Every now and then, we’re pretty sure the city government of San Francisco looks at each other and says, “We haven’t passed a law that makes us look like wussy idiots in a while…let’s take care of that.” It happened last year, when they passed a hilariously stupid “cell phone radiation” bill that essentially told anybody buying a cell phone they were going to get lots and lots of brain cancer, and immediately got smacked down by the CTIA.
And now they’ve learned the hard way that, yes, you do actually have to pay attention to real science, and not people who think television fires mind control rays and that radios are full of magic singing elves. The law got laughed out of court by a judge yesterday, who pointed out that the individual facts may or may not be true, but the overall impression the law is designed to give definitely isn’t. Oh, and it’s a free speech violation.
The city, apparently, intends to appeal, because there’s nothing else they could be bothering to deal with.
San Francisco city fathers, if you’re reading, a quick science lesson: a cellular phone is, at root, a two-way radio. Radio does not give you cancer. If it did give you cancer, we’d all be dead by now because we’re surrounded by radio towers pumping out radio waves at an energy far higher than a cell phone can crank out even at close range and they’ve been doing it for years. Try this fascinating innovation online called “Wikipedia” the next time you’re confused.