Just Bee-cause

"Bees" have always been a topic of conversation equally among the Generalists. The Generalist here, Aristocrates here, and Puff here. (By the way, I can't believe I didn't think about my post after reading Puff's.)

Anyway, today is a big day. The Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee is today and even though preparing for the State Spelling Bee was one of the worst experiences I've ever had (yea whatever, clown me later), this event always manages to entertain. I mean generally you have kids who genuinely look uncomfortable in their own skin, kids who do dead-on Napoleon Dynamite impressions that leave the commentators in the land of the lost, and of course, you have one of my all-time favorite clips when Askhay Buddiga collapsed on stage, only to immediately get up and bang out the word. (His hands never come out of his pockets when he's falling; no one runs to his aid and helps him up; the other kids look completely unfazed; and like a robot he gets up and spells the word as if nothing happened. I love it.)



I'll watch when I get home (I've got Connor winning) but I've been following the hilarious live blog and the biggest news is that Samir Patel - the Peyton Manning of the Spelling Bee before Peyton won the Super Bowl - went down in the 5th round. That's like when the Colts lost at home to the Steelers two years ago. But wait...he's challenging the pronunciations of the word "clevis." It's the equivalent of a questionable call deciding a game. The problem for my guy Samir is that unlike Peyton, he can't come back next year. Ooooh, the drama!

(Wikipedia update: I swear Samir's fate was posted on his Wikipedia page in what seemed like real-time.)

Bee Keeping

Interesting Story: About 8 years ago I was signing up for some music forum online and I needed a login name. I wanted something random and not related to my actual name. In about a minute I came up with i2012. Why/How? I have no idea. It just occurred to me, and I like it to this day.

Later I started wondering why such a "random" number would ever occur to a person. Eventually I became convinced that "i" was simply I, and 2012 was a year. Other than being the year in which I should turn 30, I felt like something significant would happen to me in that year... no idea what.

Then came word from Aristocrates that the Mayan calendar is predicting that 2012 would bring the end of the world as we know it. Upon hearing something like that one can't help but wonder how exactly it'll be that the world will end. ... Which brings me to the title of this post.

Supposedly, Albert Einstein once said that if all the bees disappeared from the earth, man would have "only four years of life left," the logic being no bees = no pollination, no pollination = no crops, no crops = no animals, no crops and no animals = no people. And well, it seems the bees are disappearing. Give Einstein's prediction an extra year since "all" the bees haven't disappeared, and we're looking at massive crop shortage that produces worldwide starvation by about 2012.

So how's this for coincidence: Roughly 8 years ago I came up with a random number that I was convinced had some extraordinary significance, only to find out that it happens to coincide with both ancient and modern forecasts for the end of the world.

Nice, huh?

Where's the Buzz?

An excerpt from Time (July 31, 2006 issue date):

"Where's the Buzz?"

Bees may be the summer picnicker's bane, but they're a crucial part of many ecosystems - and their role in pollinating crops makes them important to the economy as well. That's why scientists are alarmed by a new study in the journal Science. Over the past 26 years, say European researches, the diversity of species in British and Dutch wild bees - and the wildflowers they favor - has plummeted. That's not to say there are fewer bees (some species are thriving) but there are fewer varieties, and that is not good news. An ecosystem with fewer species is like a baseball team with only a couple of good pitchers: there isn't much to fall back on if one goes out of commission. One small positive note is that the disappearing species are mostly picky bees that pollinate just a few plants. The survivors tend to be the versatile generalists - those that pollinate a variety.

Nobody is sure whether the simultaneous drop in wildflower diversity is the cause or the effect of the bee decline. But scientists think the overall phenomenon may be linked mainly to loss of habitat for both plants and bees as countryside is plowed over for development - yet another price nature is payin for human civilization.

- By Michael D. Lemonick

Akeelah and the Bee

So I was watching Akeelah and the Bee last weekend, and I was thinking about how hot the movie was. First of all, there is only one other movie I know of where a smart young black person is central to the plot (the other is finding forrester). However, I would love to be proven wrong about this.

The movie is powerful for a number of reasons, and almost singlehandedly made me re-envision the way I had thought about the concept of potential. Its a feel good movie, and I damn sure needed to feel good when I saw it. Thanks akeelah.