04/05/2006
Cell Phones in Trouble?
Bon jour, mes amis. C’est une crazy world we live in. Last week my wife and I saw the Broadway musical “Spamalot”. I found this professed rip-off of the movie “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” to be hilarious and delightfully crazy. However, when I looked at Monday’s Star-Ledger and saw the front-page banner headline “LUCENT HEADS FOR PARIS” I realized that there are much crazier things than a Monty Python musical. Having spent over 36 years at Bell Labs, now a part of Lucent, I find it almost inconceivable that it will be part of a yet-to-be- named company under a management dominated by the French. With other Bell Labs retirees, I share the concern over our pensions and other benefits.
To appreciate the craziness of today’s situation, a bit of history is instructive. In 1952 I joined Bell Telephone Laboratories, then a part of the Bell System, which consisted of the labs, the Western Electric Company, most of the country’s large telephone companies and the dominant American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T). In those days there was the quaint custom of naming companies in a manner that bore some resemblance to their function or product. The Bell System had a million employees and we employees could take advantage of a generous stock plan that involved the purchase of AT&T stock.
In 1984, CEO of AT&T Charlie Brown broke up the Bell System, divesting and consolidating the telephone companies into seven “Baby Bells” while retaining Bell Labs and Western Electric, the manufacturing subsidiary. Bell Labs became AT&T Bell Laboratories. We stockholders found ourselves the owners of AT&T and all the Baby Bell stocks. Years later, AT&T spun off Bell Labs as a part of the newly formed Lucent Technologies. Over the years Lucent has made substantial cuts in our retirement benefits and some years ago I sold all my AT&T, partly in a pique because of its shifting of our pensions and health plans over to Lucent, which didn’t exist when I retired in 1989.
Today, I find myself with a few hundred shares of AT&T, thanks to the recent acquisition of AT&T by SBC, which now calls itself AT&T! It seems that the SBC/AT&T merger to form one of the largest telecommunications service providers helped to spur the proposed Alcatel/Lucent merger to form the world’s largest manufacturer of communications equipment. One thing Lucent brings to the table is expertise in the wireless arena and customers such as Verizon, a major player in cell phone service.
If things aren’t crazy enough, this past week saw the release of the results of a Swedish study on cell phone use and cancer. The results are not encouraging. Over the years, there have been questions about possible bad effects resulting from the use of cell phones. Could brain tumors result from the electromagnetic radiation from these phones held up next to the head of the user? Previous studies were reassuring and found no ill effects. Today, you look around and see many whose cell phones seem to be attached to their heads; they’re obviously not concerned.
The Swedish study, led by Kjell Mild of the Swedish National Institute for Working Life and published in the International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health, comes to a strikingly different conclusion. Cell phones have played a significant role in Sweden since 1984 so they have over two decades of experience with them. The study involved over 2,000 cancer patients and a like number of healthy individuals. The conclusion was that those who were heavy cell phone users, defined as having accumulated 2,000 hours on the cell phone, have a 240 percent higher chance of a malignant tumor on the side of the head next to the phone! This number of hours of use was likened to 10 years of talking at work on the cell phone an hour a day. I have the feeling from my observations that many people pile up 2,000 hours in much less than 10 years!
If cell phone usage contributes to cancer and listening to loud music on your iPod or Walkman contributes to hearing loss over time, it would seem prudent to seriously restrict what goes in your ears. If confirmed, the Swedish study should stimulate a major effort by AT&T and Alcaluc (or whatever it’s going to be called) to promote hands-free cell phoning that gets the antenna away from the head. Surely the French will have the answer?
Now that I’ve gotten those concerns off my chest, let’s continue on another joint American/French theme. A few weeks ago, I wrote of the role played by the French sculptor Houdon in the reconstruction of George Washington. I find that Houdon also played a role in a “reconstruction” of another revolutionary hero, John Paul Jones. Jones is perhaps best known for his words spoken in 1779 when he captured a British frigate and, as his own ship was sinking, said, “I have not yet begun to fight!” Jones’ place in American naval history is demonstrated by the fact that his body lies in an elaborate sarcophagus in a crypt beneath the chapel of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis.
Or does it? That’s the question posed in an article titled “Home is the Sailor…” by Adam Goodheart in the April 2006 Smithsonian. This month marks the 100th anniversary of the return of Jones’ body to Naval Academy. Surprisingly, Jones, born in Scotland, spent just a few years in America. When his services were no longer needed he returned to Europe, finally coming to rest in France. He died in Paris in 1792 at age 45. Jones hoped to obtain some sort of military command from either King Louis XVI, soon to lose his head, or from President George Washington. A letter from Washington appointing Jones to a diplomatic post was in the mail when Jones died.
Before his death, Jones paid numerous unappreciated visits to the U.S. ambassador to France, Governour Morris. One day, feeling ill, he summoned Morris to his bedside to draft a will. Morris reluctantly performed that chore and left Jones to visit his mistress before returning with her and a doctor to find Jones dead. Morris arranged for a burial but a French admirer of Jones paid the expenses for the funeral. Jones was buried in a cemetery for foreign-born Protestants. Morris did not attend the funeral.
Over a century later General Horace Porter, a Medal of Honor recipient in the Civil War, arrived in Paris as the ambassador to France. Porter had an obsession to find and bring back the body of Jones to America. Unfortunately, all records of the burial site were destroyed by fire and Porter embarked on a quest that turned up some old maps that helped locate the probable site. Delayed a few years by exorbitant demands for money for excavation rights, Porter started digging in 1905, with funding from the U.S. government when Teddy Roosevelt became president. Roosevelt was a naval buff and saw the public relations value in bringing this famous naval hero back home.
It’s a long story but Porter unearthed a leaden casket with a body that was in surprisingly good shape after a century! The body was buried covered with alcohol, which helped preserve it. I won’t go into detail but there was and is controversy about whether the body is/was really that of Jones. One of the pieces of evidence that Porter used was a life bust of Jones sculpted by Houdon. As we noted in the column on Washington, Houdon was known for making precise measurements of his subjects. Porter, not having computers to do the scanning used to reconstruct Washington, did the next best thing. He took a photograph of Houdon’s bust and laid it over a photo of the cadaver’s head, citing the match as confirming it was Jones.
In 2004, Nikki Rogers, a physical anthropologist, looked at microscopic enlargements of old photos of the body and she concluded that the cause of death was kidney failure, consistent with descriptions of Jones’ illness prior to his death. Rogers credits Porter with the first use of “photo-facial superimposition” when he placed the picture of Houdon’s face over that of the cadaver. Even so, there still is skepticism that the body enshrined in the Naval Academy is that of Jones.
It seems that the French thought more of Jones than we did when he was still alive. The French also revere Jerry Lewis more than we do and recently had a big ceremony at which some high honor was bestowed upon him. Vive la France! Vive la Alcaluc (or whatever)! Crazy - as I''m positng this column on April 5, it''s snowing like crazy and the ground is covered in white. And my wife just cut some daffodils with the sun shining an hour ago!
Allen F. Bortrum
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