I'm not sure whether these worth buying

I went to a store at Ciwalk and bumped into this. Well, I'm not sure whether these worth buying
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Mobile phone health risk: Phone giants accused of burying warnings on handsets in small print

 | Mail Online

Mobile phone firms have been accused of concealing warnings about the health risks of using their handsets.

A warning that Apple’s popular iPhone should be kept at least 15mm away from the body is buried deep inside the manual.

BlackBerry goes even further, saying customers should use their devices hands-free or keep them an inch from the body ‘including the abdomen of pregnant women and the lower abdomen of teenagers’. Again, this advice is hidden in the instruction booklet.

All other manufacturers, including Nokia and HTC, carry similar small-print warnings despite insisting that holding mobiles against the ear and head is harmless.

Health campaigners and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are calling for clear warnings to be put on handset boxes.

They are also demanding a public education campaign, starting in schools, to advise on the safe use of the devices.

Alasdair Philips, of Powerwatch, an independent group which investigates the safety of mobile phones, said: ‘Most people have no idea about these warnings.

‘The safety advice should be included on the boxes and far more prominently in the “getting started” section of user guides and not just in the detail at the back that hardly anyone reads.

‘This should be only part of a much wider public education campaign that begins in the schools.’

The safety advice in manuals is designed to limit so-called Radio Frequency exposure. This is said to heat body tissue and some – inconclusive – research suggests it is linked to tumours in the brain.
THE SMALL PRINT

Blackberry torch: Use hands-free operation if it is available and keep at least 0.98in (25mm) from your body when turned on and connected to the wireless network. Reduce call time.

Apple iPhone: When using near your body for voice calls or for wireless network data, keep iPhone at least 15mm (5/8in) away from the body and only use accessories that do not have metal parts. Again maintain at least 15mm separation from the body.

Nokia C6: Maintain a normal use position at the ear at least 15mm (5/8in) away from the body. Any accessory should not contain metal and should position the device the above-stated distance from the body.

Most RF exposure comes from the antenna and it can increase when a phone is kept in a pocket because phones increase their power output when a network signal weakens.

Men who carry handsets on their belt or in their pockets with the keypad facing outward will suffer higher exposure because the antenna, which is always at the back, is close to the body.

SAR – Specific Absorption Rate – is the standard industry measurement for the amount of RF energy the body absorbs.

Mr Philips said: ‘When a phone has to power up, it sends high SAR power into the trunk and towards the kidneys and liver. It can be the testicles if in a trouser pocket.

‘Some girls carry them in chest bags which hang just below their breasts. Breasts, eyes and testicles absorb external RF energy the most. Blood-rich organs, such as the liver, kidneys and heart are among the top energy absorbers.
Advice: Campaigners say pregnant women should keep their handset away from the growing foetus in the first six months

Advice: Campaigners say pregnant women should keep their handset away from the foetus in the first six months

‘The ovaries and foetus are relatively well protected by the trunk, but it obviously makes sense to keep the handset away from those areas, especially the foetus in the first six months. Many later-life causes of ill health are increasingly being recognised as having their roots in foetal exposure to chemicals, hormones, radiation of various sorts.’

He said most handsets also put out pulsed ELF magnetic fields which travel further into the body than RF signals. These are associated with childhood leukaemia and some adult cancers.

Caroline Lucas, Green Party leader and MP, said: ‘Greens have never said don’t use mobile phones, but we have always said that as with any other technology, we need to make people aware of any potential risks and give clear guidance regarding the safest possible use, so we can get the maximum benefit from the technology with the least possible risk.’

Mobile phone firms are legally required to advise customers on how to minimise RF exposure and use their manuals to do so.

Michael Milligan of the Mobile Manufacturers Forum said: ‘A mobile phone can always be used up against the head without the need for this separation, because phones are designed to have the antenna far enough away from the head when making a call.

‘Every mobile phone model is tested to make sure they meet national and international exposure limits for exposure to Radio Frequency emissions, before they can be sold in the UK or elsewhere.’

However, many new phones are so slim, antennas will be closer to the head than distances recommended by many manufacturers.

NiqaBitch

'NiqaBitch' unveil themselves in Paris | Nesrine Malik | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Just when you thought the niqab ban story had no more legs, it goes burlesque. Two French women have taken it upon themselves to register their opposition to the niqab ban in France by covering their faces but baring their legs in miniskirts. The duo, who call themselves NiqaBitch, have posted a video where they stop traffic and turn heads and sashay in heels down the streets of Paris. Portmanteau in name and in dress, they merge the sacred and the profane. The footage is tongue in cheek, all rather typically French. "We were not looking to attack or degrade the image of Muslim fundamentalists – each to their own – but rather to question politicians who voted for this law that we consider clearly unconstitutional," they said. "To dictate what we wear appears to have become the role of the state."

Somehow, the trite juxtaposition isn't as lowbrow as one would think. Like a good advertisement, it makes a clear, simple, powerful point. Bypassing all the ambiguity of the debate, it goes straight to the viscera, eliciting a range of responses. Some have observed that the public's reaction is less unfriendly than usual because it's clear the two women are not wearing the burqa for religions reasons, which highlights the Islamophobic aspect of opposition to the niqab. At one point a policewoman asks for a picture. Once the law comes into effect, she will be obliged to fine them. It proves that covering up per se is not the point. It's what it entails, and what value judgements we then make based on that – a tenuous position indeed from which to legislate against any form of dress.

