Humor – Tyson Adams

Fun Articles, Humor, Mythtaken, Science, Sciency

Mythtaken: Bees and CCD

I love honey.
Actually, that’s a lie, I’m ambivalent toward honey, I could take it or leave it.
Anyway, bees: kinda important. But not as important as recent internet and media talk would have us believe.

Here’s the problem summed up by the Penn State entomology group (dated August 2013):

At an international pollinator conference held at Penn State last week, the general consensus was that Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) of honey bees is caused by multiple factors including: a) viruses and diseases; b) two species of mites; c) poor nutrition caused by foraging in sugar poor crops like cucurbits; d) the stress of interstate travel and e) pesticide exposure. Despite this, however, most of the research presented at the conference concentrated on pesticide exposure with a general call for banning a group of insecticides known as the neonicotinoids. This of course seems to be an easy fix to a complex problem that is still not completely understood, but of course is popular with the public and many ecologists that have never worked with pesticides or IPM. This stance does not take into account the reason these products were developed in the first place which was to replace human toxic OP pesticides and replace them with something safer as mandated by the Food Quality Protection Act. Neonicotinoid insecticides have also proven to be safer to most beneficial insects other than bees and promote the biological control of pests such as San Jose Scale, Woolly Apple Aphid, European Red Mite, leafminers, and leafhoppers to name a few. A general ban of neonicotinoid insecticides would cause a reversion back to OP, carbamate and pyrethroid insecticides which would totally destroy current IPM programs and cause growers an additional $50 to $100+ per acre in secondary pest sprays.

But here’s the other point that a lot of scares about pesticides miss:

Moreover, the authors do not account for the fact the France still observes CCD each year, even though they banned neonicotinoids 5 years ago. Nor do they note that beekeepers in Canada and Australia and parts of Europe use neonicotinoids, but do not observe CCD. Finally, they do not note that CCD has been taking place regularly for hundreds of years. We reviewed this in an article last year.

Update and aside:

There’s an important point in this piece that wasn’t covered. The discussion here is completely focused on European Honey Bees that are used in agriculture. They’re domesticated bees. We have plenty. But native bees are suffering the same issues that all animals and plants are faced with: a severe case of humans.

This explainer video from Vox is very good at covering that part of the issue.

Back to the article on honey bees.

Crops aren’t really affected: http://www.rba.gov.au/publications/bulletin/2011/jun/images/graph-0611-3-02.gif

Beehives aren’t exactly going extinct either: http://faostat3.fao.org/faostat-gateway/go/to/search/bee/E http://www.daff.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0011/1942481/graph1.gif

About 30% of our food, mainly fruit and nuts is pollinated by bees, but almonds are the only common crop that relies almost exclusively on bees. Of course not that it’s at all plausible that we will lose bees, as I hope I’ve already demonstrated.The headline of that article; “Scientists discover what’s killing the bees and it’s worse than you thought” is not supported by the text at all.

CCD or events that meet the description have been happening since at least the 19th century, but it’s entirely possible that there are modern reasons for it occurring now, and I’d say that seems especially likely on account of the very stark geography involved – where places like the USA and some European countries are badly hit, while other regions are completely unaffected.

The explanation that’s been favoured by actual scientists for a long time is that it’s a consequence of many factors. People, dare I say with confirming ideologies, are quick to point the finger at various “chemicals” but we know that it’s not just those chemicals, because other places that use them have no CCD.

But I go back to my earlier point, which is that it’s important to remember that this is no threat to the existence of bees, or plants that rely on bees. It’s very easy to breed bees and create new colonies. We could easily make the global bee population 100 times larger than it is now within this year if we really wanted to. CCD increases the costs to bee keepers, increases the costs of honey, and very marginally increases the costs of some fruits and nuts, within particular regions. It doesn’t threaten food security and it doesn’t threaten the existence of bees.

The European honey bee contributes directly to the Australian economy through the honey industry and to a lesser extent the packaged bee, bees’ wax and propolis sectors. Honey bees also contribute to the productivity of many horticultural crops, by providing essential pollination services that improve crop yield and quality. The Australian honey and bee products industry is valued at approximately $90 million per year.

