Since news of a report on cell phones and brain tumors was dated 4/1 Australian time, verification that this wasn't a spoof required going to the source.  So it's legit.  There's a white paper, audio interview, and a plethora of news ariticles on the subject of cell phones overtaking smoking as a public health issue.

My gut has been telling me for quite a while that I don't want my kids using a cell phone while their brain is developing.  It seems my concern is validated by Dr. Vini Gautam Khurana PhD, FRACS, described below, with his resume here.

“A Mayo Clinic-Trained Neurosurgeon with an advanced neurosurgery Fellowship in Cerebrovascular and Complex Tumor Surgery from the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona. A Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons.”

Interestingly, it's difficult to research how much radiation is coming out your particular brand and model. The FCC limit for public exposure from cellular telephones is an SAR (Specific Absorbtion Rate) level of 1.6 watts per kilogram (1.6 W/kg).

Do you want to know how much microwave radiation your cell phone puts out?  One place to start looking is the Mobile Manufacturers Forum.  But if you have a Motorola, Nokia, or Sony Ericsson you'll have to link out of the FCC site and roll up your virtual sleeves in the hunt for infomation.  Palm (Handspring) isn't even listed.  More on that below the fold.

Suppose you get one of the $20 models with your Unicel plan, like the Motorola 197.  As any layperson would know (not), just type in SAR in the search box at Motorola and you get — well, nevermind, this model isn't listed.  Interesting to note that between the FCC website and manufacturer websites, there's a lot of broken links and circular references creating a labyrinth for anyone who might research the radiation info for their particular model cell phone. 

Palm doesn't provide the information, but refers back to a FCC site, which doesn't list current Palm devices.  Instead, there's arcane SAR engineering reports for 2002 Treo models, and these are listed under their pre-release code names, Manhattan, Shea, and Atlanta.  Don't worry, if you still have the “device under investigation (DUI), they pass the test.  But if you're looking for the radiation output for the Palm 755p, you're outta luck.

Back to the ratings:

The FCC SAR guideline of 1.6 W/kg.  Let's check the SAR ratings for the following smart phones and cell phones.

Moto Q9:  SAR 1.53

Razr V3:  SAR 1.24

V8 Razr2: SAR 0.86

Motorola V197:  SAR 1.6W/kg 

Finding maximum guideline 1.6 SAR for the Motorola V197 required an email to Corporate Consumeer Advocacy.  Here's the response:

Dear Mr. Freeman,

Thank you for your interest in Motorola products. As requested I am providing you SAR level for V197. Our site is not updated to show thisinformation, but I was able to get information from the online manualfor V197.

The highest SAR value for this model phone when tested for use at the ear is 1.60W/kg, and when worn on the body, as described in the userguide, is 0.38 W/kg. The SAR value for this product in its data
transmission mode (body-worn use) is 0.25W/kg. (Body-worn measurementsdiffer among phone models, depending upon available accessories and
regulatory requirements). While there may be differences between the SAR levels of various phones and at various positions, they all meet the governmental requirements for safe exposure.

Thank You,
Dorothy Hodges
Corporate Consumer Advocacy Office

You get the picture.  There's a wide variance betwen cell phone models, so who knows how much juice you're getting.

And for your viewing pleasure, this is where cell phones lie in microwave radiation spectrum:

I really don’t know what to make of this, I’ll leave it up to y’all to discuss amongst yourselves. I’m hoping it’s a joke, but considering how clueless Repubs are when they try to be hip, I’m not so sure…

I’m warning you ahead of time, it’s painful. Really painful.

It should happen this morning: Bush's secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Alphonso Jackson, is expected to announce his resignation at a press conference at 9:45 this morning.

I'm not sure why it is, but I think part of the problem is that the Republicans are at least neutral, if not actively hostile, to the mission of HUD. If that's the case, and if your agency isn't doing anything that really should be done, why not use it as your personal piggy bank, or as a way to funnel profit opportunities to your friends, or as an opportunity to punish your enemies?

That's what they did when Reagan was president, and that's what Jackson did under Bush, and now, as when Reagan was president, Jackson's been caught. 

So HUD is once again a hotbed of corruption, local housing authorities don't know from one month to the next how much they're going to get to run their vital programs, and homelessness is still getting worse.

 Once again, they've proven Howard Dean right: the Republicans can't be trusted with money.

I recommend Jack McCullough's excellent post on a recent Vermont Supreme Court decision. The Court reversed a criminal crop cultivation conviction after the police broke Vermont law protecting our State's civil society. Unlike the defendant's conduct, growing marijuana plants, the police conduct really does have victims – us.

In addition to the high cost of fighting a war against people who grow marijuana as Jack explains in his post, another unfortunate and frustrating, aspect of this case is the seemingly accepting attitude of the trial court toward the police behavior.

Let's see what the Supreme Court had to say . . .

The officers filed false affidavits with the court and gave perjured testimony at the suppression hearing. The Vermont Supreme Court explained how the trial record showed:

¶ 6. After the flight, the state trooper prepared an application for a search warrant based solely on his observation during the aerial surveillance of what he believed to be marijuana plants. In the application, the trooper characterized the surveillance as having been from “an aircraft at least 500 feet above the ground . . . .” The warrant was issued and executed, and three marijuana plots were discovered by defendant’s home.

