You may have heard about the massive die-off of bees caused by Colony Collapse Disorder, or the possible extinction of a number of species of bats caused by White Nose Syndrome. But have you thought about the ramifications or kept up to date on the causes? Depending on the source, the cost to agribusiness resulting from continued bee die-offs ranges from $14 billion to $92 billion annually. And if the bats continued dying? Some species of bats can eat as many as 3,000 insects nightly, mosquitoes being common prey. To frame that more dramatically: the colony of approximately 20 million free-tailed bats at Bracken Cave, Texas, eats up to a quarter-million pounds of insects in a single night. Or put another way, the weight of 462,962 6oz cans of Deep Woods Off. So what’s causing these weird syndromes? In the case of the bats, they have no idea, and aren’t getting much funding to find out. And the bad news is that the fungus that seems to cause the syndrome has spread to Europe. If you want to help this massively underfunded research, consider supporting Bat Conservation International. Because if the fungus doesn’t get them, the wind turbines will. And in the case of the bees dying, there’s not much in the way of solid scientific answers yet, though insecticides and cell phones have both been proposed, and some are convinced the EPA is hiding information about recently approved pesticides.

This is some of the kind of humor you can expect:

One of the contestants in the “cock opera”…

The official trailer…

Of course, I had to hit “refresh” like thirty times on the captcha page….

The other day I mentioned that I thought it was strange that given so many Americans’ universal hatred of Muslims because of September 11, I found it odd that we don’t hate all rednecks from Michigan for the Oklahoma City Bombing . Fortunately, some friends set me straight on a few facts. First of all, many American’s ARE rednecks. And secondly, the ones who aren’t, DO. Hate rednecks, that is. Ironically, that second point was made by a Russian friend of mine, who also said - on behalf of rednecks - that at least “they don’t go around burning the American embassy after we draw them in funny ways“. To which I replied with something like “yeah, they just blow up abortion clinics and stuff“. The irony in my Russian friend’s defense of rednecks being that not too long ago, Russians were the enemy. Which for me is the real bitch in all of this. Anyone who bothers digging deeper than the frothing idiocy of ratings-driven anchortainers or polarized partisan blog punditry knows very well that this irrational contempt for all things Muslim has its roots in the fact that when the Cold War ended, the military industrial complex had a serious problem on their hands, i.e., an enemy crisis. Who better to fit the bill than a culture that most Americans know nothing about? Which frankly could be just about any culture. But handily, most Americans - in spite of being incredibly ignorant of history in general - are experts on the wars between Christians and Muslims, and strangely eager to start them again, even if they don’t really believe in God. The level of ignorance swirling around the whole topic of “Islam as our enemy” is frighteningly depicted in the Onion satire Man Already Knows Everything He Needs To Know About Muslims. I say “frighteningly” depicted, because the satire is so close to reality as to be nearly indistinguishable. So if an Islamic center at “ground zero” is going to be a test of freedom and tolerance in America, I think we should at least be consistent and remove the Nascar track that’s in front of the Murrah Federal Building site, and ban all sales of Pabst Blue Ribbon in Oklahoma City, and eliminate any other redneck insults to the federal government in the area. And don’t try that “it’s not a Nascar track it’s just a street” argument on me. That’s like saying a mosque is “just an Islamic center“. I hope I’m sounding utterly irrational with what I’m saying here. Because it would be un-American of me to do otherwise.

Whoever wins the new Norton Antivirus/Snoop Dogg anti-cybercrime rap contest over at HackIsWack.com is destined to be at least as famous as M. E. Hart. Oh. Sorry. You probably didn’t know he was the “rapper” in the 1994 Don’t Copy That Floppy campaign (video below). You know, the one you don’t remember. This marketing campaign by Norton is so full of fail in so many ways that I don’t know where to start. First, I’ll acknowledge that yes, I’m talking about Norton Antivirus, which is part of their goal. In fact, here. Go buy some if you want. I’ll make something like $1.37 if you use that link. But otherwise, this is full of fail. You can almost hear the aging executive at the board meeting that got this in motion: “We need one of those VIRAL things. Make sure we have one of those Facebooks, and that, whatchacallit? One of those TWITTER things. Oh, and a MySquare or whatever it’s called too“. Well, they’ve got their Facebook and Twitter thing set up (although I’m more impressed with Crack Is Wack, a joke FB page by a couple of youngsters), and they’ve got that “hip” domain HackIsWack.com. And then what? You can view all the hilariously bad whiteboy “nerd up to your motherboard” raps here, but guess what. You can’t SHARE them, so we can only link to our current pick, called Hairetsu Entry. We admire it mostly for the fact that the guy seems so gangsta for shizzlin’ on company time by recording his performance on the security cam in the stock room at his shoe store job. If the decision makers at a company like Norton had half a brain, they’d hire Snoop as a consultant, not a celebrity endorsement. Like so many marketing campaigns involving Snoop, while he brings some attention to the brand that he’s hired to endorse, the REAL brand remains Snoop, and I’d bet he sees more revenue than whoever hires him. Go Snoop. You’re a genius. And in the end, the main reason this campaign fails is that anybody who will talk enough about Snoop and computer security in the same conversation to lead to a conversion are technophiles like me who will say “That’s so funny! But don’t use Norton, use Kaspersky or AVG, or Malwarebytes, really just about anything BUT Norton! Fo’ rizzle. By the way, apologies for my less-than-Snooptastic Slanguistics, but gizoogle.com was down.

Here’s the hip and edgy 1994 “Don’t Copy That Floppy” video, starring M.E. Hart. I just have one question. What’s a “floppy”?