It is estimated that bees contribute directly to between $100 million and $1.7 billion of agricultural production, mostly from unpaid sources such as feral bee colonies, but also from a small paid pollination industry of about $3.3 million, per year.1

This estimate refers to 35 of the most responsive crops to honeybee pollination. If all agriculture is included the estimates have run as high as $4-$6 billion2.

The industry is composed of about 10,000 registered beekeepers. Around 1,700 of these are considered to be commercial apiarists, each with more than 50 hives, and there are thousands of part-time and hobbyist apiarists, with total honey production around 16,000 tonnes of honey each year. http://www.daff.gov.au/animal-plant-health/pests-diseases-weeds/bee

A lot of people like to pretend that there is also a link between GMOs and CCD. This is utter nonsense. Firstly it is a poisoning the well logical fallacy, secondly there is nothing wrong with GMOs (check this list of +600 safety studies, and this list of articles on how good GMOs are, and this series on the Food Wars), and thirdly there is no actual link between GMOs and the supposed chemicals pressuring bee populations. This last point is very important, as it shows a confounding of issues, either deliberately or accidentally, that actually shows a lack of reading/understanding of the science of both GMO and CCD.

http://io9.com/ask-an-entomologist-anything-you-want-about-the-disappe-1616898038

Anyway, the real cause of CCD is the South Carolina divorce rate: http://tylervigen.com/view_correlation?id=558

http://extension.psu.edu/plants/tree-fruit/news/2013/the-role-of-pollen-bees-in-fruit-tree-pollination-and-some-new-cautions-on-pesticide-use

http://www.examiner.com/article/bees-are-found-to-die-from-insecticide-insignificant-new-paper

More on GMO: Scientific American come out in favour of GMO:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/labels-for-gmo-foods-are-a-bad-idea/
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/2013/09/06/scientific-american-comes-out-in-favor-of-gmos/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonentine/2013/10/14/2000-reasons-why-gmos-are-safe-to-eat-and-environmentally-sustainable/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonentine/2013/04/11/science-collapse-disorder-the-real-story-behind-neonics-and-mass-bee-deaths/

http://beta.cosmosmagazine.com/society/how-we-perceive-risk-gmos

http://beta.cosmosmagazine.com/society/seeds-deception

http://beta.cosmosmagazine.com/society/environmentalists%E2%80%99-double-standards

Blog Topic, Fun Articles, Humor, Writing

Writer’s Block Research

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? It is a crippling and debilitating affliction that rivels writer’s cramp for its perniciousness.

Researchers, knowing the harm that writer’s block can cause, have been undertaking decades of research into potential treatments. The seminal work was written in 1974 by Dennis Upper.

Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1311997/

As you can see, it was a very concise paper that encapsulated the issue perfectly. Upper’s research was semi-influential and spawned several other studies on the issue. This culminated in a meta-analysis in 2014.

The meta-analysis covered all the relevant studies and data from 40 years of research. The study makes it clear that most treatments are unsuccessful at addressing writer’s block. Table 1, below, outlines the body of research and word counts under each treatment setting.

While these studies and the meta-analysis suggest that there is no hope for those suffering from this disease, we shouldn’t be shuffling those afflicted into a career in programming bitcoin farms. They need to be treated with dignity and respect, not cast aside into worthless activities that destroy the planet.

So, before it is too late for writer’s block sufferers, try to talk to them about how many words Stephen King writes per day. Mention that Enid Blyton wrote over 800 novels in her career, including a period of time where it wasn’t uncommon for her to write a book every two to three days. Or that Ryoki Inoue published 1075 novels and that he writes night and day without any breaks until he finishes a book.

Blog Topic, Humor, Pics, Reading

Reading is anti-social

Blog Topic, Humor, Pics, Writing

Autobiography

Blog Topic, Fun Articles, Humor, Reading

The limits of imagination

Many would think of authors as having limitless imaginations. We can imagine amazing futures, fantastical worlds, utopias, dystopias, magics, stuff that we call science that is actually just more magic, but we can’t imagine a rich person as wealthy as actual rich people.

