Sunday, August 15, 2010

The Empire Strikes Back

Editor's Note: This fictional story is a part of a continuing series that aims to explore various educational issues. This installment is a follow up to "IWB, I Loathe You" and "IWB, I Will Hunt You Down and Destroy You!!"

By Jacob Gutnicki

It is a dark time for the Frederic Burrhus Skinner High School. Michael Lotta has been promoted to Assistant Principal, and is using the custodial troops to rid the school of Clever Boards. He has also begun to confiscate student wireless devices with the help of the newly constructed wifi sniffer.

In order to evade the wifi sniffer, a group of student tweeters have established a secret closed network using the 802.11z protocol on a remote Linux server.

Meanwhile, Assistant Principal Michael Lotta has become obsessed with stamping out the use of wireless technology and has dispatched the use of an enhanced wifi sniffer to put an end to all the tweet heads…

Midnight… 3rd Floor of Frederic Burrhus Skinner High School…

“Are you sure no one is here.”

“Yes, yes, yes. This is the perfect time to swipe the end of year examinations. Time to pick the lock.”

“This is strange. It seems that the door is open.”

“Stop! It’s a trap.”

“Oh no, too late.”

Michael Lotta, the new Assistant Principal appears from a secret door.

“Good Evening gentlemen. Say cheese to the camera. Perfect… You are now eligible for the Student Relocation Program.”

“The what?”

“I guess you did not read my new memo. Any student caught violating the school discipline code will be deported to our annex in France.”

“You can’t do this. You’ll never get away with this.”

“Oh no my young students. You will find out it is you who are mistaken about a great many things. Guards!!! Take them away!!”

Two weeks later…

Principal- “How goes the Student Relocation Program?”

Michael Lotta- “I have deported 67 students; a prime number.

Principal- “Excellent. This will help our school standing tremendously.”

Michael Lotta- “I hate asking you this, but is this really legal?”

Principal- “Don’t worry about it. I will make it legal.”

Epilogue… In just one month, Michael Lotta has inspired new levels of fear amongst the student body. Students think twice about tweeting. After all, if they are not careful, they could be the next student to join the Student Relocation Program…

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Blogger's Note: Like this story? You can read other parts in the series here.

4 comments:

  1. get rid of wireless-- good for you !!
    More information about the biological effects of non-ionizing radiation from wireless technology is coming out every day. Enough is not being done by cities, counties, states and the Federal Government to protect us from the potentially devastating health and environmental effects. Through the 1996 telecommunications act the telecoms are shielded from liability and oversight. Initially cell phones were released with no pre-market safety testing despite the fact the Government and the Military have known for over 50 years that radio frequency is harmful to all biological systems (inthesenewtimes dot com/2009/05/02/6458/.). Health studies were suppressed and the 4 trillion dollar a year industry was given what amounts to a license to kill.
    On it's face, the 1996 telecommunications act is unconstitutional and a cover-up. Within the fine print city governments are not allowed to consider "environmental" effects from cell towers. They should anyway! It is the moral and legal obligation of our government to protect our health and welfare? Or is it? When did this become an obsolete concept? A cell tower is a microwave weapon capable of causing cancer, genetic damage & other biological problems. Bees, bats, humans, plants and trees are all affected by RF & EMF. Communities fight to keep cell towers away from schools yet they allow the school boards to install wi fi in all of our schools thereby irradiating our kids for 6-7 hours each day. Kids go home and the genetic assault continues with DECT portable phones, cell phones, wi fi and Wii's. A tsunami of cancers and early alzheimer's await our kids. Young people under the age of 20 are 420% more at risk of forming brain tumors (Swedish study, Dr. Lennart Hardell) because of their soft skulls, brain size and cell turn over time. Instead of teaching "safer" cell phone use and the dangers of wireless technology our schools mindlessly rush to wireless bending to industry pressure rather than informed decision making. We teach about alcohol, tobacco, drugs and safe sex but not about "safer" cell phone use. We are in a wireless trance, scientists are panicking while young brains, ovaries and sperm burns.

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  2. The side effects of cellphone technology is definitely an issue that needs to be explored more closely. Thank you for sharing. Having said that, at the end of your commentary you made reference to "safer cell phone use". I am wondering, what does that entail in your mind.

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  3. Okay, not what I expected with this 'second installment'.

    How on Earth am I supposed to go back to my faculty and attempt to promote ed-tech blogs as valuable resources? Someone on my staff will surely read "sperm burns".

    Ken, you can keep your blogs! That's what they'll say.

    On another note, I'd like to believe that in the early portion of this post, you include a wondrous tribute to Admiral Ackbar.

    "It's a trap!"

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  4. This is what makes the whole process interesting. This installment (in my mind) had nothing to do with the issue Jail Bush raised. Nevertheless, the points made are interesting and are worth examining. In my view, this was more about examining the policies of the new administrator in charge. Is his tough love approach correct or is he taking it a bit too far? There are other issues as well in this narrative.. However, I like to keep my audience guessing...

    Obviously, there are various elements of spoof including Admiral Ackbar, Darth Sidious, Darth Vader, and the language used in the intro Star Wars crawl. As always, thanks for sharing.

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