At the local AT&T Store in Santa Barbara, a crazy lady went up to some kids and described a conspiracy that the iPhone is going to destroy our minds.

In December of 2006, while receiving Britain’s highest scientific award, the Royal Society’s Copley Medal, Stephen Hawking stated that if the human race were to survive, it would be necessary to travel beyond planet Earth: “The long-term survival of the human race is at risk as long as it is confined to a single planet.”

However, he acknowledges that colonizing other worlds and interstellar travel present a number of nearly insurmountable challenges. “If we used chemical fuel rockets like the Apollo mission to the moon, the journey to the nearest star would take 50,000 years. This is obviously far too long to be practical.â€?

Successful manned space exploration will require not only a lot of money and technological expertise, but an advanced understanding of human psychology. Quite frankly, manned space exploration presents so many problems, that it downright sucks.

1. Psychological Stress. Benny Elmann-Larsen, coordinator of physiology in human space flight at the European Space Agency, says psychological stress could be the biggest problem of all.

A trip to the moon would last only a few days, which is short enough to be bearable. But life on a lunar colony or a trip to Mars would present months of confinement, boredom and monotony.

In fact, the sense of isolation and cabin fever could become oppressive. A 110 day isolation experiment carried out on a mock space station in Moscow showed how badly things can become. One module housed four Russian men; the other, three international test subjects, from Austria, Canada and Japan.

During a New Year’s celebration, two of the Russian men engaged in a 10 minute fist fight that left blood on the walls before they were restrained by the other men. And the mission commander hauled the only female, a Canadian, out of sight of the experiment’s cameras and twice gave her a French kiss that she fought in vain to resist.

The Japanese participant was so traumatized by this episode that he quit the experiment altogether.

2. No emergency care. Ailments such as motion sickness and impaired coordination, to toothaches and appendicitis would be difficult to treat. There would be few supply flights, or quite possibly none at all. And the distances could become so great that it would require 45 minutes for people on Earth to receive a question from a crewmember, and another 45 minutes to receive a reply.

3. Radiation. High-speed particles in space can slice human DNA, increasing the risk of cancer, cataracts, neurological disorders, and other problems. Without proper shielding (limited by spacecraft weight and design and increasing costs), astronauts would be bombarded by so much cosmic radiation on a trip to Mars that 1 in 10 of them could die from cancer. We would also have to address the problem of shielding people while on other moons and planetary bodies that lack Earth-like atmospheres.

4. Muscular Atrophy. Traveling through space requires a strict exercise regime in order to overcome the loss of muscle tone due to zero gravity.

5. Bone Demineralization. Bones become more porous, and thus weaker, on long-duration space missions.

6. High cost. Because space is so hostile for humans, all our needs must be met by creating a hospitable environment in space. Missions in space must be meticulously planned in order to avoid stressing our fragile bodies. We need food, water and air, all of which requires complicated and heavy equipment. All this machinery needs to be monitored, reducing an astronaut’s available time to carry out experiments. And it substantially reduces the payloads spacecraft can carry.

Currently, it’s estimated that just the shuttle program average cost per flight has been about $1.3 billion over lifetime and about $750 million per launch over its most recent five years of operations. This total includes development costs and numerous safety modifications. That means each shuttle launch could pay for 2 to 3 unmanned missions.

7. It can be used to further nationalistic agendas. The race to the moon was a direct consequence of the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union. And now we can see the same thing happening with China’s manned space exploration programs. While competition can certainly be healthy, cooperation would more likely reduce conflicts.

8. Robots and telescopes may be more effective at increasing scientific knowledge. Most scientists agree that both the space shuttle and the International Space Station are an expensive and unproductive means to conduct space science.

However, the Mars Pathfinder and Mars Exploration Rovers have succeeded beyond the expectations of their designers and continue to deliver important data to earthbound scientists. Also, when the successful Deep Impact mission smashed into comet Temple, it released a cloud of debris that helps the understanding of comet formation and composition.

Such feats would be prohibitively more expensive and difficult if humans were involved.

9. Shuttle explosions put further flights on hold indefinitely. These tragic events have the unfortunate side effect of slowing the progress of space exploration.

And this hero tries to do something about it:

AT&T Inc. is the largest provider of local and long distance telephone service, wireless service, DSL internet access, and zoo animal torture. The current AT&T is now run by the company formerly known as SBC Communications, after it purchased the old AT&T company, or American Telephone & Telegraph.

AT&T may very well be the largest and most powerful organization in the continental United States. Its tentacles reach all the way up into the upper echelons of government.

