Study: Late night work brings cancer risk

I just can't win. If smoking doesn't kill me, then my occasional forays into fast food will. Or my coffee consumption. Or fumes from the road.

Or even my working hours.

This last part sounds like a joke, but the International Agency for Research on Cancer (part of the World Health Organization) will list late-night work as a probable carcinogen, putting it in the same league as Diesel exhaust fumes, anabolic steroids, and ultraviolet rays.

This came to my attention via a USA Today article, which cites higher rates of breast and prostate cancer among night workers -- which account for close to 20 percent of the work force in developed nations.



According to the article, epidemiologist Richard Stevens, a professor at the University of Connecticut Health Center, noticed in the 1970s how breast cancer rates increased suddenly and dramatically as societies industrialized and running three shifts became a sign of progress Stevens suggested aritficial lights and backwards circardian rhythms tweaked hormone levels -- particularly melatonin -- to the point where cancer was more of a risk. He published his findings in 1987, and he'd taken some heat in since then. The cancer research agency, though, puts new credence to Stevens' hypothesis.

On Thursday, Stevens told the Hartford Courant that research is still a little iffy, that there's not just enough data to warn night shift workers to quit their jobs. "I would be a jerk to quantify that right now," he said.

To me, the whole thing sounds like one of those you-never-know scenarios. It's a pretty good bet that working late night isn't the healthiest thing in the world. I can consider myself knowledgeable on this because, in the 32 years I've worked full time, most of it has been during the witching hour. This includes most of my time in newspaper work -- I had free rein to work whatever hours I wanted and I gravitated toward those goofy hours. I'm just "naturally" a night person, meaning I'm not spending my workshift just trying to stay awake. I can see night workers being more at risk of heart problems, of stress-related issues, or just plain "issues" issues, but cancer? Hell, I still think you can test any substance known to man -- including water -- and some lab rat somewhere will get cancer.

Admittedly, it's not easy to function on those hours, and and the late-shift worker's options are definitely limited. Rather than running out to a favorite restaurant during lunch hour, one ends up going to some 24-hour joint with questionable chow. I guess you could say night workers eat a lot of grease. And coffee. And eggs. And hash browns. At a casino where I once worked, the employee dining room's fare was limited to breakfast food during the wee hours. I'd eaten so many eggs I developed this urge to go outside and peck corn.

In a lot of public businesses and factories, even those that run three shifts, late night is when much of the operation is shut down for cleaning and maintenance. So a night worker may be exposed to more chemicals than his co-workers who pull daytime hours. But strangely enough, that may not be a real factor in the numbers being used here, as most of the workers studied were nurses and airline crew members. And Stevens allowed that many of these worked on rotating shifts, which is enough to fry even the hardiest people.

Stevens' best advice for the night worker is to darken the bedroom as much as possible before going to sleep, as that appears to be a factor in producing melatonin.

"The balance between light and dark is very important for your body," Stevens says. "Just get a dark night's sleep."

I have my own quick-and-dirty "hack" for this; at least it (hopefully) fools my body into thinking it's dark. I hate those sleep masks, but I'll sometimes fold a bandanna over my eyes. Of course it'll fall off when I roll over, but by then I'm already asleep and don't really care anyway.

My own advice, as a longtime night worker? Find a schedule, and stick with it. Putting a worker on a revolving schedule -- nights one week, days the next -- should be classified as cruel and unusual punishment. And, I find it easier to function if I keep those same hours on my day off. Simple logic here -- why adjust twice?

"The problem is re-setting your body's clock," said Aaron Blair, of the United States' National Cancer Institute, who chaired IARC's recent meeting on shift work. "If you worked at night and stayed on it, that would be less disruptive than constantly changing shifts."

Worth a look: Global terrorism map

It doesn't take much to crank up a person's anxieties these days. Just read the newspaper, talk to people, or go on the Internet, and you'll see what I mean.

Even mentioning the phrase "homeland security" is enough to make a lot of folks go paranoid.

With this in mind, I checked out this website showing incidents that may or may not be terrorist-related. To be sure, this site also includes warnings, sightings of things that may be bombs, or even random people going postal. Also you'll find the usual run of false alarms.

Here's the incident map. Special thanks go out to blogger Chrissy Jo for bringing this to my attention through her blog.

As I looked at it, there were a few items in the States: A potentially explosive device found in Savanna, Georgia (about 100 miles from where I live). A suspicious package found at a convenience store in Florida (the neighborhood evacuated; later a false alarm). A mall shooting in Texas, which was probably a little he-ing and she-ing gone bad. A suspicious device found in Nevada, detonated by police. A radioactive scare near an Indiana airport. And as far as the Middle East, India, Pakistan, and the world's other trouble spots? Don't ask.

