Good Days to Be a Plant...For Now
If I’m reincarnated as vegetable matter, I’d like to come back as a flowering tree in Seattle at this time of year.
These last few days must be some sort of crazy Mother’s Day brunch experience for plant life: periods of rain showers followed by bright sunshine followed by more rain all over again.
You can practically see photosynthesis in action, plants gorging themselves on water and sunlight.
Yesterday, for instance, it poured intermittently all morning; riding my bike out to school, I changed in and out of my rain gear three or four times. Typically, of course, as soon as I got all plasticed-up, the rain would stop and just as I took it all off, the showers would begin again. As frustrating and slow it was for me, I consoled myself with the bursting beauty of the flowers and leaves all around.
All this weather might be sort of a pain for me, but the flowers, at least, we having a rocking good time.
At school, though, I read this chilling article about how honeybees are dying out in record numbers and that if this keeps up, it might spell the end for commercial production of about a third of the current human diet.
Scientists haven’t figured out what’s causing the die-off yet, but my crazy conjecture is, not surprisingly, to wonder whether it’s the fault of cell phone use.
What if it turns out that the signals upon which cell phone calls are sent are somehow damaging the delicate communication signals upon which honeybees rely? Would people be willing to stop calling each other wirelessly in order to save the food supply?
Getting people to refrain from using their own phones would present a classic collective action problem; even though everyone could see that it would be better if no one called, everyone individually would have incentive to do so.
As bad as that would be, what if what’s killing the bees is blogging?
These last few days must be some sort of crazy Mother’s Day brunch experience for plant life: periods of rain showers followed by bright sunshine followed by more rain all over again.
You can practically see photosynthesis in action, plants gorging themselves on water and sunlight.
Yesterday, for instance, it poured intermittently all morning; riding my bike out to school, I changed in and out of my rain gear three or four times. Typically, of course, as soon as I got all plasticed-up, the rain would stop and just as I took it all off, the showers would begin again. As frustrating and slow it was for me, I consoled myself with the bursting beauty of the flowers and leaves all around.
All this weather might be sort of a pain for me, but the flowers, at least, we having a rocking good time.
At school, though, I read this chilling article about how honeybees are dying out in record numbers and that if this keeps up, it might spell the end for commercial production of about a third of the current human diet.
Scientists haven’t figured out what’s causing the die-off yet, but my crazy conjecture is, not surprisingly, to wonder whether it’s the fault of cell phone use.
What if it turns out that the signals upon which cell phone calls are sent are somehow damaging the delicate communication signals upon which honeybees rely? Would people be willing to stop calling each other wirelessly in order to save the food supply?
Getting people to refrain from using their own phones would present a classic collective action problem; even though everyone could see that it would be better if no one called, everyone individually would have incentive to do so.
As bad as that would be, what if what’s killing the bees is blogging?
posted by Professor Dave at 9:49 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home