Bird food. Pretty birds.
Bat food. Why do you hate bats?
They're pretty important to a lot of ecosystems, and eradicating them would be likely to have major unintended consequences. Plus there's the whole issue of the other effects of whatever you use to eradicate them (e.g., DDT).
Insufficient commitment to authoritarian methods?
If you think about it, we're the mosquitoes.
Lack of will, lack of fitness, lack of integrity. Grains. Soy. Theft of intellectual property. The Boston Celtics and San Francisco Giants. These are the friends of the mosquito, and to crush the mosquito you must crush its allies.
Mosquitoes take from the 1% megafauna hogging all the protein (e.g. moose) and redistribute it to the 99% in the rest of the ecosystem (e.g insects, spiders, frogs, birds, and bats).
Male mosquitoes are also significant pollinators, you racist.
Also, the mosquito has no interest in making you itch. Blame that on your own immune system. Hate the game, not the player.
9: I didn't say you weren't charismatic.
Anyway, regarding the question "Why not just kill all the mosquitoes in the world?", it's not been for lack of trying. Eradicating species is actually pretty difficult, generally, and the smaller the species the harder it tends to be.
Mammoths spread diphtheria? Solved!
The article linked in 3 reads almost like a satire, perfectly illustrating all that is wrong with Gladwell's kneejerk contrarianism.
Mosquitos are far less annoying and dangerous than humans, Stanley. Don't push me into making a choice.
Wasn't that kind of considered a possible side benefit of widespread DDT use? Which didn't turn out so hot.
M/tch and I have this conversation a lot.
Me: Mosquitoes are evil and give everyone malaria and make me itch. Kill 'em all!
M/tch: Interdependent ecosystem, mosquitoes play their part, protein, pollen, blah, blah.
Me: Oh, the poor fuzzy baby seal with the big round eyes is about to be slaughtered by the orca.
M/tch: Orcas gotta eat.
Me: I don't want to hurt the poor little mouse that's living in our house. We'll get one of those nice humane traps and release it in a meadow.
M/tch: Where it will starve to death.
Also, the mosquito has no interest in making you itch. Blame that on your own immune system. Hate the game, not the player.
Spoken like a man who can walk through a swarm of moquitoes without a bite while I'm covered with welts and scratching my skin raw.
Today I watched a video of chimpanzees hunting monkeys. It was like 17 in many respects.
The article linked in 3 reads almost like a satire, perfectly illustrating all that is wrong with Gladwell's kneejerk contrarianism.
It is an interesting summary of the history and the issues involved, although Gladwell's editorializing throughout it is admittedly annoying.
See, now that just hurts my feelings.
22 to 20. I feel just fine about anyone's hunting Gladwell.
I don't understand 20. 21 is fair. And for the record, I'm not against killing mosquitoes, and do so frequently. I just don't think they're evil or should be eradicated from the face of the earth, especially not with broad spectrum insecticides. I would be much more okay with eradicating the malaria parasite, given a focused way to do so.
Er, it was like 17 in terms of the reactions of the people watching it with me. What? That was perfectly clear in my head.
Er, it was like 17 in terms of the reactions of the people watching it with me.
Yes, but which side did you take?
27: Well, he didn't mention any involvement of killer robots, so I for one am in the dark.
28: I dunno, how sure are we that those chimps weren't secretly robots?
Chimps gotta eat. The monkeys were cute, though, and it's hard not to empathize with a primate getting mauled by a chimp, what with the news lately.
I admit I may not have been keeping up with the news that much lately, but has there really been an unusual number of chimp-maulings?
Oh, endless. Thousands. Another day, another pile of discarded faces and genitals from mauling victims.
Huh. The things you learn around here.
Chimps are the worst. Stay away!
Fish gotta swim. And dinosaurs gotta soar.
As a child out backpacking in the Rockies I once tried my best to eradicate all mosquitoes. I spent an hour or two one evening letting them into the tent (they were coming in clouds), killing them against the tent walls, and counting. I can't remember how many hundreds I got. To my great disappointment it didn't seem to reduce the number outside. My efforts did, however, produce a very nice reaction from my parents when they got around to locking inside the tent.