Anyway, it's a really interesting read, and it might give you nightmares faster than that loaded pizza you ate just before bedtime. Enjoy!

Something to think about ...

"Laws are like sausages. It's better not to see them being made."
- Otto von Bismarck

'Greener' light bulbs a two-edged sword

even if you're armed with Rand McNally's latest, both hands, and a flashlight, you'll never find such a place as "away." Forget it. There ain't no such animal.

Maybe it's my imagination, but it seems every time we make a gain somewhere in our efforts to live greener lives, we lose ground elsewhere.

I'm seeing this again with the much-publicized mini-flourescent light bulbs. In case you haven't seen them, these are the ones that look like a glass corkscrew in the shape of a normal bulb. These are supposed to last longer, blow off less heat, use about a quarter of the energy compared to the old bulbs, cost less to use, and preserve our ozone layer for a few more days. That's the story line, anyway, and lately a lot of folks are buying into it. Perhaps these claims are true. I've used them, and there's a lot less heat and a lot more light; I'm not going to dispute the advantages there.

But this design is being taken so seriously that several states (California, New Jersey, Connecticut) introduced legislation to make them standard, getting rid of the old incandescent light bulbs. None of these attempts went very far, though.

It seems these new mini-tubes are the greatest thing going, until they burn out or break. Then, it's time to worry about the mercury in them. The bulbs contain an average of about five milligrams of mercury -- about the size of a ballpoint pen tip, and one drop can contaminate the fish in a 20-acre lake. Potent stuff.



There are plenty of warnings about these bulbs. Don't throw them in the trash; take them to a hazardous waste handler instead. And if you forget and throw one in the circular file, pray that it's not incinerated. Or anything else.

This came to my attention because of reported high mercury levels kicked out at Charleston County's Montenay facility, a waste-to-energy incinerator near the old Charleston Navy Base, This plant, which handles 500 tons, or 80 percent, of Charleston's solid waste, was called the state's fifth-worst generator of mercury pollution by the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC), ranking behind only a few coal-burning plants. The culprit? Batteries, and those damned light bulbs.

"The incineration process doesn't create the mercury," Montenay plant manager Lee Bazzle said. "If people didn't put their batteries in the trash, and other things that contain mercury, we wouldn't even be on DHEC's emissions list."

Chalk all that up to the physical laws that govern our ideas of progress, and these laws are every bit as inviolate as gravity. Nothing's free. There's always a trade-off somewhere. And, even if you're armed with Rand McNally's latest, both hands, and a flashlight, you'll never find such a place as "away." Forget it. There ain't no such animal.

The EPA has a list of warnings about how to use and dispose of these bulbs, and of course these warnings are couched in the usual governmental gobbledegook (only a government, as Edward Abbey once suggested, could put out a monograph listing protocols for disposing of human waste in permafrost while dismissing the obvious -- crap in the snow and let the sled dogs take care of it). If a bulb burns out, the EPA warns, open a window and wait 15 minutes before doing anything. And if you should drop one, consult same EPA recommendations for disposal. Sweeping the glass up with a broom doesn't cut it anymore, but the actions do stop short of having a HAZMAT team showing up in your living room wearing moon suits. So far, anyway.

By now, we should be used to some of the trade-offs, and we've seen a few more lately. Like, nothing's more environmentally friendly than a drink of cold water, but the bottles in which the water is sold are starting to bite us in the butt. Per normal, although nobody really paid attention until the plastic bottles were carrying water. No one seemed to worry when it was a soft drink.

I'll be watching to see what happens with these funny-looking light bulbs. Eventually, though, whoever handles some of this legislation may figure out some of the physical laws. It can happen. There's no such place as "away."

Wireless Follies: The Sequel

Not long ago, I wrote about the troubles that Charleston and other areas are having with trying to build a citywide wireless Internet system.

You can add Riverside, California to that list of cities that are finding this out the hard way.

Riverside is where I grew up, and it's a fast-growing area. Cutting edge, allegedly. The Inland Empire. Home to nearly 300,000 people, though it's hard to tell because the turnstiles broke years ago.

For some time my parents have been eagerly waiting for the signal to cue up their wireless cards. We've discussed the issue off and on, and in fact they were the ones who sent me the Sacramento Bee story that became the basis for a blog entry. But anyway, they're not expecing wireless to hit their area anytime soon.

According to the smartriverside.com website, here is how coverage looks in Riverside right now. If you're sitting in a green area, you're good to go:



As you can see, it's pretty spotty. Uhh, like, very spotty. Three areas where you can get a good signal from the city. I know that city -- hell, I grew up there -- and I'm curious to know if people actually live in the areas that are seeing service.

