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 17 Here's a column from James Gill, this time in the Advocate. Gill, who has jumped ship from the Picayune, writes about the absurdity of dueling polls in this post. The numbers are so wildly different, it is obvious that both sides are "cooking the books," he writes. In particular, he looks at Sen. Mary Landrieu, and how her recent actions in DC have been received by those polled. Gill's acerbic, amusing prose is a welcome addition to a paper so conservative as to be occasionally lacking in personality.
MAY 17 Blogger Tom Aswell continues delivering bombshells about the state education department and Gov. Jindal's education "reform" efforts. In this post, he reports that students in the Shreveport area have been signed up for a charter school without their knowledge or consent. Most interesting to Aswell is how this Texas-based charter (with ties to GOP types) got the personal student information it has, if the students didn't give it.
MAY 17 This post by JR Ball in the Baton Rouge Business Report is an interesting tongue-in-cheek look at recent Baton Rouge economic development efforts. Among the items he examines is the idea that gaining a Costco makes BR a "world-class city." (Really? All you need is a different brand of Sam's? MK!) This effort, and other recent ones, are all built on the taxpayer's back, with tax zones, tax incentives and tax rebates, Ball writes.
MAY 17 Blogger CB Forgotston is critical of the legislature's reliance on a revenue-estimating committee's decision to include projected tax amnesty income in this year's forecast. That's a problem, CB posts, because the deadline for these people to pay their taxes is June 30, 2014. So when do you think these people who haven't paid taxes in years are going to pay their taxes? Surely not before June 30, and that means the money won't be there for this year's budget, he argues.
MAY 17 Here's an interesting blog out of California by a Hollywood writer, attorney and academic named Brian Alan Lane. He blogs about higher ed, and was a whistle-blower in a scandal over false credentials. In this post, he takes aim at LSU's new top dog, King Alexander. It's convoluted and a little confusing, but it sure makes Alexander a lot more interesting than he was yesterday.
MAY 17 Blogger Robert Mann writes about the LSU Board's refusal to allow Dr. Fred Cerise to testify before the legislature about Gov. Jindal's plan to close down all the state's charity hospitals and dump the poor on the private system. It's hard to imagine anyone more qualified than Cerise to testify about that, so why would anyone try to prevent him doing so? Mann thinks it is because the powers that be aren't interested in hearing any truth about the plan.
MAY 17 This post on the Louisiana Sinkhole Bugle, a blog that notes developments in the Bayou Corne and Jefferson Island salt domes, talks about a proposed expansion of the salt dome storage under Lake Peigneur in Iberia Parish. Residents are working against it for several reasons, including two biggies: the sinkhole disaster in Bayou Corne and the continuing, unexplained bubbling on the surface of the Lake.
MAY 17 NOLA police arrested more people Thursday accused of either being involved in the Mother's Day shooting or hiding the suspect afterward, this Gambit story reports. The NOLA police chief said he suspects the whole thing was gang-related and throws out a challenge to the gangs: he's got informants now, he says, and he knows a lot more than the gangs want him to know. The people who live in the neighborhoods terrorized by gangs are ready to talk, he says.
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