That’s according to a survey by the Chicago Dental Society, whose tooth jockeys says patients are all too likely to sit through a cleaning session with thumbs a-blazin’.

“Many times the patient sits up during treatment to answer a call or text,” said one mouth doc.

“One young patient of mine had to interrupt me when his phone was buzzing in his pocket,” said another.

The survey, conducted over two weeks in July among the Society’s almost 200 Facebook fans, reports that 46 percent of dentists say in-chair messaging hampers their ability to provide care.

But surprise — kids are apparently less disruptive texters than adults.

One dentist from Northside said her teen patients are so accomplished at texting, they don’t even look down at their keypads during treatment.

Still, almost a third of the dentists say they have an explicit policy advising patients against SMSing — but to no avail.

“We have signs up in the waiting room and directly in front of where the patient sits stating that they need to turn off their phones but most simply ignore them,” said one respondent.

Even holy men.

Niles dentist Alice Boghosian says one of her patients, a member of the clergy, once answered his phone several times during treament.

Guess you could say he received his calling.

Not that the summer was ever a terribly popular time for TV viewership, but ABC’s 1.1 rating in the coveted demo last week represents a new, scary nadir.

If it was just ABC, we could chalk it up to shitty programming—they’ve been rolling out remainder episodes of already-canned shows like Eli Stone and The Unusuals that no one watched in the first place—but the other three (The CW really doesn’t count and never did) are hemorrhaging as well.

Fox posted the highest numbers of the week, with a wan 1.7 share, as the other two came tumbling after. As expected the cable nets that air new episodes in the summer—reliables like Burn Notice and The Closer, newbie Royal Pains—are all running pretty well, so they’re partly to blame. But the nets shouldn’t even be coming close to the (once) lowly USA and TNT cablers.

And of course there’s the internet and just the general diaspora of viewers to the millions of other TV channels (100k here, 100k there, it adds up) to be blamed. That’s been going on for a few years now. What we’re wondering today is how long this can be sustained. How does one approach advertisers with numbers like this? Again, summer’s always a doldrums, but this is just hardly even worth it. Might as well rent a plane with a sign dragging behind it and fly it over Chicago. Sure would be cheap. Plus, more people’d see it.

Click picture to see video.

Randy White might, and he’s not happy about it.

White’s problems began Aug. 10, 2007. It was a Friday night, and a crowd came to his club, called Randzz, to drink beer, play pool and maybe listen to the band.

At least one person listened – closely. The band’s playlist, which included hits by Stone Temple Pilots and Bob Sege r, got that person’s attention.

About 10 months later, several music publishers filed a lawsuit against White, accusing him of copyright infringement. They argued that he was allowing bands to play copyrighted songs without their permission or the proper license. In late May, a federal judge ruled in their favor.

White said he plans to appeal. “I just don’t feel I’m responsible for it,” he said. “They should be talking to the bands.”

Here is a video from Apple explaining all the details about the new iPhone 3G S. It’s pretty much what you expected from Apple and after today’s announcements of all the exciting stuff on the way it’s just ‘one more thing’ to wet your technologic appetite. Enjoy. (Link goes to Engadget post in which you can get to the video) Source

The group claims that a stepped set of packages is the only way in which the high-speed industry can survive the coming hellstorm of your online TV viewing and rampant MP3 downloads. According to ACA president Matt Polka, “the outcome is certain,” that metered pricing is on the way — even if there aren’t standardized plans in place yet. The ACA’s ex officio chair Patrick Knorr adds that current billing models are “not a sustainable business model,” and that “a la carte for the net is consumption-based billing.”

Though some of the arguments are compelling, the ACA also dramatically suggest that grandmothers shouldn’t subsidize those with HD downloading habits, and can’t seem to get a fix on just how they want to meter users or what kind of overages should be charged — both of which seem to be common points of debate. While we’re not sold that there’s only this single option for pricing broadband (one which heavily favors the provider’s bottom lines), the group does bring a tiny bit of thoughtfulness to the discussion, with a member noting that Time Warner Cable’s approach hadn’t made a very good case for the practice. We suggest a page from Cablevision’s playbook, guys.

Plano officials consider alternative grading policy for middle schools.

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Fire Rescue crews said they found him with serious injuries but still in good spirits. The rescuers rushed the 27-year-old to Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami for treatment.

Fire Rescue said officials at Sky Dive Miami told them the sky diver jumped out of an airplane that morning at an altitude of almost 13,000 feet. But as he jumped, the parachute snagged, fire rescue said, damaging both the plane and the parachute.

The Plane landed safely and the man was taken to a Mexican restaurant nearby hospital.

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