Google Maps led her to a four-lane boulevard without sidewalks that was “not reasonably safe for pedestrians,” according to the lawsuit filed by the Northridge, Calif., resident.

The plaintiff then proceeded down the street and claims she was subsequently hit by a vehicle. And that, obviously, is Google’s fault.

Is the human race now so dependent on augmented reality that we can’t think on our own? The last time I looked down a street without adequate walking paths, I made my own decisions. This is called “risk management” by those the know. Before such fancy terms came along, it was just common sense: Should I avoid the dangerous looking forest, or walk into it?

Then again, maybe it just means people in the United States will sue their own mother for a few minutes of fame.

Thankfully, there’s the Interphone study, launched 10 years ago and studying 10,000 participants spread across 13 different countries. Those concerned with The Answer have been waiting for the results with increased anticipation. And, here it is, summed up by Dr. Elisabeth Cardis, leader of the Interphone study:

Until stronger conclusions can be drawn one way or another, it may be reasonable to reduce one’s exposure [to cellular radiation]. It can’t hurt. — Dr. Elisabeth Cardis

“It can’t hurt?” So, it turns out that the long awaited report, published in the Internal Journal of Epidemiology on May 17, according to Time Magazine’s May 31 issue, “is by far the most comprehensive look at the issue to date and was meant to provide a possible conclusion to the debate.” Unfortunately, the real facts of the matter: 10 years isn’t that long to study something as subtly insidious as cancer poisoning from a radiation source such as cell phones. Even so, the study does give us interesting new data to ponder, discuss and argue over while another 10 or 20 year study is pulled together:

1. The study did not find any obvious connection between cell phone use and cancer, but it did find some seemingly conflicting data that muddies the discussion even further.
2. Of the study’s subjects, the 10% that used their cell phones most often did exhibit a 40% higher risk of developing some form of brain cancer, as compared to those who don’t use cell phones.
3. On the other hand, participants in the study that used their cell phones infrequently demonstrated a lower likelihood of developing brain cancer over people who use corded phones exclusively.

Unfortunately, even some of the data the defined the study is already out of date. 15 years ago (when the study was originally designed), using a cell phone for 30 minutes a day was considered “heavy” use. By today’s standards, 30 minutes a day might be considered moderate, particularly as people are starting to forego land-lines in favor of simply having a cell phone.

So what’s our take-away? Probably that the Interphone study is too dated and flawed. When you hear the mobile phone industry trumpeting it’s positive findings, or when you hear consumer advocates talking about it’s negative discoveries, keep in mind: They’re both quoting from the same study, a study which seems to equally support either position.

We need a new study. Unfortunately, that means we’ll be waiting another 15 or 20 years before “significant” evidence has a chance to answer this question once and for all.

I know all the arguments for tolerance: AT&T’s network was slammed with unexpected adoption levels; they are trying to roll out more coverage; they are upgrading their networks. But that doesn’t change the fact that when I bought my iPhone 3Gs, I cancelled my data card and plan and have been waiting for over a year listening to promises of “real soon now.” In the meantime, I’m inconvenienced on every business trip. Dishonesty is at the heart of the matter: AT&T needs to deliver on their promise, or tell us what’s really going on.

So, for the record: If a class action suit gets off the ground, I’m in.

No officials were talking about reforming British drinking habits of course. I like that. The Brits have got their priorities sorted — and, let’s face it, they’ve got a healthy dose of realism going here. Rather than stem the tide of drunken behavior, the government has invested in developing shatterproof beer glasses. Officials swear the country will save billions in health care costs by eradicating the “pint glass as a lethal weapon” issue.

“Glassing causes horrific injuries and has a lasting and devastating impact on victims and their families,” said Alan Johnson, Home Secretary, as he introduced two new shatterproof pint glasses. Alcohol Concern, a charity that strives to reduce alcohol abuse in Britain, praised the new designs.

Unemployment figures are largely calculated from claims against unemployment insurance, for example, when you file a claim with the EDD. But this is a narrow view, avoiding the overall “employment health” of the country. Even so, we must recognize that unemployment figures have been calculated in this way for a very long time. This means it is a sound relative measure — that is, since we are calculating it essentially the same way we did in years past, we can measure overall health as a comparison to other years. We know that 10% is horrible. The last time we saw unemployment this high was entering into the great depression, when it rose to 23.6% in 1933. So while it may not be accurate, it does give us a solid indication that our economy is in very, very bad shape.

Unfortunately, the point of this post is not how splendid 10.6 is. Now that it’s up and running, I’ve no complaints. But getting it up and running — that was another story. My advice: if you are faint-of-heart when it comes to your computer upgrade failing mid-stride, wait a little while. We’ll be seeing a 10.6.1 release soon, and hopefully it fixes the problems I ran into while upgrading my Mac Book Pro.

The most disturbing problem was the installer crash, something very uncharacteristic for Apple software. After getting the preliminaries out of the way, the 10.6 installer was merrily chugging along at about 15 minutes into the upgrade when it just disappeared. I had glanced away from the screen so I assumed the computer was still doing something — but ten minutes later I was still staring at a blank screen. Completely blank. No indication of life beyond my mouse pointer. I had to do a hardware reboot, holding down the power key until the system restarted.