Are you all trying to tell me that you were unaware that we're living on a mosquito reserve?
43: That reminds me: one time while walking us through the woods in Olympic National Park, the Park Ranger, noticing everyone swatting at the huge mosquitoes, said he had to inform us that it is illegal to kill wildlife in a National Park. However, he said we should also know that it is illegal to feed wildlife in a National Park . . . .
||German court rules that it is perfectly legal for cops to stop people based purely on their skin color. But only on routes known to be used by illegal immigrants to enter Germany, or travel through Germany, or areas where illegal immigrants are known to live.>|
Going to get knocked down by either the constitutional court or the ECtHR, surely?
Also, a friend of mine at uni did work on mosquito eating spiders as part of disease eradication.
What you do is breed and release genetically modified mosquitos that are resistant to the life stage of the malaria parasite that is dependent on mosquitos. All the ecosystem goodness, no malarial badness.
Is it true that if a mosquito bites you and you squeeze around where it is so it can't withdraw, that it will keep taking blood until it explodes? (Side benefit- doing so squeezes the venom back into the mosquito so the bite doesn't even itch after the explosion.)
||
So, two nights in a row I fry vegetables up with some sort of starch (first potatoes, then rice). Each night I fry the same amount of food, and each time I put in one chili pepper. The peppers are the same size, variety, freshness, etc. No other seriously spicy ingredients are used. What accounts for one meal being dramatically more spicy than the other?
|>
Variation within chili peppers.
Possibly you got more of the seeds and pith in one time than the other? That's where a lot of the heat is. But mostly what Heebie said.
48: Differential spicyficatory potentiation of the starches.
48: I suspect sabotage. Were you watching the frying pan the whole time?
To the OP: people are already trying this, with somewhat qualified success. There are arguments on both sides as to its advisability.
Perhaps the food accidentally flung itself into the fire.
I suspect sabotage.
By rogue mosquito agents, who wanted to liven up their typical meal of helpy-chalk platelets.
45 is especially galling when I remember that this kind of thing goes on routinely and no one cares.
Is it true that if a mosquito bites you and you squeeze around where it is so it can't withdraw, that it will keep taking blood until it explodes?
I heard that you pull the skin tight rather than squeezing. But they do drink via capillary action and if they can't withdraw will indeed rupture. Pretty inefficient dispatch method, though.
What you do is breed and release genetically modified mosquitos that are resistant to the life stage of the malaria parasite that is dependent on mosquitos don't bite people.
48: If the measurement is different, then it is likely that either the measured or the measurer is different.
If the measured is substantively the same, then it is likely to be the measurer that has changed.
Is it true that if a mosquito bites you and you squeeze around where it is so it can't withdraw, that it will keep taking blood until it explodes?
I've successfully done this.
Mess and gross, but sweet revenge, yes?
I killed a mosquito full of blood recently. Not only was it really gross, I was also worried it was a bed bug until I took a close look at the bloody mess.
Is it true that if a mosquito bites you and you squeeze around where it is so it can't withdraw, that it will keep taking blood until it explodes?
I've successfully done this.
Query "successfully".
Differential spicyficatory potentiation of the starches.
This was actually the explanation I was leaning toward. The potatoes sucked up more of the flavor and distributed it evenly.
Anybody have firm opinions on how to reduce one's attractiveness to mosquitoes?
My theories include: wear less flowery perfume and stay the fuck inside.
Others?
This summer in NYC is probably going to be just malarial, and I tend to be on the Sir Kraab end of the reactive spectrum. It's either become less succulent to the bugs or become a Benedryl zombie.
Anybody have firm opinions on how to reduce one's attractiveness to mosquitoes?
Nets.
how to reduce one's attractiveness to mosquitoes
Embalming fluid.
I have a belief that bananas attract them, so don't eat bananas. If I'm right.
If bananas do attract them, you could carry a bunch on your person to fling away from you to distract them.
Why not just kill all the mosquitoes in the world?
Let me be the first to suggest, "What could possibly go wrong?"