I mention this because a few minutes ago I got a note from Mom and Dad saying they opted for DSL. As Dad put it, he added the city's time frame to his own age and it didn't look all that promising.

Charleston is in the same boat. Even with Mom and Dad spotting me about 30 years, the chance of me seeing a citywide Internet wireless service in my town is pretty slim.

Oh, well.

North Charleston's crime numbers hit top 10

Maybe it's paranoia, but I usually brace myself for the bad news when I hear of my home area making the top of anyone's list.

It's just something you get used to. In recent years South Carolina finished in the top five states for worst education, most DUI fatalities per passenger mile, and a few other distinctions along that line. While Charleston itself is a perennial favorite for the "most polite" city, one year it shared those top honors with (what?) New York City, making the voting immediately suspect.

I wasn't terribly surprised to see that North Charleston was listed as the seventh-most-dangerous place to live, according to a study by CQ Press using FBI crime stats. And while one could say the town made the big time, this just isn't the way to do it.

North Charleston Police Chief Jon Zumalt said the numbers didn't bother him all that much. "The study is questionable to say the least," Zumalt said. "I just don't pay it any mind."

North Charleston is no stranger to these crime rankings. Two years ago the town came in 10th in the most-dangerous-place study. Within the past year, Zumalt laid out a program keying on repeat offenders in drug arrests, and made a strong push for a 2 a.m. bar closing time. None of these efforts show in the fresh rankings, which are based on 2006 crime totals. Last year, North Charleston held 20th place.

Off these new numbers, North Charleston is an even more dangerous place to live than Memphis, Compton, Little Rock, and Gary, Indiana -- places where the locals say that deaths by gunfire are considered "natural causes."

Detroit, long considered the murder capital of the United States, took the number one ranking, with St. Louis, Flint, Oakland, and Camden, New Jersey filling out the top five.

Let's spare the whitewash, though. North Charleston has a bad regional reputation, and much of it is deserved.

I live in North Charleston, which is enough to elicit sympathy from many people who know the area. And I know North Charleston well enough to avoid it when I'm driving the taxi. When I drop off a passenger in most parts of that town, I usually beat it back to downtown Charleston or West Ashley. It's hell on my gas consumption, but better for my peace of mind.

Despite the name, North Charleston is not to be confused with the better-known, older, historic city immediately south. North Charleston is not a suburb. It's its own entity, with its own mayor, city council, budget, and police department. There's a healthy rivalry between the two cities, which often comes to a head whenever there's a choice piece of annexable land nearby (folks are still wondering how Charleston managed to nab Daniel Island, even though it's so physically separated from the peninsula). But really, trying to pit the two cities in any sort of rivalry just won't work. David at least had dumb luck and a few other unseen resources on his side when he beaned Goliath.

Every metropolitan area of any consequence has a North Charleston. It's the place where all undesirable things must go when the NIMBYs have their way. Ol' North Chuck has it all. An old retired Navy base. A smelly paper mill. Freeways. An air force base. Ashley Frustrate Road. Traffic up the wazoo. Section 8 housing. Remount Road. Drugs. Several manufacturing plants and docks that scream out, "industrial area." Rivers Avenue. Slums.

Not long ago I talked to a nice couple that lived in Bayside Manor, long considered one of Charleston's worst housing projects. Cab drivers didn't go in there without very large weapons. Utility workers didn't go in there alone. And forget about having a pizza delivered there. Bayside Manor is still what it is, but it's changed somewhat. Much of the undesirable element had been shipped out. To where? I asked the couple.

"North Charleston," the wife said. "Where else?" What with Charleston's longstanding effort to reinvent itself, each time a low-income area is torn down in favor of more upscale housing, this sends another army of turned-out, pissed-off former residents to North Charleston.

Zumalt cites the usual suspects in his assessment of North Charleston's crime picture: high dropout rates, broken homes, and black-on-black crime. Over the past few years, he said black males made up 87 percent of the town's murder suspects, and about the same percentage of crime victims were also black. Which, well, is practically impossible to mention in a time where political correctness is the rule, but when the numbers are stacked like this, it's also impossible to ignore.

To North Charleston's credit, though, things may change in the future. A pair of the sketchier housing projects, John C. Calhoun Homes and Century Oaks, have been torn down in favor of something a lot more upscale. The Park Circle area is looking pretty good these days. The Tanger Outlet Mall is giving the city a much-needed economic shot in the arm.

The numbers may improve over time, but it will take a while to escape this list.

