Saturday, February 28, 2015

THE MYTH OF THE 'QUIET ZONE'!



(#93)  28 FEBRUARY 2015, Vol.2, No.8 >  THE MYTH OF THE ‘QUIET ZONE’!




The POCAHONTAS CRIER
‘When the Righteous succeed the people rejoice,
But when the bad govern, men groan!’ – Proverbs 29:2


THE MYTH OF THE
‘QUIET ZONE’!

Perhaps the greatest of all ‘myths’ taking place within Pocahontas County is the ‘MYTH OF THE QUIET ZONE’ as perpetuated through the years by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) located in Green Bank.  This most egregious of all ‘myths’ exists under the pretext that the NRAO needs a ‘Quiet Zone’ in order to listen to the noise that stars make whether coming into existence or blowing apart into their final oblivion – and that this ‘zone’ requires as little ‘white noise’ or ‘static’ as is possible!  As a direct & proximate result, the DETRIMENTAL EFFECTS TO THE COUNTY are that Pocahontas County is DENIED CELL PHONE SERVICES!  And by being denied ‘Cell Phone’ service, the Citizens of this county are being denied basic services found elsewhere in the USA including DENIAL OF specific EMERGENCY MEDICAL SERVICES…such as ‘Medical Alert’ and others that use cell phone towers!

This Scam of denying cell phone service is happily appreciated by the monopoly that Frontier Communications has in effect thanks to the treachery & self-serving of the likes of former county commissioner Reta (the rodent) Griffiths who gave Frontier a ten-year contract as the sole provider of communications for Pocahontas County so that she could obtain her ‘executive’ position with Frontier located in Elkins, West Virginia.  And because Frontier has had such a monopoly, this bottom-feeding-corporation has used their monopoly to more than DOUBLE THE COST for each household to have a telephone in their home – compared to other counties in West Virginia!  The average monthly cost to just have a telephone in a house, regardless of long distance program, is more than TWICE THAT PAID elsewhere in West Virginia all under the pretext that the population of Pocahontas is too small to afford communication services!  And it’s been the monopoly of Frontier that has prevented and stalled other telephone communications companies from offering their services here in Pocahontas for lower costs.  That’s why FIBER OPTICS has been so long delayed, and will be delayed as long as possible by Frontier, since they do not want any competition to their stranglehold over Pocahontas County!  Only City-Net communications has made an inroad here in this county by putting in Fiber-Optics to Snowshoe across Cheat Mountain from Randolph County.  And finally, we now have Spruce Knob / Seneca Rocks Telephone coming in from Pendleton County that offers rates HALF that being charged by the thieves at Frontier.

But the prevailing scandal taking place at the NRAO regarding the LACK OF NOISE coming from stars ‘light-years’ away from Earth is just one of the reasons that the National Science Foundation is slowly pulling-the-plug on the NRAO and wishes to drop the facility altogether as an unnecessary expense! 

THE REALITY OF THE WHOLE AFFAIR IS THAT EVER SINCE ITS INCEPTION IN THE 1940s, THE TOTAL AMOUNT OF ‘NOISE’ RECEIVED FROM SPACE HAS BEEN THE SOUND OF A SINGLE-PIN DROPPING IN A ROOM!

That means that once the program for the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) was set aside, its replacement of listening for any star-noise on the spectrum of ‘radio frequencies’ has been a giant ongoing expense that too has now run its course – and that means that the inflated salaries received by those working at the NRAO amounts to nothing more than inflated-welfare-checks that can no longer be substantiated with any positive or concrete results or justification.  And that all means that the ‘tourist attraction’ has lost its credibility as a viable scientific project and has turned from a necessity, or novelty, into a giant embarrassment for the U.S. government!

But that also means that once the NRAO is given its final resting place in history that FINALLY THIS COUNTY CAN HAVE CELL PHONE SERVICE that of and by itself will more than likely benefit far more people than the NRAO!  And that also means that once Cell Phone service comes to Pocahontas County, then the likes of corrupt corporations like Frontier may also find their demise since CELL PHONES CAN REPLACE LAND-LINE PHONES AT A MUCH CHEAPER RATE PER/MONTH per/household!  The sooner the better for the mutual benefit of all concerned!