That’s right when it came to thinking of massive piles of money that a fictional character would go swimming through, it didn’t amount to as much money as our actual wealthiest people.

Scrooge McDuck – $65.4 billion
Smaug – $54.1 billion
Carlisle Cullen – $46.0 billion
Tony Stark – $12.4 billion
Charles Foster Kane – $11.2 billion
Bruce Wayne – $9.2 billion
Richie Rich – $5.8 billion
Christian Grey – $2.2 billion
Tywin Lannister – $1.8 billion
C. Montgomery Burns – $1.5 billion
Walden Schmidt – $1.3 billion
Lara Croft – $1.3 billion
Mr Monopoly – $1.2 billion
Lady Mary Crawley – $1.1 billion
Jay Gatsby – $1.0 billion (Source: Fictional 15, 2013) Total = $215.5 billion

Let’s compare that to the real-life Richie McRiches.

Jeff Bezos – $131 billion
Bill Gates – $96.5 billion
Warren Buffett – $82.5 billion
Bernard Arnault (and family) – $76 billion
Carlos Slim Helu (and family) – $64 billion
Amancio Ortega – $62.7 billion
Larry Ellison – $62.5 billion
Mark Zuckerberg – $62.3 billion
Michael Bloomberg – $55.5 billion
Larry Page – $50.8 billion
Charles ‘f@#k the environment’ Koch – $50.5 billion
David ‘f@#k poor people’ Koch – $50.5 billion
Mukesh Ambani – $50 billion
Sergey Brin – $49.8 billion
Francoise Bettencourt Meyers (and family) – $49.3 billion (Source) Total = $993.9 billion

On the fictional list, we have a literal 350-year-old blood-sucking parasite who had several lifetimes to accumulate his wealth. Another is the image we conjure up when we think of rich people. One character even has rich in his name twice. Yet for all of their billions, they aren’t matching it with the real-life billionaires.

It says something that the richest fictional character has half as much money as the richest man in the real world. And the total worth of the Top 15s couldn’t be more different. All of the world’s authors couldn’t come up with a list of the wealthiest characters with as much money as their real-life counterparts ($215 vs $994 billion!!).

But the worst part is the real-life billionaires. Do we see Jeff Bezos swimming in a giant vault of money? Does he even own a giant vault? What type of pathetic billionaire is he? Too busy stopping his workers unionising to enjoy a swim in his money is what he is. Bill Gates has not once tried to scare dwarves away from his mountain of gold, on the plus side, he isn’t a gold hoarding dragon. And will we ever see the Warren Buffet spanking a college newspaper reporter sex tape, and will that be hotter than the 50 Shades of Grey movies?

What about superheroes? Zuckerberg isn’t donning a cowl and fighting crime, he’s too busy selling elections. Tony Stark was fighting to save the planet, the Koch brothers only seem to have time to see the planet burn. Would it kill them both – or at least one more – to try to build an arc reactor?

Authors may not be able to imagine ridiculous levels of wealth for their characters, but billionaires seem equally unable to imagine doing something worthwhile with their billions.

Blog Topic, Humor, Pics, Writing

First Drafts

Humor, Pics

Like to read, huh?

Blog Topic, Fun Articles, Humor

When kangaroos jump high, how do they secure their baby?

Much like any other commuter in Australia, Kangaroos have to obey certain laws and regulations. One of those laws is that all young must be restrained so that in event of an accident, say a mother Kangaroo misjudging the distance between her and a tree and slamming into it, the Joey isn’t flung about in the pouch.

See these guidelines for more.

The most common restraint for younger Joeys is a capsule, then a three-point restraint seat. See the table below.

Of course, just as not every adult human wears a seatbelt, not every parent Kangaroo is as concerned with safety as others. Those terrible parent Kangaroos tend to rely on the Joey being small and the strength of the pouch muscles to hold the Joey still. They are also likely to lay off too much bouncing once the Joey gets bigger.

Usually, the final straw is when the Joey defecates too much in the pouch. Then it is time for the Joey to do its own bouncing and let mum have a rest.