¶ 7. Based on the evidence presented at the suppression hearing, the court found that the helicopter circled defendant’s property for approximately fifteen to thirty minutes, well below 500 feet in altitude, and at times as low as 100 feet above the ground. Although both the trooper and the pilot testified that the helicopter remained at least 500 feet off the ground at all times, the court did not find their testimony to be credible.

The court further found that pilots doing MERT flights in Vermont are told to stay at least 500 feet above the ground and that, according to a National Guard pilot who testified for the State, the reason MERT pilots are so directed is to avoid invasions of privacy.

The truth, of course, was that the cops were buzzing the town and the defendant at tree-top level, no more than 75-100 feet above ground. The police lied, the knew they were lying and the court knew they were lying. 

The judge thus had a felony case brought against a citizen based on an officer's false written statements. The officer compounded the deceit by appearing in Court; and when asked about the false written statements, showed no compunction about giving false testimony in open court as well. “Testimony not credible” — My experience, when a judge says a police officer's testimony is “not credible,” is that the judge is being extremely diplomatic. Saying the officer is “not credible” is court talk for “they guy is blowing smoke up my robe and damn well knows it.”

Still, this was just another drug case, and the over-burdened trial court choking with public health issues gave it a pass. The result was, unlike a few plants growing in the forest that hurt no one, the police committed a crime against Vermont civil society. Worse, they lie about it under oath and in open court after-the-fact. It then takes the over-burdened judiciary five years to fix some of the damage done by the illegal use of police resources against Vermonters.

The war on people who use marijuana wastes millions of dollars of Vermonter's assets every year. From the record in this case, Vermont's front on the war against people using marijuana also is corrupting a vital public asset and institution – our police – as well. That is a huge expense and an enormous intangible waste of resources.

Would the trial judge let slide the same type of highly disrespectful and insulting attitude toward her court had the police looked her in the eye and made her listen to false testimony about a white collar crime, a domestic violence crime or a burglary? I have no idea (and I certainly hope not).

Think about the “true cost” of this for a moment. The State invests millions in the training, salary, healthcare, benefits etc. of its public safety officers. Police officers do not just investigate (thankfully) victimless acts of crop cultivation or other agricultural offenses involving relatively benign substances such as marijuana. Rather, the police are also responsible (remember?) for crimes that leave victims. The Department of Public Safety needs to allocate resources to handle that end of the job as well.

Imagine you are a victim of any number of real crimes: domestic abuse, rape, assault, battery or armed robbery. Do you want your case investigated by an officer with a public record of falsely sworn affidavits? How secure will you feel and how sure will you be that the person who victimized you will be convicted if a judge or jury cannot trust testimony from the officer investigating the crimes perpetrated against you?

Imagine being a crime victim, someone shot or raped, and you are sitting in the courtroom during the perpetrator's trial. How much comfort will you take hearing a police officer being cross-examined on the sworn testimony needed in your case to send a violent criminal to prison?

It seems the more we continue and the further we escalate our war on people who use substances, the less reliable our core public institutions are when it comes to matters of honesty, perspective and civil rights. Drugs may be poisonous intoxicants for some people. In the case of State v. Bryant, it is hard to tell which party's judgment was more impaired by illegal drugs. One thing is for sure, the defendant is definitely not on the top of the impaired judgment list.

And this takes us right back to Jack's original point that bears repeating. It bears repeating because it goes in the face of the lie the police, the politicians, the incarceration industry and the commercial drug companies keep are telling us every day about the resources lost to criminalizing public health matters. The truth is, we pay out the ass for this folly. Mr. Bryant did not have an opportunity to cultivate his marijuana plants. However, over the five years his case worked its way through the criminal justice system and the appeals' process, hundreds of hands worked on countless aspects of this case. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe more, from the police, the courts, judges, law clerks, private investigators, dozens of private citizens losing days of work to investigation and traveling to court to testify, prosecutors, appellate attorneys in the Attorneys General's office and Mr. Bryant — all went up in smoke.

Doin' a heckofa job. 

(promoted because it’s important for news like this not to get lost in the clutter of the Dem primary stuff – promoted by JDRyan)

On Saturday German Chancellor Angela Merkel became the most significant world leader to announce she will boycott the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics in solidarity with the people of Tibet in their most recent struggles against the imperialist Chinese.  Her announcement came after Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk and Czech president Vaclav Klaus announced the same.  As other European nations contemplate similar actions, and the unprecedented (at least to my knowledge) spectacle threatens to spread worldwide, it will be hugely interesting- and important- to watch how China reacts.  It is a huge international embarrassment that, unlike the U.S.’s reaction to being made to look foolish on the world stage, is clearly very troublesome to the Chinese government.

Just so GMD doesn't appear to waste its time beating up on Anthony Pollina and fretting about Peter Galbraith,  here's your opportunity to throw some darts at the man who will likely proceed as governor in 2008, setting himself up for a formidable run for House or Senate in 2010.  Such are the consequences when the best candidates from the majority party gives ol' Do-Less a pass.

Oops — this is supposed to be a diary against Douglas, not the Dem Party.  Sometimes it's hard to conceal one's frustration.  But let's do our best.  Bring out your inner Ian Carleton and start throwing darts at a virtually uncontested public official.

Maybe to get things startted, I grabbed this photo from  a 2006 article, Women’s Organizations Debates Not On the Governor’s To-Do List, on VermontWoman.com. I wonder how Vermont women feel about the guv these days?  Are they worth his time now? 

Are any of us?