Spanish priest installs electronic jammer in church to banish cellular ringing
“MORAIRA, Spain - A priest fed up with mobile phones ringing during Mass has installed an electronic jammer to keep his flock in tune with God. The Rev. Francisco Llopis, pastor of the Church of the Defenseless, said the beeps, tunes and other digital noise emitted by today’s omnipresent cell phones are incompatible with quiet worship. Llopis’ church in this southeast coastal town is the first in Spain to install such a device, which transmits low-power radio signals that sever communications between cellular handsets and cellular base-stations.”
I’m quite pleased to see that this solution has been implemented at the Church of the Defenseless.
What I wish my college teachers would do: follow through on their promise to eject from class, and charge that period as an absence to, the person whose cell phone rings during class.
I carry my cell phone in case of emergency.
I leave it off unless I’m using it, which is rare.
I’m scared that some day someone is going to be having
a heart attack, and I’m going to pull out my cell phone
to call 911, and … oops, it’s blocked.
Sorry buddy. You’re dead because someone overreacted
to inconsiderate cell phone users.
Hmm. If my loved-one dies because I can’t call 911
because someone jammed my phone,
can’t that person be arrested for manslaughter
or indifference to human life or something?
If you are worried that the time taken to run outside to use your cellphone is going to put an emergency victim in danger, you probably have an unrealistic expectation of your emergency services.
Time taken to run outside: 30 seconds, max
Time taken for an ambulance to get to you: 5 minutes? 10? 20? YMMV.
No and no. I mean, good luck for trying if you wish but you’d have just as much luck trying them for battery on the theory that they “touched” your phone and your phone was touching you. It ain’t gonna happen. Well, unless the guy is there laughing at you trying to get your phone to work and screaming “vindication at last!” while your friend has passed out on the floor.
Anyway, there might be some liability involved, but he wouldn’t be guilty of homicide.
Will running outside be enough? What’s the range
of the jamming device?
My phone still doesn’t work outside the church,
so I start running down the block,
oops, now I’m outside a “quiet-zone” restaurant,
still I’m jammed,
a few hundred more feet down the street,
oops, I’m outside the movie theatre. Still jammed.
etc…
I say if you want to declare your place to be ring-free,
then do so, and have zero tolerance for the jerks.
I’ll help you throw the guy out.
But be aware that it is possible from time to time
that a phone call can be more important than
your sermon/meal/movie/book.
This is a very unlikely scenario. The effect of a jammer can quite easily be confined to the sanctuary, leaving you free to use it in the lobby, let alone outside the building.
Anyway, you won’t have to worry about it in the US unless the laws change quite a bit (you did notice the story originated in Spain, right?). The FCC definitely frowns on this type of thing. Not to say that it couldn’t be done, but the feds would be there quite shortly with an order to cease and desist.
If you ever come to Hong Kong (population 7 million), say “Hi”. I’m the one without a phone clamped to his ear.
Really irritating - movie theater, restaurant, office, subway (special equipment installed in the tunnels so people can carry on jabbering underground). A colleague tried to fix me up with some bimbo friend of hers - blind date lunch, during which the bimbo acceped at least 4 calls. (I did not ask for her number.)
Even foreign domestic helpers - Indonesians earning US$300 a month - constantly play with the wretched things. I’m living in a city of people who spend all day talking into or dumbly staring at little boxes. Their lives revolve around these boxes. All hell breaks loose when someone loses their phone, battery runs down, etc etc.
And don’t get me started on the idiotic tunes people choose as a ringing tone…
I completely agree that cell phones should be turned off in movie theaters, libraries, classrooms, places of worship, lecture halls, and other places where either everyone there is expected to be quiet or only the person who is addressing the gathering should be speaking. But what’s up with “shopping”? I haven’t noticed the hushed, cathedral atmosphere of the typical American shopping mall.
Oh, wait, I missed one–subways??? Ah, yes, the quiet peace and tranquility of the subway station at rush hour. I frequently go to subway stations just to “get away from it all”.
Taking cell phone calls during a date is certainly pretty boorish. But I think some of the anti-cell phone snobbery is as bad in its way as the snobbery of the people who think being on a cell phone all the time makes them seem important.
The rules for cell phone conversations in public should be precisely the same as the rules for face-to-face conversations in public. Is it rude to talk to the person next to you in the movie theater or the church? Yes. So don’t talk on your cell phone either. Should you be chatting with your friend in the next desk during class? No. So don’t talk on a cell phone either. Don’t yell into your cell phone, just like you shouldn’t carry on your personal conversations in public places in a loud, carrying voice. A person who repeatedly interrupts a date to have conversations with all their friends is being a jackass, and probably ain’t gonna get laid that particular evening, either.
BUT…all that said, if someone is talking on a cell phone in a non-quiet public place in a normal conversational voice, it’s no more rude than if they’re talking to another person in a non-quiet public place in a normal conversational voice. Even if you find their conversation inane or unneccesary (“Guess where I’m calling from? The grocery store!”), it’s really none of your business. (Cars are different matter, since we’re talking about safety and not just rudeness. IIRC, studies have shown that even hands-free cell phones are more distracting than having a conversation with a person who’s actually in the car with you.)