Also spoken like someone who has never been in the north woods/taiga in early summer.
Also spoken like someone who has never been in the north woods/taiga in early summer.
Boy, I can't wait!
77: The one place we went was so bad that it prompted us to each get something like this, which we dubbed Mr. Mosquito Heads.
77. Taking up smoking helps. Not much else does.
78: Holy fucking shit is all I can say to that. Seriously, with the buzzing coming from everywhere and little chance of escape, it's like being in a horror movie. Sometimes the caribou will stand on a little patch of snow to try to get some relief until they just run around going nuts, with bare patches all over their skin from the constant scratching. I vaguely recall that some of Mackenzie's men went a little crazy because of them.
Oops, I meant 77. Anyway, one the plus side, it seems that a person can develop some immunity after a miserable while.
Mosquitos are attracted to heat and carbon dioxide, so ...
Garlic, B12, and citronella are all rumored to have mosquito-repelling effects, but they've never done anything for me. I've tried various "natural" and "organic" bug sprays, but it turns out there's just no substitute for Deet. It stinks, but it seems to be less toxic than I assumed, per the Environmental Working Group.
And, while I don't care much for walking around in a net, I do try to keep a lightweight long-sleeved shirt with me if there's a chance I'll be going out into Nature.
a lightweight long-sleeved shirt
This works for you? I tend to get bitten through my clothing.
When my mom and sister come to visit me in July we're planning to camp at Wonder Lake, which is pretty notorious for mosquitoes. We probably really will wear nets.
The trick is you have to periodically tug on your shirt, irreparably bending all their noses.
It works when there aren't swarms of them. I still get bitten on every other piece of exposed skin, though. A shirt at least cuts down the available surface area.
Mosquitoes hate me. As do sand flies. All around me can be bitten to the point of looking like plague victims and I'll have the stray bite or two. Deer flies, however, love only me.
86: That sounds so unpleasant. How about a nice RV park instead?
You could all just move to Southern California, where Mosquitos aren't a problem.
86. 90: It's usually only net-head bad during the evening or early morning (unless there is a good breeze). We were at Wonder Lake during the day in late June and it was not noticeably, but I do think it was a breezy day.
My new theory is that the difference between people who seemingly get bitten a lot and those who don't is just allergic response. That is, that everyone gets bitten roughly the same amount, but some are more allergic than others and so have a bigger reaction.
I have a belief that bananas attract them, so don't eat bananas.
Time flies prefer an arrow.
67 -- They like my wife a whole lot more than they like me. Enough so that if I stay within a few yards of her, they don't bother biting me. Advice: choose partner carefully.
94: I saw that joke for the first time when I was maybe ten or eleven, and completely failed to understand it (that it, I thought it was just absurd: "Fruit flies the same way a banana flies") A year or two later, in the middle of social studies class, it drifted through my mind for no reason and I got it, and started giggling helplessly. Mr. Steinfink was not amused.
Our trio of pests still invade and obstruct us on all occasions, these are the Musquetoes eye knats and prickley pears, equal to any three curses that ever poor Egypt laiboured under, except the Mahometant yoke.
You could all just move to Southern California, where Mosquitos aren't a problem.
Smog scares 'em off?
||
"Not caring about their feelings makes you self-fish."
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I'm reminded of how surprisingly bad the mosquitoes were when I lived in Madrid in August. Being Madrid in August, it was really hot, so sleeping with the window open was a necessity. And yet, the open windows let in the evil bloodsucking Spanish mosquito devil creatures.
Eventually, I settled into a comfortable routine of reading in a nice, cool bath before bed, and then getting into bed completely (head and all) underneath the sheet. This maneuver generally allowed for 2-3 hours of sleep before I was re-awakened by either the mosquitoes (who discovered some exposed patch of skin that had slipped out from the sheet) or the oppressive heat (leading to cool bath #2).
In conclusion, don't go to central Spain in August.
I keep humming "I don't give a damn about my rad (e)radication..." which then reminds me pleasantly of Freaks and Geeks.
: I saw that joke for the first time when I was maybe ten or eleven, and completely failed to understand it
I still don't get it.