MOST DANGEROUS 25:

1. Detroit 407.2
2. St. Louis 406.2
3. Flint, Mich. 381.0
4. Oakland, Calif. 338.9
5. Camden, N.J. 323.8
6. Birmingham, Ala. 268.8
7. North Charleston 254.3
8. Memphis, Tenn. 245.6
9. Richmond, Calif. 245.1
10. Cleveland 244.4
11. Orlando, Fla. 237.4
12. Baltimore 236.7
13. Little Rock, Ark. 233.8
14. Compton, Calif. 223.6
15. Youngstown, Ohio 222.0
16. Cincinnati 218.3
17. Gary, Ind. 214.0
18. Kansas City, Mo. 203.4
19. Dayton, Ohio 201.5
20. Newark, N.J. 197.3
21. Philadelphia 192.9
22. Atlanta 189.9
23. Jackson, Miss. 188.8
24. Buffalo, N.Y. 187.8
25. Kansas City, Kan. 187.6

SAFEST 25:

1. Mission Viejo, Calif. -82.1
2. Clarkstown, N.Y. -81.0
3. Brick Township, N.J. -78.7
4. Amherst, N.Y. -75.4
5. Sugar Land, Texas -75.4
6. Colonie, N.Y. -74.6
7. Thousand Oaks, Calif. -73.8
8. Newton, Mass. -73.5
9. Toms River Township, N.J. -72.7
10. Lake Forest, Calif. -71.7
11. Irvine, Calif. -71.1
12. Orem, Utah -70.6
13. Round Rock, Texas -69.4
14. Cary, N.C. -68.6
15. Greece, N.Y. -68.5
16. Chino Hills, Calif. -63.2
17. Coral Springs, Fla. -62.0
18. Troy, Mich. -61.8
19. Farmington Hills, Mich. -61.7
20. Centennial, Colo. -61.3
21. Glendale, Calif. -59.2
22. Broken Arrow, Okla. -58.8
23. Parma, Ohio -58.8
24. Sterling Heights, Mich. -58.5
25. Simi Valley, Calif. -58.5

Privacy redefined in post-9/11 world

In a world that has been changing since our nation has discovered it is not impervious to attack, a top intelligence official says that it's time to redefine what the word "privacy" really means.

Whatever it is, deputy director of national intelligence Donald Kerr says that the freedom to be anonymous is not part of the package. Not any more.

Kerr aired his thoughts a week ago during a speech, and it was largely ignored for several days until the Associated Press story showed up on the Internet and caught the attention of a few bloggers.

"Too often, privacy has been equated with anonymity," Kerr said. "It's an idea that is deeply rooted in American culture. The Lone Ranger wore a mask but Tonto didn't seem to need one even though he did the dirty work for free. You'd think he'd need one more. But in our interconnected and wireless world, anonymity -- or the appearance of anonymity -- is quickly becoming a thing of the past."

The proliferation of social networking sites -- MySpace, Facebook, and others -- are examples Kerr cited as evidence of our eroding sense of privacy.

Protecting anonymity is a losing cause, Kerr added. "Anyone that's typed in their name on Google understands that."

Insuring privacy, Kerr said, starts with "a system of laws, rules, and customs with an infrastructure of Inspectors General, oversight committees, and privacy boards on which our intelligence community is based and measured.

In other words, trust the government with your privacy. Thanks but no thanks.

There are several reasons why this story bothers me. One's pretty obvious, me being the freedom-loving type that I am. The more intrusive a government is, the less I like it, and all governments by their very nature tend to be intrusive to some degree. A fact of life. Even so-called "good government" is highly suspect. The framers of the Constitution had a huge task in front of them; they were basically putting together the least-intrusive government possible. Over the years, though, with each new crisis, civil liberties have eroded here and there, and with the hysterical aftermath of 9/11 this erosion is happening faster and faster. The public is not raising holy hell about it because, well, Americans have proven their willingness to trade off a few liberties for a safer world, even if that "safer world" is all mirage and no substance.

Another thing about this speech that bothers me has largely been ignored. It's almost like, if you can't win the game, change the rules to fit your style of play. Change the very definitions. You used to have to go into a courtroom to see this dynamic in effect (it all depends on how you define "is..."), but this kind of thinking has escaped the legal world and implanted itself into our own thinking.

James Pinkerton, a columnist with Newsday and former Reagan/Bush I staffer, also believes the post-911 world is making anonymity into a thing of the past. "The old equation, privacy equals anonymity, is being buzz-sawed six ways," he wrote. "First and most obviously, terrorism concerns. If you're walking through Times Square carrying a backpack and acting strangely, inquiring minds will want to know why."

