Pride 2011

This weekend was the Twin Cities' Pride festival and I felt heavily pressure by, surprisingly, my straight friends to go. So I did. Yay.

For those of you who don't know me well, I've never really felt much of a connection with the gay community. It's generally because I really don't have many things in common with other gay men aside from my love of Lady Gaga and, honestly, I find them pretty annoying. Gay men are everything I dislike about men (which, granted, is pretty much everything) combined with everything I find unattractive/dislike about women.

Lesbians, on the other hand, I love. Seriously, they rule. They're the few things I like about men combined with the very many things I like about women... and, best of all, there's no physical attraction from either direction so things never get weird! Woo hoo!

Anyway, so I went to Pride this weekend and it was kind of fun I guess. I did some volunteering and met some awesome lesbians. However, if I never see glitter or hear music that could easily serve as the soundtrack for a porno, I'd be completely okay with that. There was one story in particular that I wanted to share because I think it teaches an important lesson.

It's no secret that I'm a pretty hardcore agnostic and am not a fan of religion and especially Christianity as it seems to be obsessed with denying gays rights... or at least that's how many of it's followers choose to interpret it. I was pretty much expecting there to be tons of those crazy religious people with their "Stop sinning!" signs. Surprisingly, I saw none all weekend. What I did see, however, was a ton of Christians handing out free water and just generally being accepting and telling everyone there that they accepted and loved them regardless of their sexual orientation and that they just wanted them to be happy. It's been a while since my Catholic school days and I've been using my Bible as a paper weight, but I feel like that's what Jesus would want, as well as a supposedly all-loving God.

The take home lesson is to just accept others and also to act in (positive) ways that break stereotypes. You might have, at the very least, a slightly less negative opinion of that group.

That's all I wanted to share. Now, I'm going to go back to having nothing to do with the gay community for the rest of the year.

Taco Tuesday!

I meant to post this earlier but, sadly, my life has been once again consumed by school. Why did I think it was a good idea to take organic chemistry in the summer? I must've taken some whacky pills that day. Anyway, I have a test Thursday so I'm really studying hard... as evidenced by me writing this blog post.

Anywho, a few nights ago I found myself having to cook for myself. For someone who's living at home for the summer, I found this quite distressing as I am used to my parents preparing most meals for me. Luckily for me, my mommy and I happened to go on a trip to Whole Foods in the recent past so I knew I had some delicious organic tortillas in my fridge. Perfect for tacos!

And then I remembered I'm a vegetarian. Fuck.

For those of you who have never been underwhelmed by a vegetarian taco they're generally not that exciting and usually consist of cheese, lettuce, and tomatoes. Woo.

Thankfully, the taco is the most versatile fruit so I decided to improvise based on what I happened to have in the fridge. I came up with organic asparagus, red, orange, and yellow peppers, and summer squash. I chopped these up and decided I should probably cook them. (Can you even eat raw asparagus?) I got out a pan and put some olive oil in it and sauteed (or whatever the fancy cooking term is) them for... well, I didn't keep track of the amount of time. You can't rely on me for all the answers, discover things for yourself, man!!! But to give you an idea of when they're done... whenever the fuck you feel like it. I mean... you can just put them in there for two minutes and basically just get a bunch of hot vegetables and, hey, if you're cool with that then I'm cool with that! I accept you for who you are. Otherwise try cooking them until you poke them with a stirring utensil. And you might want to look for them to change appearance a little bit. But not too much!!! If they start to turn brown and smoke then FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP COOKING THEM.

So now you have a bunch of vegetables that are somewhere on the moderately warm to singed spectrum. Now, put everything into the taco. That's what she said. To add variety, flavor, and, most importantly, some additional nutrients I think sprinkled some cheese on top. I used sharp cheddar because I like the strong flavor but you can use whichever cheese moves you. I'm not the Cheese Nazi who tells you what kind of cheese to like. I also discovered some organic spinach salad mix in my fridge as I was putting the cheese back and decided to add that as well.

And with that, the tacos were finished!

So I ate them.

And it was like a vegetabley cheesey food sex explosion in my mouth.

I thought of maybe adding beans next time I make them but why fix what's not broken? However, in your taco-ing life feel free to try whatever you would like and share some suggestions with me!

Speaking of sharing, I have one last thing to share with you all. I thought this was appropriate given today's topic.



Enjoy the rest of your week.

