Friends, Readers:
Mercury stationed direct today at 9:13 am EDT (New York daylight savings time), with a surge of activity in the world. A typhoon devastated the Philippines, killing 240 people, and is now headed for Vietnam (thankfully, in reduced form). For that region it’s the worst flooding in a generation.
Apropos of Virgo — the sign most often associated with healing — Dr. Joe Mercola published an article this morning reporting data confirming that cell phone use is involved with brain cancer, something we’ve known for a while (as little as half an hour a day over 10 years can cause tumors; the new information is from a master study reviewing many other studies). Let’s see how many news organizations report this information.
To me the more meaningful issue is: if cellular phones cause brain tumors, what do they do before that happens? The human body is an electrical device; a subtle one. A cell phone must be capable of sending a microwave signal three miles in any direction, right through your brain and nervous system first. Years ago, I read an article wherein the author warned that we should carry cell phones like a loaded gun; leave them off when not in use; and suggesting many other precautions that now seem warranted. But really; leave your phone off? What about all those text messages that have to come in from moment to moment?
Another story likely to disappear into the mists of forgotten environmental news is an Associated Press article yesterday that indicated a ‘new’ source of PCBs in schools: window caulking. This is not actually a new source — it’s a very old one, extant in buildings built between 1950 and 1978 or so. PCBs were used in many industrial processes, particularly things that needed to be supple. I’ll come back to this, but in essence we have potentially a New Paltz-like problem in (taking a rough guess here) about half the schools in the United States. If you have a kid in the United States attending a school built during that timeframe, I suggest you call the principal and arrange to email him or her this article (the top link, on window caulking).
(Here is a link to an article on New Paltz taking you to an article in The Ecologist that I wrote this year. At the time, a Planet Waves subscriber was the editor, and she invited me to contribute this to the last print edition. Therefore it will be on the stacks of actual libraries, for anthropologists to find in a hundred years from now explaining why we are collectively such whack jobs when it comes to environmental issues.)
Here is the story that jumped out yesterday, on the theme of “the truth comes out.” Over the weekend, Facebook published a member-produced poll asking: “Should President Obama Be Killed?” The item was first reported Sunday by the blogger Gotta Laff, at the progressive website called The Political Carnival. The writer sent a screen shot of the poll to the Secret Service.
The item caught the attention of bloggers at other political websites Monday morning, including Pam’s House Blend, Daily Kos, Talking Points Memo and the Huffington Post. The item was up on Facebook for over twelve hours before it was taken down by site administrators. Facebook temporarily disabled its poll application at the site. The Secret Service called Gotta Laff to thank her for her tip, but could not divulge the next steps they plan in their investigation of the incident.