Hoarding Food on a National Scale

It's not just Mormons that are hoarding food these days.

Entire nations are now sharply reducing food exports in order to feed their own countries. Seems logical enough. But what about the rest of the world. The places that can't grow their own food. The places that rely on other countries agricultural magic. This is the subject of the latest in a line of stories that the NY Times is running. (Much like the Washington Post, they now have an on-line section devoted to the food crisis. Again, EIGN would like to point out that we started that trend, or at least we like to.)

The hoarding nations, including India, China, Vietnam and nearly a dozen other countries, are causing the price of rice, corn, and other basic food goods to skyrocket. "The restrictions are making it harder for impoverished importing countries to afford the food they need." (nytimes)

Didn't we post something about food riots a while back?

Need Ice for your Labor Day BBQ? Then Avoid the North Pole

"The North Pole may be briefly ice-free by September as global warming melts away Arctic sea ice, according to scientists from the National Snow and Ice Data Center." (cnn) While it's not guaranteed to happen, it is a 50-50 shot, they say. Originally these same scientists, as recently as 5 years ago, were saying it would happen anywhere between 2050 to 2100. Then they revised those estimates to 2030. Now... well... now? Scary.

"From the viewpoint of the science, the North Pole is just another point in the globe, but it does have this symbolic meaning," Serreze said. "There's supposed to be ice at the North Pole. The fact that we may not have any by the end of this summer could be quite a symbolic change."
"If we had a few cold years in a row, we could put sort of a temporary damper on it, but I think at this point going to an ice-free Arctic Ocean is inevitable," he said. "I don't think we can stop that now."

I have just one question at this time, although I reserve my right to ask more in the future, do Santa and his reindeer float?

thanks to feign (Friend of Earth Is Going Nova) G. for another great link. You too can contribute potential stories and have your name right here, [Your Name Here], on your favorite blog. You may even get a free EIGN sticker.

Bees and Guns

Two brief EIGN notes:

BEES: More bee swarms. (the sun) First NYC, Texas, and who knows where else. This time in Exeter, UK. Apparently their language skills are allowing the US and UK bees to communicate. It's only a matter of time before they get those African and Asia bees on their side--then we're really screwed.


GUNS: US Supreme Court calls DC handgun ban unconstitutional. Great, that's exactly what the Nations Capital needs right now, more guns.

'This is the last chance'

"Exactly 20 years after warning America about global warming, a top NASA scientist said the situation has gotten so bad that the world's only hope is drastic action."
"We're toast if we don't get on a very different path," Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute of Space Sciences who is sometimes called the godfather of global warming science, told The Associated Press. "This is the last chance." (ap)

Haven't these so-called "scientists" been screaming the sky is falling, and that this is our "last chance," for a long time? I bet he said the same thing in 1988 that he said earlier this week. Why should we believe you now Mr. Hansen? Your attempts at scaring us aren't working.

(wow, you know I think that was the second chicken little reference we've made in the last few weeks. odd)

GNW XII: Pay For Sex, Not Gas.

Hooray! "Brothel to offer gasoline gift cards."
"Starting July 1, [the Nevada whore house] will hand out gasoline gift cards to paying customers who make the drive [out of the city]. Spend $300 on you know what and get a $50 gas card. Spend $500 and get a $100 gas card." (Las Vegas Review Journal) I wonder if they'd refund for airfare too.

Also, "As part of the promotion, [the owner] has placed a giant thank-you card in the brothel's parlor for customers to sign after doing their piece to spur the economy. Once the card fills up, Hof plans to mail it to President Bush at the White House." HOLY CRAP, that's AWESOME.

Happy Wednesday everyone.
(Link courtesy of Friend of EIGN, G.)

Duct Tape and the CDC

Apparently people at the CDC are the only ones to take President Bush seriously when he suggested using duct tape and plastic to cover your windows during a bio-terror attack.

At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's new $214 million infectious disease laboratory in Atlanta, scientists are conducting experiments on bioterror bacteria in a room with a containment door sealed with duct tape.
The tape was applied around the edges of the door a year ago after the building's ventilation system malfunctioned and pulled potentially contaminated air out of the lab and into a "clean" hallway. (AP)

Patrick Stockton, the CDC safety and occupational health manager said, "It's an enhancement. We could take it off." I'm glad I don't live in atlanta.

Why We (Already) Matter

Apparently the AP has been reading our little blog. This story, "Is everything spinning out of control?" starts this way:

Is everything spinning out of control? Midwestern levees are bursting. Polar bears are adrift. Gas prices are skyrocketing. Home values are abysmal. Air fares, college tuition and health care border on unaffordable. Wars without end rage in Iraq, Afghanistan and against terrorism.

