Don't you sometimes wonder about all the useful information your favorite banks, bill collectors, and mortgage lenders would be sharing with you via your cell phone, whenever they felt like it, if they only could? If our representatives in Washington pass the Mobile Informational Call Act of 2011, you won't have to wonder anymore!
You know how when you're at a party and you don't know anyone, so you pretend to be texting all your cool friends about the famous exclusive club you're all going to later? You're not the only one.
It's not just the London police and Middle East dictators who try to curb unrest by clamping down on communications networks. According to reports, police in San Francisco are jamming cell phones to head off protesters.
Life lives! Bears menace! Phone cancer! Asteroid stowaways! Booby bullies! Lab dangers! Electron dancing! Neanderthal crowding! And dangerous health experiments that you can do at home! It's your Thursday Science Watch, where we watch science—on the road, baby!
Everyone who came of age in the post-cell phone era had a friend whose parents called them every five minutes to "check in" and/or yell at them about cleaning their room. Stop doing that, parents: You're hurting your relationship with your kid.
Everyone knows that if you use your cell phone while flying, your plane automatically crashes into the ocean. Just common sense. Now a leaked report from the International Air Transport Association confirms it.
Most people have a general sense that the cell phone we carry in our pockets record our movement. We've all heard stories of lost hikers being found through their cell signals, after all. But the full extent to which we're tracked by our cell phones is frightening.
Right now, tweens in New Jersey who send "suggestive photos" to their "bffs" can be prosecuted as sex offenders. And even though this makes perfect sense, and is a productive way for the state to teach adolescents that the expression of sexuality is a deeply harmful thing, pervert lawmakers are attempting to stop it with a new bill. Yes, New Jersey may soon be the Amsterdam of sexting:
Time to check in with an old friend: Jason Hope—the Arizona entrepreneur whose $500,000 Christmas party made him the "Party King of Scottsdale" and ignited fake-baked nightlife warfare—is getting sued. Verizon Wireless has launched a legal battle against 26 people and companies they say are fleecing consumers with "premium messaging services," i.e., when your grandma gets a spam text message that enters her into an automatic billing cycle without her consent. Verizon says Hope is "the mastermind behind defendants' fraudulent and deceptive practices."