I’m with MEBuckner. Some cell phone users are annoying, but being annoyed by the gall that someone would have to hold a converstaion on gasp a sidewalk! is a bit overboard, don’t cha think?
Yea, I have a cell phone with me all the time. Since I’m usually at school its on silent mode more often than not. I don’t answer it while I’m in class, obviously. However, my family lives a six hour drive away. With the wonder of free long distance and roaming I talk to them almost every day. My little sister calls me when she gets home from school and I can hear all about her crush, her friends, and her new flute piece while I sit on campus. That level of being in touch is valuble to me. If it damages your sensibilities that I’m chatting with my sister while she’s not physically present, I’m sorry, being there for her is more important to me.
Yes, some cell phone users take the convienece of a cell phone far beyond what is acceptable. Cracking down on silence in quiet places is an acceptable responce. Demanding that noise be in the flesh only is not. (And by saying that subways, sidewalks, and shopping malls be cellphone free, that is essentially what you are saying.) Logically, any place that you would carry out a face to face conversation should be fair game for me to ask my sister what she learned in school today.
[sub]Yes, I did choose to go to school a hellishly long way away frommy family. Yes, I’m choosing to love them so much as to want to remain a part of their lives. In that choice I got a cell phone that is a local call for them, and long distance for anyone here. We all have our priorities. I chose education and family.[/sub]
I am the terror of the 5:47, because I will actually get up and (politely) ask people to pipe down. Nine time sout of ten, they apologize and do indeed pipe down, in great embarrassment. That tenth time, I get into a very enjoyable fight.
I don’t mind quick “I’m on the 5:47, meet me at 6:30” calls, or any call made in a normal tone of voice. But when I hear “HI, I’M ON THE TRAIN, SO WHAT’S UP WITH YOU?” I know there’s trouble ahead.
I might add that I have frequently been applauded by other passengers after making one of my swoop-and-kill missions.
I don’t think the problem is so much with the cell phones themselves, as it is with the idiots who abuse them. I’ve gone shopping and had to maneuver my large, pregnant self around some moron who’s oblivious to her immediate surroundings because she’s yakking into her cell phone. I’ve also gotten to hear the intimate details of someone’s medical problems at Barnes and Noble because of these things.
I think the cellular industry would do well to launch a campaign about cell-phone etiquette.
Amazingly, despite the lack of cell phone technology, the human race for 50,000 or so years. Even more surprising, people survived heart attacks.
Do you want to help. Don’t reach for the cell phone. Reach for your CPR card. It’s far more useful. What’s that, you (generic and not addressed at any poster in particular) don’t know CPR? But you have a cell phone and it’s just as good. I’m sure your cell phone will keep oxygen flowing to the victim’s brain just as well. (resisting rolleyes…whew, it was close)
Most places of business, etc., have neat inventions called non-cellular phones that can be used for emergencies. You might have to tell someone who works there “Call 911!” and they’ll do it for you instead, but I gather that the signal goes out over suspended wires and works just fine.
What’s sad is that people are that freaking disrespectful that a pastor felt he had to do this. 99%+ of all cell phones made these days have a ‘vibrate’ mode. If you think your phone calls are that freaking important that you can’t even turn your phone off in church, then switch it to vibrate.
I don’t mind quiet conversations on trains and other places like that, but when they get into long, drawn-out, loud conversations in an otherwise quiet place, it gets obnoxious. Last night I was in a train car where the only sound other than the ventilation system and some newspapers being paged through was this woman going on and on, with no attempt to mute her voice at all, about who she was meeting with (naming names, committees, and reasons for the meetings) when, about her personal life, etc., etc. If a person were sitting next to her and listening, I’d find a lot of that conversation just as loud and inappropriate - you never know who’s sitting around you and what they might pick up on if you’re talking about business dealings, etc.
"Last night I was in a train car where the only sound other than the ventilation system and some newspapers being paged through was this woman going on and on, with no attempt to mute her voice at all, about who she was meeting with (naming names, committees, and reasons for the meetings) when, about her personal life, etc., etc. "
—So, did anyone go over and ask her to SHUT UP? Why not?
I would have no problem if a theater decided to use one of these jammers as long as it was clearly indicated before buying the ticket that the device was installed and no one would be able to send or recieve phone calls on their mobile.
They’ve started doing this in Calgary (and, I assume, other Canadian cities) - I’ve seen commercials recommending common sense for people driving with cell phones; “Use a handsfree set or pull over to take a call”, etc. I would like to see them go even further with the etiquette myself, to address the inconsiderate things that have been mentioned, but at least they’ve started doing something.
Nope, Eve, no one did. I haven’t personally seen anyone confront someone on my train about cell phone use, though I do occasionally read tales of it in the newsletter that the train line releases (they have a section where you can submit anonymous letters about things that happen on the train). I didn’t because I decided to take a nap - I can sleep through anything, including thunderstorms - and I get some cheap personal amusement at the thought that this woman might be sabotaging herself with her stupid indiscretion. But I’m petty that way. I figure, it’s not like I’d be telling her anything she shouldn’t already know.
If something annoys me enough, I will speak up about it - I do in movie theatres for instance. But the train is more of an iffy situation, since people will talk to each other in louder voices sometimes as well, and there’s not really any rule against that.