AP:

The head of a prominent cancer research institute issued an unprecedented warning to his faculty and staff Wednesday: Limit cell phone use because of the possible risk of cancer.

The warning from Dr. Ronald B. Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, is contrary to numerous studies that don’t find a link between cancer and cell phone use, and a public lack of worry by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Herberman is basing his alarm on early unpublished data. He says it takes too long to get answers from science and he believes people should take action now — especially when it comes to children.

In the memo he sent to about 3,000 faculty and staff Wednesday, he says children should use cell phones only for emergencies because their brains are still developing.

Adults should keep the phone away from the head and use the speakerphone or a wireless headset, he says. He even warns against using cell phones in public places like a bus because it exposes others to the phone’s electromagnetic fields.

Actually, people shouldn’t be using cell phones in confined public spaces like buses out of common courtesy, never mind the medical risk that lambert might be sitting next to you and go for your throat, maddened beyond endurance as you yammer about your trade secrets or sex life or anal leakage issues or whatever. “Hi, I’m on the train!” This means you, Ashley.

A driving force behind the memo was Devra Lee Davis, the director of the university’s center for environmental oncology.

“The question is do you want to play Russian roulette with your brain,” she said in an interview from her cell phone while using the hands-free speaker phone as recommended. “I don’t know that cell phones are dangerous. But I don’t know that they are safe.”

Obviously, another reason for universal health care. Why?  Read more 

My worldview really brightened on the way down to Eschacon:

Used to be that a competitive advantage of a regional busline I would take, Trailways, was that they had a no cellphones except for emergency use policy, which the driver read at the start of the trip. (Actually, some drivers would sing it, and others would recite the policy in poetic form).

Glorious silence! No more being trapped in an echoing metal box with some asshole yammering about their gallstone operation, or some punk whining about their parole officer, or—though it comes to the same thing these days—some investment banker disclosing proprietary information! No more ringtones!

So, on my trek down to Philly, I discovered that Greyhound has adopted the same no cellphones policy! (“Your neighbor doesn’t want to hear your personal business,” says the driver.) Victory is near!  Read more 

And that’s the way the telcos like it, uh huh. Times:

As cellphone use has skyrocketed, making it hard to avoid hearing half a [noisy, useless, yammering, overly personal, and non-stop] conversation in many public places, a small but growing band of rebels is turning to a blunt countermeasure: the cellphone jammer, a gadget that renders nearby mobile devices impotent.

The jamming technology works by sending out a radio signal so powerful that phones are overwhelmed and cannot communicate with cell towers. The range varies from several feet to several yards, and the devices cost from $50 to several hundred dollars. Larger models can be left on to create a no-call zone.

Of course, those Fourth Amendment-trashing assholes at Verizon aren’t too happy about this:  Read more 

[Welcome, TPM readers. Welcome, Laodicea readers.] As we keep saying, authoritarian systems are extremely vulnerable to fraud, because authoritarian followers aren’t capable of providing checks and balances for their leaders, and the leaders are always tempted by the usual suspects: Money, power, and sex. Latest example: Oral Roberts [cough] “University,” which is about as much a university as Monica Goodling’s Regent “University,” or bad pizza billionaire and uber-Catholic loon Tom Monahan’s Ave Maria. I’ll skip right to the juiciest details:

An ORU student repairing [the laptop of Stephanie Cantese, Richard Roberts’ sister-in-law] discovered the document and later provided a copy to one of the professors.

It details dozens of alleged instances of misconduct. Among them:

• A longtime maintenance employee was fired so that an underage male friend of Mrs. Roberts could have his position.
• Mrs. Roberts — who is a member of the board of regents and is referred to as ORU’s “first lady” on the university’s [sic] Web site — frequently had cell-phone bills of more than $800 per month, with hundreds of text messages sent between 1 a.m. to 3 a.m. to “underage males who had been provided phones at university expense.”

Sounds like she’s been taking lessons from Mark Foley (R-Neverland), although, granted, Foley (“Don’t forget to measure for me”) used IM, not text. Honestly, what is it about Christianist authority figures and child abuse? It’s like being a sex predator is part of the job description, or something; at this point, these guys have a track record, and there’s example after example after example.

