Latest estimate of Iraqi civilian deaths since the Iraq War started: 655,000.
Consider this: The total Iraq population is about 26,000,000. That means that roughly 2.5% of the population has been killed.
2.5 percent — In the United States (pop. 295 million) that amounts to 7,735,000 deaths.
Heckuva job, Bushie.
A self-improvement website called 43things.com urges visitors to contribute a list of 43 things they want to do with their live. To date, over 600,000 have contributed their list. And here are the top items:
Stop procrastinating 11615 people
Drink more water 7309 people
Take more pictures 6598 people
Save money 5554 people
Read more books 5120 people
Exercise regularly 4023 people
Eat healthier 3923 people
Wake up when my alarm clock goes off 3759 people
Quit Smoking 3555 people
Spend less time fooling around on the net and more time actually working 3258 people
Have better posture 3201 people
Stop biting my nails 3146 people
Exercise more 2338 people
Get more sleep 2231 people
Never stop learning 2154 people
Worry less. 2092 people
Finish what I start 2075 people
Practice Yoga 1951 people
Stop wasting time 1924 people
Volunteer 1873 people
Meditate daily 1775 people
Write more 1753 people
Stop caring what other people think of me 1548 people
Be a better person 1547 people
You know how North Korea — a member of the "Axis of Evil" — just set off its first nuclear weapon?
You know how Republicans are trying to blame Clinton for that, even though Clinton managed to keep North Korea from becoming a nuclear power during his presidency?
Well, funny thing ’bout that North Korean nuke.
The nuclear material used to make the bomb was made in nuclear reactors. Where did North Korea get those nuclear reactors?
Well, six years ago, a Zurich company named ABB sold designs and key components for those reactors to North Korea.
Guess who served on the board of directors of ABB, and was asked to lobby in Washington to allow North Korea to get those nuclear reactors?
Just sayin…
I’ll let The Talent Show pick up the thread:
Give it a second for those last few paragraphs to sink in. One of the biggest enemies of the United States just joined the nuclear club over the weekend and our secretary of defense was involved in selling them the technology to do it. I won’t even bother to speculate about the ulterior motives that have surely shaped our policies towards North Korean non-proliferation, but I’d love to know how much money Donald Rumsfeld has made helping Kim Jong-il make a nuclear bomb. Between Rummy and North Korea, the Bush family’s close ties to the Saudis, and our nuke-selling, Bin Laden-harboring "close allies" Pakistan, I can’t help but look forward to 2008 when our country has another chance to choose a leader who isn’t all chummy with the bad guys.
Rummy? Chummy with the bad guys?
Oh, right.
I have a problem with clutter, and a bigger problem UNcluttering. One of the reasons is that I have a hard time doing it ALL (when of course, if I just did a little at a time, it would eventually get done).
Which brings me to this helpful household hint article I discovered:
Your home is filled with clutter of all shapes and sizes. This is why you are unable to keep it clean. You have too much STUFF. All we ask is that you set a timer and spend 15 minutes a day decluttering. That’s it. Anyone can do anything for only 15 minutes, even if you have to break it down into 5 minutes segments. These are the five tools we give you to help you declutter and also make it fun for you!
We do this assignment as fast as we can. Take a garbage bag and walk through your home and throw away 27 items. Do not stop until you have collected all 27 items. Then close the garbage bag and pitch it. DO NOT LOOK IN IT!!! Just do it.
Next, take an empty box and go through your home collecting 27 items to give away. Suze Orman taught me this in her book, The Courage to be Rich. This will change the energy in your home and bring about good feelings. Every time I do this I feel better and my home is becoming decluttered in the process. As soon as you finish filling the box, take it to the car. You are less tempted to rescue the items.
Rule of thumb: if you have two of any item and you only need one, get rid of the least desirable.
I also sing a wonderful song as I am doing this fun job: "Please Release Me, Let Me Go" as sung from the stuff’s point of view.
Here is a problem that we all have and continue to struggle with – Hot Spots. What is a hot spot?
A hot spot is an area, when left unattended will gradually take over. My favorite analogy is of a hot spot in a forest fire, if left alone, it will eventually get out of hand and burn up the whole forest. This is what happens in our homes. If left unattended, the hot spot will grow and take over the whole room as well as making the house look awful. When you walk into a room, this is the first thing you see.
