Come on, admit it. You can't resist Lipton. [Beard Revue via NotCot]

Seriously now, my youngest sister has a phone she never uses—save for texting. LOLs and ttyl's have long replaced spoken word, and the clickity clack of her slider phone keyboard easily drowns out the family small talk at the dinner table during holidays.

It's only natural that some entrepreneur would turn this phenomenon into a game and make a little coin off of it. The game features arcade and race the clock modes, as well as a 2-player competitive mode. The joysticks are toy cellphones. Obvi.

And I'm just speculating wildly here, but since Rockstar didn't develop this one I'm pretty certain there's no hidden Hot Coffee sexting level. [ChipChick via Ubergizmo]

And half think it should have the same penalty as drunk driving. Steeeep.

What's fascinating is that while 80 percent think phones should be a no-no, they deem it kosher if you're going hands-free. Newsflash, morons, a bunch of studies show it's just as distracting if you're using a Bluetooth headset. It's the conversation that's distracting, not your hands being up near your head. Personally, I think we should also ban eating, drinking, using combs or makeup, overly talkative passengers, any kind of music, talk radio, GPS navigators, and small children from being in cars, period. Only then can we drive completely safely, since then we won't ever be distracted by anything ever again. [NYT]

According to subpoenaed cell phone records "Riccardo Blas Rivas II had been sending text messages to a friend just before the May 23 crash." That crash resulted in the death of 32 year old Tracy Cate.

The incident is incredibly sad, but it may turn into an example of how harshly the courts are willing to punish careless idiots who decide to text while driving. Based on what we're seeing, it may be months, possibly even years, before Rivas' case goes to trial and gets wrapped up, but let's hope the charges stick. Don't wuss out on me now, Florida. [Naples News]

The roll out is limited and seemingly very random, with iPhones gaining the ability across the U.S.

Perhaps this is an early test to see if that dubious AT&T network can finally handle this "new" feature? [Consumerist - Thanks, Tipsters!]

Yes. That definitely goes beyond the general area of stupidity straight into the I'm a Bloody Moron, Please Shoot Me Dimension. It had to be a dumb Spaniard, of course, for this Euro-African country—alongside Italy and France—produces the biggest driving—and regular—dumbasses in the planet (I know because I was born there).

The 18-year-old driver—identified as J.C.R—was caught by the Spanish police while racing through the streets of the Northwest city of Vigo. The police noticed the speeding car at 2:50am. According to them, the guy was fishtailing, and running red lights while taking photos of himself using a cellphone.

When the police tried to stop him, the moron accelerated and tried to escape, only to be intercepted in another street. Then he tried to escape running and, when he realized he couldn't make it, he returned to his car, and crashed against one of the police vehicles that was chasing him.

Adding to this list of idiotic things, when the police tested his alcohol levels, he was off of the scale. In Spanish law, that means that you will get your driver's license automatically revoked. But then again—as the police discovered later—this guy doesn't even have a driver's license, so it's not that he's going to care about that. Not that he will need one in jail, anyway. [Yahoo! Noticias (in Spanish)—Thanks Mariló]

Passed after a texting driver killed two scientists, the law would put texting while driving in the same legal category as drunk driving if any crash happens. It's a far stronger law than most of those already existing in other states; California's, for example, punishes offenders with a tiny fine, usually around $20.

In Utah, if you were to crash while texting, the punishment could be extremely severe—up to 15 years in prison. It's a harsh law but we can't deny that texting while driving is incredibly dangerous. [NYTimes]

So is half the world absolutely insane or is this survey—done with just a 2,881 driver sample—inaccurate? It seems to me like an awfully high number, but knowing that everybody has a phone now, I'm not surprised. If true, this is something a bill won't fix. It seems more like an education matter. And with education I mean "if you text while driving you may end up dead, you idiot." [PR Newswire]

The video was done with local actors by the Gwent police department, to be shown in area schools as part of a 30-minute deterrent movie about "texting while driving." It's effective, violent and bloody. That's probably the point.

Anything like this being shown in the U.S.? [BBC News - Thanks, Matthew]

Henan province promises a lockup of "up to five days" for one message, or ten days for 3 messages. If you're going to send three, you might as well do it in a chunk to get the discount rate.

"I'm totally for the rules. It's uncomfortable to get dirty text messages from male friends and even more gross when they are from strangers," Zhang Kai, 26, told the daily.

What's even better is that the normal people are questioning why so much government effort is being spent in this area.

Since July 10, Shenze party officials have held 480 meetings to discuss the harmful effects of obscene messages, a degree of dedication that has been questioned by the public, the People's Daily said.