Hope that helps.

This helpful answer originally appeared on Quora.

Blog Topic, Fun Articles, Humor

Are Aussies ashamed that they lost a war against Emus?

In answer to “Are Aussies ashamed that they lost a war against Emus” there needs to be some context to how us brave Aussies were able to valiantly defend ourselves to the last against the evil horde of emus.

First of all, as I’ve outlined in a blog post, yes, this Emu War actually happened. Roughly 20,000 emus invaded the Eastern Wheatbelt area, discovering newly cleared farmland filled with crops and watering points for sheep. They liked this supply of food and water and were ambivalent toward the soldier settler (and other) farmers’ tough run of grain prices and droughts.

They turned up their tails at the mere thought that farmers might be doing it tough. They stuck their beaks into food that wasn’t theirs – and don’t give me any of that “they were there first” and “it was their land” and “do you want to see them starve” nonsense. Take your bleeding heart elsewhere, hippy!

Since these were ex-soldiers facing ruin (from drought, grain prices, broken subsidy promises, and emus – blame the killer emus!), they liked the idea of using machine-guns (2 Lewis Guns) against the birds in the same way they’d used them against opposing infantry in WW1. They wanted to reminisce about mass slaughter, even if it wasn’t against the most deadly of game.

This didn’t go anywhere near as well as expected. Emus are faster, harder to kill outright, and generally not running straight at a machine-gun embankment like some sort of pea-brained… Anyway, their casualties were low.

Two attempts were made at an emu cull, but ultimately the government decided to offer a bounty on emus instead. Later they went with the tried and trusted move of building a fence to keep the emus out of agricultural areas (along with dingoes, wild dogs, rabbits, kangaroos – although the latter laugh at attempts to build a fence they can’t jump over).

These efforts combined with increased land clearing, increased pest species (wild dogs, rabbits, etc), and increased fossil fuel burning slowly baking the entire planet, have led to a decline in all native Aussie wildlife, including emus.

That context should show you that the emus may have won the battle but they lost the war.

So, no, Aussies don’t feel bad about losing a battle.

This answer first appeared on Quora.

Blog Topic, Fun Articles, Humor, My Writing

How To Be An Internet Tough Guy

Have you ever wondered what it takes to be an internet tough guy?

Well, I’ve created a simple DO and DON’T list that should start you on your path to winning at the internet.

Claim to do MMA
“SAY THAT TO MY FACE!!”
“I’LL KICK YOUR ASS!!”
Claim to be the strongest in gym
Claim to be an ex-Marine
Claim to get laid a lot
Claim they were all models
“Do you even lift, bro?”
Subscribe to Guns & Ammo and Blackbelt Magazine

DON’T

Claim to do Taekwondo
Appear in person to talk
Post shirtless pictures
Post lifting video
Claim to be ex-Airforce
Claim they live in another town
Claim they were foot models*
Provide numbers
Subscribe to House & Garden

*Not kink shaming, but this is the internet tough guy wars that only a certain type of guy – always a guy – engages in.

Blog Topic, Humor, Reading

How does it end?

Blog Topic, Humor, Pics, Reblogged

The Week

59422470_2616371845101634_2541666026915889152_n — Source

This is fantastic. I also like the irony of posting this on a Friday (Thursday for many of you, since I’m in Australia).

Check out Lunarbaboon and buy his stuff.

Blog Topic, Fun Articles, Humor, My Writing

Barbie My Birthday Party – Too Serious

Somehow, we have managed to acquire a Barbie storybook which our daughter inexplicably enjoys. While I privately suspect that the interest level is driven purely by the immoderate amount of pink the book is composed of, she is still fascinated by having us read it to her at bedtime.

For those who aren’t aware, Barbie is a ~~feminist icon~~ ~~early childhood reinforcement of patriarchal beauty standards~~ much-beloved kids’ toy. It has expanded from a ~~tool of societal indoctrination~~ line of fashion toys into a multimedia empire of animated films, television shows, video games, music, and books; and I’m left with some very important questions.