CLUTTER ATTRACTS CLUTTER!
Do you have areas like this that continue to grow if left alone? Does the rest of the family see this as a place to put things when they do not want to put them where they belong? It is our job to nip this in the bud! Get rid of that pile, find the surface underneath and stop this Hot Spot from becoming a raging clutter inferno! Watch for the Hot Spot fire drill reminder – then try it – it works!
This is a reminder to spend just 5 minutes clearing a path in your worst room. You know this area of your home: the place you would never allow anyone to see. Just 5 minutes a day for the next 27 days and you will have a place that you can be proud to take anyone!
Each day (or almost each day) Kelly will e-mail a 5-minute mission for you to do. It will be in the area of the home that we are focusing on for that week (the zone). These missions will take you to places you may have never been before! Have fun with this! We will also be posting Kelly’s missions for the week in the Flight Plan.
Each week FlyLady will tell you what zone we are working in. After a full month, you will have worked our way around the majority of the living areas of your home. Do not worry if you have not gotten to every room in your house the first month. As one area gets cleaned, it will become easier to do and you will have more time to face those areas that don’t seem to fit in any zone. See the Flight Plan for more information. Remember: FlyLady wants you to take baby steps. Don’t worry about zones until you have conquered the basics!
Sounds good. In fact, the whole website (flylady.net) is devoted to clearing your house and home of chaos.
Anonymous Liberal scrawls a good one:
Opens with an image of a world map; North Korea, Iran, and Iraq are highlighted.
Narrator’s voice: Almost five years ago, President Bush warned Americans that North Korea, Iran, and Iraq "constituted an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world."
Cut to audio of Bush’s January 2002 State of the Union speech:
President Bush: I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons.
Cut to footage of 2006: North Korea testing its nukes, Ahmadinejad defiantly rebuking America, scenes of ongoing violence and chaos in Iraq, etc.
Narrator’s voice: But under Bush and the Republican Party’s watch, North Korea has developed nuclear weapons, Iran has grown stronger, bolder, and more determined than ever to seek nuclear weapons of its own, and Iraq has become a violent quagmire and breeding ground for terrorists. It’s time for some competent leadership. It’s time to change course. Vote Democratic.
It’s good ad copy, sure to resonate. Alsmost as good as this bumpersticker: "The Republican Party — Come For The Torture; Stay For The Pedophilia!"
And the thing is, people will listen. That’s right, friends. According to the latest polls (and there were a slew of them that came out today), people favor Democrats over Republicans on EVERY MAJOR ISSUE — not just things like education and health care — but the big Republicans issue, like Iraq and terrorism. For the first time sine 9/11, people now favor Democrats when it comes to national security issues.
What’s more, according to the latest NY Times/CBS polls Bush’s approval rating is down to 34% and (I love this)….
Mr. Bush clearly faces constraints as he seeks to address the public concerns about Iraq that have shrouded this midterm election: 83 percent of respondents thought that Mr. Bush was either hiding something or mostly lying when he discussed how the war in Iraq was going.
83% is an astounding number. Think about it — on the MAJOR issue of his Presidency (the Iraq War), 83% think the President was full (or partially full) of shit.
Here are the headlines of the day:
– Poll Shows Strong Shift of Support for Democrats (WaPo)
– GOP Officials Brace For Loss of Seven to 30 House Seats (WaPo)
– A Political Limbo: How Low Can Republicans Go? (Newsweek)
– Time Poll: The Foley Scandal Has Hurt the GOP (Time)
– Foley & The Polls: Americans Taking Aim At GOP Sex-Chat Scandal (NYDailyNews)
This guy, a Yale graduate, has decided to do a bit of self-promotion through a video resume.
The problem isn’t just that he’s an egomaniac, he’s also a huge liar liar pants on fire:
Not only is Alexey an amazing egomaniac, by the way–he’s apparently a thoroughgoing fraud. According to that link, he plagiarized a book on the Holocaust for the text of his self-published book ("a gendered look at the Holocaust") and both the company he founded and the charity he started are, well, a little iffy.
It’s kind of a pattern. Even his name is bogus: it used to be Alexey Garber until that name started showing up on Google’s BS detector. From the Ivygate site above, here’s a link to a profile about him (in .pdf) when he was first starting college as a pre-freshman, telling everyone the Dalai Lama was his bud, and he was Sarah Michelle Gellar’s tennis coach. Funny how the lies sort of stay in the same ballpark–martial arts, tennis, entrepreneurship. He doesn’t show a lot of range in his improvisations.