For those of you who are unaware, I've recently developed an obsession with this YouTube show called "My Drunk Kitchen." The premise that this girl gets drunk and cooks things and films it. It's pretty freakin' great. Well, there happens to be a new episode today so I wanted to share it with you before I got into the real meat of today's blog.




Isn't she great?! I love her. I want to keep her in a jar in my room.

Now that I've shared the joy of MDK, it's time to move on to a more serious topic. I know, I know, it's rare that I have serious blogs because I'm so fucking entertaining.

For those of you who don't follow me on Twitter, lately I've been posting a lot of rather depressing statuses (Basically, I've turned into this whiny thirteen year old fat emo girl). I know they're annoying and I know it seems like I'm... well, a whiny thirteen year old fat emo girl. I also realize that lately I've been really irritable lately. I'm snapping at people, I'm making vicious sarcastic comments, I'm not commenting or tweeting or texting back, I'm being really anti-social... Basically, I'm becoming a real asshole.

Well, more of a real asshole than I usually am.

I've also become a tad paranoid and have gotten mad at people for stupid things like not responding to a Facebook event invite or whatever... Stuff that, while annoying, doesn't warrant the kind of reaction I've been having. In addition, I've felt the need to obsessively write on people's walls, comment or like everything, etc. because I feel like everyone is abandoning me for completely irrational reasons.

I guess I just really wanted to apologize for how I've been acting lately. There's been a lot of negative stuff in my life lately that I've been struggling with and it honestly has been getting worse rather than better. I'm trying to work through it but it's a long, difficult process. So if I snap at you or whatever, don't take it personally. It really is my issue more than anything else and you're probably doing nothing wrong. I don't know why I take things out on the people I love, but that's what always ends up happening. I'm trying to stop, I really am.

Life has been a struggle lately for me. I don't want to go into details of what's been going on, and I'm sure most of you probably don't want to hear it, but things are getting bad. Some days, I won't get out of bed until 4 because I just don't see the point or feel like dealing with reality. Hopefully, someday I'll get better. Hopefully.

Live fast, die young?

I'd like to start out with some exciting news... I found another purple food!!!! Apparently, one variety of kale is partially purple. Who knew?! Obviously I had to pick up a bunch and now I'm looking for something to do with it because... what the fuck do you do with kale?

Anyway, I read a disturbing article today that the US is WAY behind other developed countries as far as our life expectancies go. I found this a bit shocking because I've always been told that we had one of the highest life expectancies. As I got near the end of the article, it became clear why ours is so low: Obesity (as well as smoking). This leads to today's angry Joey rant.

*clears throat*

GET OFF YOUR LAZY FUCKING ASSES AMERICANS AND STOP EATING SUCH CRAP. Yeah, I know it's a lot more fun to sit around and eat chocolate and ice cream and deep fried shit all day but do you realize what it's doing to your body?! It's disgusting. So suck it the fuck up and MOVE. You can spare half an hour a day for activity. And fuck, you can even take two days off a week and still be fine! And quit bitching about how healthy food tastes like shit. Ever thought that maybe you're not doing it right? DON'T BLAME CARROTS.

What's amazes the fuck out of me is how people still manage to be lard asses even though we have tons of resources for them to loose weight and stay at least relatively healthy. I mean, running is FUCKING FREE. GO DO IT. You can look up yoga videos online FOR FREE. You can get a Jillian Michaels DVD for like $10. You don't need a gym! Just get out there and MOVE. And stop eating at McDonalds. We all know how crappy it is.





This concludes our Joey rant for today. Thank you for your time.

The (Facebook) Bystander Effect

It's a Saturday night and so far this evening I ran 8 miles, chased a rabbit around the yard, and learned the medical term for man-boobs. One thing I did not do, however, is have any sort of social contact minus a few texts seeing if some friends were free this evening (Obviously they were not).

I know you're probably thinking, "Oh God, Joey's going to bitch about not having friends again." While most of the time you would be right (Let's be honest: I'm pretty damn good at bitching) bear with me because this is actually going somewhere productive.

Anyway, where was I? Oh right, not having a social life. So here I was, sitting by my lonesome when I got the idea to post something on Facebook seeing if anyone wanted to hang out. Despite posting the most witty, insightful, and though provoking status I could, no one responded. Whomp whomp. This isn't the first time this has happened, nor will it be the last. I was pondering why the fuck this kept happening when two explanations came into my head:

(Actually, quite a few more came into my head. But these seemed the most likely. I don't think all my friends being abducted by aliens and replaced with illiterate sheep who have hacked into their Facebook accounts is very plausible).

