I know the link was shit. I never claimed it wasn't.

And that idea was just an idea I read, not saying it works that way. I simply don't know.

If you insist of believing in diving rods, that's fine, but it's a discussion you can't have with me because magic isn't real.

I don't know what caused your headaches either, but it wasn't due to earth radiation, because that isn't real.

I'm not saying it was aliens, but: it was aliens.

So, I asked around and the best answer I have for you is that it was due to a Radon Gas Leak.

This happens if small amounts of Radium is breaking down in the soil and your house has negative-pressure, which essentially sucks the gas into the house.

Something could presumably have been installed that sucked the gas out of your basement and fanned it back out if the house.

Why the ruse about dowsing, though, I have no idea. There are very simple meters you could use to determine if this is the cause.

I don't insist it's earth radiation, I just said that was the explanation given. I do believe the water vein somehow, probably indirectly, influenced my head, without me drinking from it or something.

To be clear though: you insist that it's just a coincidence that I cried pretty much every night for a year and a half and I didn't after the thing was placed? Or perhaps 'just' don't believe me/my parents?

That's a small chance if you ask me...

And, I mean, it doesn't seem very likely that I somehow had a placebo effect as a baby or something, since I didn't know what the hell happened...

Babies often cry when their parents are stressed:
http://www.webmd.com/parenting/baby/crying-colic-9/stress-and-your-baby

If the snake oil in the yard made your parents less worried, there's an easy translation for you.

I like the way you're thinking in solutions now, but my dad installed the metal thing himself, in the frontyard, not in the basement, and I don't believe it sucks gas :)

Is the metal thing a pipe that goes from the basement to the front yard?

The "metal pipe" could have simply been a vent for Radon gas. And radon gas will do all kinds of things to fuck you up. That's why I like my old house. It may leak like a sieve (and cost me in heating and cooling bills), but there is no way radon is gonna build up in it. Too many damned holes and cracks in the basement from old water, gas, electric, cable lines that weren't plugged up. It all seeps out there (along with some of the heat or A/C).

No, not a pipe. My dad described it as barbed wire except that it didn't have sharp points, and he didn't know what kind of metal it was, but he isn't exactly a specialist. I should ask for the exact shape perhaps. Apparently we have smaller ones somewhere which we used behind the tv because the tv had interference or something like that.

Another funky thing I forgot to mention: when my dad called the man, the man said he already heard over the phone what was going on, meaning he's either a brilliant con artist (because he made me stop crying after one and a half year, which is brilliant for an... indirect placebo effect, since my parents would have to be convinced and cause me to have less stress to make me stop crying after so long?), which I think is the unlikely of the two options, or whatever it was most likely interfered with my head, the tv and/or the telephone.

The guy was apparently a farmer-ish type of guy. I don't think he knew too much about what he was doing, but I think he did recognize a symptom and found a solution. His explanation might be wrong.

You could perhaps compare the man to someone who keeps seeing the sun coming up in the east and assumes the sun moves in western direction around the earth.

Sure, the man is wrong, but he recognized a pattern and made a conclusion based on it, which wasn't correct but checked out time after time. That the earth is moving around the sun changes nothing about the observation.

In the same sense, I think the man did recognize the symptom but perhaps drew the wrong conclusion. So I'm saying it doesn't have to be earth rays (if it turns out to be rays coming from earth I would still rename them I think, but anyway :P), but something that would result in the same observation, and would also make what seems to be interference go away by placing the metal thing.

I hope I'm sparking a bunch of scientific interest here, I think many of us here know a bunch about physics after all :)

@Steephie...did you ever consider that babies generally tend to cry less after they get to about a year and a half/two years old.

@jmo Don't ruin this thread with your fucking common sense please. Thanks.

My girlfriend told me a strange story about her colleague at work and her "illness" which was supposedly caused by radiation emanating from computers and mobile phones. This lady had been having dizzy spells and generally feeling unwell, and so she went and saw a medical doctor, who told her to stay away from all electronic devices as he said it was mostly likely electromagnetic radiation interfering with her own body's electric pulses. I think her doctor might be a quack (although apparently he was a proper MD and not a homeopath or some other non-evidence-based practitioner).

@jmo: I think I was a little older than that, at the age you're not supposed to cry anymore :)

But I'd have to check how old I was.

