Bluetooth, Autos, And Sunspots

You’ve all seen them. Walking downtown. In the restroom. On the ski chairlift. Talking to themselves, usually loudly. Well, not exactly talking to themselves but to someone else on the phone via their fancy bluetooth earpiece. It’s not until you spot the electronic protuberance stuck in their ear that you realize they’re not talking to you or anyone around them. Word up people – if you use one of these things in public it makes you a bit of a duche (or douche if you’re Canadian). Sorry, that’s just the way it is.

Nobody, and I mean nobody, is so important they can’t stop what they’re doing for a moment and hold a phone up to their ear like a normal person. Unless of course you’re a T-Rex. With those little arms you don’t have many choices. Or Captain B. McCrea from the movie WALL-E. He was a bit arm challenged as well. The rest of us however have no excuse. Unless you live in California which has banned holding a phone while you drive. You can still talk and you still have to look down at it to dial, but you can’t hold it. Important because driving at 70+ mph on the freeway, scrolling through your smartphone’s contact list looking for aunt Winifred’s phone number (who you haven’t spoken to in 3 years) is clearly not dangerous. Actually holding the phone while you explain why you never thanked her for the holiday fruitcake in ’98 is death-defying. I feel so much safer now.

Speaking of safety, there’s the issue of sunspots. Sunspot AR1476 erupted a few days ago. While it didn’t turn into an x-class flare, due to its orientation things could have been bad if it had. Why is this an issue? Next to the zombie apocalypse I think a large-scale, x-class eruption to be our greatest danger. What would such a flare-up do? Nothing much. Just interrupt and/or destroy our power grid and some electronics with massive amounts of electromagnetic energy and radiation. Its happened before. The Carrington Event in 1859. Again during WWII – knocked out all radars for several days.

Can you imagine the chaos if our power grid was down for weeks? Or months? Assuming their brains weren’t fried in the initial radiation waves, all those folks walking aimlessly around with bluetooth headsets with nobody answering…  “Hello? Hello? I’m getting some static here, can you hear me? Can you hear me now?”

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