The eponymous protagonist’s story starts with her need to celebrate her birthday by buying lots of stuff and having her friends do the same. There are decorations, cake, sparkly jewellery, and dresses to buy. And lots of butterflies for some reason. I’m not sure if the butterflies are attracted to the inordinate amount of sparkly jewels Barbie and her friends adorn themselves in, or if they are a hallucination due to overconsumption of shrooms, or if the butterflies are actually Death’s Head moths and Barbie’s Fun House is in need of an FBI raid.

This brings me to my first question: how is Barbie funding this lavish lifestyle. I know that Barbie has had many jobs during her life but she never seems to hold them down for any length of time. A lot of those jobs weren’t particularly well paid, and given the number of technical and professional degrees she would have had to obtain, her student debt levels would have to be crippling.*

To my mind, there are three possible explanations for this lavish lifestyle. Barbie is either:

A trust-fund baby living a life of vapid luxury;
A white-collar drug dealer supplying her rich friends with cocaine and party drugs;
Or she is a consumerist wracking up mountains of credit card debt to finance a lavish lifestyle to impress her equally facile friends.**

The drug dealer explanation would certainly explain her impossible body proportions; the amphetamines and cocaine keeping her thin, and with plastic surgery padding the other areas. But another career? That seems a bit far fetched. The credit card funding similarly doesn’t seem likely due to her 30-jobs-a-decade career habit.

The job-hopping would, however, fit with the trust-fund baby explanation. Bored rich kid decides to change careers for the third time this year: not a problem. It would also explain many of the other story inconsistencies. Which brings me to the next issue.

In the story, Barbie is throwing a party for herself. She could have been throwing a surprise party for her friends, or she could have been holding a fundraiser for impoverished people who can’t afford to eat let alone accessorise for their catered birthday party. Instead, we are treated to pages of exposition detailing her choice of dress, make-up, jewellery, hairstyle, and matching her shoes and handbag. Then to top it all off, we see her matching presents to the friends who gave them, as though she is judging the friendship upon the quality of the gifts received.

I’m concerned that in a world of growing inequality that Barbie’s message is one of vapid selfishness that seeks to teach young girls a nasty and mean lesson. This trust-fund image-obsessed wealth flaunter is not an ideal that young girls should be exposed to. The very least Barbie could have done is host a charity fundraiser, although even that is somewhat problematic. Has she learnt nothing from Bill Gates and Warren Buffet’s examples?

Maybe I’m judging Barbie too harshly. This was, after all, a short Barbie story. It is quite possible that in further adventures many of my above concerns and questions will be addressed. I only hope that those stories have satisfactory explanations and answers.

* I’m also not convinced that she has actually had all of the jobs she has claimed. There is a sense that she is padding her resume for some unknown reason. I mean, how do you manage to be a paratrooper and the US President in the same year and then throw the towel in to become a Spanish teacher the next year?

** There is a fourth option that I don’t wish to include in the main list as I hope it is untrue. Pretty girls like Barbie can make good money escorting and that would certainly explain her expansive wardrobe; her sugar daddies making sure she is always looking pretty. This is a very poor message to send to young girls. Encouraging such a dual-exploitative career as a means to accrue meaningless objects of vanity normalises everything wrong with the sex-industry whilst marginalising its positive aspects.

Blog Topic, Humor, Pics, Reblogged

Happy endings

53327427_2345882892098009_3016986509921222656_n — Source: Sarah Andersen

Blog Topic, Humor, Pics, Reading, Reblogged

Reference books

1271b6a43711b64620a2477fb95bff15 — Source: Hannah Hillam

Blog Topic, Humor, Pics, Reading, Reblogged

Things you’ll never hear from an English major

Number 5 you might actually hear, as I’ve discussed here.

Blog Topic, Humor, Pics

Free Why-Fi

Source

From Dave Coverly at Speed Bump.

Blog Topic, Humor, Pics, Writing

How writers take revenge on critics

I think any writer could confirm the truth of this.

Another brilliant cartoon from Tom Gauld in The Guardian Review.

Blog Topic, Humor, Pics, Reading

How to declutter your book collection

Tom Gauld’s latest in The Guardian Review in response to the grossly misunderstood Marie Kondo book decluttering affair. Do I need to say you should follow Tom and buy his stuff?

