Idiots Who Are Deathly Afraid of Wi-Fi Have Found a Town in West Virginia That Bans Wireless Signals for 13,000 Square Miles [Wtf]

I always thought it would be a hilarious conspiracy if all the wireless signals that invade our invisible space was really screwing with our health. I wasn't serious though! These people are—they avoid Wi-Fi like the plague.

"My face turns red, I get a headache, my vision changes, and it hurts to think. Last time [I was exposed] I started getting chest pains - and to me that's becoming life-threatening"

That's Diane Schou, she's one of the 5% (!) of Americans who think they suffer from Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS). Symptoms of EHS include skin burning, muscle twitching, chronic pain, etc. and is caused by exposure to cell phones, Wi-Fi and other electronic devices, basically they're allergic to modern life. I don't mean to demean other people's beliefs and/or health problems but...

What the fuck.

Schou's husband, bless his heart, built a Faraday Cage for her to live in—it was a wooden frame with two layers of wire mesh and a door that could be sealed shut. All the more better to block out the signals, you know? That's where Schou spent much of her time before she found her safe haven: Green Bank, West Virginia. Green Bank is part of the US Radio Quiet Zone—wireless signals are banned 13,000 miles across to prevent interference with the giganto radio telescopes in the area. Green Bank is slowly emerging as the destination du jour for these Wi-Fi 'fraidy cats—no one carries cell phones, no one uses wireless tech and people can breathe now!

According to the BBC, dozens have flocked to the area and are now able to live a normal life. As normal as crazy people can get, I guess. [BBC via BoingBoing, Image Credit: Rob Wilson/Shutterstock]

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Microchip Implant Brings a Lost Kitten Home After Five Years and 1,800 Miles [Cats]

Five years ago, a cat named Willow went missing in Boulder, Colorado. She turned up this week 1,800 miles away in New York City. How'd her owners track her down? A tiny microchip, and huge heaping helpings of luck.

Willow is (must be) some kind of Achillean battle kitty. Her estranged owner explained that the family gave up hope after a while because of the "tons of coyotes" and owls in the area, assuming she'd been eaten. Nope. She was living it up in New York City.

We'll never know exactly how she got to New York. Maybe she just hoofed it the whole way; maybe she fell in with some kitty-lovin' hitchhikers; or could be she rode the rails and lived off of cans of baked beans cooked over barrel fires the whole way across the country. A spokesman for the New York's Animal Care & Control said Willow's in "very good condition, clean, a little chunky," so obviously she's had someone taking care of her once she got to the city.

Pet microchips are passive RFID devices, and don't require an internal power source, so they can last the lifetime of a pet. They're about the size of a grain of rice and generally cost under $100. Scans for the chips are standard when a lost or stray animal is found by authorities, and the biggest hassle is figuring out which of the why-are-there-this-many services has the owner's information.

Willow's owner joked that all of his pets are microchipped, and he'd microchip his kids if he could. But really, if it's this easy to reunite a cat with its family across five years and half the country, why aren't we microchipping basically everything in our lives? [NY Times, The Atlantic, Wikipedia, LA Times]

Image credit: Bebeto Matthews/Associated Press

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