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Another Way Your Cell Phone Will Kill You
from the professor-you-say? dept
If the radiation doesn't get you or your phone doesn't draw lightning to you and you've managed to avoid exploding wall chargers, you're still not safe: your phone may make you kill yourself. An Australian researcher says that there was an increase in the country's suicide rate following solar flares and the increase in geomagnetic storms they cause. This means, apparently, that mobile phones and other things that generate radiation could affect people's moods, and, by extension, make them suicidial. Guess we'd all better run out and get those special radiation-blocking watches to save ourselves from the radiation. That just leaves us the explosions and lightning to deal with.
Reader Comments
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No Subject Given
Classic problem with the experimental design
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calm as hindu cows
The amount a cell phone radiation can change your mood is about as much as a blue colored faceplate would be soothing to look at.
i'd be more worried about the callers on the other end driving me suicidal.
but still, an entertaining article
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Uh?
The original article comes from the Sydney Morning Herald: In most years there was a small but significant increase in the suicide rate among women on the day of a solar flare and up to two days later. Of course, taking two arbitrary phenomena and deducing a causal connection out of a statistical correlation is bad bad science. But besides the research being bad, really, let me understand, if you understood yourself: what have solar flares to do with cell phones, anyway? Are these guys serious?
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Re: Uh?
I guess I didn't lay my skepticism of the claims on thick enough in my post. This is definitely one for the tinfoil beanie file.
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Re: Uh?
Carlo, if you had been any more sarcastic my monitor would have snapped in half. :)
Alas, sarcasm doesn't always lend itself to the printed word, I suppose.
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Re: Uh?
not that i buy into it at all, but solar flares do have minimal impact on your cell phones. solar flares affect all types of signals, from radio to tv to phones. just most of the time, this impact is nothing more than causing static. i don't see how it'd cause suicidal urges though. thats just ridiculous.
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When Will It End?
Even the phasers on Star Trek weren't capable of all this. They could zap people to death, but they couldn't invoke mother nature, calling lightning from the sky, to wreck havoc upon the world.
Now that we've correctly identified cellular phones as the leading cause of cancer, monstrous explosions, natural disasters, AND suicide, what more does it take to ban these little talk-boxes of doom?
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Re: When Will It End?
Even the phasers on Star Trek weren't capable of all this. They could zap people to death, but they couldn't invoke mother nature, calling lightning from the sky, to wreck havoc upon the world.
Now that we've correctly identified cellular phones as the leading cause of cancer, monstrous explosions, natural disasters, AND suicide, what more does it take to ban these little talk-boxes of doom?
hahahahahahahaha. awesome
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Get rich quick
Does this mean that we could sue nokia? I mean if you can sue McDondals because you go there, buy food, supersize it, and then get fat, why can't we sue them for creating a little box that will attract lighting, blow up our houses, AND somehow drive us to wanting to kill ourselves. We are becoming sad people :(
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Phone dangers - Bah!
I've had seven ... yes, seven close lightning strikes, with the closest being ten feet (above and to the right). I ain't afraid a no phone. Granted, family members "move away" during storms now.
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No Subject Given
*sigh* is there even any evidence to prove this? Maby thare just happend to be a lot of depressed people during the solar flare.
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Re: No Subject Given
and it is in Oz, have you ever been in the outback? solar flares or not, it's not an easy land to deal with and keep a happy attitude, and I'm sure the cells suck...
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Phones that kill...
If the radiation from phones is killing that many people; why can't we engineer them to take care of those that call saying that they "are already at their computer"?
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No Subject Given
I wish it would just cause suicidal ideation in people talking loudly on their cell phones on public transportation...
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