{"id":3061,"date":"2007-04-15T22:11:32","date_gmt":"2007-04-16T02:11:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/2007\/04\/15\/cell-phone-use-killing-missing-bee"},"modified":"2007-04-15T22:16:06","modified_gmt":"2007-04-16T02:16:06","slug":"cell-phone-use-killing-missing-bees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/2007\/04\/15\/cell-phone-use-killing-missing-bees\/","title":{"rendered":"Cell Phone Use Killing Missing Bees"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world’s harvests fail.<\/p>\n

They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world – the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon – which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe – was beginning to hit Britain as well.<\/p>\n

from the Independent <\/a>of London <\/p>\n

The neo-Luddites who rabidly oppose cell phone use (funded, no doubt, by the last of the state-monopoly land-line phone companies’ dinosaur death throes) have paraded a variety of flimsy, pseudo-scientific scenarios in front of a gullible public: cell phones are causing an epidemic of auto accidents; cell phones are causing brain cancer; cell phones are contributing to the spread of pre-teen promiscuity by facilitating “hook-ups”; cell phones are a hazard to public safety and national security.<\/em><\/p>\n

Now this nefarious cabal has raised the ante. They are claiming that cell phone use by bees is threatening the survival of human civilization by endangering agriculture.\u00a0 Without our trusty bees to pollinate plants, trees and flowers, they aver, human agriculture would collapse.\u00a0 Men and women would have to revert to pre-agricultural survival patterns, migrating behind packs of wild dogs and gathering roots, nuts and berries.\u00a0 What tommyrot!<\/em><\/p>\n

Obviously, the answer is to outlaw cell phone use by bees in flight.\u00a0 Worker bees especially should be prohibited from using cell phones while on the clock.\u00a0 Some would argue that the government should ban all sales of cell phones to bees, period. But please, enough with the doomsday scare tactics.<\/em> \n <\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world’s harvests fail. They are putting forward the theory that radiation … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1118,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1118"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3061\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}