In case you weren’t aware, and I wasn’t for a long time, the foundation in common usage by beekeepers results in much larger bees than what you would find in a natural hive. I’ve measured sections of natural worker brood comb that are 4.6mm in diameter. This 4.6mm comb was drawn by a hive of commercial Carniolans and this 4.7mm comb was drawn on the first try by a package of commercial Carniolans. What most beekeepers use for worker brood is foundation that is 5.4mm in diameter. If you translate that into three dimensions, instead of one, that produces a bee that is about half again as large as is natural. By letting the bees build natural sized cells, I have virtually eliminated my Varroa and Tracheal mite problems.
From Bush Farms regarding Colony Collapse [via Kottke.org]
Found an interesting article from Kottke.org. He lists other solutions, but I have to admit—it seems so simple that human greed has left left the bees vulnerable to disease and infestation. While the research from the Spanish scientists don’t jive with recent article in Scientific America, anything that can help crack this nut will be helpful.
At one level this should come as no surprise. For most of the last decade America was a nation of borrowers and spenders, not savers. The personal savings rate dropped from 9 percent in the 1980s to 5 percent in the 1990s, to just 0.6 percent from 2005 to 2007, and household debt grew much faster than personal income. Why should we have expected our net worth to go up?
Yet until very recently Americans believed they were getting richer, because they received statements saying that their houses and stock portfolios were appreciating in value faster than their debts were increasing. And if the belief of many Americans that they could count on capital gains forever sounds naïve, it’s worth remembering just how many influential voices — notably in right-leaning publications like The Wall Street Journal, Forbes and National Review — promoted that belief, and ridiculed those who worried about low savings and high levels of debt.
from Paul Krugman regarding America’s Decade at Bernies [via NY Times Op-Ed]
Crazy. The numbers above are absolutely scary. I think the world is in for a lost decade similar to what happened in Japan. It will take years for families to work off the debt that they incurred, and consumer confidence hasn’t even hit rock bottom.
When you buy a book, you’re also buying the right to read it aloud, have it read to you by anyone, read it to your children on long car trips, record yourself reading it and send that to your girlfriend etc. This is the same kind of thing, only without the ability to do the voices properly, and no-one’s going to confuse it with an audiobook. And that any authors’ societies or publishers who are thinking of spending money on fighting a fundamentally pointless legal case would be much better off taking that money and advertising and promoting what audio books are and what’s good about them with it.
He definitely gets it right. I mean, I can make my mac read out loud as well—are they going to outlaw that? Next thing you know, I won’t be able to read a book with my daughter.
When I was at PC World, I explained to anyone who’d listen that our editorial strategy was pretty simple: We had to be a Web site that had a magazine, not a magazine that had a Web site. That philosophy affected the decisions we made in 10,000 different ways. And it’s nice to see revenue figures that validate that approach.
From Harry McCracken regarding Advertising Age’s chartfest on the state of the magazine industry.
Harry reports that 38 percent of PC World’s Ad revenue comes from online—tops in AA’s special report. His quote doesn’t surprise me. I saw this trend back in 2007 with newspapers like the Globe and Mail whose online redesign totally affected the layout and presentation of the hard copy newspaper.
At this point, it’s better to tell people right up front, ‘We don’t know,’ as opposed to trying to put out numbers that we’ll be dissatisfied with in maybe less than a week. // To put numerical ‘certainty’ on the Canadian and Ontario outlooks at this point in time . . . seems silly – and potentially damaging if the outlook is used as a basis for short-term planning
Peter Dungan, economist, from UofT’s Institute for Policy Analysis, which published a report entitled We Don’t Have a Clue and We’re Not Going to Pretend That We Do (via The Globe and Mail and Canada.com)
It’s great that they are honest.
One formal definition of insanity is doing the same thing twice and expecting a different outcome. Canada’s DMCA is, by this measure, insane — and so is the party that insists on ramming it through.
From BoingBoing.net (via Michael Geist’s Blog) regarding the reintroduction of Bill C-61 if the Conservatives are elected to government.
Cory Doctorow nails it. It’s insane that they’d re-introduce this bill in its current state. Moreover, I’m doubtful that they could really strike the balance that Canadians are looking for.
For those who haven’t listened to it, you should check out the CBC’s Ideas podcast: Who Owns the Ideas. It’s a great introduction into the evolution of copyright law.
Directly responding to Apple’s campaign is weak. It’s playing Pepsi to Apple’s Coke, Burger King to Apple’s McDonald’s. It’s an explicit acknowledgement that Microsoft is the second-place brand.
From Daring Fireball regarding Microsofts new I’m a PC Ad
John Gruber makes an excellent point. It’s almost like MS is asking Apple not to make fun of them anymore.
In the long term, we think of Chromium as a tabbed window manager or shell for the web rather than a browser application. We avoid putting things into our UI in the same way you would hope that Apple and Microsoft would avoid putting things into the standard window frames of applications on their operating systems.
From Google’s User Experience section of Chrome’s development guide. Via daringfirball
Google chrome isn’t a browser, it’s the next platform for web applications.
Finding the source can be difficult to track down due to the hierarchy of theming calls whose source can be spread throughout the whole system.
From Overriding themable output | drupal.org regarding drupal theming
Wow. There is a startling admisssion. Even Drupal admits that theming is a bit hairy.