Pinkerton offers that the need for deeper information for health insurance and medical treatment, the proliferation of cameras, and the Internet are all putting people on the radar screen like never before.

"If you've ever wondered why the Googlers can give you search engines -- and Gmail and everything else for free, it's not because they are necessarily nice guys," Pinkerton wrote. "In fact, they've built a $200-billion company by studying you closely."

Some of the online response to Pinkerton's article was downright interesting. From Gainesville, Florida: "Proposed years ago by some smart kids at cal tech... at the bottom of every email... include jihad, terrorist, bomb, explode, president, c4, ammonium... and then the govt will have TOO much information. Info overload is a large part of the answer."

Uhh, while this could very well cause the central computer system to blow a fuse, I don't think I want to be the first to try that. Any takers here?

When I go on the Internet, several things about me are automatically announced. Things like an IP address, a hostname, and an Internet Service Provider. From these a halfway savvy computer operator can figure out which city I'm surfing from. OK, that may or may not be of any great consequence to you. Also, one can tell a lot of things about the computer I'm using. Things like how fast my connection is, which operating system I'm using (Linux), which browser (Firefox), and even what my screen resolution is. Again, this may or may not be important, even if it's a little creepy to see local ads on a national page. Like, how do they know?

Just another couple of little things to think about here:





These graphics, courtesy of danasoft.com, kind of freaked me out the first time I saw them, too.

I use Gmail for most of my communication. When I saw how Google uses keywords from my mail to match me up with certain ads, it really creeped me out. It took me a long time to get used to having my mail scanned like this, but face it. It's done anyway, no matter who your email carrier is. If you want total privacy, forget email, forget the Internet. Arrange to meet your person in a subterranean parking garage somewhere, exchange a few verbal passwords ("the boat will sail at midnight"), then exchange the information.

To see how this works, I sent a short email from one of my Gmail boxes to the other. Just as a test. The subject of the email was "Advice from your legal counsel," and the text read, "Get thee to a nunnery ... and become a Thelonious monk."

The ads that showed up in the email sidebar? These, at last look, though they change with each viewing:

Medtronic Lead Lawsuits
Defective Medtronic Lead Lawyer. Lawsuits Commencing Now!
jrobertdavis.com/Medtronic

Defense Base Act Law Firm
Freedman & Lorry handles overseas non-military injury claims
freedmanlorry.com

Michael Pohl-Trial Lawyer
Over 30 years of experience helping injured people across the nation
www.pohlattorney.com
Costa Rica Legal

Bufete Echeverria InterLex a General Practice Law Firm
www.bufeteecheverria.com

General Counsel Attorney
Firm Profiles, General Counsel Law Job Listings, Salary Surveys, More!
www.Vault.com/Law

Kind of interesting. Maybe the contents of the missive were a little too cryptic for Google to come up with some good ads. Lots of legal services, but nothing about religious orders or out-there jazz pianists.

And yeah, I do a lot of other communicating on line, and control several social networking sites. Being thoroughly modern, of course I have a MySpace page and Facebook site. I also have several blogs and keep many of my Web bookmarks online through del.icio.us (including background pieces for blog articles). I'm not foolish about it, though. I'm a private person and like to keep it that way, so I'm real picky about what information goes online.

Perhaps privacy is eroding. Well, if there's a call to redefine it, you know it's already eroded. Perhaps beyond all recognition.

Municipal wireless called 'telecom's Bay Of Pigs'

After tossing around ambitious plans to set up vast wireless Internet systems, a number of cities are getting out of the game.

Figuring in the costs, infrastructure headaches, and the just plain unknown aspects of wireless communication, the whole idea is being branded as anything from premature to a major fiasco, with companies and cities abandoning half-drafted, half-built systems.

In my home town, plans to build a citywide wireless network are sitting in a holding pattern, primarily because it was determined it would need about three times the number of antennas as originally estimated. The Evening Post (which owns the Charleston Post And Courier) and Mount Pleasant-based Widespread Access had spent about a half-million to get wireless going, and are cutting their losses right now. So far, according to the Post and Courier, the only thing the city had to show for the expenditure is a signal along a few streets near the Medical University of South Carolina. That's all. That network is tapped into about 200 times a day.

Financial black hole? Try "telecom's Bay of Pigs," Tim Wu of Columbia's School Of Law, said recently in a Slate magazine article. Strong words, painting a picture of a total train wreck in the making. But it's turning out to be true, so far.

Last month, the city of Charleston terminated its contract with Widespread Access, and the Evening Post has also cut its ties.