Well, it’s autumn.
Which means Thankgiving approaches.
Which means Christmas is just around the corner
Which means it’s time to get your gear on for the next skirmish in the "War on Christmas"(TM)
The American Family Association is willing to take your money to FIGHT for your right to have K-Mart employees wish you a "Merry Christmas" instead of "Happy Holidays", because who gives a shit about Hannaukah and Kwanzaa and New Year’s Day, which aren’t holidays.
Get yours today! Don’t be the last one to ruin everyone’s holidays Christmas by being a prig!
Law Professor Geoffrey Stone takes a stab at writing ten central tenets of "liberalism", since many people (even liberals) have a hard time identifying what liberalism is about. I’d say he did a pretty good job:
Part of the problem is that liberals have failed to define themselves and to state clearly what they believe. As a liberal, I find that appalling.
In that light, I thought it might be interesting to try to articulate 10 propositions that seem to me to define "liberal" today. Undoubtedly, not all liberals embrace all of these propositions, and many conservatives embrace at least some of them.
Moreover, because 10 is a small number, the list is not exhaustive. And because these propositions will in some instances conflict, the "liberal" position on a specific issue may not always be predictable. My goal, however, is not to end discussion, but to invite debate.
1. Liberals believe individuals should doubt their own truths and consider fairly and open-mindedly the truths of others. This is at the very heart of liberalism. Liberals understand, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once observed, that "time has upset many fighting faiths." Liberals are skeptical of censorship and celebrate free and open debate.
2. Liberals believe individuals should be tolerant and respectful of difference. It is liberals who have supported and continue to support the civil rights movement, affirmative action, the Equal Rights Amendment and the rights of gays and lesbians. (Note that a conflict between propositions 1 and 2 leads to divisions among liberals on issues like pornography and hate speech.)
3. Liberals believe individuals have a right and a responsibility to participate in public debate. It is liberals who have championed and continue to champion expansion of the franchise; the elimination of obstacles to voting; "one person, one vote;" limits on partisan gerrymandering; campaign-finance reform; and a more vibrant freedom of speech. They believe, with Justice Louis Brandeis, that "the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people."
4. Liberals believe "we the people" are the governors and not the subjects of government, and that government must treat each person with that in mind. It is liberals who have defended and continue to defend the freedom of the press to investigate and challenge the government, the protection of individual privacy from overbearing government monitoring, and the right of individuals to reproductive freedom. (Note that libertarians, often thought of as "conservatives," share this value with liberals.)
5. Liberals believe government must respect and affirmatively safeguard the liberty, equality and dignity of each individual. It is liberals who have championed and continue to champion the rights of racial, religious and ethnic minorities, political dissidents, persons accused of crime and the outcasts of society. It is liberals who have insisted on the right to counsel, a broad application of the right to due process of law and the principle of equal protection for all people.
6. Liberals believe government has a fundamental responsibility to help those who are less fortunate. It is liberals who have supported and continue to support government programs to improve health care, education, social security, job training and welfare for the neediest members of society. It is liberals who maintain that a national community is like a family and that government exists in part to "promote the general welfare."
7. Liberals believe government should never act on the basis of sectarian faith. It is liberals who have opposed and continue to oppose school prayer and the teaching of creationism in public schools and who support government funding for stem-cell research, the rights of gays and lesbians and the freedom of choice for women.
8. Liberals believe courts have a special responsibility to protect individual liberties. It is principally liberal judges and justices who have preserved and continue to preserve freedom of expression, individual privacy, freedom of religion and due process of law. (Conservative judges and justices more often wield judicial authority to protect property rights and the interests of corporations, commercial advertisers and the wealthy.)
9. Liberals believe government must protect the safety and security of the people, for without such protection liberalism is impossible. This, of course, is less a tenet of liberalism than a reply to those who attack liberalism. The accusation that liberals are unwilling to protect the nation from internal and external dangers is false. Because liberals respect competing values, such as procedural fairness and individual dignity, they weigh more carefully particular exercises of government power (such as the use of secret evidence, hearsay and torture), but they are no less willing to use government authority in other forms (such as expanded police forces and international diplomacy) to protect the nation and its citizens.