And ends this way:

And maybe this is what the 21st century will be about — a great unraveling of some things long taken for granted.

Sounds a little familiar, doesn't it?

Evolution is a bitch... or in this case a jerk

This just isn't right. 34 year old married man, born female, is getting ready to give birth. (nytimes) The paper says "anyone who has turned on a television, linked to a blog or picked up a tabloid in the last few months is aware [of his pregnancy]." I wasn't, until this morning. And now I'm terrified. As a former roommate once told me, "You live under a rock." (Or was it many former roommates... hmm) Where the hell is the baby going to come out? Wait, no, I really don't want to know... I wish I was still under the rock on this one.

Mommy, what's my interest rate?

In this day and age it's probably a good idea to start building up good credit early. Take it from any of your friendly EIGN contributors, building good credit is important; really. Want to buy a house? A car? A ticket to mars? What to impress your friends? Get a job? (Which seems incredibly ironic, because don't you need a job to build good credit?)
Anyway, logical fallacies aside, five seems a bit too young to sell your soul in the name of capitalism. Apparently Bank of America decided it would be smart to issue a card with a $600 limit to a five year old Illinois boy. Talk about spending more than you make! (cbs2chicago)

Holy Crap! Motor Oil Sucks

G. writes us with a story that she thought goes well with the "angry tone" of this blog. Wait, we're angry?

Something you may not have known:
"One gallon of used oil can foul the taste of one million gallons of water."
That's just an absolutely astonishing number. Point of story: Don't change your oil every 3000 miles, in fact, maybe you should never change your oil. (yahoo auto)

GNW XI: The Why You Should Be Excited About Vacation Edition

Happy Wednesday morning all. A few good news stories this week.

* News flash: sex is better when you're not at home. The article expounds a variety of reasons, but I think this is my favorite--alcohol: 'Several men told NEWSWEEK that their wife or girlfriend tends to drink more on vacation, becoming less inhibited. (On the other hand, one 30-year-old women suggests, 'maybe it's just that men are less annoying after a few drinks.')" Yeah, sure they are. (newsweek)

Okay, so maybe that isn't a very EIGN Good News story but can you blame us? Let's get back on track...

* Further proof of the decline of man. A 42 year old man from the Richmond, VA, area decided that to lose weight he'd go on an all McDonald's diet for 6 months. (inrich.com) I don't know what is scarier, that this idiot decided this would be a good idea or that he actually lost over 75 pounds. You know what, I don't even know where to start with this one.

* Now baby girls (or boys) can get a head start on the competition on becoming a whore. Baby stilettos. This company, despite their "cute" name (heelarious), is selling 0-6 month old sizes of baby shoes with heels. Because apparently it's funny to dress your 6 month old up like a hooker. You can probably find whore caliber makeup that is baby safe on the interwebs somewhere too. freaks.

Cost of Popcorn set to Skyrocket

With the increasing cost of food, bio-fuels, transportation, water, life, etc., going to the movies is about to get even MORE expensive. (EIGN wants to know why it's already so expensive to get popcorn at the movies. Maybe this book can help.)

The cost of popcorn is set to rise dramatically in the coming months. Says Popcorn guy Dennis Kunnemann, "This year, we've paid the highest price ever that I've contracted for, 13 cents a pound, compared with 9 cents per pound in 2006." And that's in Canadian currency. With the dollar the way it is--ie: bad--who the fuck knows what that means for US consumers. (citynews.ca)

Two reasons why I'm not worried about this: 1. I don't go to the movies. 2. I hate popcorn. Take that suckers.

"These bees are covering me! Killer bees!"

They just don't ever go away, do they. A man in Texas survived after a two hour horrific bee attack. (cbs11) Apparently he's crediting his cell phone (makes sense) and God (questionable at best) for helping him survive.

Take a look at this 911 transcript clip:

Dunsworth: These bees are covering me up! Killer bees!
Dispatcher: Have you been stung?
Dunsworth: All over! They're all over me!

Save me Jebus!

Adaptation at it's finest

Good news wednesday thursday. Lots of good news this week. However this good news isn't for us, it's good for the animals.

* On Tuesday Pete had a great post about dolphins that stash trash to get food tomorrow. Today we learn that fewer and fewer dolphins are getting caught in fishing nets. "The most recent dolphin counts in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean suggest that two species decimated by deaths in tuna fishing nets may be making a comeback." (discovery news) Have they learned and adapted to avoid the nets? Maybe.

* Macaque monkeys have been discovered fishing in Indonesia. And (according to EIGN) unlike us, they (according to discovery news) "are a survivor species, which has the knowledge to cope with difficult conditions." Adaptation at it's best.

