Critical Brain Candy

In this continuing saga, I had most recently posted: Wait, now cell phones don’t cause cancer?

Then today I ran into this: Cell phone radiation could make you sterile according to studies.

I wish someone would come up with a solid answer.  In the last post I quoted this, and hoped it was based on real evidence: “No matter how powerful the transmitter, radio waves simply cannot produce ionising radiation.”  Why can’t someone just point a powerful radiation-emitting device at some cells and see if they get damaged?  At least that should answer the question of whether they can be damaged; whether cell phones emit enough to do so would be another question.

Over the past few days I’ve been contemplating the medium-term view of US stocks and whether I should reduce exposure to them. It seems difficult to be very bullish on the US markets as a whole given the continually rising debt, inflation concerns, aging population and political problems.  That doesn’t mean I think their markets will necessarily drop much, plus there are many reasons why the US currency could stay valuable, but at this point I’d guess staying stagnant would be a win.

Anyways, to lighten the mood here’s a great song: The Horse by Beach Fossils.  I love the tone of the guitar track that starts at about 49 seconds.

Congrats to the USA for raising the debt ceiling.  Wait, is that a good thing?  No, I’d say it isn’t.  I think the fight over reigning in US spending is a good one to have, but doing it over the debt ceiling seems like the wrong issue.  As many people point out, the debt ceiling was money already spent.  I also think it was bad for the Dems to cave over revenue increases, although that probably would have been impossible with the Tea Party crazies holding congress hostage.

But, leave it to the CBC to make the most informative tool I’ve seen to help put the debt ceiling in perspective:
Raising the roof: The uphill climb of the U.S. debt limit