More of the sadly familiar, yet still lurid, details:  Read more 

Too much even for Murdoch’s paper:

… [T]here are some limits on odd behavior. Which makes us wonder what Rudy Giuliani was thinking last Friday when he accepted, and even flaunted, a phone call from his wife Judith in the middle of his speech to the National Rifle Association.

This was no emergency call. His cell phone rang in his pocket during his speech, which is itself unusual; most public officials turn theirs off during events, if only out of courtesy for the audience. Mr. Giuliani went on to answer it and carry on a routine “love you” and “have a safe trip” exchange with Mrs. Giuliani while the crowd (and those of us watching on C-Span) wondered what in the world that was all about.

His campaign aides spun the episode as a “candid and spontaneous moment” [please play the YouTube now if you have not already] illustrative of the couple’s affection. [The current Mrs. Tooliani is, of course, a paid employee of Mr. Tooliani. Odd.] We might believe that if we hadn’t heard stories of similar behavior by Mr. Giuliani as he has campaigned around the country. During one event in Oklahoma, we’re told he took two calls, at least one from his wife, and chatted for several minutes as the audience waited. That episode followed Mr. Giuliani’s eye-popping disclosure earlier this year that, if he’s elected, his wife would sit in on Cabinet meetings. He later downplayed that possibility.

[Obligatory balanced boilerplate on Tooliani’s supposed competence ommitted.]

The spontaneity was too much even for the NRA:  Read more 

[Welcome to the French, C&L readers, Blog Report readers, and devotees of the girl in the grey flannel bra.]

[More surprises: Today’s uncritical coverage mindlesly repeats McConnell’s “surgical” obfuscation.]

Surprise!

Honestly, reading the McConnell interview in the El Paso Times, of all places, is like having your head pushed through mush. The guy is just an obfuscatory master of the filibuster. And has anyone ever noticed how much he sounds like Bush the First? (“Don’t want to go there. Just think, lots”; “Just let me leave it, not too much detail.” Na ga happen…)

There’s plenty of Inside Baseball stuff, and McConnell develops his own timeline for the Democrats FISA betrayal, but this exchange leaped out at me, because our hair has been on fire about this for years:

[MCCONNELL] Now there’s a sense that we’re doing massive data mining. In fact, what we’re doing is surgical. A telephone number is surgical. So, if you know what number, you can select it out. So that’s, we’ve got a lot of territory to make up with people believing that we’re doing things we’re not doing.

The warrantless surveillance program targets both voice and data. Ever since Bill Keller allowed James Risen to break this story after Bush was safely elected, when the administration and its enablers wish to conceal the scope of the program, they focus on voice, and don’t mention data at all (see here at “diversionary tactic”). McConnell does that here, and the interviewer—-surprise!—falls for it again.

As the Christian Science Monitor wrote back in 2006:

The US government [outlaw Bush regime] is developing a massive computer system that can collect huge amounts of data and, by linking far-flung information from blogs and e-mail to government records and intelligence reports, search for patterns of terrorist activity.

A major part of ADVISE involves data-mining - or “dataveillance,” as some call it. It means sifting through data to look for patterns. If a supermarket finds that customers who buy cider also tend to buy fresh-baked bread, it might group the two together.

What sets ADVISE apart is its scope. It would collect a vast array of corporate and public online information - from financial records to CNN news stories - and cross-reference it against US intelligence and law-enforcement records.

This is “surgical”?  Read more 

[Another organic question here.]

Wow. This sucks:

It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world’s harvests fail.  Read more 

I’m not even going to recount mine. I’m ready to kill or break something. deep breath But I’m pretty sure we’ve all had them. Is it just me, or are cell phones getting crappier with every new “upgrade?” Sure, it’s great to play some music and take a photo with your phone, but it’d also be nice if they weren’t as sensitive as an albino nun at an all-gender orgy in the Mojave desert. Four 1-800 calls, six crashed web pages, three stores and several “customer service” representatives later, I may be able to talk on the phone again…as soon as next Wednesday. And I only had to pay a hundred and some dollars to do it! Yeah for me.

Peasant, wage slaves, corporate serfs: how much more of this are we going to tolerate? The company name doesn’t matter; I’ve had service with all the big names, and it’s always the same story. The suck. They don’t care. They screw you over at every turn. It’s not like this in Asia, or Europe. Corporations without government regulation are evil. And as the Righteous say: “Evil must be opposed.”