Dr. Robert Park, PhD. an emeritus professor of physics at the University of Maryland, College Park and a former Director of Public Information at the Washington office of the American Physical Society, runs his weblog "What's New?" in which he talks about, among other things, typical Media (and therefore Public) misunderstanding of even basic Physics, particularly the "hype" that cell phones cause cancer. San Francisco in particular seems to be especially mis-informed. In any regard, here is his latest, and reveals what I find anyway to be his pleasurable writing style.
CELL PHONES: SANJAY GUPTA USES A WIRED EARPIECE.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta, MD, the Chief Medical Correspondent for CNN, uses a wired earpiece to avoid radiating his brain with microwaves. I don't even use a cell phone, so am I safer than Sanjay Gupta? No not unless Sanjay keeps his cell phone in his pants pocket when he uses the earpiece. Our gonads dangle in that silly scrotum to keep them slightly below body temperature, but they do seem dangerously exposed. Microwaves from the cell phone might raise their temperature a bit. The most that could happen would be an infinitesimal decrease in the fertility rate. At least that's in the right direction. Sanjay Gupta is a good writer, and he's probably a good doctor. I listen to him whenever I can. My mother would have said, "He's a REAL doctor," as opposed to the PhD scientist kind. Trust me Mom, an M.D. is not a scientist.MORE CELL PHONES: WHAT THE MEDIA DIDN'T TELL YOU.
Here's the conversation I have several times a day with total strangers:
Caller: do you use a wired earphone?
BP: No.
Caller: would it be too much trouble?
BP: No.
Caller: Wouldnt you be safer?
BP: No.
Caller: How do you know?
BP: Quantum physics; all cancers are caused by mutant strands of DNA. Electromagnetic radiation can't create mutant strands of DNA unless the frequency is at or higher than the blue limit of the visible spectrum the near-ultraviolet. The frequency of cell phone radiation is about 1 million times too low.
Caller: Wow! When did this news break?
BP: Albert Einstein let it out in 1905. Robert Millikan, considered to be the world's top physics experimentalist, spent a decade constructing an experiment to test it. It confirmed Einstein's theory perfectly.
Caller: I'm shocked! Are you sure this is right?
BP: Virtually the entire modern world rests on it.
Caller: Why am I just hearing about this?
BP: Because Sanjay didn't tell you. We all depend on the news media to keep us informed, and the news media all over the world let us down on this one. And we scientists should have been screaming louder.