Good News Wednesday X: We'll all be robots soon

Good news for those of you that really, really want to become robots sooner rather than later. EIGN has two stories in one day from different UK news sites; both about bionic people alive today. The future is already upon us. be afraid.

"Meet the real bionic woman - the mother who has had almost all her joints replaced." (dailymail.co.uk)

The world's first commercial bionic hand. (telegraph.co.uk)

Sorry about the lack of anything witty or at least any attempts at being witty with this post. This EIGN contributor is tired today. Happy wednesday.

Saving for a Rainy Day

Dolphins, tricks, trash, and the future - this article links them all. And certainly in a manner more alarming than you're thinking. Not long ago there was a post about a monkey using brain power to manipulate a robotic arm to feed itself, now allow me to introduce you to Kelly, who has certainly pared if not one upped that course.

"All the Dolphins at the center are trained to retrieve trash that has mistakenly fallen in to their pools. Upon seeing a nearby trainer, they are to take said trash to the trainer. In return, they receive a fish for their cleanliness.

However it seems that Kelly has found a loophole in the system, and is exploiting it to interesting ends. She hoards her trash, underneath a rock at the bottom of her pool, and when she sees a trainer she goes down and removes a piece of paper or trash to get her fish. However she won’t use all her paper at once, instead she holds on to them for the future. It is an interesting behavior, considering that it is very much like humans storing food for the winter; it displays an awareness of tomorrow." (daily galaxy . com)

Well... sounds to me like the word has gotten out in the marine mammal community. Perhaps we should be following their lead and start stock piling for the impending shit storm. 12.21.2012.

And so it begins: 2012 makes its presence known with the force of a tire iron. Gas is just one of the many soon to be scarse natural resources. It appears 2012 is closing in on us faster then we thought. Gear up, beacuse we're sure this is just the begining.

Space Rocks Falling.

The odds that a potentially devastating space rock will hit Earth this century may be as high as one in 10.
An object falling from the sky only 300 meters wide could release as much energy as 1000 nuclear bombs. But even scarier, it turns out not all "space objects" leave craters. WTF? How could we not have known that earlier. Which leads to this scary revelation:

"A generation ago, the standard assumption was that a dangerous object would strike Earth perhaps once in a million years. By the mid-1990s, researchers began to say that the threat was greater: perhaps a strike every 300,000 years. This winter, I asked William Ailor, an asteroid specialist, what he thought the risk was. Ailor’s answer: a one-in-10 chance per century of a dangerous space-object strike." (the atlantic)

Maybe Chicken Little was right all along. We're sorry we ever doubted you!

Scary Food Stories Are So Easy To Find

Nearly every major paper or on-line news site has some story regarding serious food issues glaring back at me on their homepages this morning. Starting with this little nugget about salmonella in raw tomatoes. (sfgate)
More importantly, however, there is a story on msnbc about how higher costs of food are causing school lunch prices to sky-rocket. In some cases by as much as 50 percent! (msnbc)
Oh and then there's the story about how Immigrants in the Washington DC region are sending food home to their families in the countries they left for a better world. Prices and availability is becoming so bad in some countries such as the Philippines and Haiti that it is now cheaper, or in some cases even possible, to eat necessities such as rice. (wapo)
Oh, and last but not least, apparently the cost of water is going up. WATER. (the street via yahoo)

All of these stories come back to increasing energy prices. I'd say we're all up shit's creek, but it probably now costs too much to even get there.

Bees, bees, everywhere

"Bees from opposite ends of the Earth can communicate more easily than people, a discovery that suggests bees can learn a new language easily." (telegraph.co.uk)

Apparently if you put honey bees from africa alongside honey bees from asia, among other places, they are able to learn each others "dance languages" and "communicate." Seriously, bees can learn? WTF. First they tell us that bees are going to die via some crazy colony collapse disorder (which Pete talked about here).

We also talked about how the bees are beginning to not do their jobs because of pollution. But learning a new "langauge." We're screwed either way. Basically the bees are going to disappear and our environment will start to collapse, or bees from around the world team up and take over the planet. (They have already started their initial attacks). I, for one, am now officially terrified of all bees, and not just this one. The only good news is that being stung won't turn you into a zombie...I hope.

UPDATE 11:22am from Pete:
This guy set fire to a shed trying to get rid of bees. He won this round, but wait until the bees in asia here about this. (AP)

Police State in the District of Columbia

From the (washington) examiner:

"D.C. police will seal off entire neighborhoods, set up checkpoints and kick out strangers under a new program that D.C. officials hope will help them rescue the city from its out-of-control violence."

A DC Councilman said "that he worried about D.C. “moving towards a police state.”" Well, at least DC is being granted some sort of state status.

UPDATE: [06.13.2008] Apparently D.C. police have given up on this idea. (the raw story)