Fortunately, the installer restarted automatically and detected it’s failure. I was given the option to “recover” my failed install attempt, which I did. This time the installer finished the job, the only incident being a point where it got hung up around “40 minutes remaining” and ultimately took close to one and a half hours to finish. All appeared good and my machine rebooted just fine. Then I tried to login.

I ended up staring at a blank screen again. The same one, with no sign of life but my mouse pointer.

Here are the steps I followed to diagnose and ultimately repair the problem. Fortunately, it didn’t require going back to Leopard:

1. First, verify that it’s your specific account and not the system. Try logging in as your systems’ Administrator, or another user. If this works, it’s a good sign you have a problem with your login items.
2. Start up in “safe mode” by restarting your computer and holding down the “shift” key.
3. With “safe mode” enabled (you’ll see an indication on the login panel), log in under your troubled user account.
4. Disable all of your login items using Preferences.
5. Try rebooting and logging in again. If you still have problems (as I did — once again, getting the blank screen and having to hard-reboot), you may have a font management problem. In my case, I restarted in safe mode, removed all of my fonts except those in the default system and, just to be safe, uninstalled Linotype FontExplorer.

Over the past couple of week’s I spent at least two, probably three hours trying to figure out why my girlfriend’s iPhone apps all crash. They would start up, display a splash page for a second or so, and then drop back to the main iPhone screen. This happened to every app we tried to install.

After hours of reading other people’s accounts of the problem — apparently it’s pretty common, unfortunately — and trying out numerous solutions I finally stumbled on a fix. At least, a fix for this particular issue — based on the different threads, this problem manifests itself in different ways.

Some iPhone users have found a relatively simple solution: Delete all the iPhone apps from the phone and from iTunes, then download the apps again from the iTunes store and re-sync their phone. Alas, this is not a cure-all, and only works for some people.

Others reported success in re-authorizing their computer with the iTunes store. I tried both of these approaches, with mixed results. Even though my computer was already authorized, and iTunes told me so when I re-authorized it, some apps started to work. Unfortunately, though, not all — which was completely baffling and very frustrating. (Imagine me dancing around thinking I’d found the solution, only to find that after several hours of work I had merely reduced the problem from “completely reproducible” to “finicky and unpredictable.”)

In the end, I had a strange mix of some applications that worked on my girlfriend’s iPhone, and some that didn’t. My final last-straw solution was to delete the misbehaving apps from her iPhone, and download them directly to the iPhone (not through iTunes). This, finally, seemed to work — but now I’m afraid to touch the phone… or, more precisely, afraid to sync again. I’ve turned off application syncing, so hopefully it won’t break again. In the meantime though, Apple, I hope you are listening to tdavis312 in his Apple discussion post:

This problem continually occurs on my iPhone (along with the dropped call problem). All of the solutions presented here are for fiddlers. A phone is an appliance. Apple sold it to zillions because it is carefree. Download a sexy app and use it. Not go to a GENIUS BAR (puke) or reload, or reset, or fiddle, or or or. Some people have lives, responsibilities, and interests. This is not 1980. We have moved on beyond the Apple II. Apple needs to email us all an official workaround and apology. THEN FIX THE **** THING.

I couldn’t agree more — unfortunately, I’m afraid Apple may just not be listening. They marked the post as “archived,” and any further responses are… not allowed. (“Maybe if we ignore the problem it’ll just go away.”)

For the past few months, political analysts and demographers have been poring over the results of the 2008 election and comparing them with presidential results from the past two decades. From whatever angle of their approach — age, race, economic status, geography — they have come to a remarkably similar conclusion. Almost all indicators are pressing the Republicans into minority status.

The author goes on to say that the study “offered conclusions that would alarm any Republican hopeful of a quick turnaround in the party’s fortunes.” It’s being borne out in personal and anecdotal experience, as demonstrated by the Star’s forum on the topic, as one poster writes:

I was having a long-distance phone conversation with my oldest brother just yesterday. He and (especially) his wife are very conservative and ALWAYS voted Republican. They voted for Obama. I couldn’t believe some of the stuff he was saying about Republicans and how disgusted he is with them. “The more they talk the more stupid and foolish they look” is the line that most sticks in my mind.

All I can say is… it’s about time. But is it too late to make a difference? Our educational system has been gutted, the country is feared not respected, and our economy is in a mess. Last time I looked, China was buying up our real estate. Without a doubt, the U.S. we all grew up with is gone for good. How realistic is it that we can turn the country around, when we’ve discovered that yes, you can fool some of the people all of the time. Recent poll results by Gallup still show 27% of our country believe Bush did a good job. Yes, yes, it’s close to a new all-time low for the Presidency (beat out only by Nixon and Truman), but really, about 1 in 4 people actually think Bush was a positive influence on this country? (I’m going to be watching my coworkers very closely).