Made By Monkeys

"EMF (electromagnetic waves) are everywhere, in your home, office, car - all electronic equipment radiate them. In addition, radio stations, cell phones, satellite communications also operate via EMF waves. Some products that generate EMF are computers, hair dryers, heating pads, microwave ovens, and cell phones, and many more. Some common symptoms of EMF exposure are headaches, fatigue, nausea, eyestrain, and overall lack of energy."

The paragraph above is posted on the Toolsforwellness.com website, which offers a plethora of products for EMF protection including pendants and watches. Plus they're stylish, too! In fact, plenty of websites offer devices to protect your home and office, your car, even your pet. Because you know if your pet hedgehog is acting a little weird, it just has to be the result of harmful EMF!

After the Wi-Fi detector, here's more on "divining rods", on a far more serious topic.

Thanks to David Mery for flagging this one, a trail that leads through the New York Times (Iraq Swears by Bomb Detector U.S. Sees as Useless) and Bruce Schneier's Security Technology blog (The Doghouse: ADE 651)...

"Despite major bombings that have rattled the nation, and fears of rising violence as American troops withdraw, Iraq's security forces have been relying on a device to detect bombs and weapons that the United States military and technical experts say is useless," writes the New York Times.

Gupta Harshwardhan (a dyed-in-the-wool mechanical engineer) responded recently to a post on the excellent Sherlock Ohms blog on Design News. It concerned EMI (electro-magnetic interference) causing computers to spontaneously reboot.

He wrote in to our sister title wondering whether the HP wireless keyboard+mouse on his office desktop was suffering from the same problem. Every now and then, he said, the cursor would creep towards the left as if directed by a spirit hand.

(Okay, he didn't add that last bit in - we're taking a little editorial license because we like ghost stories.)

Over two million pets in the UK have an idENTICHIP RF tag in the scruff of their neck that works as a kind of electronic ID tag. So what are the chances that two new devices based on the same technology -- which has had a good track record up until now -- would fail in three different dogs (including Barney, shown here with his pal Georgia, who coincidentally lives next door to one of the other dogs). And then to have those same devices weirdly and spontaneously rectify themselves after "xray"' investigations?

The odds must be, well, big enough to be almost impossible.