Doctors Diagnose 'Cell Phone Elbow'

One would think there'd be a correlation with some sort of sore jaw affliction as a result of flapping your gums so much.

Coming next: Text-thumbitis.

Cell phones have been accused of causing cancer before, and of lowering fertility thanks to their heat levels. However, doctors worldwide are reporting a less sensational, but potentially far more dangerous affliction striking users worldwide. Scientist are dubbing the new disease "cell phone elbow", a use injury similar perhaps to Wii-itis, but with the potential to cause long term damage.

According to doctors, when you bend your elbow to hold your cell phone to your ear, you stretch a nerve which extends underneath the funny bone and controls the smallest fingers. According to Dr. Peter J. Evans, the director of the Hand and Upper Extremity Center at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, long chats can "(choke) the blood supply to the nerves. It makes the nerves short-circuit. The next thing you know, there's tingling in the ring and small finger."

Doctors are advising users who experience such tingling sensations to switch hands and, if possible, cut back on their use. The alternative is to risk long term damage to your nerves. The disorder officially goes by the name cubital tunnel syndrome, and its victims have troubled opening jars and performing other dexterous activities, such as playing musical instruments.

Obviously we'll need some federal cell phone control legislation to prevent this dire affliction. Or maybe switch to a hands-free device.

Or (gasp!) maybe people can just STFU for five minutes and get off the phone.

Latest in Law Enforcement Technology: Cell Phone Sniffing Dogs

This blog is really going to the dogs. Earlier we noted a unique way to wash your pooch. Now comes word from Arizona that dogs are being used to combat the use of cell phones by prisoners.

Arizona corrections officials hope to have a dog capable of detecting cell phones in each state prison by the end of 2010, a move that would help authorities locate phones that can help further criminal activity.

The state Department of Corrections has four dogs that are either working or being trained to work in one of the state's 10 prisons to search for cell phones being hidden by inmates, officials said.

Cell phones are banned in prisons. Inmates found with phones can face disciplinary action and even criminal charges, depending on the severity of an incident in which a phone was used.

Inmates can use the phones to conduct criminal activity, including drug transactions and gang business, beyond prison walls, said Ralph Pendergast, trainer for the service-dog program and an administrator with the Corrections Department.

Cell phones also can aid inmates who try to escape or actually do escape, said Angelo Daniels, commander of the Correctional Officer Training Academy in Tucson, where the dogs are trained.

Pendergast said the department began training the dogs last May. Virginia was the first state to start using dogs to find cell phones, he said.

The dogs have helped Arizona corrections officers confiscate about 50 phones so far, Pendergast said.

The dogs are trained to identify four unique odors associated with cell phones and their components, said Kenny Vance, a service-dog trainer for the Corrections Department. The dogs also can detect batteries and phone chargers.

Vance said inmates usually get or buy the cell phones from visitors, contractors who work at the prison and staff members who sneak the phones in.

It can cost between $400 and $800 for an inmate to buy a cell phone inside a prison, Vance said.

Seems to me they ought to do a better job preventing them from being smuggled in.

Got Food Stamps? Here's Your Free Cell Phone! (VIDEO)

This is a commercial that has been running in Georgia over the past week or so. I am absolutely stunned.

How in the hell did we get to this point? A free cell phone, given to you by the government? WTF? I bet this stuck in the spendiferous package somewhere.



Oh yeah, sure they tug on your heartstrings by showing an old black woman cowering during a thunderstorm, but when did we get to a point in our society where qualification for food stamps is enough for the government to give you a damn cell phone? And make no mistake - this phone isn't "free." It's coming out of our taypaying pockets!

Now with your gubmint cheese, you'll get your gubmint minutes.

We're clearly on the road to socialism. A cell phone is not a right.

I promise you folks this one thing: Every government social program from here on out will be sold to use with a black person in the commercial/advertisement/stump-speech/PSA, etc. Then if we complain about it, we'll all be RAAAACCIIISSSTS!

Kids Now Being Treated for Cell Phone Addiction

It's come this this. Too much time texting is now an addiction.

Two children have been admitted to a mental health clinic suffering from an addiction to their mobile phones.

The Spanish boys, aged 12 and 13, were spending up to six hours a day chatting, sending texts, playing games and taking pictures on their phones.

One deceived his grandmother and other relatives into giving him money to fund his habit. The boys were taken to the clinic by their concerned parents.

Yesterday, the head of the clinic called for parents to ban their children using mobiles until they are 16.

Dr Maite Utges, director of the Child and Youth Mental Health Centre in Lleida, north-east Spain, said: 'It's the first time we have applied a treatment for curing a dependency on a mobile phone.

'Both showed signs of behavioural problems and were failing in school. Both had problems living a normal life without their mobile phones.'

Bombshell! 100,000 People Secretly Tracked Through Their Cell Phones

Oh my. I can imagine the calls for Congressional hearings and impeachment will resound across the nation.

Oh wait. Never mind. It was some university researchers from Massachusetts doing it, so it must be OK.

Researchers secretly tracked the locations of 100,000 people outside the United States through their cell phone use and concluded that most people rarely stray more than a few miles from home.

The first-of-its-kind study by Northeastern University raises privacy and ethical questions for its monitoring methods, which would be illegal in the United States.

It also yielded somewhat surprising results that reveal how little people move around in their daily lives. Nearly three-quarters of those studied mainly stayed within a 20-mile-wide circle for half a year.

The scientists would not disclose where the study was done, only describing the location as an industrialized nation.