Don’t bother trying to play the video below. Part of the built in fail of Norton’s “social networking” campaign is that it isn’t very “social”. The videos barely stream on their site, it’s not surprising they didn’t mess with that crazy “embedding” thing all the kids are doing these days.

One last warning: These are pretty disturbing vids.

You’ve probably seen the nasty lady tossing the kitten in the wastebin…

And by now you may have seen the girl throwing the bucket of puppies in the river…

But are either of these acts any more cruel than how we treat animals at processing plants?

Before I get to the precious links that I know you really come here for, I’m going to preface things with an interesting experience that I had recently. Early in the morning the other day, I walked out of my house to head to what I knew was going to be a long meeting. I lit a cigarette, and as I rounded the corner was confronted by a woman who asked if I had another. I said “sorry” and kept walking. I live in a town that even in bad economic times has service jobs going wanting, which makes it easy for me to pompously justify to myself my reluctance to give things away to the 5-15 people that ask me for something each day. As I walked on, she muttered something incomprehensible, which I assumed was some Gypsy curse to punish me for being such a selfish bastard. About a half block further along, I remembered how my recently deceased mom ALWAYS gave things to strangers, and thought “Great. That lady was probably Jesus in disguise or something, and now I’m going to hell”. I resolved to try to be just a little bit nicer. Just for that day. So a few hours later, I walked out of the meeting, and headed to a nearby alley to indulge in my shameful nicotine addiction. Guess who was sitting at the entrance to the alley. I was on the phone as I passed her and she asked for a dollar. I ignored her because, well, I was ON THE PHONE dammit, so DON’T BE SO RUDE. When I headed back I wasn’t on the phone, and because she had been SO RUDE while I was on the phone, I ignored her as she asked for “just a few” dollars. I walked about 20 feet further and thought to myself “Damn. I planned to try to be just a little nicer, just for one day.” I walked back and asked her exactly what she needed, and she said “oh please mister, just five dollars would really help out.” I explained that I wasn’t likely to just give her five dollars, but would gladly go with her to the nearby store and buy her a bunch of food or other basics she might need, or even take her to a cafe or something for a bite to eat. To which she replied, almost sobbing, “can’t you please just help out with twenty dollars?” I’m not sure how we got from a cigarette that morning to 20 dollars just now, but I explained that there was no way I was just going to give her a bunch of money. I walked away, actually more angry than anything. I was reminded of this little set of interactions today as I read a fascinating article called Westerners vs. the World: We are the WEIRD ones. It explains how we WEIRD people (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) are in fact quite weird in our perception in many ways. It tells the story of how researchers used something called The Ultimatum Game, in which you are given money and asked to share it with someone else. You can offer that person any amount, and if he accepts the offer, you each get to keep your share. If he rejects your offer, you both walk away empty-handed. The results in various parts of the world were quite telling. Along the same lines, a Toronto Star reporter tried a little experiment recently to see how panhandlers would use free credit cards. The actual results were interesting, but not all that surprising. And frankly raises a small question of the ethics of “charity experiments” to create news content, when this sort of thing occurs naturally and probably gets about as much readership. This kind of experimenting is something that can be taken to incredible extremes, as in the case of doing A-B testing to see if a homeless guy can generate more revenue by refining his sign design. I’m not sure if that’s even a true story, but all of these stories reminded me that I’ve been struggling for a long time with how to deal with the people in my everyday life who ask for money on the streets and how I might do something positive that doesn’t involve simply giving away money. To that end, I already have a project in the works to teach computer skills to the disadvantaged, as I think computer illiteracy is a common obstacle to job-hunting confidence, even for homeless people. But I long for a simpler, practical solution to helping those that are struggling, and I think I’ve hit on a clever idea that may have some sense in it. I’d love input on the idea; I’m not sure if in reality it would be pointless or seem condescending. I explain it a little below.

The idea is that aside from people who have made hustling and panhandling a committed lifestyle choice, there are people who are really just down on their luck and floundering. And in tough times like this, there are plenty of us who are fairly broke ourselves, and can’t afford to pull twenty bucks out of our pockets daily to help these people that are worse off than ourselves. In many communities - especially the one that I live in - there are probably more than enough resources available to help out those in need. Once a person is living with the anxiety of simply eating that day, it becomes hard to think clearly about anything. I know. I’ve been there. I’m fairly confident that very few people who start reluctantly panhandling even know where all these resources are. So I’m going to try my own little “charity experiment’, and print up “dollars” that fit in my wallet, and start passing them out in lieu of cash. They could include all sorts of information, like where to get substance abuse treatment, shelter from physical abuse, temp work; the possibilities are endless. Above is a simple mockup of the idea. What do you think?

Here’s that A-B testing mentioned in the article:

	Teddy Bear Wireless Camera Yeah, they pitch it as a product for baby monitoring. But what a surprise for your cheating partner when they learn that little Teddy’s broadcast-ready.
	Pocket Pro Pen Style Camcorder In spite of its bulk, the nerd most likely to use this probably has adequate pocket-liner clutter to keep this device stealthy
	Covert Micro Pinhole Spy Camera Pretty creepy. Just make a pinhole in any object, place the camera, and you’re ready to watch your target’s banal existence 24/7.
	Microeyes Nanny Cam The perfect gizmo for the constantly expanding Nanny States of the world. What a cute name for a survaillance device!
	Secret Compartment US Quarter I envision a nationwide network of undercover buskers and bums transmitting important data via casual coin tosses.
	Mini Realtime Covert Vehicle Tracker You can engage in the same kind of invasive vehicle tracking as the government for just 300 bucks. Great for tracking pizza deliveries too.

You have to wonder who these vendors are really targeting. The image below was used by several of the spy camera makers listed above.