Pouring a little cold water on the conspiratorial fire recently doused with the fuel of a few thousand dead birds and fish, the Associated Press is reporting today that mass die-offs of animals occur with regularity and, although some elude ready scientific understanding, are virtually always unrelated and attributable to disease or pollution. The sun will not turn black as sackcloth nor the moon red as blood.
Indeed, several thousand blackbirds fell from the sky in Arkansas on New Year’s Eve, a few hundred died near Baton Rouge on the heels of that and, most recently, mass bird deaths were reported from Kentucky and Sweden. And let’s not forget the 2 million fish recently found bobbing in Chesapeake Bay, the 40,000 belly-up crabs in Britain or the 150 tons of dead red tilapia in Vietnam.
As the media glom onto these events and conspiracy theorists connect the dots — and it’s 2012 no less, the year the Maya, who couldn’t outlive their own calendar, predicted the world would end — talk of chemtrails, secret military operations, UFOs and even an angry God is amplified.
But, scientists say, it’s just nature — bacteria, viruses and other ailments easily transmitted among organisms that live in both close quarter and large numbers — or man-made pollution squeezing the ghosts from these delicate creatures:
In the past eight months, the [United States Geological Survey’s National Wildlife Health Center in Wisconsin] has logged 95 mass wildlife die-offs in North America and that’s probably a dramatic undercount... The list includes some 900 turkey vultures that seemed to drown and starve in the Florida Keys, 4,300 ducks killed by parasites in Minnesota, 1,500 salamanders done in by a virus in Idaho, 2,000 bats that died of rabies in Texas, and the still mysterious death of 2,750 sea birds in California.
On average, 163 such events are reported to the federal government each year, according to USGS records. And there have been much larger die-offs than the 3,000 blackbirds in Arkansas. Twice in the summer of 1996, more than 100,000 ducks died of botulism in Canada.
The more likely explanation for the perceived rash of die-offs is simple — an application of Occam’s Razor, if you will: electronic media, especially the Internet and TV, raise awareness of these events. Recall the summer of 2001 and the terrifying rash of sharks attacking swimmers. The story dominated the news for weeks. Then, on Sept. 11, terrorists attacked America and the shark attacks abruptly ended.
Read the full AP story here.
MAY 21 Gambit columnist Clancy DuBos writes about the Mother's Day shooting, and how the stages of shock and blame and healing mirror those traveled by the same city following Hurricane Katrina. The city will recover, just as it did following the storm, by reaching out to help the people injured most seriously by the event, DuBos writes. It's how we heal, he says.
MAY 21 Here's a post on the Advocate (but buried on a subpage, not on the front) that reports something Louisiana Voice reported some time ago: a top DOE official lives in Los Angeles and "commutes" to Baton Rouge. The positioning of the story caused a stir on Facebook Monday, with several posters asking if the Advocate was covering someone's hiney. Sentell's stories on DOE are notoriously soft, and this one is no different: don't expect any hard questions in here.
MAY 21 Here's another post from blogger Tom Aswell about the "course choice" program. He's already reported on kids being signed up without their consent or knowledge, and has more here: For example, he tells of a six-year-old who was signed up for high school Latin. He also digs a little deeper into the sister companies of the main one operating in Louisiana; all of them seem to have complaints against them. Stinky.
MAY 21 Given the 80 percent cut in higher ed funding since he's been in office, it's clear Gov. Jindal would rather give tax cuts to out of state companies than have a functioning system, blogger Dayne Sherman argues in this post. The cuts have been such a disaster, Sherman says, that it will take 30 years to fix what's been broken. He says he believes the aim is to shut down most of the schools before Jindal leaves in 2016.
MAY 21 Blogger CB Forgotston says there are too many elections in Louisiana, and they're costing us too much money. The proof is in the pudding: turnout for most of these nonsensical pollings gets worse and worse, CB opines, even as millions of dollars that could be spent on health care or higher ed go down the tubes. The legislature must take action to stem the tide of pointless elections, he says.
MAY 21 Here's an interesting investigative piece by WVUE on the retirement benefits of some Jefferson Parish public employees. According to the story, the taxpayers are paying 100 percent of the retirement contributions of employees who started work prior to a certain date in April 1986 -- and have done for more than 30 years. It costs the parish millions annually, and might not be legal, the story reports.
MAY 21 This post on Bayou Buzz provides insight from Louisiana's intrepid pollster, Bernie Pinsonat, on the winners and losers from this year's legislative session. But to hear Bernie tell it, there's almost nuttin but losers: Jindal, the Republican party, the Fiscal Hawks all get big goose eggs in his win column.
MAY 20 This post on The Lens takes a look at a huge (either $500K or $250K) bill that one NOLA charter now has for school lunches. The RSD says the charter group didn't fill out the proper paperwork for federal reimbursement, but the story details how the RSD didn't ensure the people running the charter had the proper training, despite requests from hapless charter employees trying to fill out forms. Either way, somebody's asleep at the wheel.
Most Read
in case you missed it
Subscribe to this comment's feed