10. Liberals believe government must protect the safety and security of the people, without unnecessarily sacrificing constitutional values. It is liberals who have demanded and continue to demand legal protections to avoid the conviction of innocent people in the criminal justice system, reasonable restraints on government surveillance of American citizens, and fair procedures to ensure that alleged enemy combatants are in fact enemy combatants. Liberals adhere to the view expressed by Brandeis some 80 years ago: "Those who won our independence … did not exalt order at the cost of liberty."
Consider this an invitation. Are these propositions meaningful? Are they helpful? Are they simply wrong? As a liberal, how would you change them or modify the list? As a conservative, how would you draft a similar list for conservatives?
As for me, the only one I have a problem with is #8, but my gripe is more of semantics. I don’t think the courts have a special responsibility to protect individual liberties — I think the courts have a special responsibility to follow the Constitution. And the Constitution protects individual liberties. Small difference, but an important one.
All it requires is some LEDs, a battery, and some wires.
Oh, and a dead rat.
And instructions to make a dead rat light which you can attach to your car.
The "Bee-yatch" is what I call my car’s voice nav system. She dutifully tells me which road to take, where to turn, etc.
Of course, every time I turn her on, she strictly informs me that "safe driving is the driver’s responsibility". In other words, she (and Ford) doesn’t want to be blamed (and sued) if she drives me off a cliff.
I always thought the warning was a dumb feature, but then again, there are dumb drivers who probably need to be reminded that a nav system is not, you know, God. Exhibit A:
Driver obeys navigation system, no matter what
BERLIN (Reuters) – An 80-year-old German motorist obediently following his navigation system ignored a motorway "closed for construction" sign and crashed his Mercedes into a pile of sand further down the road, police said Monday.
"The driver was following the orders from his navigation system and even though there was a sufficient number of warnings and barricades, he continued his journey into the construction site," a police spokeswoman told Reuters.
"His trip finally ended when he wound up crashing into a pile of sand," she added.
The driver and his wife escaped uninjured from the collision, which occurred on a motorway near Hamburg.
Fans of Ken Burn’s Baseball documentary will be sad to learn that Buck O’Neil passed away:
Buck O’Neil, a star first baseman and manager in the Negro leagues and a pioneering scout and coach in the major leagues who devoted the final decade of his life to chronicling the lost world of black baseball, died last night in Kansas City, Mo. He was 94.
Bob Kendrick, marketing director for the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, reported the death last night, according to The Associated Press. O’Neil entered the hospital in August but was released after a few days. He was readmitted Sept. 17, The Associated Press said.
O’Neil was a smooth fielder and a two-time league-leading hitter with the Kansas City Monarchs, one of the Negro leagues’ most acclaimed teams, and he also managed them. He spent more than three decades working in the Chicago Cubs’ system, becoming one of organized baseball’s first black scouts and then the first black coach in the majors. In all, his baseball career spanned seven decades.
O’Neil had been chairman of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Mo., since its founding in 1997 and made scores of appearances to raise funds for it. He bore witness to the exploits of figures like Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Buck Leonard, Cool Papa Bell, Oscar Charleston and Ray Dandridge. All of those players were inducted into the Hall of Fame at Cooperstown belatedly, their prime seasons in the Negro leagues coming in the years before Jackie Robinson broke the modern major league color barrier.
O’Neil was among 39 candidates for entry into the Hall of Fame at a special vote in February 2006 to consider figures from black baseball who were not among the 18 previously inducted. Seventeen people were elected in that vote by a 12-person committee, but O’Neil and Minnie Minoso, the only two living figures given consideration, were not chosen.
The Kansas City Star has a nice obit, too:
Buck was the grandson of a slave. He grew up in Sarasota, Fla. — so far south, he used to say, that if he stepped backward he would have been a foreigner. He shined shoes. He worked in the celery fields. He could not attend Sarasota High because he was black.
“Damn,” he said on one particularly hot Florida day in those celery fields, “there’s got to be something better than this.”
“That may have been the first time I ever swore,” he would tell school kids across America. “But it was hot that day, children.”
The lesson of Buck’s story is that there is always something better — but he had to go out and get it. And he did. He played baseball. He was tall and had good reflexes. So he played first base, first for some semi-professional teams and then for the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues. That, he said, was the time of his life.