Many of you reading this may also be aware that within the last several months there have been reports that as many as 10,000 signals, pulses, patterned & sequenced noises in what some are calling ‘messages’ are bouncing into our atmosphere on a daily basis from various locations in outer-space!  This is exactly what the SETI program was originally set up to track & follow.  BUT THE PROBLEM IS THAT NO ONE CAN DECIPHER whatever these patterned noises mean, if anything, and therefore the whole exercise remains a mystery since by some accounts, some of these patterned-noises have come from galaxies so far away that the ‘noises’ began millions of years ago and are just now reaching Earth!  For those of you who have seen the Hollywood movie, ‘BATTLESHIP’, within the last two years or so, then you have an idea of just what could or would happen IF there is other intelligent-life out there…and it decided to track & follow a signal sent from Earth to outer-space and then back again!

At any rate, several things are certain, and that is that the Citizens of Pocahontas County have been CHEATED OUT OF CELL PHONE SERVCES by BOTH the NRAO and Frontier Communications for mutually compatible & self-serving purposes and there is no telling just how detrimental this loss has been to this county financially and otherwise!  Also the current THREE STOOGES on the county commission have not a clue as to how to change these matters to the mutual benefit of all concerned – they would rather give away portions of this county to self-serving corporations like Dominion Gas for promised short-term tax-revenues and ignore the long-term and permanent DEFACEMENT!  And let’s not forget the outdated-business-clique still clinging to Marlinton lead by the likes of Fred Burns & his Ilk who have kept POVERTY & PAUPERISM in this county for the past four-decades for everyone but themselves!  As usual these charlatans fail to realize that Randolph to the north and Greenbrier to the south are actually PROSPERING since they have embraced all things modern while Pocahontas in the middle wallows in Poverty & Pauperism thanks in part to the Greed & Corruption and Minimum-Wages paid by the businesses here in Pocahontas County!  Ah, but then again are these not the same men that attempt to proclaim  and portray themselves as members of a ‘benevolent-secret-society’ which in reality only benefits themselves!  Is that indeed not the very definition of ‘HYPOCRISY’?   

Meanwhile there are now several ways in which anyone in this county can DROP FRONTIER and pick up an ALTERNATIVE to the ‘lousy-services’ that Frontier provides!  The best & also the most expensive provider of Internet Services is Hughes-Gen-4 that runs at the fastest speed ever provided so far for Internet usage.  And then there is Spruce Knob / Seneca Rocks Communications that provides the same Internet services as Frontier BUT AT HALF THE COST CHARGED BY FRONTIER.  And although Frontier is still STALLING & PREVENTING Spruce Knob / Seneca Rocks from providing telephone services, there is still a way to defeat Frontier by purchasing BASIC TALK from Wal-Mart for $10 and then paying $10 per/month for the same telephone services that Frontier is charging for around $100 PER/MONTH or more! 

Through BASIC TALK all one needs is an Internet connection – the same telephone number is used as now, and the connection goes through the Internet INSTEAD OF ACROSS THE TELEPHONE WIRES OF FRONTIER!  So @ $10 per/month x 12 months = $120 per/year!  Now compare that to your currently monthly and annual charges paid to Frontier Communications – subtract the $120 for BASIC TALK – and the difference is WHAT YOU SAVE by being ripped-off by Frontier!  And for the record, YOU DO NOT NEED TO KEEP YOUR COMPUTER ON to access BASIC TALK as those that use ‘Magic Jack’ are required to do – besides ‘Magic Jack’ requires the user to purchase access-cards limiting the amount of time for telephone usage pursuant to the time purchased on each access-card.  With BASIC TALK the only difference is that telephone services are provided via the INTERNET and not via a private-predatory-corporation like Frontier!  Who knows, if enough folks learn how to save their funds and redirect those funds to better services, then maybe, just maybe, the likes of self-serving-rodents like Reta Griffiths might just have to get a minimum-wage job like everyone else in this county!  She sure hasn’t proven herself to amount to much more at this point…now has she?


ONE WAY OR ANOTHER…WE ALL REAP WHAT WE HAVE SOWN…& then some!

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The Pocahontas Crier is an independent, free, non-subscription, Internet News Service providing in depth reporting on important issues directly affecting the Citizens
of Pocahontas County, West Virginia, and meant for entertainment in the true ‘muckraking’ & ‘iconoclast’ tradition of questioning authority, challenging corruption, exposing impropriety and the appearance of impropriety, and offering Common Sense Alternatives for
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