[ExI] Tiny Aircraft ...

[spike]

  _____  

From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Olga Bourlin
Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2008 8:02 PM
To: ExI chat list
Subject: [ExI] Tiny Aircraft ...


... and Spike's beloved bees are in the news:
 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1541106/Bumble-bee-paradox-solved.html
 
Olga

 
Thanks Olga, very cool.  I am happy to report that my own bees appear to be
making a comeback.  I joined in the great sunflower project in which one
grows a specific strain of sunflower as a benchmark, then observes the bees
that come to it.
 
http://www.greatsunflower.org/
 
They sent a packet containing hundreds of sunflower seeds, which was itself
quite the surprise.  I learned that the native American sunflower seed is a
tiny thing, just a spec, so that 100 of them can easily fit on a postage
stamp without touching.  It looks like the one in the lower right in this
photo, actually smaller than that one:
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunflower_seed
 
In any case, apparently there was some problem with that batch for only two
of the hundreds eventually germinated, and one of those perished, but now I
have one good calibrated sunflower.  Perhaps the sunflowers were
insufficiently pollinated in 2007 for lack of bees.
 
While I was on vacation, a neighbor left a message that a swarm of bees had
taken up residence in their back yard, and invited me to come take them
away.  I have a reputation in my neighborhood as one who loves animals, as
long as it has at least six legs.  By the time I returned, unfortunately,
the neighbor had taken remedial action in the form of a can of Raid.
 
So life is good: the bees are recovering, the possibility of an eminent new
Mersenne prime is titillating my senses, Venus is back in the evening sky
along with Mercury, the scientists have discovered that the bumblebee really
can fly, and this has actually been a very good bug year in spite of the
still low bee population, and you and I lived to see the twenty first
century.  How can we be so lucky?
 
spike
 
{8-]
 
 
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