"It's not necessary to hold 480 meetings on this. This is an enormous waste of administrative resources," an Internet user named Han Haoyue was quoted as saying.

[Google via Mobile Crunch]

The kids who used their phones a lot were faster on some of the tests, but were less accurate. We suspect that using mobile phones a lot, particularly tools like predictive texts for SMS, is training them to be fast but inaccurate. Their brains are still developing so if there are effects then potentially it could have effects down the line, especially given that the exposure is now almost universal. The use of mobile phones is changing the way children learn and pushing them to become more impulsive in the way they behave.

More impulsive than a 14 year old? Oh noes.

Abramson—professor at the Monash University, Melbourne, Australia—says that they are not becoming stupid because of the cellphone radiation frying their brains, but because predictive texting trains their minds into thinking they can get what they want easily: "If you're used to operating in that environment and entering a couple of letters and getting the word you want, you expect everything to be like that."

As someone who sometimes goes around life unconsciously clicking "UNDO! UNDO!," and using the pinching gesture to resize things, I understand completely. OK, maybe that's just an excuse for the pinching, but you get the idea.

There's a way to easily solve this, however: Make cellphones only available for 16 year-olds and older. That way, they can start texting right when they get their driver's license. Another way is to let kids feed the crocodiles at the zoo, allowing them to hand in the food through the bars. Both ways will make some great LOLz Ytbe vids! [Daily Mail]

You see, only subscribers to i wireless, a local T-Mobile affiliate, can text message 911. And it only works within Black Hawk County since just one call center has received the upgrade.

But it gets even worse. Because a text message lacks location information, your 911 text is greeted by an automated text request for your zipcode. If your zip is within Black Hawk County, your message will find a recipient. If not, you'll receive a text message advising you to call 911.

I can imagine a scenario in which, crouched in an alley to avoid an angry batch of Apple fanboys following a negative iPhone review, I might want to silently summon a few SWAT teams. But until text messaging rolls out to every carrier in every location, it's pretty much useless. [USA Today Thanks Sharnaff!]

That's right. When little Timmy gets Susie to "sext" him nudie pics in class, not only are both parties degrading the moral fabric of our civilized society, they're also contributing to the growing number of transient relationships Nichols feels is slowly killing us all.

"I think there's a worry that an excessive use, or an almost exclusive use of text and emails means that as a society we're losing some of the ability to build interpersonal communication that's necessary for living together and building a community," he said in a Sunday interview that was probably not conducted over email or IM.

While I agree that anything can be abused if done in excess, the suicide note seems a bit alarmist and anti-technology, even for the Catholic church. Then again, I've (luckily) never had the misfortune to know someone who was driven to suicide because I un-friended them on Facebook.

That said, we've seen some freaky cases where crazy shit's happened on these networks... maybe the ol' Archbishop has a point. What do you think? [Reuters]

Several different teams have done research showing that texting while driving is at least as dangerous as drunk driving and significantly more dangerous than talking on the phone while driving. The most interesting conclusion found that someone texting while driving is about eight times more likely to cause an accident than someone not texting, while a driver with a blood alcohol percentage of 0.08%, the legal limit, is only four times more likely than a sober driver.

The bill would force each state's highway department to institute a ban on texting within two years, or lose 25% of their federal funding each year, which is enough to cripple a highway department. Some weren't thrilled, pointing out that nobody's figured a way to enforce this kind of law, but we'll have to see if the Senate passes the bill to find out if anyone has real objections. [NY Times]

I don't agree with everything in the issue—I will not accept Facebook friends I've never meet in real life, I think it's rude to text message in front of other people, and I will not, under any circumstances, pretend I don't hate Twitter—but it's definitely a fun and thought-provoking read. My favorite is this article on haggling over Craigslist, which has saved me hundreds of dollars over the years. [Wired]

Alexa Longueira fell about 4 or 5 feet into an open manhole in Staten Island, scraping up her back and shoulders in the process, although she is otherwise physically unharmed. Her mother noted that she was also mentally injured, as the sewer was "putrid" and one of her shoes remains down there. Apparently, there were some DEP workers on the scene who were "looking" for cones to mark the area when the girl fell in.

The Longueira family says they will sue, although it's not clear exactly who—the city? The cellphone company? Alexa herself, for not watching where she was walking? Regardless, we are all allowed to laugh at this story, at teenagers with their texting, and at Staten Island as a whole, because the girl is unhurt. Proceed. [MSNBC via Twitter]

Image: timcaynes/Flickr