Blog Topic, Fun Articles, Humor, Uncategorized

Super Wings – Too Serious

The latest craze in our house is Super Wings with the various character catchphrases having entered my own lexicon. Super Wings is a children’s ~~toy advertisement~~ TV show following the adventures of the red delivery jet imaginatively named Jett. The various sentient planes on the show have the ability to transform into robots and I’m left with some very important questions.

Jett is the series protagonist. Every episode he is dispatched to another location far across the planet to deliver a package. Yes, just one package. Anywhere on the planet. By jet plane.

How does this package delivery company manage to stay financially afloat!?!

I’ve crunched the numbers on a single 3,500km adventure and just the cost of fuel would be ~$3,000. That’s an expensive package. But Jett is modelled off of an F-16 Falcon which has a range of ~4,000km, yet routinely does deliveries of twice that distance. Not only would Jett have to stop over for fuel or do an aerial refill, neither of which have been shown to occur in the show, but those package delivery costs would also further sky-rocket.

This company’s package delivery economic model can’t work. Either the packages, which are often small items like badminton racquets, are freighted with super expensive delivery fees to only extremely wealthy clients, or the company runs at a massive loss. Now, we already know from the list of clients that many of the package recipients are not wealthy. One adventure sees Jett deliver a sled to a Moroccan villager, and whilst Moroccan’s aren’t living in the poorest African nation their average take-home pay is half that of an average Aussie. This leaves us with a company that has to be running at a loss.

But does it? They have to pay for that fuel somehow. Jett’s employment must be worth something. As a sentient transforming plane surely Jett must have economic needs to be met. Jett might be internationally famous, but I doubt that keeps a roof over his head and whatever equivalent of clothes on his back there is for an anthropomorphic plane – paint maybe?

That leads me to conclude that the package delivery company must be operating with an ulterior motive. It can’t be drug smuggling, even their profit margins couldn’t cover the ridiculous costs involved. Or maybe not. Maybe Jett and his deliveries are a cover for the smuggling operations that other delivery planes are involved with. Jett might be the publicity-friendly face covering for a much darker trade. Maybe sentient planes delight in trafficking human slaves around the world. If so, they already have the police in their pocket.

There is another possible explanation for the company’s motives and it relates to Jett’s adventures.

Without fail, every delivery that Jett performs he manages to instigate a series of unfortunate events. You have to wonder if Jett is a magnet for Murphy’s Law*, is some sort of Clouseau-esque character, or an agent of mayhem. Regardless, these events require Jett to call on his friends, the eponymous Super Wings, to help clean up his mess.

Several of these Super Wings friends appear to work at or are based out of the same facility as Jett. It is unclear why a package delivery service would have such broad-ranging staff – police, rescue, passenger, a WW1 biplane. It is also unclear why they are always so readily on-call to help. Are they just waiting for Jett’s latest mishap? But the biggest question is how they manage to fund the involvement of all of these extra staff for every delivery adventure. I’ve already covered how expensive just the fuel would be, but a minimum of two staff per delivery, one staff member unable to perform their primary role whilst helping out Jett, and the extensive travel time to far-reaching parts of the planet, and we start to see a mounting cost that has to be footed by someone.**

But what if these unfortunate events and resultant adventures for Jett and the Super Wings are a deliberate act? What if Jett and his package delivery employers are secretly working toward nefarious ends? They could, in fact, be trying to drive socio-political instability in far-flung places around the world. The only question that would then remain is if Jett is a knowing participant in this nefarious plot or if he is merely a pawn in a dastardly game of epic proportions.

Hopefully, all of these questions will be answered as the Super Wings series unfolds.

*For anyone lucky enough to be unfamiliar with it, Murphy’s Law states: Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.

**Perhaps the aftermath of every episode is the delivery of an invoice for extra associated costs. Maybe that is how the package delivery service makes its money. Lure people in with a super cheap luxury personalised service and then charge for all of the added expenses incurred when Jett’s mayhem inevitably occurs.