The joke is "Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana."
If you're me when I first saw it, you read it as "Time flies the same way an arrow flies. Fruit flies the same way a banana flies." Me two years later saw the ambiguity between that reading and "Time flies the same way an arrow flies. Fruit-eating-insects enjoy a banana."
Two summers ago, I went from central Brooklyn to the Yukon, expecting to get eaten alive by mosquitoes. I was really astonished to realize that the mosquitoes, while annoying and awful in the YT, were much more virulent in Brooklyn. Damn my neighbors and their "water feature"!
Last summer in Brooklyn wasn't so bad, but then we had had a vicious winter.
I saw an illustration of it that showed little winged clocks circling around a quiver of arrows.
My friends are about to move to Rum. They've only been there for a few days in November and February, but apparently the Rum midges are ferocious for several months of the year.
I've got one of these bug repellent shirts and it seems to work. I haven't worn it in the taiga in early summer, though.
I wonder what dinosaur song sounded like in the early Cretaceous mornings?
Damn, can't believe I got beat to posting 106.
I blame being distracted from my RSS feed by a giant T Rex skeleton in the room. (Decided to work at AMNH this afternoon.)
80: Fans of Alaska mosquito horror are recommended to The Atlas by William T. Vollman. "The driver's head was a black sphere of mosquitos." This is after popping outside to clean the squished bugs off the windshield -- it's not even an especially horrific moment.
Key quote (referring to a close ancestor of T Rex): 'Instead of giant lizards, they were basically weird birds.'
The money quotes:
Might the king of dinosaurs have strutted like a peacock?
"Instead of giant lizards, they were basically weird birds."
Now do you feel better, Unfoggetarian?
A little.
Also, L.A. does have pockets of mosquitos. West Nile was found here. But the general dryness means it's not a constant problem -- you have to be near a water feature of some kind, whether a backyard fountain or the Sepulveda Basin.
"Time flies the same way an arrow flies. Fruit-eating-insects enjoy a banana."
But this isn't funny! Is "time flies like an arrow" a common expression? I sure haven't heard it much. So then why would the rest of the joke be funny? The first page of Google hits for the phrase all reference the joke, not some common phrase. Goddamnit I am very upset about this.
108: Are midges the same as gnats? Avon's Skin So Soft is famously effective against the latter. (Not originally sold as such but people figured out that this lovely lotion they bought from the nice Avon lady puts the smackdown on gnats. Not effective against mosquitoes, worse luck.) Rum midges sound particularly formidable, though.
108.--The description linked reminds me of the chapter in The Fellowship of the Ring crossing through the marshes outside of Bree. The midges are so bad, and the hobbits so whiny, that Strider decides to make for higher ground at Weathertop...
After summers in the Yukon, that chapter was especially vivid to me.
Halford's arrowless fruit ideas fly furiously.
118: Right. You're probably familiar with more common contemporary version, but the complete original expression was, "Time flies when you're having fun like an arrow."
Why do mosquitos give you warning by buzzing? What was going on back on the veldt?
118: The exclusion operator is your friend (put a '-' before words you do not want to appear in the results). In this instance searching books is probably better. Not a common idiom, but it points (like an arrow) to a common conception.
118: Halford will now explain that chickens might cross a road for any number of reasons, and that our lack of ability to communicate with chickens renders any given road-crossing uninterpretable.
Why did the chicken cross the road?
It didn't want to go extinct like the dinosaurs.
But the general dryness fact that all the creeks and rivers have been channelized or buried means it's not a constant problem
(Okay, it's also the dryness. But there totes are non-trivial numbers of mosquitoes in LA, Barton Fink notwithstanding. SF has none.)
Why did Heebie not want to go to yet another boring meeting when she has lots of stupid shit to get done?
It appears that "Time flies like an arrow: days and months like a weaver's shuttle." is an old Chinese maxim. The phrase has been used as a challenging example for computer translation from back in the '60s (which is related to the joke, of course).
