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The Bee/Cellphone Connection

snl_killer_bees.jpg

I'm officially weighing in on the story reported on Drudge/Instapundit about the death of bees as somehow the fault of cellphone technology...

Ahem.

"The only way that cellphones are effecting bees is if the bees are flying around talking on the damn things and causing lots of little mid-air bee collisions".

Full disclosure, I'm a well known hater of cellphone technology so its not like im on the side of the cellphone industry but seriously guys, the advent of hybrid cars, womens perfume, gatorade in neon colors or "bratz dolls" are all far more likely a culprits in "bee deaths" as are the growth of cellphones in modern civilization. Do the Amish use Cellphones? Any Cellphone towers in Bird-in-hand Pennsylvania? How's their bee populations? Sure, I dont know either, but I would think that you would want to find out before you go scaring the hell out of everyone.

Let's start looking there before we start enforcing a new tax of cellphones to help our poor little winged helpers, shall we?

Dontcha think its funny that no one ever says:

"Study shows sudden unexplained rise in cockroach deaths possibly due to overhead power lines".

Cockroaches, rats and flies all go on living endlessly without interruption no matter what you toss at them, but all of the rest of Gods creatures are undone by mans industrial works as soon as it hits the market shelves. No one seems to give a damn about cockroaches. If all of nature is a wonder to be protected from the harsh hand of man, then why doesnt anyone care about the cockroaches and flies?

If cellphones are somehow whacking bees from the skies, then maybe we could adjust them to somehow get rid of mosquitos? Now THATS something I would gladly pay 5 bucks a month for.

It's always the same story. In the minds of "the new luddite", new technology can only make the world worse. There is a whole subculture of people who spend their days and nights ( using the very technology they so dispise) trying to prove it to be true, that the world sucks and its all your fault, and in the end its for no other purpose than to find a new way to tax you for your sins.

They say this even when every single metric about life in the modern age that there is shows just the opposite to be true.

I love Bees and I hate Cellphones, but science is science. If I wanted to make stuff up to get my own way politically, I would be a whole lot more creative about it than this.

Ok, what if its satellite television systems? GPS systems? Free WIFI on every street corner? Big Bass speakers on teeny tiny cars? The decreased use of non-leaded paint? maybe bees LIKED lead in their paint? Would we put it back if we found that to be true?

No. "Screw the bees", we would say.

Radar? What about that? Would we turn it off if we found out that Radar was causing the bees to die?

Nope. "Screw the bees", we would say.

Who wants a sky full of 747's without radar? You want to go back to world without cheap air travel? not me brudder! What about lithium batteries? Cellphones use lithium batteries, and hybrid cars use lithium batteries so maybe the bees are sensitive to something about lithium batteries? would we get rid of hybrid cars if it helped the bees?

Nope. "Screw the bees", we would say.

Well maybe its the rise in the use of biodiesel? Again, if thats the case, people will say "Screw the bees" in response. And the thing is, they would be right to do so.

If bees are so weak as to fall apart after a teeny tiny bit of radiation from freaking cellphones as opposed to the thousands of other radio sources, then off go the bees into the exhibit next to the south pacific dodo bird. But the cool thing is that people seem to be forgetting is that bees are insects and insects breed fast. Those bees that live will be the type with the genes made to survive the onslaught of the 'evil brain cancer causing cellphones' and there you have it, in a few generations, we'll have bees that will do just fine co-existing with humans and cellphones.

So all of you that want to go into the office on monday morning and look down your nose at your coworkers who are insensitive to the plight of the bees, do a little more research on the subject before you start tut-tutting about how "they dont care about nature", ok?

Because they dont care about the damn bees, and neither do you.

(And the cool thing is, I got through this whole post without using any of the obvious puns like "what about CB radios? get it? C-Bee, hahahaha. I kill myself sometimes... )

Posted @ April 15, 2007 03:19 PM | Current Affairs

Comments

Lowseee-STEENKIN' bee-ners.

We need to close the borders to thum par'sites!

Posted by: vittle at April 18, 2007 12:54 AM

You're mssing the big flick here. Everything vegetable and fruit you eat requires insect pollination except for corn, rice, and wheat.

Your argument, constructed as some sort of parallelism with other ill-thought-out arguments against conservation fails profoundly.

This isn't about protecting the bees because they're some sort of engandered species. The human race NEEDS bees to survive.

Posted by: Paco at April 19, 2007 07:01 PM

Paco, you're the one missing the boat.

There are, as usual, grandiose claims being made which defy basic sense. It is up to those making the claims to back them up with direct evidence.

Lacking said evidence, an intelligent person rejects the assertion as improbable and unsupported. It's called "The Scientific Method", and it has far more to do with Real Science than a lot of the Whiz-Bang stuff people think of as science. It's failure to understand this which leads to ignorance about the absurdities surrounding global warming, to argue against evolution, and to flip-flop back and forth every 2/3rds decade over the dangers/benefits of magnetic fields on human physiology (and equally to fail to grasp that there is no demonstrably relevant difference between the magnetic field of a high-voltage electric wire, a CRT, a cellphone and that of the earth itself).

Posted by: Vittle at April 24, 2007 06:50 PM