All my life's a circle....
25/07/08 12:02 PM
Sunrise and sundown, Moon rolls thru the nighttime,
Till the daybreak comes around....... In keeping with
our musical theme we thank the late, great, Harry
Chapin for the Circle Song, a lovely ditty that
neatly ties up in a geometric bow, so to speak, the
ebb and flow of birth, life, death and infinity. Not
to be constrained by music, we sneak in a little Sam
Jaffe reference from Ben Casey MD.
I am reminded of a circle when I see in today’s (July 25/08) National Post, a snippet of an article referencing a professor of some kind of science from Carnegie Mellon in PA, who, according to the article, has pronounced cell phones for toddlers as dangerous and deadly and all but declared that your new iPhone, RaZr, LG, device is nothing more then a battery operated cancer generator.
This seems to dovetail nicely with the pronouncement last week from those noted scientists at the Toronto Board of Health who, in total defiance of the conclusions reached by an exhaustive study released two weeks ago by Health Canada which concluded that there was ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE to support any such stupid claims, released their own press release which claimed that it just sort of made sense that cell phones emitting all of those nasty X-Rays and stuff so close to your brain must be bad and even though we can’t prove it we are sure that the medical study never really looked at the long term effects of cell phone use on toddlers who after all, had to be protected at all costs.
Well, here we go again, we are doing it for the children. When you do not have any evidence, or facts on your side, you throw out the old, “if it can save the life of just one child, it is worth it to ...................” you know the rest, you have seen it a thousand times. It never fails to stir the mothers instincts of a dedicated group of worriers who invariably show up on the evening news, crying huge tears and bawling that “Somebody’s got to DO something” before their baby dies.
So that must pretty much wrap it up, eh?. First Toronto Health Board, a known font of really important thinking, and now a study from prestigious Carnegie Mellon University. Bye, Bye Health Canada’s, multi-million, multi-year, multi-patient, study. We now have a new truth with confirmation from a University!
Well, not so fast. I just happened to notice two days ago, a little meme on the Interweb about a professor at Carnegie Mellon, the department head of some scientific discipline or other, who had sent out an EMAIL to all department staff, expressing his concern about and advising against the extended use of cell phones and in particular, he advised, that children not be allowed to spend hours a day with cell phones pressed against their tender little skulls or they might get cancer sometime, maybe, much later in life.
This was the sort of memo I used to send out when I was a captain of industry to my troops in July warning people about to go on summer vacation not to swim for 3 hours ( yes, I am that old.) after eating and to watch out for poison ivy while camping.
Further reading of this guys motivation and source of information that formed the basis of his concern reveals that. A: The wife of his best friend and fellow faculty member is suffering from brain cancer. A tragedy to be sure and I am equally certain that being able to point to a cell phone as the source of this poor woman’s pain would be comforting. You know how that goes, “It wasn’t anything I did or ate, it was the damn cell phone company’s fault. B: The professor also noted that a city in Canada, (Toronto) had recently declared cell phone use dangerous and especially for children.
Circle closed! Some numbskulls at TB of Health manufacture a concern out of whole cloth to fit in their weekly press release and then some head of department reads that, sends out an email and the next thing you know, the National Post publishes the news as a fully qualified pronouncement regarding something as important as Cell phones causing cancer.
There are a lot of very frightened people out there friends, and they seem to really need to cajole, bully, persuade others to share their fears in some kind of twisted need for verification of the validity of said fear. I wish I could say this was amazing but it is not, it is as common as dust these days.
It went like this: Birth, Life, Death, Infinity. It did not read: Birth, Life lived in fear, Death, Infinity.
All my life’s a circle, sunrise and sundown..... Somedays, the circle is smaller then other days.
30
I am reminded of a circle when I see in today’s (July 25/08) National Post, a snippet of an article referencing a professor of some kind of science from Carnegie Mellon in PA, who, according to the article, has pronounced cell phones for toddlers as dangerous and deadly and all but declared that your new iPhone, RaZr, LG, device is nothing more then a battery operated cancer generator.
This seems to dovetail nicely with the pronouncement last week from those noted scientists at the Toronto Board of Health who, in total defiance of the conclusions reached by an exhaustive study released two weeks ago by Health Canada which concluded that there was ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE to support any such stupid claims, released their own press release which claimed that it just sort of made sense that cell phones emitting all of those nasty X-Rays and stuff so close to your brain must be bad and even though we can’t prove it we are sure that the medical study never really looked at the long term effects of cell phone use on toddlers who after all, had to be protected at all costs.
Well, here we go again, we are doing it for the children. When you do not have any evidence, or facts on your side, you throw out the old, “if it can save the life of just one child, it is worth it to ...................” you know the rest, you have seen it a thousand times. It never fails to stir the mothers instincts of a dedicated group of worriers who invariably show up on the evening news, crying huge tears and bawling that “Somebody’s got to DO something” before their baby dies.
So that must pretty much wrap it up, eh?. First Toronto Health Board, a known font of really important thinking, and now a study from prestigious Carnegie Mellon University. Bye, Bye Health Canada’s, multi-million, multi-year, multi-patient, study. We now have a new truth with confirmation from a University!
Well, not so fast. I just happened to notice two days ago, a little meme on the Interweb about a professor at Carnegie Mellon, the department head of some scientific discipline or other, who had sent out an EMAIL to all department staff, expressing his concern about and advising against the extended use of cell phones and in particular, he advised, that children not be allowed to spend hours a day with cell phones pressed against their tender little skulls or they might get cancer sometime, maybe, much later in life.
This was the sort of memo I used to send out when I was a captain of industry to my troops in July warning people about to go on summer vacation not to swim for 3 hours ( yes, I am that old.) after eating and to watch out for poison ivy while camping.
Further reading of this guys motivation and source of information that formed the basis of his concern reveals that. A: The wife of his best friend and fellow faculty member is suffering from brain cancer. A tragedy to be sure and I am equally certain that being able to point to a cell phone as the source of this poor woman’s pain would be comforting. You know how that goes, “It wasn’t anything I did or ate, it was the damn cell phone company’s fault. B: The professor also noted that a city in Canada, (Toronto) had recently declared cell phone use dangerous and especially for children.
Circle closed! Some numbskulls at TB of Health manufacture a concern out of whole cloth to fit in their weekly press release and then some head of department reads that, sends out an email and the next thing you know, the National Post publishes the news as a fully qualified pronouncement regarding something as important as Cell phones causing cancer.
There are a lot of very frightened people out there friends, and they seem to really need to cajole, bully, persuade others to share their fears in some kind of twisted need for verification of the validity of said fear. I wish I could say this was amazing but it is not, it is as common as dust these days.
It went like this: Birth, Life, Death, Infinity. It did not read: Birth, Life lived in fear, Death, Infinity.
All my life’s a circle, sunrise and sundown..... Somedays, the circle is smaller then other days.
30
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