130: It's a good book (we have the video version from the library now) but has led to tough conversations about why it's important not to put sticks in your ears and a little about how Mara's mother might have felt when her own baby died, which is not exactly something I wanted to get into right now but probably one of those tough conversations you should start having early.
I highly recommend those dvds (we have Corduroy, Harold and the Purple Crayon, and one other, as well as this one of African stories from the library) and they're huge hits with Mara, especially "Smile for Auntie," which must have been taken off YouTube recently.
Another dinosaur song. Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping.
Actually, this 1973 version is from before he rewrote the lyrics to include that. I think this one better.
We had that book, but somehow I remember a specific voice, so we must have also had an audio tape of it.
It didn't want to go extinct like the other dinosaurs.
Haters gotta hate, but Steve Miller is *not* extinct.
Why do mosquitos give you warning by buzzing? What was going on back on the veldt?
When I ask M/tch questions like these -- including this very one -- he's all, "not every single trait is adaptive, you know." And I'm all, "Whatev-- oh, that's a really good point."
Midges are evil little bastards. The sky literally goes black around you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_midge
It's usually only net-head bad during the evening or early morning (unless there is a good breeze). We were at Wonder Lake during the day in late June and it was not noticeably, but I do think it was a breezy day.
Thanks, that's helpful to know.
134: Maybe this voice? No idea when that was made.
noticeably bad. But you figured it out. I assume you have office mates with lots more specific experience, right? Or would that be like asking a stranger for directions?
I assume you have office mates with lots more specific experience, right?
Not among the few I've asked, but I'm sure there are some people somewhere in the office with extensive experience there. The park is big enough that they mostly do their own thing and don't interact that much with us, though, so I don't know many people who currently work there and have detailed knowledge.
Harsh signage at AMNH:
"The dinosaurs displayed here are more closely related to chickens, pigeons, and gulls than to any of the other dinosaurs in these galleries. Not all people agree with this, but the evidence is overwhelming."
(It's on the case with velociraptors and their close relatives.)
The dinosaurs displayed here are more closely related to chickens, pigeons, and gulls modern dinosaurs than to any of the other dinosaurs in these galleries.
They could have been a little more explicit:"The dinosaurs displayed here are more closely related to living dinosaurs like chickens, pigeons, and gulls than to any of the other extinct dinosaurs in these galleries. Not all people agree with this, but the evidence is overwhelming."
Damn you, JP. If it hadn't been for my more elaborate formatting I would have triumphed!
Fast and dumb beats elegant and considered every time. The fundamental truth of the Cable News era. Off to gloat swim take a nap.
I mostly just love the last sentence.
I mostly just love the last sentence.
"Opinions differ, but ours is correct."
|| I need some tech assistance. Through an undoubtedly common but apparently unanticipated series of events, something like 1,000 tuns in my iTunes can no longer be authorized to my laptop or iPod. (They were lost in an ill advised 'erase and synch.') Maybe if I 'jailbreak' the device, they can be loaded and will play there. Could someone who can explain this to a dinosaur please send me an email? |>
Yeah, but alerting people to your upcoming sting is counteradaptive. So either buzzing is wired into the mosquito so deep that it can't be evolved out, or else it must have some countervailing advantage. Tell M/itch to put that in his pipe and smoke it (since you seem to have volunteered to be the messenger.)
154: I don't actually know why mosquitoes aren't silent, but I would guess that it's a hard enough problem to solve given physical constraints and their flight requirements that it was just easier for the various species of mosquitoes to evolve behavioral fixes/kludges like primarily feeding on sleeping victims, focusing on ankles, focusing on animals that can't easily swat them, and things like that.
It's biological altruism. One attracts your attention while the others sneak up behind you.
"Opinions differ, but ours is correct."
"Creationists and a handful of nutjobs in other disciplines occasionally disagree with this and our funders insist that we mention it because they're scared of Republicans having to argue. Sorry to waste your time.
Charley: what's the error message that you're getting?
158: "I'm sorry, Charley. I'm afraid I can't do that."
153: I figured someone cleverer than I would have offered advice by now, but in case you haven't looked into already, Charley, look into deauthorizing any old computer/iDevice that you're no longer using. If necessary, you may want to deauthorize all, and then autorize the machines/devices you're actually using. (You're limited to once a year for deauthorizing all, so this solution assumes you haven't done that in the past year.)
