Sally Anne Hates Harry Potter

Are you donating toys to The Salvation Army this year? Maybe you should rethink that.

Recent news items have brought to light the fact that many donated toys never make it the children for whom they were intended. Because the Salvation Army is a Christian organisation, any toys that are deemed "not in line with Christian principles," are rejected by the charity. This includes the most popular items for young teens this year: Harry Potter and Twilight themed merchandise.

Are these items rejected at the donation sites? No. Your donations are taken to a warehouse where they are sorted, and the $40 Harry Potter Lego game you gave, and other toys like it are separated out, and discarded. Why? According to a representative of the Sally Ann, it's because they promote the occult and black magic.

So, you decided to donate a gift this year. You chose something you thought a child might like. The charity is second guessing you, and your choice of toy might be labelled inappropriate. If you thought it was inappropriate, you wouldn't have donated it.

The Salvation Army claims that the rejected toys are sent to a third party, where they might end up being distributed to children in a different manner, but they did not deign to identify that third party, so, really, who knows?

My charitable donations will certainly be aimed somewhere else this year. Yes, I think so.


hat tip: The Friendly Atheist

The (not so) great wi-fi debate

You probably haven't been able to turn on your computer and surf the Internet the last few days without running into a story about Barrie, Ontario area parents claiming their children are being made sick by Wi-Fi radiation in the schools. The media is giving all kinds of attention to one or two scientists who are saying there might be a health concern. Unfortunately, it is giving little more than lip service to the vast bulk of the scientific community who say the opposite.

Sure, many publications have expressed some more or less skeptical opinions - in a wishy-washy kind of way, but no one, anywhere, is telling it straight. No one is saying what should be said. No one is saying that there isn't a shred of credible evidence that there is any harm whatsoever from Wi-Fi signals. No one is saying that the cell phones all these kids have glued to their heads twenty-four hours a day emit considerably more radiation - in the same frequency range - than Wi-Fi transmitters. Heck your DVD player emits more RF radiation than your wireless router, but I don't see any of these parents cutting up their Blockbuster cards.

What needs to be said - loud and clear - is that, in order for the claims of this group to be in any way valid; in order for there to be a health risk from Wi-Fi signals, everything we currently understand about physics would have to be wrong. I'm not talking about a minor correction to our scientific understanding of the world. I mean we'd have to throw the laws of nature out the window and start all over again. Microwave radiation is non-ionizing. That means it doesn't have enough power to damage cells beyond heating them. A typical microwave oven is about 1000 watts. A typical cellphone is less than one watt. What that means is, in order to reheat your cold cup of Tim's to a piping hot, drinkable state (what your microwave would do in about one minute), you'd have to hold your cell phone up to the cup for around seventeen hours...in a shielded box that didn't allow any of the radiation to escape into the environment at large...in an insulated cup that didn't allow any of the heat to escape into the air. OK, let's be honest, it's impossible. And your average Wi-Fi transmitter is about half the power of a cell phone - and typically not held up against your head.

This idea - that Wi-Fi radiation can somehow be harmful to people's health - is what we, in the skeptical community refer to as, "not even wrong." What we mean by that is it is an idea that is so far out of the realm of reason that it's like asking how many pot-roasts the Yankees scored last night. It's a statement that doesn't even make sense in the context of a reasonable discussion. No, these parents are barking up the wrong area rug. They're "not even wrong."

Today's Headlines

Sources are reporting the death of an unidentified 50 year old man due to heart failure. His friends and family say he was taken before his time.

In unrelated news, hundreds of young men in their late twenties and early thirties are celebrating their sudden release from decades old non-disclosure agreements...