The first explanation is that I'm completely unbearable to be around because I'm annoying as all fuck, smell, am ugly as sin, a real asshole, hated by everyone, or some combination there of. While this is definitely a viable theory because no one wants to to spend time with people with those traits, it's more than likely a product of my paranoia because sometimes I convince myself of some pretty ridiculous things.

I decided to think a little more rationally for an explanation. Suddenly, it hit me as I thought back to my social psychology class and something known as the bystander effect.

Those of you who haven't taken social psychology or even introductory psychology are probably thinking, "What the fuck is the bystander effect?" ...or some variant of that. The bystander effect is an interesting phenomena that occurs when people are confronted with an emergency situation in which someone else needs help. If there's just one person there, they will be significantly more likely to attempt to help than if there is a group of people around. This is believed to occur because when more people are around, people feel less personally obligated to help and the sense of responsibility is diffused throughout the group. Unfortunately, this usually results in no one helping. An example of this from my social psych class was this chick named Feline Genwjwthaiothabgtasjgnasg, or something like that, who was murdered in an alley in New York and, despite crying for help, none of her neighbors called the police.

So what the hell does this have to do with my Facebook post? Think about the way Facebook works: We each have a couple hundred (or, for those who are particularly insecure, a couple thousand) friends that all of our status updates, links, etc. get sent out to. Each of those friends has a couple hundred/thousand friends (again, depending on their level of insecurity). Each of these friends acts as a bystander of sorts and thus everyone develops a, "Oh, someone else will respond" attitude and no one responds even if they may be bored and looking for something to do. I am coining this "the Facebook bystander effect."

Another example from my life was back in March when I was looking for someone to see Girl Talk with me. I posted repeatedly on Facebook asking if anyone wanted to go with me because the person I was originally going with was no longer able to go. Bear in mind that GT sold out two back to back shows in Minneapolis. How many people do you think responded? ZERO. Thankfully, I ran into my friend Edwina (isn't her name AWESOME?!) and she told me she wanted to go. I asked why she didn't respond on Facebook and she said, "Oh, I thought someone else would want to go so I figured I'd wait and see." Like in the real life bystander effect, there were many virtual bystanders so she had just assumed that someone else would respond because of a sort of diffusion of responsibility (although in this case there's no responsibility, but to keep in the context of the original bystander effect I'll use that term).

Now, I realize this is quite the stretch to go from a real life emergency to something as silly as Facebook but think about it abstractly and you'll see that the general concept, the more people there are the less likely someone will act, carries over. Of course, there are other problems. My thinking is in no way based on any empirical evidence because I don't have fucking time to do experiments for fun. I do think the anecdotal evidence suggests there may be something there. Also, it is based off of a theory that actually has empirical evidence behind it. So if any of you happen to be a researcher and want to test this theory out, let me know! *wink wink nudge nudge*

There are some other applications of the Facebook bystander effect that, assuming it's actually happening, I'd be interested in exploring as well. For example, does this still happen if the person making the post has few friends? Are people more likely to respond if they themselves have few friends? What factors can increase responsiveness to a request on Facebook (humor, invoking a sense of obligation, etc.)? How many people would respond to an actual emergency request on Facebook ("The baby's coming! Someone take me to the hospital!") and would responsiveness be affected by any of the above listed factors? Does having a picture of a sexy bikini model increase the likelihood of a response?

Finally, how can this effect be countered? Research would need to be done to make a reliable judgment of whether variations in wording or tone could result in more responses. The best way to counter the Facebook bystander effect would be to make very specific requests. In the actual bystander effect, instead of shouting, "Somebody help me!" it would be a better idea to pick one person out and point to them and shout, "Hey asswipe in the red scarf, call the police!" Okay, maybe don't call them asswipe. But you catch my drift, right?

To apply this to Facebook, instead of posting a status saying, "I'm bored. Someone want to go fly fishing?!" it would be more effective to write on one person's wall, send them a message, use the chat feature, tag them in a post, text them, use a carrier pigeon, address them specifically via smoke signals, etc. I can't promise that this will get you results, however, because it seems like people are too lazy/big of assholes to respond to texts and what not... But that's a whole different blog =)

Another way to overcome the bystander effect may to just simply be aware of it so you can consciously make an effort to notice if it is happening and hopefully act against it. So the take home message is that if you see someone who's looking for something to do or someone to go see a show with on Facebook, don't just assume someone else is going to respond and do it yourself. Chances are, everyone else is thinking, "Someone else is going to respond so why bother?" This especially applies if it's something I post. I always love comments and responses, which is why I obsessively do it on other peoples' posts all the time.

