Just Another Reason to Hate the Phone

That's right, B&E readers. This is another complaint about cell phones.

Recently the smart phones have been advertising the ability to talk on the phone while simultaneously allowing the caller to surf the net or perform other smart phone functions.

Boy, that's just great. I love it when the people I talk to on the phone (and yes, I admit there aren't many of them) are doing something else.

We are breeding shorter and shorter attention spans and, if I may be hyperbolic for a moment, it will destroy our country! And the world! There will come a day when we can't do anything anymore because we're so easily distracted. I mean, I'd love to finish tying my shoes but ooooooooh! bunnies!

Smart phones will make us all stupid.

Signs of Life at the FCC?

During the Bush administration (and let's face it: during the Clinton administration too), the Federal Communications Commission never found a merger it didn't like. It also seemed to deregulate just about everything having to do with anything and gave media, phone, and internet companies carte blanche to fuck consumers by any means necessary.

In theory the FCC is supposed to protect consumers. Well done, FCC.

I just caught this headline: FCC asks Verizon Wireless to explain fees.

It's not actually that interesting an article and, frankly, I'm surprised it's news at all. Imagine that: the regulatory body charged with protecting consumers from the communications companies is actually asking a company why it believes it has the right to charge certain fees. This shouldn't be news. This should be the FCC doing its daily duty.

Still, I've rather liked the shift at the FCC of late. They seem to be a little friendlier to ideas like net neutrality, which would keep the internet free and open to the public, something the various internet providers are dead set against.

The big test will be the NBC/Comcast merger. That will be one monster of a media/communications company, which will almost certainly screw consumers in the long run. Has the FCC grown the balls to stop it?

The connections between free and open media and a thriving democracy are undeniable, and if you feel like geeking out on these issues for a while, FreePress.net is your one-stop shop for information about these things.

And It's Freakin' Staying Off

OK, so maybe cell phones aren't killing bees, and maybe those popcorn-popping cell phone videos are totally faked, but guess what cell phones are doing? They're giving you fucking brain tumors!

This shit is fucked up, yo. The report was kicked off ten years ago...

...but its full publication has been held up for years. Components of this study published to date reveal what the authors call a 'systemic-skew', greatly underestimating brain tumor risk.

The design flaws include categorizing subjects who used portable phones (which emit the same microwave radiation as cellphones,) as 'unexposed'; exclusion of many types of brain tumors; exclusion of people who had died, or were too ill to be interviewed, as a consequence of their brain tumor; and exclusion of children and young adults, who are more vulnerable.

That's right. People in the study who died of brain tumors were taken out of the statistics because, you know, they were fucking dead.

Anyway, even just a quick skim of the report (downloadable from the link above) will freak your shit out.

It freaked my shit out, and I keep my goddamned cell phone off at all times. If I get a brain tumor, I'm gonna be pretty pissed off at all you cell phone users.

I found the link at HuffPo, and it freaked out the missus, too.

I Don't Much Care

I've had from a few sources that those cell phone corn popping videos are faked and, in fact, viral advertisements.

But as far as I'm concerned, cell phones are killing bees, causing ear cancer, and making the single largest contribution to global warming.

I'm Sure Those Cell Phones Are Perfectly Safe

As most B&E readers will know, I'm not the biggest fan of cell phones. Maybe your cell phone isn't actually killing bees as I suspected last year (and still do, not so secretly), but maybe they're killing us instead.

[Full disclosure: I now have a cell phone, but in my defense, it's never on, and I don't know the number.]

But this evening the missus showed me a series of YouTube videos with pretty much the same content in various languages. I chose the Japanese version for your viewing pleasure. And if this doesn't make you want to keep your phones away from your brains and balls, I don't know what will.