Yet another story on the crisis of dying honeybees and yet again, no mention of the fact that honeybees are not the only pollinators out there. The fact that honeybees are transported around the country to perform their important pollination duties is mentioned as an interesting fact but not analyzed at all. This is typical of how the media has covered this story and is especially disappointing coming from Salon.

It is important to remember that the honeybees used in the United States are European in origin--in fact they are non-native domesticated agricultural livestock. This does not make them evil, but it should put the story of their use and abuse into perspective.

Does anyone stop to wonder why we need to use mobile hives of domesticated insects to pollinate our food crops when this continent has hundreds of native insects capable of pollination? In fact, this crisis is brought on by the monocultural practices of industrial agriculture.

Vast fields (or forests) of a single species cover acres upon acres. The plants bloom for perhaps one or two weeks a year. Any possible habitat for local insects (shrubs, brush piles, etc.) are eliminated. Poisons are spread all around to complete the job. Few native pollinators can survive in such a landscape. And so we have to bring in the honeybees. It does not have to be this way.

I'm not sure if Zonbu is a good deal or not. But Farhad kind of cracks on the Open Office word processor. Perhaps the version that ships with Zonbu is stripped down, but the full version of Open Office I use is 100% ready for all uses. Despite Farhad's contention that you "wouldn't want to write a book" using Open Office, I have, in fact, already done so, and am working on my second. The experience has been problem free.

The support for master documents in Open Office is excellent, allowing you to save each chapter as a separate document instead of mushing the entire thing into a single massive document. This is pretty easy to do.

The efficiency of contemporary appliances compared to the same appliances of 15 to 30 years ago is simply amazing. The government regulations that have lead to this situation are probably the most outstandingly successful government regulations of all time.

Purist libertarians might claim that the efficiency we see today would have happened anyway or might have gone even further without the government making things "stupider." I suppose the oil and automobile companies would have worked together to phase out lead, and the A/C and aerosol manufacturers would have phased out CFCs too thanks to the invisible hand of the market. But I'm glad I didn't have to hold my breath.

While every single new breed of appliances might not always be perfect, on the whole, the system has worked exceedingly well and society (rich, poor, and in between) has benefited enormously.

I'm with those who are kind of puzzled about Glen's apparent water-carrying for Ron Paul. Yes, I carefully read all the caveats, but still, there is something kind of specific about this particular defense of a politician from unfair media attacks.

Perhaps Glen is just trying to play fair. He's defended Edwards and Gore from this kind of media labeling. Has he defended HRC? I don't recall, but this post definitely makes Glen seem pretty anti-HRC.

I think those calling for a little balance in post about Paul from a guy who claims not to actually support him are correct. Where do you disagree with Paul, Glen? Do you like his ideas about the gold standard and New World Order conspiracies?

I find this Ron Paul surge particularly disturbing because a family member, someone I always considered a strong liberal, is a strong Paul backer, and I really wonder if he's thought this through, and if any of Paul's liberal supporters have. Sure, he's right about the war, but he's wrong about everything else.

People praise Ron Paul for his consistency and integrity, but where others see consistency I see slavish adherence to an ideology--damn the consequences! I will take a practical politician who looks at the expected results of policies over one who thinks a single ideology is the solution to every problem any day.

Waaaay back in the thread, some posted the following:

Paul has also said political reality would prevent any of his more ideological views on SS and Medicare from happening.

This may, in fact, be the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard a politician say. Imagine a convicted murder asking the parole board to set him free. "Sure, I'd like to kill someone else, but surely some good person out there will stop me."

This issue was addressed in a pretty funny manner on Futurama, and I'm surprised no one's brought this up yet.

They showed a spoof educational film called "I Dated a Robot" which argued (accurately) that all of civilization was just an effort by people to impress the opposite sex. Once people start dating robots, there will no longer be a need to do anything else but, well, have sex with robots. Civilization will crumble.

This You Tube video includes clips:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PYA6M-rZMw

I've been a NetFlix customer for going on 4 years. In that time I've had a total of 2 disks delivered in an unwatchable state. I wonder what the deal is with others who've had so many problems.

Voice of Reason, why do you think your breakage rate was 75% when NetFlix rate is much lower? Does the USPS handle their mailers differently from how they handled yours?