Hehe. Get involved in a bunch of things and see your name in the paper. I haven’t had my name in the paper this often since, well, I wrote for the Aggie. Take a read, the author did a good job summarizing all the points we brought up, and balancing them with information she got from other sources. Although I don’t remember ever using the word “instincts” as quoted, she captured the crux of my point about the many factors that could be involved. At the time, we didn’t know about the NYT article Monday, that suggested that there may be a specific pathogen involved, that they killed with gamma radiation. So the migratory beekeeping issue could be involved, and then the parasites could be vectors for it, and the point about beekeeping practices brought up by Robert Thorp (which we mentioned at the Bee Collective meeting as well) I think bolsters the idea that there’s a “Perfect Storm” in our swarms.
Honeybees disappearing throughout world - Science & Tech

P.S. I might be in the aggie again next week, I’m writing a letter to the editor about this piece of dross.

We have a genuine mystery on our hands. Larger-than-normal numbers of honeybees are dying off, we don’t know why, and we’re calling it Colony Collapse Disorder. I have talked about it on my show already, but I thought I would put up a few links to some good resources. Read More…

Over the ~2.5 years that I’ve been doing my radio show, I have accumulated a whole host of science fiction soundtracks that I use as theme music for each episode. Lately, that list has been getting huge, as I pick up one CD after another at used music shops, Ebay, and from beating up other geeks that I meet on the street. I’ve been wondering just how many I have, and until now I didn’t have a full count. If you’ve heard the varied music I’ve played on the Mindcast, you might also have wondered that yourself. Read More…

Barely over a year ago, a friend of mine got in a car accident on a really bad intersection in Sacramento, which has since improved. (Funny what adding a traffic light does to a high-speed overpass that you want to cross from an offramp… My friend was technically at fault, but I drove through that intersection a few times and it was nerve-wracking.) My friend had some bruising, but healed quickly, and thankfully the person in the colliding vehicle came out unscathed. The insurance companies chucked their lawyers at each other, and cars were fixed or replaced, and insurance rates probably increased as well, but soon enough everyone got their lives back on track. Until now, a year later - my friend is getting sued.
I know what you’re thinking - why am I talking about this on my blog? Until the whole thing blows over, I won’t identify my friend, which shouldn’t be long anyhow. It won’t even go to court, but if it did, I’d pay real money to see them argue this one! Read More…