160: But only because Stanley and Emerson trolled me.
You're limited to once a year for deauthorizing all
How feudal. But also useful. I didn't realize you could do that. Maybe I can finally deauthorize the laptop that broke that I was never able to deauthorize.
"Creationists and a handful of nutjobs in other disciplines occasionally disagree with this and our funders insist that we mention it because they're scared of Republicans having to argue. Sorry to waste your time.
I can never understand this attitude. If you're scared of being seen to promote evolution, what the hell are you doing funding an exhibit at a natural history museum?
How feudal. But also useful. I didn't realize you could do that. Maybe I can finally deauthorize the laptop that broke that I was never able to deauthorize.
Microsoft does a similar thing with transferring DRMed content between Xboxes. Once a year max. Which was often not enough, given the spectacular failure rate for the first few years of the console's life.
I don't think that sign is referencing creationists, but rather its aimed at the BANDits. If it was a creationism thing it'd have to be on almost all signs.
164 If you're scared of being seen to promote evolution, what the hell are you doing funding an exhibit at a natural history museum?
Then there's the Hall of Human Origins at the Smithsonian's natural history museum, where the Koch brothers decided it's just fine for conservatives to promote evolution as long as they can also use it to promote the idea that climate change is good for us.
In fact The Koch brothers also funded this exhibit (when it was remodeled in the mid-90s). Their interest in evolution appears to be genuine and not just a screen for sneaking in climate change stuff. Interestingly their approach to climate change isn't to deny that it's happening, but instead to argue that we'll adapt just fine. The stupidest part of that Smithsonian exhibit is a game where you design how we're going to evolve in the future, illustrating why climate change isn't a big deal.
I'm sure 166 is right, and per the other thread Mark Norell at AMNH is one of the leaders in the bird-dinosaur stuff.
a game where you design how we're going to evolve in the future,
Does not compute. Although it does remind me of a great Viz article taking the piss out of this sort of thing, that predicted we'd evolve tank tracks and duck bills.
168 Interestingly their approach to climate change isn't to deny that it's happening, but instead to argue that we'll adapt just fine.
But the Smithsonian exhibit's section on present-day climate change, despite containing accurate plots of temperature and CO2 change over time, omits any reference to the fact that this is caused by human activity. It says "the projected increase [of CO2] over the next century is more than twice that of any time in the past 6 million years and suggests a long-term sea-level rise of 6.4 m (21 ft)," which is a pretty stark statement of the problem that I'm glad to see in a public place. And yet, it still seems like a form of denial to completely avoid mentioning that this is our fault.
And yeah, the bits about how we'll somehow evolve very quickly into magical new hot-climate-suitable humans is really stupid.
168: Their interest in evolution appears to be genuine ...
Because they are social darwinists.
Also the sign was written in 1996, when the evidence hadn't been overwhelming for very long and so there was more arguing.
I really love that top floor of AMNH, but it's interesting to see what's changed science-wise since 1996. As far as I can make out the two major things are the discovery of all the Chinese feathered dinosaurs (AMNH does not have feathers on their Deinonychus), and the molecular biologists discovery of the Afrotheria clade (AMNH has Elephants and Manatees nested within the even-toed ungulates, rather than in an outgroup to all other placentals).
I thought that a lot of the reaction to that Smithsonian exhibit was unnecessarily hyperbolic. Hyperbolic because it's really not very climate change denial-y, and unnecessarily because the point is that scientific institutions should be in the business of communicating the truth rather than twisting things even a little to satisfy their funders.
You know who eradicated mosquitoes? Mussolini. Also, the trains ran on time. Malaria was quite common in Italy until his time. (See: Henry James, "Daisy Miller"; Edith Wharton, "Roman Fever".)
M/itch, there are lots of quieter insects than mosquitoes.
Male and female mosquitoes buzz in harmony. Science.
Male and female mosquitoes buzz in harmony.
Oh. Lord, why don't we?
