penn and teller are effing NUTS

remind me to NEVER go see them in person
(it looks like there are people in the audience, no?)


(shout out to boing boing)

some news on the bees

BUT FIRST, the lyrics to one kick ass song by joe strummer and the mescaleros:
Lord, there goes Johnny Appleseed
He might pass by in the hour of need
There's a lot of souls
Ain't drinking from no well
locked in a factory
Hey - look there goes
Hey - look there goes
If you're after getting the honey - hey
Then you don't go killing all the bees
Lord, there goes Martin Luther King
Notice how the door closes when the chimes of freedom ring
I hear what you're saying, I hear what he's saying
*Is what was true now no longer so
Hey - I hear what you're saying
Hey - I hear what he's saying
If you're after getting the honey - hey
Then you don't go killing all the bees
What the people are saying
And we know every road - go, go
What the people are saying
There ain't no berries on the trees
Let the summertime sun
Fall on the apple - fall on the apple
Lord, there goes a Buick forty-nine
Black sheep of the angels riding, riding down the line
We think there is a soul, we don't know
That soul is hard to find
Hey - down along the road
Hey - down along the roadI
f you're after getting the honey
Then you don't go killing all the bees
Hey - it's what the people are saying
It's what the people are saying
Hey - there ain't no berries on the trees
Hey - that's what the people are saying, no berries on the trees
You're checking out the honey, baby
You had to go killin' all the bees

Study Points to Virus in Collapse of Honeybee Colonies

By Juliet Eilperin Washington Post Staff Writer
Scientists yesterday identified a virus as one of the likely causes of the recent wave of honeybee colony collapses across the country.
The study, co-authored by researchers at Pennsylvania State University, Columbia University, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and several other institutions, suggests that the Israeli acute paralysis virus (IAPV) helps trigger the mysterious condition known as colony collapse disorder, which destroyed about 23 percent of U.S. beehives last winter. The paper is being published today in the journal Science.

more on bees

(and by the way, my mother's father was a bee keeper back in the old country)

A stinging loss for U.S. farms as honeybees vanish
Experts fear their disappearance will take a toll on the nation's food chain

BY AMY ELLIS NUTTStar-Ledger Staff
Jean-Claude Tassot felt the sunshine spilling over his shoulders. It was unseasonably warm for January -- a good day, he decided, to check his honeybees. So Tassot jumped in his truck and rumbled over the back roads of Morris County to the first of the eight farms where he stores his boxes of hives.
"When you first take the cover off, usually you can see the bees," said Tassot. "But when I looked, there was nothing. I kept looking (but) the hives were all dead."
Tassot drove to the next farm, then the next and the next. At every stop it was the same thing.
Out of 171 hives, 140 were wiped out. Even the few dozen that remained were weak at best.
"It was a catastrophe," he said.
In New Jersey, as in at least 26 other states around the country, commercial beekeepers and hobbyists are reporting catastrophic losses of honeybees this year. As many as 700,000 of the nation's 2.4 million bee colonies have been affected, according to the American Beekeeping Federation.
"I've talked to several beekeepers up and down the state, and they're reporting from 30 to 99 percent bee losses," said Bob Hughes, president of the New Jersey Beekeepers Association. ..............

wow, i hope this is just a far-fetched

bizarre theory. however, it COULD be real. how frightening is THIS? (and i for one want to rip many a cell phone out of many a hand to ear. it's RIDICULOUS. i once saw and heard someone using their cell phone in a grocery store. WHO WERE THEY TALKING TO? someone ONE AISLE OVER. and no, i'm NOT making this up. i've yelled at people at work for talking on their cell phones in the loo. i sure don't want to be 'freshening up' while someone on the phone is listening. do we REALLY need to talk on our cell phones as much as we do? NO we don't. i am not innocent. i have a cell phone. i don't use it frivolously though)

Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?
Scientists claim radiation from handsets are to blame for mysterious 'colony collapse' of bees

By Geoffrey Lean and Harriet Shawcross

It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world's harvests fail.
They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world - the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe - was beginning to hit Britain as well.
The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up.................