside memorials that testify to how dangerous the drivers on that road can be). As I understand it, opponents of the placement of this cell tower are saying there might be health risks associated with the placement of this tower, but no one has found them yet. On the list of things that threaten my kids, the thing that might hurt them but no one has found proof of that is kind of low on my list.
I really dislike the part of this conversation (I mean among parents, not on cvillenews) that goes like this: “evil school officials HATE our children, all they care about is moneymoneymoney and they KNOW this is going to kill our kids but they don’t care because they’re evil and they hate our children, plus those lazy overpaid government-teat-sucking teachers simply want to yak on their cell phones when they really ought to be teaching our kids, that’s the ONLY reason they want this cell tower.” You think I exaggerate, but go read the comments from parents on the newsplex site Waldo posted to–I’m not exaggerating much. All this venom and vituperation comes pouring out from parents. I don’t get how you assume that the people you entrust your children with every day in fact could not care less about your children. Why are you sending them to school, then?
This. Yes. I hadn’t realized it until you said it, but this is exactly what really annoyed me here.
It’s the default assumption that the Other Side is operating in criminally bad faith.
@Claire. I think you’re exactly correct. Sadly, I think many people believe this because it’s what they, themselves, would (or do) do.
Most of these are the same people who have no qualms about putting a cordless or cellular phone — which amounts to a relatively powerful radio transmitter, RIGHT AGAINST THEIR HEADS.
What ever you do don’t tell those parents about all the radiation that is a mixture of electromagnetic waves ranging from infrared to ultraviolet rays. It includes visible light, which is in between IR and UV in the electromagnetic spectrum that is passing though their precious angels from …THE SUN!
I’ll admit it, I’m from the “Other Side” and we are operating in criminally bad faith. We’re the folks that put nitrogen in your air. It’s harmless of course, but just wait until we cut off the supply….
This misplaced paranoia, hyper-aggression, assumption of bad faith, etc, seems to be the new normal when there are public policy disagreements. Whether it is the meadowcreek parkway, the water supply issue, the geese removal from forest lakes, the President’s birth certificate, the deficit, Osama Bin Laden’s photographs, health insurance reform or whatever, people on one side (or often both sides) of an issue now automatically assume that there are nefarious, unseen forces and/or motivations at work on the side opposed to their view.
Indeed it often appears that literally nothing can happen in the public sphere these days without there being an outcry regarding some unintended victim or unforeseen drastic consequence.
I don’t know why this is, but perhaps people are becoming so hyper-vigilant as they feel that they have less control of the world at large and so they fight all the more tenaciously to control their small corner of it?
Hormones in milk, genetically modified food, vaccines, whether or not the President was born in the US, a cell phone tower on a school…. evil forces MUST be at work. Teachers must WANT to damage their students brains’ so that they can call their significant other during lunch. Fewer kids, easier workload, and all the easier to indoctrinate their charges into the Socialistic-Muslim-Terrorist New World Order that Obama’s election has ushered in!!
YES WE CAN!!!!