This came to mind partly because of an article in the Sacramento Bee (registration required). That town's efforts to build a data net are running into financial problems. According to consultant Phil Belanger of Novarum, it takes nearly 50 wi-fi transmitters ("nodes") per square mile. All of which costs. Sacramento was planning to do it on the cheap, with 18 to 20 nodes per square mile, according to a city official.

"It will cost a lot more than most cities had planned to build a network that provides robust, consistent indoor coverage," adds Glenn Fleischman, editor of Wi-Fi Networking News.

In Mountain View, 80 miles away, Google has built a wireless system to blanket that town. The only problem is, it just doesn't work indoors. According to the Bee, the network rarely penetrates walls. You'd have to find a spot near a window or -- horrors -- take things outside if you really want to get your geek on.

I'm extremely lucky. I live in a free wi-fi hot-spot, and I can probably wear out an industrial-strength router all by myself. Sure, the cost of the wireless access is figured into my rent, but I definitely get my money's worth here. Through my wireless connection I maintain this blog, address my news addiction, stay in contact with fellow musicians (including sending sound files and chord charts), keep in touch with my scattered-all-over-the-country family, listen to Internet radio, and chat regularly with my friend up in D.C. Plus downloading open-source programs and operating systems to feed my inner geek. OK, I probably spend more time on the Internet than a grown man should, but it's because I can.

To my experience, wireless isn't perfect yet. The connection is subject to the whims of the same forces that affect all radio-frequency waves. Your signal may -- or may not -- make it through walls. I've had to do some major rearranging to get the best connection, moving the computer right next to the kitchen. All kinds of factors affect my connection, including storms, heavy Internet traffic on the system, perhaps the phase of the moon, and probably the steel plate in my neighbor's head. I've had 24-hour stretches of down time. And, yeah, with my Linux system (I never do anything the easy way, do I?) setting up the wireless card was a contentious pain in the butt. By and large, though, I'm extremely pleased with the result.

I'm of two minds when it comes to free (well, never really free) municipal Internet access. While it's good to see such a resource become available at no end-user cost, I have major reservations. Like, the fact that a city or county government would be involved so closely in the operational side. I have yet to see a government build a better mousetrap, or a cheaper one. As soon as a government gets involved in an enterprise such as this, you can expect the total cost to be much more than what its really worth and the quality to be inferior to what you can get on the open market. And no, I'm not talking through my tinfoil hat here; this is a fact of life.

Trying to make a municipal wireless Internet system is going to be a lot like running a bus service. It's not going to make money, no matter how you dress it up. To make the system attractive at all to the consumer, it has to be as convenient as possible and as cheap as possible, an equation that does not fit in anybody's idea of a business model. I can't think of any bus service that actually pays its own way.

My idea of a perfect system will be one that's built and maintained by your friendly neighborhood hacker community, folks making it work for the love of it. Kind of an open source model. All of the software on my computer is built the same way, by a loose crew of experts doing it for the hell of it and accepting any brilliant ideas from the end user. My web browser (Firefox) is built the same way, by a bunch of hackers doing it 'cause it's fun. Unfortunately, Firefox (well, its parent company Mozilla) is going a lot more corporate these days and much is lost in the translation. Firefox is a lot more bloated than it used to be, and the newer versions just doesn't run as well on my system (though it still beats the pants off Internet Explorer). But if it was operated by a municipal government, they might even forget they're making a Web browser.

If the whole idea is to simply make the system work, the open-source model might be the most promising scenario. But it would be practically impossible to do it for love without starving to death.

Letter from the editor: New home for The Column

Excuse the plaster, dust, and drywall all over the place. The Column, Reloaded is remodeling. Moving into new digs.

For several months this example of bloggery has been on a different site, different service, all of that good stuff. It's probably not a real good idea to switch horses in midstream under most circumstances, but there are reasons for the switch.

I get a little more flexibility with Blogspot, and I can do a lot more with it. Instead of the old "linkable, clickable news," you can just go to the sidebar and grab whatever news stories are there ... things that have caught my interest. That's one example. Plus, I can add a news ticker at the bottom, creating more of an all-news experience -- and more reasons for you, the reader, to stick around for a while.

Eventually I might import some of my old entries to the new site, but I'm in no hurry. In the interim -- and this might be the permanent solution -- you can find my past work on my old Wordpress site, via this link. Feel free to click on it, there's plenty of other good stuff there.

Enjoy the new site. And welcome to The Column, Reloaded. I've been expecting you.

Cockroaches may die but 'Gilligan's Island' lives on

I don't do commercials in this blog. Not even my own, really. If someone has something to sell, he can do it without me.

