If you go to Berkeley, you've seen the man I affectionately call Crazy. You know the one--brings plants to Sproul Plaza and waters them excessively while screaming at unsuspecting passers-by that they're destroying the world by f*cking their cell phones. Sometimes holds up signs. Always holds up your commute to lecture.

While everyone appreciates the unique character crazies like these bring to the Berkeley campus, is it really necessary to yell at Berkeley students, of all people, about their excessively intimate relationships with their portable communications devices? Is it so bad that I want to stay in constant contact with everyone I know at all times? A cyber, not-quite-personal, sometimes unreadable form of contact ("Stop drunk texting" was definitely one of my top failed New Year's Resolutions), but contact nonetheless. They may cause cancer, but Crazy's assertion that cell phones are the cause of all world hunger is kind of a stretch. I may have given up on all emotional contact with people in favor of sex with my cell phone, like Crazy said, but it seems he's given up all rational contact with the world around him, and that's probably the bigger issue.

In all, I think it's pretty safe to say cell phones have, if not made the world a better place, then maintained its status quo of shitty relationships and even shittier conversations. Add this to the "plus" side: cell phones are sufficiently unreliable that you can pretend you never got the message that beer-goggles-hot guy you met at a party left you. And you don't have to smell his garlic breath.