Do Cell Phones Cause Cancer? (No, not likely.)

Certainly, holding an emitter of electromagnetic radiation close to your head frequently should raise some question as to whether this could be harmful. However, cancers that could be caused by such EMR are occurring less frequently even as cell phone use is becoming more and more common. The best medical studies to date do not show a link, either.

This article (h/t New York Times) does an elegant job of bringing together the concerns and the most reliable information to date. For those avoiding the NYT paywall, this article (h/t BoingBoing) summarizes it quite nicely.

A Couple of Interesting Notes

Are lucky people really lucky, or just more flexible and open to opportunity? (h/t to Lifehacker)

It's pretty shocking to put the recommended evacuation areas around the Fukushima reactor near Tokyo into perspective. Gizmodo provides some maps of the same sized zones around reactors in L.A. (and also New York and Chicago). Ouch.

A Few Interesting Reads

• From Wired magazine, an interesting re-do on the famous Milgram experiments from back in the day. If asked, do you think you would deliver electrical shocks to a stranger for money? If actually offered money and provided with a real person, would you still?
• In Vanity Fair, a famous economist writes on the effects on our country of having 40% of the country's wealth in the control of 1% of its people.
• Ted Rall's cartoon: Terrorist Plots We Could Really Use.