I’m not sleeping well, so this article piqued my interest:
A good night’s sleep now appears to be every bit as important to good health and long life as a nutritious diet and regular exercise.
"Sleep is in the top three," says Dinges. "And I think it’s No. 1. Sleep is a biological imperative and not getting enough has health-related costs."
In April, the Institute of Medicine issued a report confirming links between sleep deprivation and an increased risk of hypertension, diabetes, obesity, depression, heart attack and stroke.
Some scientists are exploring possible connections between inadequate sleep and a decline in immune function.
The Archives of Internal Medicine devoted its Sept. 18 issue to the relationship between sleep and health. An editorial called for assessment of sleep habits as a standard part of all medical checkups.
That’s because short sleep can hasten the arrival of the inevitable long sleep. The largest study of sleep duration and mortality was published in February 2002 in the Archives of General Psychiatry. The Cancer Prevention Study II of the American Cancer Society followed more than a million participants for six years. The best survival was found among those who slept about seven hours a night, the worst among those who slept less than 4.5 hours. Too much sleep — nine hours or more — also was associated with a higher risk of mortality.
***
Americans are racking up sleep debt like a college kid with a credit card. About 40% of Americans say they get fewer than seven hours of sleep on weekdays, and most — 71% — get fewer than eight hours of sleep, according to a 2005 survey by the National Sleep Foundation. Even on weekends, they sleep about 7.4 hours — better, but not enough to pay back the week’s loss. Every hour they fall behind is considered an hour of sleep debt, and Americans accumulate about two full weeks of personal sleep debt a year.
Sleep researchers have a name for the way the vast majority of people in this country sleep: volitional chronic sleep deprivation, and it is a lifestyle disorder.
Without enough sleep, the cost in reduced memory, focus, concentration and reaction time is well established. Incidents in the lore of sleep research include the Exxon Valdez oil spill and the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster. In each, key decisions were made by people who were sleep deprived.
Preacher says GOP delaying 2nd coming:
Voters should oust congressional Republican leaders because U.S. foreign policy is delaying the second coming of Jesus Christ, according to a evangelical preacher trying to influence closely contested political races.
K.A. Paul railed against the war in Iraq on Sunday before a crowd of 1,000 at the New Spirit Revival Center in Cleveland Heights, his first stop on what he hopes is a 30-city campaign.
The Houston-based preacher said he believes that the Bush administration has delayed the second coming because U.S. foreign policy has blocked Christian missionaries from working in Iraq, Iran and Syria.
"Somebody needs to say enough is enough," he said to worshippers who stood, waved and called out in support.
Um. So if you want the world to end — as this guy does — vote Democratic.
The US Geological Survey records a seismic event in North Korea:
Feel safer yet?
All North Korea wanted was (a) talks with the U.S. and (b) some humanitarian aid, in exchange for which they would cease their nuclear weapons ambitions.
But nooooooo — we had to play "tough cowboy" (because diplomacy is for faggy hairdresser types, doncha know).
In 1993, North Korea announced it would pull out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, leaving it free to divert nuclear material from its energy reactors to make a nuclear weapon and setting off a round of crisis diplomacy led by the Clinton administration. The result was the so-called agreed framework, which – in return for supplies of fuel oil to North Korea – froze most aspects of Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons programme for the rest of the decade.
The agreed framework was in effect consigned to history when the Bush administration came to power in 2001. The new administration argued that although the road to a plutonium-based nuclear bomb had been frozen, the North Koreans were cheating by attempting to develop a uranium-based bomb that was not explicitly addressed by the agreement.
That five years later, North Korea has tested a nuclear weapon will be widely interpreted as a sign of the failure of the tougher approach favoured by the Bush team.
Clinton success, Bush failure. Again.
So here we are now.
Nice going, Bush. Josh Marshall has a pretty good take on how hard it will be, post Foley, for most Americans to escape the obvious conclusion that NoKo was a monumental Republican/Bush fuckup :
Threats are a potent force if you’re willing to follow through on them. But [Bush] wasn’t. The plutonium production plant, which had been shuttered since 1994, got unshuttered. And the bomb that exploded tonight was, if I understand this correctly, almost certainly the product of that plutonium uncorked almost four years ago.
So the President talked a good game, the North Koreans called his bluff and he folded. And since then, for all intents and purposes, and all the atmospherics to the contrary, he and his administration have done essentially nothing.