Don’t worry though, because I’m going to give you 8 reasons why AT&T sucks beyond all belief:

1. They are liars, and horrible at lying. The new AT&T was founded in 1983 as Southwestern Bell Corporation. In 1995, they announced they would be changing their name to SBC Communications, Inc. in a move to improve their global image and reach. Then they claimed that not only was “SBC� not an acronym for Southwestern Bell Corporation, but that it didn’t stand for anything at all. Oh, that makes sense.

2. They lied to the FCC and American people about allowing competitors to have access to their markets. They told the FCC that they would allow competitors to have access to local markets where SBC (AT&T) had a monopoly if the FCC would approve their acquisition of Ameritech. The FCC agreed, and gave SBC monopolies in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Then, SBC broke their promise and never allowed any competition in all five states.

3. They lied again, and stole American taxpayer money. In the early 1990’s, SBC and the other major telecommunications companies (Verizon, BellSouth and Qwest) made promises to upgrade the internet infrastructure of the United States with fiber optics by 2006. For this task, they were given $200 billion in taxpayer money by the Clinton administration. Instead of doing what they said, they pocketed most of the money and used the rest to build copper wiring for near-term profits from ADSL.

Now, the United States’ broadband speed ranking is, at best, 16^th in the world, and the major telecom companies are complaining about not having enough money to upgrade. Their solution? Charge everybody more money; forget net neutrality.

4. AT&T is the United States’ second largest donor to political campaigns. Since 1990, they have contributed more than $36 million to both Republicans and Democrats. Their most important political issue now? Winning the right to profit by providing broadband internet access.

5. AT&T allows the National Security Agency (NSA) to monitor its customers’ communications without warrants. This violates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 and the First and Fourth Amendments of the Constitution of the United States. AT&T still has neither confirmed nor denied this. Are they hiding something? You decide.

6. In 2006, AT&T handed all of their international and domestic calling records over to the NSA. This was done in order to create a massive calling database.

7. Then they rewrote the rules on their privacy policy. The policy says that, “AT&T — not customers — owns customers’ confidential info and can use it ‘to protect its legitimate business interests, safeguard others, or respond to legal process.’ “

8. Finally, there is only one provider you can use if you want to use the Apple iPhone. Can you guess who it is? I’ll give you a hint:

AT&T

Note: The average iphone user has an IQ of 119. Are you smarter than that? Take this IQ test and find out!

The Apple iPhone is about to hit the market in one of the most-hyped product releases in recent memory. Fanboys across America are getting ready to camp outside of their nearest iPhone sales location so that they can be the first in the nation to give Apple money for this product.


Did you know that it sucks?

Here are some reasons why:

1. At $599, it is ridiculously expensive. (Add in the cost of an AT&T contract and you get close to $1500)

2. Those who want to buy one must sell their soul to evil mega-corporation AT&T.

3. Japan already has technologically superior phones, and they’re far cheaper.

4. Slower internet than the commercials show: “The data experience is going to be very slow. If you’re on a cellular network, [using the Internet] is going to be very slow.”

5. Initial reports indicate that YouTube is slow and crappy using cellular network internet/EDGE. It’s nothing like in the commercials.

6. You cannot remove its battery. Thanks for replicating one of the biggest complaints about the ipod, Apple!

7. The glass touch screen of the iPhone guarantees that thousands of customers who drop their phones will have cracked screens.

8. The touchscreen keyboard sucks, according to those who have used the phone.

9. It can’t send MMS picture messages.

10. The camera has little or no options, and the pictures it takes aren’t very good.

11. It lacks proper support for Flash websites. So much for the internet.

12. It can’t record video.

13. “Pinching” pictures to zoom might look neat in commercials, but many reviewers are saying it actually sucks.

14. It lacks 3G high-speed data transfer.

15. No songs as ringtones.

16. No GPS.

17. It doesn’t work under 64-bit Windows XP / Windows Vista!!!!!!! Thanks for not including that in your Windows System Requirements, Apple!

18. It only allows for a maximum of 1 picture to be attached to each e-mail you send.

19. It doesn’t have a file browser/organizer.

20. Its default ringtones suck.

21. You can not save documents on it: documents can only be viewed as attachments when they’re sent to your e-mail address.

22. No games!!

23. Its “quick list” dialing sucks compared to traditional speed dialing, which it lacks..

24. Long activation waits: many new iPhone users are reporting that they are being told to wait hours or even days to activate service for their phone. Thanks, AT&T!

25. Heat issues: the iPhone can get very hot when it is in use.
26. Deceptive Ads: Apple has been using models with gigantic hands in their advertisements for the iPhone in an effort to trick consumers into believing it is more compact.

27. Many of the positive press reports about the iPhone are influenced by newspapers and TV networks that simply want to profit from the hypefest, or even worse, reporters who are looking to sell books about the iPhone.

28. It creates incredibly annoying iPhone fanboys.