Let's Call an Electron a Cell Phone

There has to be a reason why electrical anomalies are occurring. There have always been blackouts from time to time when our power grid becomes overloaded. There has to be a reason why one of the Azipod propulsion units on our ship just stopped working. The other was only operating at 75% efficiency. When we arrived in St. Thomas, their power was also troublesome. I had always wondered how they generated electricity on those Caribbean islands. You have a choice of a diesel prime mover or a gas turbine facility. Will it be jet fuel or diesel? At the pier there was a large noisome generator cranking out electricity. In the past it was never turned on. At the sky lift they too had their backup generator operating. The lights were out at the DVD store. It is hard to buy movies in the dark. The power went off this morning for about an hour. Why is it so difficult for people to discern some of the things that are causing these effects, global warming, and the onslaught of physical and emotional disorders new to the decade of the 90’s? If you look at our recent history, what is the largest single most influencer of pop culture? You guessed it. The cellular phone. What exactly is a “cell.” A cell in the telecommunications industry is a little area covered by one transmission tower. Transmission towers are antennae, but antennae for microwaves. In our country’s past the Federal Communications Commission (a commission of the U.S. government with authority to regulate radio, television, telephone, and other means of electronic communication), saw fit NOT to allow use of microwave frequencies of the spectrum of electro-magnetic waves known as physics. For some reason they deemed these frequencies potentially harmful. That changed and like magic transmission towers began springing up like beanstalks in Jack’s garden. You remember? Ugly, squat, towers reminiscent of the movie War of the Worlds? They look threatening. Is it the evil “Death Ray?” That’s what a lot of people thought, and some communities passed legislation keeping these towers away from our public schools. Over time as will happen, people forget. The telecommunications industry gets more suave at disguising towers or simply placing the antennae on objects that were all ready there and acceptable to society. Some examples of those would be water towers, bridges, FM radio antennae, the roofs of buildings. You name it and you can probably find a microwave transmitter on it. That does not make them safe. It’s just that people forget about the ill effects of microwave energy. What does a microwave do? To answer that question think back to the decade of the 80’s when the microwave oven first came out. Some people were suspect, but for the most part microwaves caught on, and they became a fixture in domestic American life. A microwave in your home has the magical property of heating your food. Put microwaves on a towers outside our homes, all over the country, in full view, and then wonder why there is Global Warming. Some writers have called this era in American history “The Electronic Age.” Is all this wireless technology such a good thing? It certainly has changed pop culture. Adolescent life used to revolve around the telephone. When did you get a phone in your on room? What kind of phone did you have? Was it a Mickey Mouse phone? Was is shaped like a football? Was it a candlestick phone? I remember when the touchtone came in. You no longer had to “dial.” You could merely touch the buttons, and they would make a lovely little sound. The touchtone was at the forefront of development of telecommunications services provided via a wire. You could check your checking account balance, ask questions, or order products all from pushing the buttons on your phone. Touch tones are analog. They are sound carried via an analog electrical circuit. It’s not the same with cell phones. Most of the phones they are trying to sell today are all digital. That is why they are unreliable. Digital is appropriate for reliability in computer technology. Sound, on the other hand, has always been resistant to digitization. It took much research and diligent labor to transform the recording industry to digital, and I am not sure that was a good thing. Is Digital sound really pleasing in itself, or does the process of analogization somehow augment the quality of sound? Tape is only Ferric Oxide on a plastic material. It is funny how sound can be produced and recorded via rust, but there is something "earthy" about that. The cell phone industry began as analog, and a majority of the reliable service is still analog. Digital is proving unreliable, because it is prone to interference, interference from the same medium we are discussing, electro-magnetic energy. The laws of Physics state electro-magnetic energy moves in waves. These waves have specific properties, one being that they can manifest themselves on preexistent energy. That means all of the microwaves in the air can and will cause interference with out traditional means of telecommunications. Electro-magnetic energy is attracted to and will travel down all the preexisting wiring in our power grid. There is the cause of many of the problems we are encountering today. On a more human note the buttons on a cell phone are too small. They are hard to see just like most of the palm held electronic devices on the market today. The buttons don’t have that tactile property. It’s hard to interact with a small piece of plastic replete with digitized electricity. Is this really something we want to interact with, a digital microwave transmitter held in our hand and up to our heads? It would be difficult to find harm in an AM transistor radio. It doesn’t transmit microwave energy. In the 50’s the youth of America carried them around holding them up to their ears. Do we really want to stick our heads in our microwave ovens and push the start button? We all know what happens, or at least there have been comical moments in film devoted to the exploding of a turtle’s head in a microwave oven. They heat and explode like some foods. Better not put metal in a microwave or it will produce sparks. I don’t think cell phones are a good idea.