In discussions about the niqab, this opposition's argument of last resort is that public nudity is the polar opposite of full coverage and hence the same laws should apply. The video subverts that argument by rendering exposed and covered flesh two sides of the same coin but as manifestations of personal freedom of dress. Is it mocking the niqab? As the campaign is in protest against the niqab ban, I think not. But even if it were, so what? What I like about the video is its iconoclasm. Both the religious and secular could do with being less precious and heavy-handed about what women would like to wear.

However, it is not a novel idea. Personally, I think it is reminiscent of a sinister orientalist fetishising, one that hides an exotic woman's face but lays bare her body as a faceless sexual object, mystified by lack of character but simultaneously made accessible. But that is just my own visceral reaction. Ultimately, it is about choice.

Another display has also been hitting the headlines. "Princess Hijab", a 20-year-old guerrilla artist, traverses Paris incognito spray-painting hijabs and niqabs on male and female models on posters and billboards. She claims it is not a political point she is trying to make, rather an examination of contradictions inherent in mainstream culture.

But is it art? What impact do these kinds of demonstration make? Perhaps none at all in the immediate term, but what is encouraging is that the concept of the niqab is being decoupled from religion and incorporated into popular culture, examined and discussed in terms of freedom of choice, artistic expression, and redefinitions of sexuality and personal space. All in inimitable, indigenous French avant-garde fashion. It is a hallmark of integration and a repudiation of the state's transgression into the realm of personal freedom.

NiqaBitch secoue Paris ?! (REMIX Mild Lyrics) SD

NiqaBitch secoue Paris ?! (REMIX Mild Lyrics) SD

Morality beyond God

 | Mary Warnock | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

It is often assumed that religion is the only source of agreed, stable morality. We must therefore either return to literal faith in the existence of God, or we must accept moral "relativism", which is another word for moral anarchy.

Such assumptions, surprisingly common even among those who practice no religion, are, in my view, mistaken; they rest on a false belief about the actual nature of the moral. But before I argue that case, I'd like to ask what recent calls for a return to faith entail. Suppose for a moment you understood Stephen Hawkings's argument that it can be shown mathematically that there is no need to suppose a God as creator of universes; and suppose you rejected it, arguing, like creationists now and in the 18th century, that the universe we live in is such that it constitutes proof of a designer, who is God, what else could you infer about this designer?

The answer, surely, is: nothing. We cannot move from believing that God lit the blue touchpaper to assuming that he made man in his own image, or gave him dominion over other animals in the world. We cannot assume that just because a creator must exist, he must also be a loving father, interested in the wellbeing of his children, and aiming for the salvation of their immortal souls, or, on the other hand, a stern judge, condemning the sinful to eternal damnation.

These beliefs, as David Hume pointed out more than 200 years ago, are quite extraneous to any belief that the world was created by a divine hand. From the need for a creator you can infer nothing but that a creator exists, or did once exist. About the creator's attributes or character you can know nothing. But those who call for a return to faith call for more than a return to the belief in a creator. They want a belief in God as the great and unchanging moral authority, by knowledge of whose commands we can know for certain what it is right and what it is wrong.

However, the enthronement of God as the source not only of the laws of nature but of moral law has its origin not in the argument from design, but in the narrative of the scriptures. In the Jewish tradition, the laws that should regulate life in society, among them the Ten Commandments, were given to Moses by God in the mists of Mount Sinai. In the Christian tradition, the new covenant of love that replaced the old was preached by God himself through his incarnate son. To return to faith is to accept the authority of these narratives and treat them as the literal truth.

But is it now possible for people simply to decide to believe the literal truth of the scriptures? We have become too scientifically and historically sophisticated to accept the story of the Garden of Eden as other than a myth, albeit a powerful and illuminating myth. How can we simply choose to see God's hand in the Ten Commandments? Our historical sense tells us the small, suffering society that was the Jews needed a cement to hold them together contra mundum and that this was provided by their great moral leader Moses and the story of his shortlived private encounter with God, giving supernatural authority to his teaching. Shared legends are cohesive.

Similarly, the genuinely great moral reform that constituted Christianity's break from the rest of Judaism was imbued with the supernatural and acquired power over the imagination as the messianic story was repeated. Religious narrative is the imaginative clothing of morality. Religion is born from moral leaders who are believed either to have seen God or to be God incarnate. So their authority is confirmed.

Has morality, then, in reality none but human authority? I do not believe that it has; but this does not entail it must be completely uncertain or that there is no real difference between how we must and how we must not behave. For human beings alone among animals can envisage a world that is better than their own. They can understand the faults, the hazards and the horrors of their own, even if it is others not themselves who suffer. They have much in common and can sympathise with each other. This is part of human nature, though it needs to be taught.

Morality arises as the predicament of human beings in the world is recognised and their shared responsibility one for another is understood. No human being is exempt from the temptation to make things worse in his own interest, nor from the responsibility not to do so. One way of marking this human commonality is to talk of universal human rights. Another is to call attention to common human needs, and that sympathy with human need that is the foundation of good, rather than bad behaviour.

Drinking in pregnancy 'is good for baby' says new research

 | News.com.au

AN OCCASIONAL glass of wine during pregnancy won't harm a baby's development and may actually result in a better behaved child.

A study in the Journal Of Epidemiology And Community Health yesterday drew on data from 11,513 children born in the UK between September 2000 and January 2002.

It found children born to light drinkers were 30 per cent less likely to have behavioural problems than children whose mothers stayed away from alcohol throughout their pregnancy.

Boys and girls born to light drinkers even had higher cognitive test scores compared with those born to mothers who did not drink during pregnancy.