If anyone actually decides to put my little theory to the test, let me know how it goes. From a personal standpoint, hopefully by taking a more proactive and direct approach I won't be spending too many more weekends like this holed up at home.

... Or maybe I'm just an asshole.

Taste the rainbow

Earlier this evening, I had the pleasure of seeing a wonderful acoustic set by the Head and the Heart. If you haven't heard of this band yet, I pity you. They're so wonderful. Their voices harmonize so perfectly together and you can tell they're genuinely enjoying themselves up on stage. Also, I had a chance to talk to them very quickly afterward and they are incredibly nice.

You can check out a song from them here:



As I was driving home, I thought back to a post I made a few days back with some fitness and health advice for busy people. I realized that I forgot to include a tidbit of nutrition advice that I always try to follow but I guess it's just as well (but I miss your face like hell. [Watch the video if you don't get this]) because it's really great advice for everyone, not just busy people... and it gives me an excuse to share a recipe!

In my other blog, I said that it's a good idea to try to eat a lot of foods that are brightly colored (but not artificially colored!) and this kind of builds on that. I like to call it the "Rainbow Rule" and no, it's not just for gays. In case you didn't imply this from the name, you basically make sure that you get at least one food that's every color of the rainbow somewhere in each of your meals throughout the day. What's the reasoning behind this? It makes sure they you get a variety of nutrients as foods with different colors generally will have different nutritional content. It also encourages you to get foods from a variety of different food groups.

Of course, some of the colors (read: blue and purple) can be difficult to find. Off hand, I think of blueberries for blue and... nothing else. Purple makes me think of eggplant, plums, and grapes. For that reason, I usually combine these two colors into one and if I can get both, great!

That brings me to the recipe I mentioned earlier! A couple friends and I were making dinner the other night and, me being me, I insisted upon it being mostly healthy. My friends took care of making garlic bread, a fruit salad (for dessert... As Marge Simpson once said, "Fruit is nature's candy!"), and an improvised baked pasta while I was in charge of a salad. Obviously, I wanted to pack as many nutrients as I could into the salad. Everyone seemed to enjoy the salad so the next week when I was looking to make a quick, healthy meal for myself, I decided to bust out the salad again, but this time with a slight modification to add yet another color that wasn't included in the original salad. I ended up enjoying it even more the original so I thought I'd share the recipe with you all.

And by share the recipe, I mean I'm going to give it a name and tell you what's in it. I'm going to give you any specifics or measurements or anything because it's a fucking salad. So let's call it Rainbow Salad because it's very colorful. Can everyone agree on that? Good.

So start with a big ass bowl and fill it with some spinach. Notice how I said spinach and not lettuce. Spinach=darker green=more nutrients than lettuce. You'll want about as much spinach as you think will feed however many people you're serving (duuuuuh!) unless you want to have left overs for later (double duuuuuuh!) Use your best estimation skillz.

So yeah, we're off to a great start and we already have green! But we're not going to stop the green there. Oooooh, no. Next up is cucumbers! I usually cut some into circles and then cut them into four pieces after that. I also keep some in thin circles to put on top of the salad at the end.

Next, git yerself sum peppars! Or, in English, get yourself some peppers! More specifically, you'll want red, orange, and yellow peppers. After washing them, cut them into small squares and then toss them into your bowl. Bam! Four colors down. God, isn't this amazing?! I feel like Emeril.

Now comes the really exciting part... AS IF SPINACH ISN'T EXCITING ENOUGH. Are you ready for it?!

BLUEBERRIES.

Holy. Fuck.

Mind blowing, right? Right. So wash yourself some of those deeeeelicious blueberries (I recommend using organic for less exposure to pesticides... Blueberries are on the EWG's Dirty Dozen!). There's blue! Woo! You've got all your colors, more or less! Now you're ready to toss the salad. Soooo... toss the salad. And I mean that in a non-sexual way, you pervert.

But we're not done yet! For an added dash of red, let's add some strawberries, why don't we? I also recommend getting these organic for the same reason. I've also noticed that the organic strawberries at my local grocery store tend to be straight up better quality than the conventional ones. Slice the strawberries into the thin slices and spread them nicely across the top along with any cucumber slices you saved. Awwww, now it looks awesome, too!

