I will be in Ireland tomorrow (3/7) until next Friday (3/17).  If you are living in the West, give me an email.  Otherwise, posting resumes on the 20th.  Catch y’all later.

While I respect the desire to keep them off of planes, the need does freak me out (usatoday.com).

Talking on cellphones or using laptops on an airplane could disrupt cockpit operations, especially global positioning devices that are increasingly being used to help land planes safely, according to a new study.
Researchers monitoring flights in the Northeast found that several cellphone calls are typically made on commercial flights during takeoff or final approach, two critical flight stages when accidents could occur.

Now, as I said, I fear the day everyone can use cell phones in a plane.  It will probably be the last day that normal human beings walk this Earth (rioting in the air would provavly cause some issues).  I worry that the technology used on a plane is so delicate that a known quantity such as a cell phone, one that uses a well-documented and well-travelled part of the wireless spectrum, could put the flight at risk.  Shouldn’t they I don’t know, use a different part of the spectrum.  Or, failing that, disallow cell traffic there.

I honestly don’t know how much I believe the hype in this situation.  I have a decent understanding of RF frequencies and a phone call from within the terminal or from a car driving near the landing strip should be just as dangerous to the plane (more so once one takes into account the greater amount of call density off the plane).

Cell phones don’t have the same limitations as WiFi or cordless home phones.  Ranges are usually closer to ten miles.  Which means that talking on the cell phone on the highway affects those planes flying overhead.

So, in conclusion, I hope this is a propaganda piece or a piese that USA Today has butchered (that latter seems to make more sense), because as it stands now, it looks like total bollocks.