This footage is amazing. It’s like an insect horror movie, and should be accompanied with Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries, or Rachmaninoff’s Flight of the Bumblebee to be truly epic.
Via Kottke and the entire internet.
Tag: bees
Thorney hijinks
These David Thorne specials made me laugh. He’s the spider drawing guy…
In this one he takes on a school chaplain (Thorne is an atheist) who sent out a parental permission form for a dramatic Easter presentation from the local uniting church with the “yes” box already ticked. Thorne recounts his own experience in a church play.
I was actually in a Bible based play once and played the role of ‘Annoyed about having to do this.’ My scene involved offering a potplant, as nobody knew what Myrrh was, to a plastic baby Jesus then standing between ‘I forgot my costume so am wearing the teachers poncho’ and ‘I don’t feel very well’. Highlights of the play included a nervous donkey with diarrhoea causing ‘I don’t feel very well’ to vomit onto the back of Mary’s head, and the lighting system, designed to provide a halo effect around the manger, overheating and setting it alight. The teacher, later criticised for dousing an electrical fire with a bucket of water and endangering the lives of children, left the building in tears and the audience in silence. We only saw her again briefly when she came to the school to collect her poncho.
In this one he tenders his resignation after his boss asks him to produce a speech about graphic design for a school. There’s a language warning on both articles. Here’s a bit of a crash course in graphic design though…
And that is what graphic design and branding is about; when the client asks you to fit eighteen pages of text onto a single sided A4 flyer and increase the type size to twelve point, simply find your special place and dance. It doesn’t matter if there is no music; create the rhythm by clapping, humming or building a musical instrument using tightly drawn string and a cardboard box. A stick with bottle tops nailed to it does not count as a musical instrument. Nobody wants to hear that. I usually tap out No Sleep Till Brooklyn by the Beastie Boys with spoons but it comes down to personal preference and implement availability.
In this one he demonstrates that bees are attracted to yellow while not test driving a new motorbike that he doesn’t want. And he, I believe, fooled some people into thinking that McDonalds purposefully leave items out of drive through bags…
I have been researching bees on the internet for the last four hours at work. When I type “Do bees like yellow” into google, it states that there are 2,960,000 results. It will take me a while to look at that many pages so I doubt I will make it in there today.
One of the pages states that Qantas once had a yellow kangaroo as their logo but when it was painted on the tail fin it attracted nests of bees so the logo was changed to red in the mid fifties. This would seem to support the argument that bees are indeed attracted to yellow and contradicts what you have told me. Admittedly though, another page states that bees are technically unable to fly due to their wings being too small for their body weight but I have seen them doing it so this can’t be true – somebody should check the internet and make sure everything on there is correct.
Regardless, I do not think having to dodge bees in addition to the already present dangers of learning to ride a motorbike for the first time would be very safe. Once when I was a passenger in a yellow taxi, a bee flew in and I screamed causing the driver to swerve and hit a wheelie bin. I will continue my research and confirm that this would not be a factor before I arrange the test ride.
Mind your own beeswax
Tim suggested I write about a link between candles and climate change. I can do better than that.
Every year, at around this time, climate change hippies call on us to cut down on carbon consumption by switching off our lights. Unfortunately, this is largely counter productive. As it encourages the use of candles. Everybody knows candles are only to be used for the following reasons:
a) Electrical emergencies
b) birthday cakes
c) romantic dinners
d) to light fuses of things you’re going to blow up
e) religious ceremonies if you’re a Catholic or High Anglican.
Any other reason, say aesthetics, or salving your crushed eco-conscience is right out. Earth Hour is a PR stunt. It doesn’t actually do anything. I don’t know Jennifer Mahoney – I don’t know what her qualifications are. But she’s a primary source whose findings match nicely with the objectives of this post – so I’ll share these quotes from her less than objective site and a post on earth hour.
“[the first] Earth Hour was held during a time of peak electrical load, so any electricity generation displaced would be peak load, probably running on natural gas. Such generation produces about 500 grams of CO2 for every kilowatt-hour.”
Whoops.
“So turning a 100 watt light bulb off for an hour saves 50 grams of CO2, or 13 grams of carbon. A candle is mostly carbon by weight, and candle wax is only moderately less dense than water at room temperature. This means that burning just 5 cm of a typical 2 cm diameter candle will produce more CO2 than running the 100 watt light bulb for an hour. If the light that was turned off is fluorescent, then even less candle can be burned if there’s to be a net reduction in CO2.”
Double whoops. Candles are not only moderately effeminate – they’re also bad for the environment.
I’ve written a little about Colony Collapse Disorder and the impending doom of the US Ice Cream industry.
Climate Change is killing bees. All over the world Queen bees are left to their own devices. They can’t save themselves. The finely balanced eco-system is on the brink of decay. Seriously.
Colony Collapse Disorder could well be climate change’s most significant impact. You think the global financial crisis that was caused by the sub prime mortgage collapse is a bad thing? That collapse has nothing on colony collapse. Do you have any idea the staggering number of US products made with honey as an ingredient? Millions. Literally. Ok, I made that up. But there’d be a lot. Whole product lines will have to close down. Hokey Pokey Ice-cream… popular breakfast cereals… not to mention honey jumbles… this is a big deal.
But you know what else is under threat. We’ve covered the economy, the world’s bee population, the breakfasts of champions… but wait, there’s more. Candles. Genuine beeswax candles will be a thing of the past. And WE’RE BURNING THEM. Well not me. I wouldn’t (except for the aforementioned acceptable reasons). I’m straight. I’m not a candle kind of guy. But YOU are burning them. You know who you are. And not only are you killing the environment – you’re adding to the relative scarcity of wax products and driving up prices.
If bees die out wax will become a much sought after commodity. Prices will skyrocket. How then will Maddam Tussauds produce their ecclectic range of affordable wax based entertainment? You are burning the chances of future British Royals to bee(sic) immortalised in wax. What would Kate Middleton say? Other than “stop burning those candles”. Heathen.
So what should we be doing with candles you ask? Since we can only light them on particular occasions for specific reasons. Good question. Bank them. Wait for the stupidity of others to create a candle currency – a trade in what will soon be earth’s most valuable commodity. Victoria Beckham will thank you when Maddam Tussauds are able to incorporate her new hair extensions into her waxy self.
Wax banks could be hives of activity. Alternatively you could put your candles in a cupboard and mind your own beeswax. Still you don’t want to be court in a bee sting – or in some honey pot of wax corruption so perhaps it’s just best for you to steer clear of candles altogether. Leave them to misguided hippies and go about your daily business.