However, while surfing the net I ran across a site and book that caught my attention. Journalist Alan Weisman painted the mother of all doomsday scenarios with his book, "The World Without Us." I haven't picked up this book -- yet -- but it's found its way on my must-read list.

For some morbid reason, apocalyptic literature fascinates me. I dug Stephen King's "The Stand," and read it several times. But it's actually kind of tame compared to Weisman's thought experiment. In The Stand, mankind was not obliterated, but a remnant was still there to rebuild some semblance of society. Really kind of a recurring theme in literature -- plenty of examples in writing as far back as the Book of Genesis. In Weisman's book, we're extinct as the Brontosaurus. Ain't nobody there but the chickens, cockroaches, and random wildlife.

Here's a sample of Weisman's thought process: what would be left if humans suddenly died out? Given our lousy housekeeping track record as a species, a lot. In 100,000 years, carbon-dioxide levels may revert back to where they were before humans showed up. Maybe. Or it may take longer. But there are some shorter-term possibilities, Weisman argues. Within a year, animals will start camping out in our old nuclear reactors, which would have melted down or burned out with nobody at the controls. Head and body lice will become extinct. And as there will be nobody minding our heating systems, Weisman expects a massive dieback of cockroaches within three years. (Now, this flies in the face of my own favorite apocalyptic argument; I've always held that the hardy cockroach would inherit the earth.)

Within 20 years the Panama Canal would have filled itself in. Within 100 years, elephants will have a population boom, but the feral descendants of our house cats will provide enough competition for raccoon and fox that those animals' numbers will decrease.

New York City gets special attention. Here's what Weisman says about the fate of America's largest city, according to an interview posted in worldwithoutus.com:

"Within two days, without pumping, New York’s subway would impassably flood. Within twenty years, water-soaked steel columns that support the street above the East Side’s 4-5-6 trains would corrode and buckle. As Lexington Avenue caves in, it becomes a river. In the first few years with no heat, pipes burst all over town, the freeze-thaw cycle moves indoors, and things start to seriously deteriorate. Plugged sewers, deluged tunnels and streets reverting to rivers will conspire to waterlog foundations and destabilize their huge loads, toppling structures. Gradually the asphalt jungle will give way to a real one."

If you've got the time and a fairly fast connection, here's a slideshow of what Weisman expects will happen to Manhattan. And you thought your tract home was jury-rigged and won't last? Gee, it's a lot more solidly built than anyone thought.

Some other, longer-lasting legacies: Our paper-or-plastic culture will leave some real souvenirs. It'll take "hundreds of thousands" of years for microorganisms to evolve to the point where they can biodegrade our plastic. So when they do show up, there'll be plenty to eat.

Weisman believes the Earth will burn out after about five billion years (be sure to mark your calendar) as the dying sun expands. But human legacy will live on, in our radio and TV transmissions. Sure, they'll get garbled over time, but they'll continue to travel outward forever.

Our longest-lasting legacy will be reruns of Gilligan's Island. Which speaks volumes of the human race.

'Dog' bitten by private phone call ... what private?

Looks like phone calls are not private anymore.

Over the past few days, TV bounty hunter Duane "Dog" Chapman has been weathering a storm since a phone conversation of his was aired on National Enquirer. The Arts And Entertainment (A&E) network put his reality show on hold, civil rights groups are taking his name in vain, and Chapman is making apologies as fast as he can.

Like anybody should care, right? Another entertainment figure pilloried by the tabloids. Big deal. Dog is in fast company, and in some ways this is a right of passage for celebrities. And, as a rule I don't care for pop journalism and don't really give a damn about what the Britneys and K-Feds or even O.J. Simpsons of this world are doing. But, the developments surrounding Dog's phone call have captured my full attention.

Here's the quick background: This controversy stems from a private phone conversation where Chapman is voicing his displeasure at his son's choice of girlfriends. Private family stuff, right? OK, he tossed around a few cuss words and a few derogatory terms that start with an N. I'm sure he's not the only one to have had such phone conversations. So how in the hell did the Enquirer get the taped transcript? So far, no one's said anything about that.

And to ride the slippery slope a bit, how private are your own phone conversations?

I'm going to pause and put on my tinfoil hat; please bear with me. Most cell phones are digital these days and a lot harder to pick up with a scanner than the old analog phone. However, a person with an Internet connection, a credit card, some resourcefulness and a *lot* of time on his hands can find ways to intercept and record other people's phone calls. A quick Google search unearthed a few options, and here's one sample.

As we're seeing, private is no longer private. And, what with this nation's interest in homeland security (and the people's willingness to give up some rights just to make their world appear a little safer), this can be a real dangerous thing.