Researchers used cell phone towers to track individuals' locations whenever they made or received phone calls and text messages over six months. In a second set of records, researchers took another 206 cell phones that had tracking devices in them and got records for their locations every two hours over a week's time period.

The study was based on cell phone records from a private company, whose name also was not disclosed.

Study co-author Cesar Hidalgo, a physics researcher at Northeastern, said he and his colleagues didn't know the individual phone numbers because they were disguised into "ugly" 26-digit-and-letter codes.

The idea that even a single terror suspect has his calls tracked normally sends the left into apoplectic rage.

It'll be curious to see the reaction in this case.

Barabasi said he did not check with any ethics panel. Had he done so, he might have gotten an earful, suggested bioethicist Arthur Caplan at the University of Pennsylvania.

"There is plenty going on here that sets off ethical alarm bells about privacy and trustworthiness," Caplan said.

Studies done on normal behavior at public places is "fair game for researchers" as long as no one can figure out identities, Caplan said in an e-mail.

"So if I fight at a soccer match or walk through 30th Street train station in Philly, I can be studied," Caplan wrote. "But my cell phone is not public. My cell phone is personal. Tracking it and thus its owner is an active intrusion into personal privacy."

Can You Hear Me Now? 20th Century Technology Comes to Cuba

People line up outside a Cubacel mobile telephone store in Havana April 14, 2008.

REUTERS/Enrique De La Osa

Reuters gushes as citizens of the island prison get to line up and wait to get a crack at buying a cell phone. Oh joy. They'd have ordered them online except hardly anyone has a computer. All I know is the fellow in orange may want to make calling a fashion consultant his first priority.

Hundreds of Cubans lined up at state-owned telephone offices on Monday as the new government under President Raul Castro began selling cellular phone service to the general public for the first time.

Thousands were expected to take advantage of the opportunity in the coming days, even though opening the service and buying the cheapest mobile phone was priced at the equivalent of more than nine months of state wages.

Yes, but they have free health care!

Naturally, the reporter fails to wonder whether the state-owned operation may have pre-planted bugs in the phone. Chances of that are pretty strong.

"It is a very good measure, but what we earn does not correspond with the price," said 33-year-old Gustavo, who nevertheless waited with around 100 others at an office in Havana's colonial district to buy the service.

Raul Castro has moved quickly to ease restrictions in the communist country since succeeding his ailing older brother Fidel Castro as president in February.

Cubans are now allowed to buy DVD players, computers and other electronic goods, and stay at tourist hotels previously reserved only for foreigners.

Wow, next thing you know they'll be able to speak freely.

Cuba has the lowest rate of cellular telephone use in Latin America and the service was restricted until now to foreigners or government officials and employees.

Customers will pay for their calls with prepaid cards bought in hard currency, and can receive and make international calls.

Wait until they find out about roaming charges.

Cubans Can Now Have Cell Phones; Problem Is, Nobody Can Afford Them

The island prison has lifted restrictions on citizens owning cell phones. Great news, huh? Just one minor problem. People make $20 a month on average, so what's the point?

President Raul Castro's government said Friday it is allowing cell phones for ordinary Cubans, a luxury previously reserved for those who worked for foreign firms or held key posts with the communist-run state.

It was the first official announcement of the lifting of a major restriction under the 76-year-old Castro, and marked the kind of small freedom many on the island have been hoping he would embrace since succeeding his older brother Fidel as president last month.

Some Cubans previously ineligible for cell phones had already gotten them by having foreigners sign contracts in their names, but mobile phones are not nearly as common in Cuba as elsewhere in Latin America or the world.

Telecommunications monopoly Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba S.A., or ETECSA said it would allow the general public to sign prepaid contracts in Cuban Convertible Pesos, which are geared toward tourists and foreigners and worth 24 times the regular pesos Cuban state employees are paid in.

The decree was published in a small black box on page 2 of the Communist Party newspaper Granma.

The government controls well over 90 percent of the economy and while the communist system ensures most Cubans have free housing, education and health care and receive ration cards that cover basic food needs, the average monthly state salary is just 408 Cuban pesos, a little less than $20.

A program in Convertible Pesos likely will ensure that cell phone service will be too expensive for many Cubans, but ETECSA's statement said doing so will allow it to improve telecommunication systems using cable technology and eventually expand the services it offers in regular pesos.

Free housing, education and health care. Woo-hoo! What a joy. Except for the fact it's dilapidated housing and rationed health care.

Wonderful. Such progress. Next thing you know they'll be able to drive cars made after 1959. Except they won't be able to afford them, let alone have money to buy gas.

Cell Phones Kill

Let this be a lesson to those who are married to their cell phones. You can always buy another one.

Wisconsin Man Drowns Trying to Retrieve Mobile Phone From Sewer

SHEBOYGAN, Wis. — A 41-year-old man drowned after getting stuck in a storm sewer trying to retrieve a cell phone, police said.

The man weighed more that 300 pounds and was wedged with his head and shoulders underwater in a vertical storm drain in front of his home Wednesday, said police Lt. Tim Eirich.

The man's identity was not released pending notification of relatives.

Neighbor Chris Van Erem said he saw the man kneeling over the sewer before he fell in. Police said the man pulled the iron gate off trying to get the cell phone.

Then, a child from the neighborhood ran toward Van Erem frantically. Van Erem said he then saw the man's feet sticking up out of the grate.

"I ran over and tried to pull him on out," Van Erem said. "Absolutely helpless was the feeling. I couldn't budge him."

Van Erem had the child call emergency services as he continued to try to free the man.

"I could see his head and his shoulders were completely under the water," he said. "His legs weren't moving. He was completely unresponsive."

UPDATE: Another death.