If you feel the need for dressing, which I highly recommend against because it's basically empty calories, go with olive oil as a healthy alternative and make sure you only put on a light amount. Trust me, this salad is so flavorful you won't even need dressing!

So there you go. My half assed approach to sharing a recipe. Try it, let me know what you think. Also, if you have any blue or purple foods you can think of, let me know!

I Felt You Drain the Blood

I've noticed that I tend to do, or at least start, most of my blogging late at night. Why this happens is a mystery to me still. Maybe I'm slowly turning into an owl or maybe I need some stronger sleeping pills.

Late Saturday night, however, I had a little too much excitement going on to be blogging. But let me start the story of my weekend at the beginning.

Wednesday, I was at Minnehaha Falls with a couple of friends. We were heading back to our car when my nose suddenly began to bleed. This was unfortunate because no one in my group had tissues and we were still pretty far off from the main pavilion. I held my nose and managed to stop most of the bleeding long enough for me to get back to pavilion, get some tissues, and clean myself up. After it had stop, I pushed it from my mind and thought nothing of it.

Skip ahead to Friday (Friday, Friday, getting down on Friday!). I had a few friends over for the evening and we were hanging out, playing this really awesome game called "What If." Around 1:30, my nose started bleeding again but this time, blood was gushing out. I'm usually pretty impatient when it comes to nosebleeds so instead of applying pressure like you're supposed to, I just shove tissue up there and let it sit for a while until the bleeding stops. I tried doing that but as soon as I got the tissue wad in my nose, the little piece that was sticking out started turning red and then proceeded to drip. This was my first clue that this was not your typical run of the mill nosebleed. I decided I'd give in and apply pressure to it until it stopped. Finally, after half an hour of holding my nose, the bleeding subsided.

I woke up early the next morning (Read: 1 in the afternoon) and went to water my garden. Upon returning inside, my nose again began to drip blood at an alarming rate. It took me another half an hour to get the bleeding to stop but I really didn't care for that evening, I had a date with the lovely Chelsea Handler.

I left my house and went out to dinner before the show and then we arrived at the Target Center. The show was great. Brad, Josh, and Heather from Chelsea Lately all opened for Chelsea and they were each hilarious. Then it came time for Chelsea to come on and I was pumped. This is one of the pictures I managed to take...

...before my nose started gushing blood AGAIN, which goes to show that even fourth row floor tickets can be nosebleed seats. My friend who I went with didn't have any tissues but she very generously took off her top shirt and let me use it to hold my nose... Thanks, Kristen! Was I about to get up and leave to get tissues or seek medical attention? Fuck no. This is Chelsea goddamn Handler we're talking about! Unfortunately, I bled for about 45 minutes... and just as I finally got it to stop, Chelsea's set was over. She was still hilarious, it just sucked having to spend the whole time holding my nose.

As we left the Target Center, I began to feel a little out of it and light headed, like I was in some sort of fog. We made it to our car and I got home alright but I just didn't feel right the whole time. I got inside and I was feeling really weak. I had some salad left over from lunch so I started by eating that (Obviously spinach will cure whatever's wrong with me... right?!). Not feeling any better, I floated over to the couch and collapsed onto it. Like any normal person, I then proceeded to check my Facebook. My friend Brooke happened to be online and I told her what had happened. She offered to take me to the hospital because, let's be honest, all that blood loss had obviously taken its toll on me.

We go to the hospital and I arrive, feeling like a jackass for having to go to the emergency room at midnight on Saturday for a freakin' series of severe nosebleeds. This feeling was further enhanced when I was put in a room next to a guy who was over dosing on some unknown drug. Needless to say, my problem felt like it wasn't that important.

The doctor looked at my nose and then spoke a word I had hoped I'd never hear from a doctor's mouth: Cauterization. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept of cauterization, they basically use either chemicals or heat to burn a bleeding blood vessel closed. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!!!! The doctor grabbed a spray bottle with a long red straw and held my nose back. He then sprayed whatever the fuck was in there up my nose and it felt like tiny little ice shards had penetrated my nasal cavity. My eyes began to water and I was coughing. NOT FUN.

