Teacher's head explodes due to Wi-Fi, mobe radiation
Pupils upload vid to slate-my-teacher cyberbully site
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April Fools New research carried out for British newspapers and broadcasters has revealed conclusive evidence that wireless technologies are in fact a severe hazard to human health.
In one controversial experiment, a middle-aged sociology teacher's head was actually caused to explode by a combination of Wi-Fi transmissions, deadly mobile phone radiation from pupils texting in class, and emissions from a nearby TETRA mast.
"It just blew up, man, like a dog in a microwave," said a shocked pupil, who declined to be named.
"Cool," added the traumatised adolescent.
Medical ethics investigators are now probing the fatal head blast brainsplatter incident at Greater Furtling comprehensive school in the leafy Cotswold commuter village of Twitchen Magna. It appears a mobile phone video of the detonating pedagogue was uploaded to YouTube in near real time, furnishing a wealth of graphic, if disturbing, evidence. In the interests of good taste the Reg has refrained from linking to the vid. Also, it has been taken down.
According to reports, deputy head of the school's sociology, media studies and sports sciences department Geoffrey Crumb, 42, had volunteered to take part in the new health experiments after suffering persistent migraines which he believed to be caused by "wireless radiation".
The headaches would strike with particular severity whenever Crumb was called upon to teach in class, supporting his theory that cyberbullying text-happy miscreant pupils armed with mobile gadgetry lay behind the crippling attacks.
Having been repeatedly subjected to ritual "double-blind" tests by a "gang" of physics and technology teachers in the staff room, who would laugh at him and snap towels when he failed to state correctly whether or not a given piece of equipment was switched on or off, Crumb was thought to have been easy prey when unscrupulous media technofear hypesters came knocking.
He agreed to take part in a series of experiments organised by groundbreaking fear-of-everyday-objects journalist Andrew Milligan, on behalf of the Independent and Panorama - the only UK media organisations with the courage to report on the fearful hazards of RF technology. In the trials, Crumb and other soft-studies teachers agreed to wear special monitoring headgear designed by Independent/Panorama scientists to measure radio-induced brain heating.
Reportedly, the headgear used a downward-oriented parabolic dish made from thin metallic sheeting to measure local radio radiation ray intesity, and was powered by a small on-head wind turbine following a suggestion from Conservative leader David Cameron. In-ear electrodes were used to monitor wearers' brain temperature.
"Suggestions that our measuring equipment had anything to do with this tragic incident are without foundation," commented Milligan in a lengthy leader this morning for the Indy.
"Mr Crumb's hugely newsworthy death, while of course extremely sad, has served to underline conclusively the terrible dangers attendant on digital wireless technology - and indeed all technology. How many more have to die before the government acts? When will this senseless waste of human lives end?"
Panorama is expected to broadcast mobile phone footage from several angles of the luckless corduroy's overheated brain bursting out of his cranium in a special post-watershed edition tonight, entitled Wi-Fi: We Told You So. A Reg leader article is also planned, subtitled "Vultures eat crow".
Internet conspiracy theorists are already circulating alternative explanations for Crumb's death. The notion of a US government-backed attempt by British police and spooks to transmit voices into Crumb's head from a nearby TETRA mast via his monitoring propellor-antenna hat, so driving him mad and discrediting the Gilligan Milligan investigation, is gaining wide credence. ®
Bootnote
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COMMENTS
Believable April Fool jokes
Many years ago, The Guardian published a story about a new automated bus control system for London. All buses were to be driverless, and controlled remotely by operators who would view the traffic through a CCTV mounted in the driver's cab, connected in real time to a video screen in the control centre. One operator in the centre would be able to control up to five buses simultaneously, tests had shown.
I was so taken in, I nearly posted it to risks@csl.sri.com
A few years later, a net-friend who was an aviation specialist published a story that the flight crew on an Airbus A320 had experienced an outage of the flight control system on approach to landing. When they tried to restart the system, it gave a message saying "PIN not recognised". Apparently, this was due to Airbus using second-hand ATM chips to build their on-board systems.
The "incident" turned up a few months later in the final year undergraduate dissertation of one of my software engineering students, quoted without irony as an example of the risks from computer systems.
A few years after that, I broadcast my own story that Airbus had subcontracted the maintenance of the flight control software on the A320 to a third-party support firm. I had just just returned from a meeting in Copenhagen, and said I had seen the story in the Danish magazine "Godaj" ("Hello" in Danish). I said that the head of the third-party support firm was Wolf Larssen (the villain of "The Sea Wolf" by Jack London) and quoted him as saying that he was not worried that the original developers of the flight control system would not give him the source code, since his employees could download the binary and de-compile it.
At least three experts in safety-critical avionics were totally taken in and expressed their concern to the discussion group on which I had broadcast the story. I was still receiving concerned enquiries 5 years later from people who had read it in the archives, and hadn't noticed the date on it.
Moral: Make the spoofs believable, but perhaps not *too* believable! :-)
hard to tell the difference
between some of LP's usual bespittled ranting and an April Fool's posting.
Maybe the new A160T "SOCOM Skynet killdroid" or whatever got to him.
Pictures?
Without pics it didn't happen?
Oh it's April 1st? I still want piccys.
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