America has always been anti-science

Tom Wheeler was head of the FCC under Obama.  Before that he was, naturally, a telecom lobbyist.  Here he is aggressively suppressing the research linking cell phone radiation to cancer.

Why, after such acrimony, Carlo was allowed to make one last appearance before the CTIA board is a mystery. Whatever the reason, Carlo flew to New Orleans in February 2000 for the wireless industry’s annual conference, where he submitted the WTR’s final report to the CTIA board. According to Carlo, Wheeler made sure that none of the hundreds of journalists covering the event could get anywhere near him.

When Carlo arrived, he was met by two seriously muscled men in plain clothes; the larger of the two let drop that he had recently left the Secret Service. The security men steered Carlo into a holding room, where they insisted he remain until his presentation. When summoned, Carlo found roughly 70 of the industry’s top executives waiting for him in silence. Carlo had spoken a mere 10 minutes when Wheeler abruptly stood, extended a hand, and said, “Thank you, George.” The two muscle men then ushered the scientist to a curbside taxi and waited until it pulled away.

Anyway it's probably a good thing.  Now that bacteria are evolving "super" drug resistance, now is probably a good time to just go ahead and irradiate everything. 

The Internet of Things will require augmenting today’s 4G technology with 5G, thus “massively increasing” the general population’s exposure to radiation, according to a petition signed by 236 scientists worldwide who have published more than 2,000 peer-reviewed studies and represent “a significant portion of the credentialed scientists in the radiation research field,” according to Joel Moskowitz, the director of the Center for Family and Community Health at the University of California, Berkeley, who helped circulate the petition. Nevertheless, like cell phones, 5G technology is on the verge of being introduced without pre-market safety testing.

Efficient markets theory of iPhone theft

Last night Ros and I were standing on a street corner downtown when some drunk bros came by looking for directions to their hotel. They were equipped with smartphones and knew the name of the hotel as well as the name of the street it was on. (Although none of them could pronounce Chartres.)

We figured out pretty quickly where they needed to go and tried several times to tell them. But they stubbornly kept trying to ignore our advice and figure it out with their phones.

Here's how they used their GPS and internet enabled phones to do this. One of them had, earlier, taken a dark and blurry photograph of the hotel which he was holding up at arm's length and comparing with the scenery around us in order to judge their location "by the angles of the light" or something. Meanwhile another one kept insisting, "But we're not on Chart! This isn't Chart!" and trying to lead them off in the wrong direction.

We eventually pointed them the right way but I can't help but think that maybe this is why nature provides the French Quarter with iPhone thieves. Someone has to get those resources to where they will be used more efficiently, right?

Because.. um...

... they're not the fad right now?

Devices not included in the new driving law are push-to-talk devices, commercial two-way radios and Citizen Band radios.

I'm a little bummed that I'm going to miss the first quarter of tonight's Saints game working late but I'll try and keep up from the road via the Tweeters anyway. Should I have one or three shots of tequila first?