Indeed, from the moment of the initial cave, the White House began acting as though North Korea was already a nuclear power (something that was then not at all clear) to obscure the fact that the White House had chosen to twiddle its thumbs and look the other way as North Korea became a nuclear power. Like in Bush in Iraq and Hastert and Foley, the problem was left to smolder in cover-up and denial. Until now.
Hawks and Bush sycophants will claim that North Korea is an outlaw regime. And no one should romanticize or ignore the fact that it is one of the most repressive regimes in the world with a history of belligerence, terrorist bombing, missile proliferation and a lot else. They’ll also claim that the North Koreans were breaking the spirit if not the letter of the 1994 agreement by pursuing a covert uranium enrichment program. And that’s probably true too.
But facts are stubborn things.
The bomb-grade plutonium that was on ice from 1994 to 2002 is now actual bombs. Try as you might it is difficult to imagine a policy — any policy — which would have yielded a worse result than the one we will face Monday morning.
UPDATE: Predictably, the rightwingers are blaming this on Clinton and Carter.
Somebody’s grumpy. I won’t say who…
Dear Citizens of Winston-Salem,
Please stop being such assholes. When you go into, say, a coffee shop, or a restaurant, or any other public place, please stop talking on your cellular telephones. It’s rude. When you come up to my bar to place an order, hang up first. Because it’s very difficult to decipher your mumblings about what you want me to serve you if you’re in the middle of two different conversations. But if you don’t hang up, that forfeits your right to get angry at me if I screw up your drink. You aren’t allowed to complain that your drink was made incorrectly if you were talking to Madonna on your cell phone at the same time. So, unless you really are talking to Madonna (in which case, please tell her I say hello), then hang up your f***ing phone and talk to me.
This may be a good time to review certain rules of cell phone etiquette.
It’s a real problem. Writing for Road & Travel magazine, Denise Mcluggage reports of an incident where "two men in a cafe were beaten and their phones destroyed by two others after the pair ignored repeated requests to curb their loud and continuous yakking on their phones."
So let’s go over the rules, shall we?
Restaurants:
Ask if there are special restrictions on phone use.
Initiate only essential calls.
Keep conversations brief to terse. Use an at-table call primarily to make an appointment for a more appropriate time for a call-back.
If you simply must be available you can put your phone on "vibrate" – say for your anticipated dinner companion to tell you that he is caught in traffic like a grape in aspic so have another drink. (If your phone does not have a vibrate capability maybe it’s time for a new one.)
Practice speaking in a quiet conversational tone. If no one looks your way I think you’ve got it.
Theaters, concerts, meetings etc:
Check at the entrance to be sure your phone is "off." If you’re compulsive, check for voice mail at breaks. (Remember, you used to have to go home to check your messages.)
If the only time you could get tickets to take the kids to "The Lion King" coincides with the only time a major mucky-muck is available for a conference call, put your phone on "vibrate" close to your heart and dash for the exit at the first tremor.
If you forget both "off" and "vibrate" and your phone rings, turn it off instantly. (And as unobtrusively as possible so nobody will suspect you are the jerk responsible). No matter what: DO NOT ANSWER IT!
Museums and art galleries:
Consider the reasons you are in such a place and be there totally. Turn off the phone, or better yet check it with your coat or tote bags.
Someone else’s house or office:
Turn off your phone. If you are expecting a call of extreme importance, ask if it is acceptable that you receive an inaudible signal so you can leave the room to take the call.
Places of Worship:
Leave the cellphone at home, in the car or at least turn it off before you enter. God may call you but it’s unlikely He will use Verizon.
Airline Travel:
Follow airline personnel instructions. Usually cellphones must be off as soon as the aircraft doors are closed until the doors open again on arrival. (Unless otherwise informed on long apron delays etc.)
Be particularly diligent if you have a cellphone with you but haven’t used it lately. It could be on; there is adequate evidence the electronics within can interfere with those that guide the plane.
Face-to-face with someone:
Do not talk on the phone while someone is trying to take your order in a restaurant, locate an upgrade for you on an airplane or return the shoes you had half-soled. Attend to the face-to-face business totally even if you have to ask the one on the line to hold. Continuing to use the phone while nodding and signaling to the person in front of you is belittling and so extremely rude I’ve only seen the obnoxiously self-important do it.