Remember the recent post about So Much for the Killer Bees? Here’s a followup.

The problem seems to be worse than previously reported; beekeepers are reporting up to 70 percent losses in Texas and the east coast, and 30 to 60 percent losses on the west coast. The bees just fly off and never come home.

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I couldn’t make something this good up if I tried: Chinese scientists can now remote control pigeons via implants. The implants, which look like they stick out through the pigeon’s tiny little skull, stimulate areas of its even tinier little brain to make it do the bidding of its Chinese masters.

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The movie adaptation of Max Brooks’ “World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War” is being done by none other than JMS - J. Michael Straczynski, creator of Babylon 5 and recently prolific comics-author.

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New Scientist has a brief article on the new radiation symbol. They mention that many children thought the old “trefoil” symbol was a propeller. Those children will now see, not only pirates, but motorized pirates chasing them.

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It’s not just the UK that had to kill over a hundred thousand birds… South Korea reported a bird flu outbreak around February 10 which led them to cull 130,000 chickens on the farm with the outbreak and another 107,000 on nearby farms. The outbreak was near Ansung, which is 80km south of Seoul.

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A 37 year-old Egyptian woman has died from bird flu in Fayyoum, Egypt. Egypt has now had 13 bird flu deaths and has had bird flu found in at least 19 of its 26 provinces.

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Via: Boing Boing: Cat with 26 toes
[tags]cat, toes, extra toes, 26 toes, polydactyl[/tags]

That is, if you’re a leading scientist.

CNN reports that the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank partly funded by Exxon Mobil, has been offering $10,000 to scientists to critique the recently released global warming study. (I was going to bash them for not being real because they didn’t have a web-site but lo! they have a web site! everything they say must be true!)

Fine, scientists are offered grants all the time, but this time the offer specifically asks for research that “thoughtfully explores the limitations of climate model [forecasting] outputs as they pertain to the development of climate policy…”

That’s a bit bold.
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The International Atomic Energy Commission and the International Organization for Standardization have released a new, user friendly ionizing radiation symbol. This new symbol is a small comic book showing what happens when you are exposed to the old standard trefoil radiation symbol: pirates chase you.

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Via: Duckling born with four legs - CNN.com
[tags]mutant, duckling, four legs, signs of the apocalypse[/tags]