I use email a lot, and I have no illusions about my messages being totally private. Such things are just not possible anymore. Although I love the convenience that Gmail gives me (along with some of the other Google applications), I still get those strange feelings when I see how closely the text ads on the Gmail sidebar match my subject matter. I do use some online applications and file storage for things that are not terribly sensitive, but I'm not going to use my Gmail space to store things like phone numbers, bank information, notes for my (forever unwritten) 1,000-page novel, or the charts for my ending to Schubert's Unfinished Symphony. And I'm not gonna use my cell phone to discuss such matters. I mean, that's just plain stupid.

I guess if there is such a thing as thought police in our future, it's not very far away.

Stick with the battle-tested 911 for emergencies

Don't you just love these urban legends? Those that sound so good on the surface -- and might be a real good idea -- but are either premature or pure crap?

Some of these legends are harmless at worst. Others do absolutely nothing but scare the living crap out of people (like the ones that had been making the rounds long before the Internet, about prospective gang members' initiation rites). And other legends may have you jump through a bunch of useless hoops in an emergency.

I got wind of one a couple of days ago, through an email.The story goes like this: It seems Lauren, a young woman, was being followed and pulled over by an unmarked car with a flashing red light on the roof. May be a real cop, may be some real sketchy type, you never know in that situation. She remembered some advice from mom and dad and used her cell phone to call *77, a straight-in number to police dispatch. Within minutes four real cops showed up, stopped the unmarked car, and arrested the driver -- who was a convicted rapist.

Nice story, right? A hell of an idea, too. Only problem is, either it's not true or "Lauren" sure gets around. One version (which showed up on the Internet in early 2002) has Lauren as a 19-year-old coed in Virginia. In 2003, still 19, "Lauren" escapes a similar fate in Australia, where dialing the "Number 112" feature on her cel saved the day for her. In mid-2004, the 19-year-old Lauren is followed again, in Canada, and saves her bacon by dialing *677. And in 2007, Lauren -- still 19 years old -- is in Dorset in the United Kingdom where her handy cell phone bails her out of similar trouble.

Plenty of inconsistencies in Lauren's tale, and already that makes it questionable. But let's skip all that crap and get to the important part of the story. What will dialing *77 get you?

In my neck of the woods, not a damned thing. Calling *77 from Charleston, South Carolina, gives me nothing but a fast busy signal. I tried a variation of the story, with #77, and was informed that my call could not be completed as dialed. (I figured if a real cop answered the phone during my experiments, I could always pretend I'm drunk and trying to call my mom in Truth Or Consequences, New Mexico, or some such fantasy.) So it won't work where I am, and I hope in a real emergency no real time is wasted fiddling with all those 77s. Stick with 911; it's battle-tested.

According to snopes.com, the great debunker of urban legends, some states use #77 as an emergency number while others may use *55, *47, or *HP as an emergency number. Your mileage may vary. If you're out traveling the highways, you might see information signs at roadside or on trucks advertising the number du jour. But to be on the safe side, stick with 911.

Clicking this link will give you a map showing emergency numbers from the states. This was originally put together in 2000 by the Missouri Highway patrol, and is pretty up to date. But this map may not be immediately available in a real emergency and you probably won't have time to pull up this web site, so do yourself a favor. In crunch time when the adrenaline is pumping like mad and you can hear your heart pounding in your ears, forget all that crap and dial 911. At least that works.

One urban legend I run across is the one about putting ICE on your cell phone. The idea here is to have emergency contact information on your phone, and slug it as ICE -- for In Case Of Emergency. Now, I've heard various reviews of this, but this is one of those it-can't-hurt-but-it-may-help things. There are rumors that viruses may target phones that have ICE in the directory, or folks who have it on their cell phones may end up paying higher rates per minute, but to all indications that seems to be nothing but a legend. Again, ICE may or may not be useless, so I have it on my phone. To me, though, what makes more sense is to carry a thumb drive with a text file containing all your emergency and medical information (history, allergies, prescriptions, things like that). These drives are small enough to do that, and maybe someone, somewhere, may take the ICE cell phone trick and merge it with the thumb drive idea. As cell phones get more advanced and have more memory, don't be surprised if a version of this idea becomes reality.

Now, *77 does sound like a great idea. Maybe someone will pick it up and run with it. Sometimes if enough people hear an urban legend it'll grow legs and become truth. Maybe in a few years it will be possible to dial *77 and get a cop. But it's not happening yet, and you sure don't need to be frittering away valuable seconds in an actual emergency.

Stick with 911. At least you know it works.

(For other links, check out the Western Herald and Urban Legend Zeitgeist.)