Now this, I think is funny, when you consider all the time that what seems to be the majority of Californians, at least the younger set, spend babbling on their cell phones.

SAN FRANCISCO – In this city known for producing laws both path-breaking and contentious, legislators have forcefully stepped into another debate — this time over the potential danger of cell phone use.

With the 10-1 vote in favor of an ordinance Mayor Gavin Newsom has indicated he will sign, San Francisco has waded into the as-yet unresolved debate over the relationship between long-term use of cell phones and health problems such as brain tumors.

The law requires cell phone retailers to disclose the phones’ specific absorption rate, or SAR, to customers.

SAR measures the maximum amount of radiation absorbed by a person using a handset. The Federal Communications Commission limits SAR to an average of 1.6 watts per kilogram of body tissue, but information about radiation levels is not usually readily available when people purchase phones at stores.

“From our perspective, this is a very reasonable and quite modest measure that will provide greater transparency and information to consumers for whom this is an area of interest or concern,” said Newsom spokesman Tony Winnicker, who noted that the mayor is an iPhone user. “We’re playing a role that we’ve often played, which is to be at the forefront of a debate.”

I took the liberty of putting in a link to the FCC’s SAR page in the text above.

Here in California, one of the hallmarks of “progressive” government is the heavy volume of “warning” signs.

For instance:

“This property uses chemicals known to the State of California to…”

They vary with the nature of the subject of the warning, but they’re all over, especially in hotel lobbies.

There are warning, rules and regs signs everywhere, which serve mainly to insult the intelligence of the smarter among us, but the lefties eat ‘em up — “Government, working for the people” or something.

Having said that, it should be interesting to see how the legions of cell phone addicts, not to mention Muslim cab drivers, react to the passing of this bill.

Then again, this is California, and brain damage already seems to have afflicted most of the population already, though the source of said brain damage is still a bit unclear.

So they pass the SAR bill, and even if a few of these wireless wonders manage to look up from their incessant conversations long enough to notice and find the time to respond in some way or other, the entire SAR debacle will remain the tip of a much larger iceberg, if these folks are correct.