I then find out that that was not, in fact, the actual cauterization but just some numbing spray. Note to medical researchers out there: Find a numbing spray that doesn't hurt. A few minutes later he came back with a silver nitrate stick and the actual cauterization took place. After locating the devious blood vessel that was causing me problems, he took the stick and rubbed it along the inside of my nose. "That's not actually that bad," I said. "I was expec... OH MY GOD MY NOSE IS ON FIRE!!!!" That shit HURTS. Thankfully, there's a solution to the pain of chemical burns... MORE NUMBING NASAL SPRAY!!!!!

They did some blood work and said that everything seemed normal and that I should just go home and rest and I'll be fine. Still feeling light headed and loopy, we returned home. I immediately went to bed and did not wake up until early after noon. I unfortunately still felt like I had smoked some sort of whacky weed so I spent most of the rest of the day sleeping. Finally, after a solid three hour nap, I woke up and felt semi-normal.

Obviously, that was not how I wanted to spend my Saturday but hey, I guess you can't really decide when your body's going to fall apart.

The take home message from this blog is this: Be kind to your nose. Don't do things that may cause it bleed excessively. A good example of an activity to avoid is cocaine usage. That's generally not good for your nostrils, nor the rest of your body for that matter. But also don't pick your nose, stick crayons up there, try using your nose for some type of really weird kinky sex, etc.

Stop Telephoning Me

I finished one of the books on my summer reading list, "Lies That Chelsea Handler Told Me"! Yahoo!!! I can't recommend this book enough. It's not quite as good as her previous books, which may be because she didn't actually write most of it, but it's still a hilarious read. One story in particular that stands out is by her assistant about a time when she takes a couple Excedrine from Chelsea's medicine cabinet. I won't say more than that to ruin it for any of you who choose to read it, but trust me, it has a hilarious twist!

Speaking of Chelsea Handler, I'm going to see her on Saturday! I can't wait!! Kristen came over tonight and we started making shirts to wear to the show. We're currently waiting for the front to dry so we can work on the back but they're going to be pretty awesome. Maybe Chelsea will notice them!

On a more serious note, the WHO today announced that it would be classifying cell phone use as possibly carcinogenic. This is kind of a disturbing revelation but it doesn't surprise me in the least because I've been cautious about possible risks from cell phone use for a while now. I'd rather be overly cautious than end up with a brain tumor down the line. There are still so many unknowns about cell phones seeing as they haven't been around for that long and many public health risks take years to show up and it's a bit disturbing how quickly we've changed our whole lifestyle to revolve around this new technology. Also, studies have shown that cell phones are linked to the decline in the bee population as well as have been shown to be able to have sometimes lethal effects on other animals.

Am I advocating that we all get rid of our cell phones? No, not at all. Just be smart about using them. Use speaker phone option when it's possible, text instead of calling, and use a headset to reduce your radiation exposure.

So what am I personally doing? All of the above. I've always hated talking on the phone anyway so it's not like I'm really giving up that much by relying mainly on testing. I also ordered a really cool headset that looks like a classic corded phone that I can plug into my phone for longer phone calls. I'm going to make sure I'm more prudent from now on and keep my phone out of my pocket when not absolutely necessary and not make phone calls in areas with poor reception. I also made sure when I bought my cell phone that it had a low SAR rating, which is a measure of how much radiation your body absorbs when the device is transmitting data. Actually, my phone is one of (if not the) lowest SAR rated phones available currently. (Some bad news for those with smart phones: In general, smart phones have some of the highest SAR ratings)

What am I NOT doing? Freaking out or doing anything drastic like not using my phone all together. I'm cautious to a point but when being cautious becomes TOO much of an interference with normal functioning, I'm not going to go there based on this announcement.

Keep in mind the following two things: First, don't listen to what the cell phone industry is saying about the results of any studies. They obviously hold a huge stake in this as it would be a HUGE blow to them if cell phones are definitively linked to cancer. Also, for those of you who actually read the research, be wary of studies that are even partially funded by the cell phone industries. It's amazing how money can corrupt even something that's supposed to be as unbiased as science and lead to whacky results.

Second, keep in mind that there is not yet a DEFINITIVE link between cell phone use and cancer. There is just evidence that suggests that it may cause cancer so don't panic. The announcement today wasn't based on any new research but instead a review of research that has already been done. Don't run to the doctor or toss your cell phone yet. Again, be prudent. If you'd like more information on what you can do to limit your exposure, visit the Environmental Working Group's page on cell phone safety. They have lots of fantastic tips, ratings on accessories, and you can even look up the SAR rating of your phone to see how much radiation you're exposed to. Stay safe, everyone!