Here is the article...
www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/05/13/cell-...
talk about a let down, here i was hoping the article would be about bees forming posses to assault iphones.
Don't worry...
Some enviro-weenie victims advocacy group will organize the bees to protest for their "rights"...
After all, people like their honey. It's not like honeybees are just some thing that sits there in the forest. Dying bees = loss of invested money.
I'm thinking beekeepers would be more interested in this than "enviro-weenies" (seriously?).
After all, people like their honey. It's not like honeybees are just some thing that sits there in the forest. Dying bees = loss of invested money.
Then the beekeepers will form unions and "persuade" (bribe) some member(s) of gov't to advocate for them and vote cell phones out of existence.
...Of course the cellphone companies will be portrayed as "evil, greedy capitialists" bent on the destruction of the poor, innocent bees simply to gain obscene profit.
So, no honey or no cell phone? Which one do you choose?
Just because you invest money into something doesn't guarantee a return.
It's a risk one decides to take.
I've seen people drive, I know how terrible they are.
I've seen people drive drunk, I know how bad that is.
It's even worse when people drive while using their God Damn Cell Phone. One of these days I'm going to end up road pizza by some random **** who's not even going to know what happened because he was on his phone the whole time.
When a colony of bees made their home in my roof, I called a bee keeper on my cell phone. It did not seem to have any effect other than a bill for two hundred dollars.
I do think that the decline in bee populations is a serious problem to which research should be devoted, but the research in the article seems more geared toward headlines.
That whole pollination thing is kind of important for you know..... everything's survival.
Cellphones on the other hand? Are worthless distracting devices that have done nothing for society except, for ironically making people socially retarded, especially during face to face interaction.
I do think that the decline in bee populations is a serious problem to which research should be devoted, but the research in the article seems more geared toward headlines.
It was on a regular news site rather than an educational/science portal, what did you expect? ;)
When it comes to choosing: you can make gingerbread without a cellphone nearby, but without honey it's not going to be possible.
talk about a let down, here i was hoping the article would be about bees forming posses to assault iphones.
Don't worry...
Some enviro-weenie victims advocacy group will organize the bees to protest for their "rights"...
Just to be clear, "enviro-weenie victims advocacy group" probably means "farmers" in this case. People who depend on bees to grow the food that you eat.
I have little doubt that we'll figure out how to make do without the bees, as I also have little doubt that people are not going to give up their cellphones. I also have no doubt whatsover that our insatiable appetite for cellphones and other compact electronic devices lead to catastrophic injustices against other regular human beings (read up on tantalum mines in Africa. Shocking stuff). But we humans also find it pretty easy to ignore stuff that we really shouldn't ignore. Like destroying the means of our own food production, or causing real human suffering because we just have to have that new model cellphone (even though our old ones work just fine).
I suspect that this is not the only cause of the declining bee population. I don't know enough about bees and the problem to give meaningful opinions, but it seems like this whole thing isn't helping. But I do know that science reporting sucks right now, and if research sounds like it's meant to grab headlines, it's because the science reporting is meant to boost ratings. Read the reports, not some know-nothing reporter who needs to grab your attention and is stuck reporting all that boring science stuff.
The problem is that they put the cell phone directly in the hive and the bees spent all day surfing the web and texting each other rather than working.
Well, we know what Emporer Comodus does to busy little bees.
Hey RH, welcome back. Things settling down?
Somewhat.
Thanks for asking/being concerned!
And when farmers have a bad day, people tend to go hungry.
The gov't pays farmers to NOT raise crops...
If the situation is serious (which I don't believe it is) then we would be able to tell through much higher food prices and shortages.
At any rate, I would rather have my honey than my cell phone.
*shrug*
If the situation is serious (which I don't believe it is) then we would be able to tell through much higher food prices and shortages.
I don't know about over at your place, but here food prices have been rising steadily and if you go to the poorer places of the earth food shortages seem to be quite common.
You know, they kind of blow right past that pesticide thing. I'd think insect poison might take a bigger share of the blame...
If the situation is serious (which I don't believe it is) then we would be able to tell through much higher food prices and shortages.
I don't know about over at your place, but here food prices have been rising steadily and if you go to the poorer places of the earth food shortages seem to be quite common.
I believe the current rise in food prices has more to do with the price of oil than a disastrous food shortage.
And as far as the "poorer places", their own mis-handling of the land or ignorance of good agricultural practices or corruption in the gov't are more to blame.
Did you know?
The imperial Roman army made such frequent use of live beehives as catapult ammunition that some ecological-historians now believe the practice brought on a massive decline in the population of those social insects around the Mediterranean littoral. The decline in the bee populace, important for crop pollination, then contributed to a large drop in the empire's overall agricultural productivity. All of which was the last thing needed by an empire already suffering through massive social, economic, political and military crises.
I believe the current rise in food prices has more to do with the price of oil than a disastrous food shortage.
Could very well be. In that case it's only going to be getting worse as time passes, I guess.
And as far as the "poorer places", their own mis-handling of the land or ignorance of good agricultural practices or corruption in the gov't are more to blame.
Could very well be, for a lot of them. Might not be, for some of them. Regardless, it does show that food is not something that exists in abudance, even though many people think it does.
Regardless, it does show that food is not something that exists in abudance, even though many people think it does.
For the most part, it is abundant. The problem is that the excess in the abundant areas does not make it to the areas with shortages. Supermarkets throw away enough spoiled food to feed a small army on a regular basis.
And they arrest people who try to "steal" the food that's throw away, too. I posted a topic about that a while ago.
Eh, cell phones are pretty useless anyway.
That's just plain silly. A cell phone is a phone (something you can use to call for help) that you can take with you on your person (to places where help may not be standing next to you). Cellphones are about as far from useless as you can get and that's not even considering smart phones that fulfill multiple functions as well as serving as a communication device.
EDIT: Oh, and let's not forget the fact that cell phones were instrumental in the recent Middle East drama, too.
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Bees have been proven to be extremely fragile. Their immune systems are crap and they're very vulnerable to a lot of pesticides, too. All of the stuff I've read points to varied sources for their vanishing. Cell phones are one that's not even mentioned that often because there's just no evidence to really suggest it. There's no evidence to suggest anything very strongly. See, the bees don't die at the hive. They vanish. Gone. No li'l bodies to autopsy. Nothin'. So, there's just no way to know what's up right now. Some possible explanations include: cell phone towers, pesticides, fungi and mites. Evidence has been found to support exactly zero of these ideas. The search goes on.