Slashdot was kind enough to alert me to a lovely story that developed recently: Sebastopol – a little commune in California that hosts the world’s nerdiest publisher and apparently a large alternative community that until now lived peacefully together – apparently contracted Sonic.net to develop a low-power Wifi Mesh network to give the community easy access to the internet and its obvious educational and economical benefits. But they didn’t expect the tinfoil-hat community of Sebastopol to sabotage the endeavour: as the council meeting agenda shows, on the 18th of March council member and pro tem mayor Linda Kelley requested a “Discussion and Action to Reconsider the City’s Wi-Fi Agreement with Sonic” . The Press Democrat – the local paper – reports that the ‘sustainable health institute’ supportes the notion, because ‘A little bit more is going to cause a little more problems’ and supported Sebastopol resident Sandi Maurer in her claim that ‘she is sensitive to electricity much as some people are sensitive to chemicals’.

I would suggest to Sandi and her physics-challenged friends to find herself a place in Sebastopol that will not only shield them from the evil WiFi terror but also protects them from FM and AM radio signals (the ‘sustainable health institute’ uses those evil radios to broadcast their healthy message), TV signals, mobile phone towers the sun and magnetism.

Good luck and happy tin-foil hat folding.

P.S. In the meantime we hope that the absence of WiFi signals will aid Councillor Kelley in the quick resolution of her misdemeanor vandalism case.