I was (and still am) annoyed that we can no longer just put the phone to our ear while driving in New Jersey, but I started using a headset. By the way, the reason why I’m still annoyed by this stupid, overreaching law is because almost every police officer I drive by on the road has a phone jammed into his ear, but the “do as I say, not as I do” thing is topic for a different entry.

Like many other drivers in New Jersey, I started using a headset and driving with the headset on isn’t that bad! However, the Safety Council suggests the following:

Froetscher said the council examined more than 50 scientific studies before reaching its decision. One was a study by the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis that estimates 6 percent of vehicle crashes, causing about 2,600 deaths and 12,000 serious injuries a year, are attributable to cell phone use. Hands-free cell phones are just as risky as hand held phones, she added.

I’m sorry, but there have got to be additional reasons for these accidents. An it’s time that Americans stop refraining from telling the truth – sometimes you get really, really stupid people behind the wheel of a car and their own stupidity is part of the reason why they get into accidents. If you’re drinking a cup of coffee, flipping through the newspaper, and talking on a cell phone all at the same time, then guess what? You should be focusing on driving! If you’re a young driver who is skittish on the road as it is, then guess what? You shouldn’t be on a cell phone! If you have problems focusing on one or two issues at a time, then guess what? You shouldn’t be on a cell phone!

In the mean time, those people who have mastered multitasking and understand that even if you can manage to do five things at once, YOU SHOULDN’T may eventually be stuck with the inability to use their cell phones while driving. It’s ridiculous that we legislate to the least among us as opposed to asking for some personal responsibility from all among us.

Remember those two twin Mars rovers (Spirit and Opportunity) that landed on the red planet some five years ago? Their mission was to collect data for three weeks and send it back to Earth. The models were designed to survive for three weeks and after that any time we got out of them would be a bonus. Well, here we are more than five years later and those two little rovers are still going strong!

An accumulation of dust on the rovers’ electricity-generating solar panels was expected to be one of the most likely causes of their eventual deaths, but wind has occasionally cleaned the panels.

Spirit, however, has an 18-month buildup of dust and its panels were barely able to provide sufficient power during Mars’ just-ended southern hemisphere winter. At one point it failed to receive commands, and its status fell to “serious but stable” condition.

These little robots are amazing. It’s a shame that we’ll likely never be able to recover them and bring them back to earth. They’ve provided such an incredible view of the Martian landscape – it would be great to have them in the Smithsonian.