Also, my dad got the tip from someone else who tried it where it worked, so that's a sample size of 2 :)

Steephie,

You realize that you're just making up details and asking us to explain them. That's not a fun game. Everything you've said has been wrong, changed, or too vague to be useful.

If you want to have a real conversation, get the facts first. Otherwise you're just wasting everyone's time.

I'm not making stuff up, I'm telling them as I find them out.

Metal barbed wire-ish near/around a water vein made me stop crying, we got smaller versions to put behind the tv so there was no interference with the tv, sample size of two, man claimed he already heard what the problem was when he answered the phone, suggesting interference with phone as most likely assuming it's not a brilliant con.

And my dad claimed to get a headache sitting next to the man. That was more than a decade ago, the thing should still be there.

Oh, and the man claimed it had to do with earth radiation, but that's not exactly to be taken as fact.

I used to get a headache whenever I sat next to a gullible person, but then a friend of mine recommended I where a special bracelet. He had had the same problem and it worked like a charm for him. So I got the bracelet and never since I started wearing it did I again get a headache from gullible people. The bracelet is made of titanium but it has tiny particles of horse shit in it. It apparently works by negating the ignorance radiation.

LOL! Had to plus one you, Oscar! That was a great bit of sarcasm!

There have been a lot of studies on the effect of EM radiation on people. Most show no effect, some show there may or may not be a small effect on some people, but statistically could go either way.

The barbed wire described is actually a good design for getting rid of static electricity, unlike the bracelets which are exactly the opposite of a good design. However, there is no reason for static electricity to build up. If there was, the water vein would be an excellent thing to ground the house to get rid of it.

Now cell phone radiation is a little different beastie, but not because it is some magical sky radiation. It's because there there is a fair amount of energy being released by the antenna (whatever the wattage is for the phone) and, being next to it, the brain is another excellent antenna soaking up that EM energy and heating up from it. The increase in temperature over ten minutes of cell phone use has been documented, although the effect of this, if any, appear to result in excessive cell phone use.

@Theodosius: I understand most of what you say, but could you elaborate on your theory about the thing solved with the barbed wire? I'm not sure I understood your point while I understood everything else :)

It acts like an inverted lightning rod, steephie. It draws the static electricity out of the house. But the bracelet is a loop around your arm and would, if looped repeatedly, actually begin to act like a magnetic coil, the exact opposite of what you want.

But unless he's talking about grounding the house via the water vein to the metal thing, which doesn't seem likely, I'm still missing his point. The only 'connection' between the house and the 'barbed wire' is the soil inbetween the house and the place in the frontyard I think... unless the water vein touches the house, but who builds the fundamentals of a house directly on soil with a visible water vein? And even then I don't see how static electricity in my house would dissapear because of a metal thing buried in the frontyard, with nothing else changed, since the fundamentals would be made of concrete most likely. The house is pretty standard.

So that's what I'm not following.

If the metal wire doesn't connect to your house then it does absolutely nothing.

And it doesn't matter jack shit whether it is barbed or not. Where the hell do you guys get this hilarious "knowledge" about static electricity?

Just trying to solve one problem at a time. If it isn't connected to the house it certainly doesn't matter what shape it is.

Of course the shape matters. If it's not barbed it won't keep the gnomes away.

@abgemacht: I agree that it can hardly have something to do with electricity.
@oscarjd: shape can matter. It's not barbed though, I just said my dad described it as a 'barbed wire without the pointy things'. I just translated what my dad said. Why he didn't just say wire confuses me, it's perhaps not an actual wire, my dad was being a bit vague. I suppose I should ask again some day what exactly it looked like :) I don't think my dad knows what it is and he sucked at explaining it. He made a round gesture while saying it so I assume it's a wire in the form of a circle, or perhaps just a metal circle (so not a solid block, but, well, in a wire-ish way except it's perhaps not a wire...)

Can't confirm the shape though, I doubt my dad knows it too well. Something like that though I suppose?

So anyway, could it be that the electricity somehow influenced the house without a direct connection but built up under the house, with the metal thing drawing the electricity away from under the house? Could the electricity built up below the house influence the environment in the house? Right now I can only think of very unlikely stuff involving that...

I'll ask my dad to be more specific soon :)

Houses should have a ground, which is a metal pipe that goes straight into the ground. This keeps your house at the same potential as the ground, thus grounding it.

While an improperly grounded house might suck for some devices, it won't affect a baby one bit.