Arctic now warmest in 2000 years, researchers say

Bullshit.

Another recent headline:

"New Reports Show Global Cooling Trend"

Which is it? I'm so weary of the global warming hysteria. It's a scare tactic to control behavior and push an agenda. Plain and simple.

Remember twenty years ago when people were freaking out and claiming that all the rain forests would be gone within five or ten years? Yeah. According to Google Earth, they're still there.

The Candy Man

Thanks to Matt for sending this.

What's killing the honey bees?

For the past few years, honey bees have been disappearing at an alarming rate.

No one seemed to know what was killing them or what unseen force could kill so many bees on such a large scale. A bee flu? Climate change? It's been well-documented that life on Earth cannot survive without pollination from bees.

Then today, this story from India:

Mobile towers are posing a threat to honey bees in Kerala withe electromagnetic radiation from mobile towers and cell phones having the potential to kill worker bees that go out to collect nectar from flowers, says a study.

A plunge in beehive population has been reported from different parts of Kerala and if measures are not taken to check mushrooming of mobile powers, bees could be wiped out from Kerala within a decade, environmentalist and Reader in Zoology, Dr Sainudeen Pattazhy says in his study.

In one of his experiments he found that when a mobile phone was kept near a beehive it resulted in collapse of the colony in five to 10 days, with the worker bees failing to return home, leaving the hives with just queens, eggs and hive-bound immature bees.

It makes sense. Bees are disappearing in areas as the ubiquitousness of cell coverage has increased dramatically. And many bees are transported across country to pollenate crops. They are loaded in hives on large trucks and literally driven to the next pollination field. In rural America, there didn't used to be cell service everywhere - it was confined to larger towns and the cities. But now, you can travel just about anywhere and get a cell signal. The trucks are literally death trains for the bees.

So what do we do about it? The knee-jerk reaction is to ban cell phones, but that would collapse our economy. I think a more inventive solution will arise: bee farms with cell jamming stations around its perimeter. And cell-jamming technology on the trucks that carry the bees. Or perhaps genetically engineer bees that are not susceptible to cell radiation. But will that make them more aggressive? Playing around with nature is usually not a good thing.

This issue, to me, dwarfs global warming a potential threat to life on our planet. This one is very real.

Disney to acquire Marvel for $4 billion in cash and stock

From MarketWatch:

"Walt Disney Co. said on Monday it has reached a deal to acquire comic book titan Marvel Entertainment Inc. for $4 billion in stock and cash, in a move that underscores the company's desire to have strong box-office franchises with appeal to families."

I'm not sure how I feel about this. I'm not really a Marvel guy, but I've always liked the raw grittyness of Marvel characters. I wonder if Disney will still let Wolverine be Wolverine and for the characters to have such dark aspects.

But my first thought when I read this was that Universal has a theme park built around Marvel characters just miles from Walt Disney World in Orlando. I wonder how that's going to shake out.

This doesn't feel like a natural fit.

Plastic Man glasses

All I need now is a red jumpsuit, a red plane and a tubby sidekick.

Ted Kennedy, Healthcare Champion?

In the media's eulogizing of Ted Kennedy, they're holding him up as some kind of Health Care reform messiah.

But I overheard an interesting point on the radio on the way to work this morning:

If Ted Kennedy was such an ardent believer in providing health care for the impoverished and downtrodden, then why aren't there Ted Kennedy Health Care facilities in every city in America, funded by his own personal family wealth? He supposedly spent 46 years in the senate working to provide health care assistance for those who can't pay for it, yet this man who came from one of the wealthiest families in the United States didn't start a charitable foundation (like the Ronald McDonald House) to do it. He wanted you and me to pay for it.

He was the archetypical liberal. And I don't mean that as a compliment.

That's Our MommyGirl!!!

Kristi is published!

She is the guest blogger today over at Today's Housewife - a blog about, as best I can tell, today's housewives.

Her post is about saving time, and she has some really great Kristi ideas to share. Be sure to check it out! And be sure to check out Kristi's blog, The Adventures of MommyGirl. It's not as interesting or geeky or ranty as Destructoville, but what is?

BTW - I'm thinking about having guest bloggers in Destructoville. The topic: Get the hell off my lawn!!!

Nessy?????

From the UK Sun:

"This amazing image on Google Earth could be the elusive proof that the Loch Ness Monster exists.

The shape seen on the surface of the 22-mile Scottish loch is 65ft long and appears to have an oval body, a tail and four legs or flippers.

Some experts believe Nessie may be a Plesiosaur, an extinct marine reptile with a shape like the Google image."

Looks like a boat with a wake behind it to me. But it would have to be a damn big boat at 65 feet long.

But I shouldn't be skeptical. I found chicken shaped like Texas.

The U.N. Can Go F**k Themselves, Instead.

From Fox News:

U.N. Report Advocates Teaching Masturbation to 5-Year-Olds

NEW YORK — The United Nations is recommending that children as young as five receive mandatory sexual education that would teach even pre-kindergarteners about masturbation and topics like gender violence.

Under the U.N.'s voluntary sex-ed regime, kids just 5-8 years old will be told that "touching and rubbing one's genitals is called masturbation" and that private parts "can feel pleasurable when touched by oneself."

By the time they're 9 years old, they'll learn about "positive and negative effects of 'aphrodisiacs," and wrestle with the ideas of "homophobia, transphobia and abuse of power."

At 12, they'll learn the "reasons for" abortions — but they'll already have known about their safety for three years. When they're 15, they'll be exposed to direct "advocacy to promote the right to and access to safe abortion."

Memo to the U.N.: Stay the hell away from my kids. My wife and I work damn hard at keeping them innocent and not exposing them to sexual content and concepts. There's simply no reason for kids that young to need any concept of sex. At that age, body parts have exactly one function: it's where pee pee comes from. Their private parts aren't for entertainment - theirs or any else's. Sex is something for adults, and it has no place in a child's sphere of thought. That will come in time, when they're older. And I insist that Kristi and I be the ones to explain it to them. Mandatory sex-ed in Kindergarten? I don't think so.

People who continually want to sex-up our kids are perverts. I'd love to be put in a locked room with one for just ten minutes. One of us would need to be carried out on a stretcher.

Just another example of the U.N. completely overstepping its charter and yet another reason we shouldn't take any part in the organization.

Snow Leopard Compatibility Chart

Excellent list of apps that work and fail under Snow Leopard.

Looks like my Photoshop CS2 and Dreamweaver MX are going to be problems.

There's a Reason Snow Leopard is Sleek Under the Hood

From Walt Mossberg, regarding Snow Leopard:

One delightful change: Snow Leopard takes up less than half the room on a hard disk that Leopard did, and Apple says the average user who upgrades will free up about 7 gigabytes of space. On my 2008-vintage MacBook Pro, I gained back a whopping 14 gigabytes.

Anyone else think that perhaps one of the major reasons for decreasing the OS overhead is to fit better on a flash memory-based tablet?

Just sayin'.

FAA called after father flies teen to school

From Florida AP:

"According a Lake County Sheriff's Office report, Bart Sutherin flew his 14-year-old son, Joseph, to his first day of classes at East Ridge High School in a blue-and-white helicopter this week.

Sutherin landed the helicopter safely, but he didn't clear the flight with the Lake County school district officials and sheriff's office first."

Awesome. I'm surprised he did't get in trouble for not alerting the dog catcher, too. 

Does anyone think that all those beaurocrats would have said that it would have been okay?  Better to beg forgiveness...

 http://www.miamiherald.com/news/florida/AP/story/1204392.html