“Mr. President, It’s The Bees And The Spiders Again”

I can't believe the news let me get that line from I Think We're All Bozos On This Bus by the Firesign Theater into a post. But bless their hyperventilating hearts, they managed it. First the bees then. The media, anxious for something to pump up into the crisis de jour, has decided on the bees again. (They've done this before, incidentally. Remember the hysterically hyperventilating news reports of the killer bees? The very early Saturday Night Live – you know, when it was mostly funny instead of rarely - ripped hell out of the media for the killer bees hysterics.) So now, instead of, "We're all going to be stung to death," we get, "We're all going to starve to death."

BELTSVILLE, Md. – Unless someone or something stops it soon, the mysterious killer that is wiping out many of the nation's honeybees could have a devastating effect on America's dinner plate, perhaps even reducing us to a glorified bread-and-water diet.

Honeybees don't just make honey; they pollinate more than 90 of the tastiest flowering crops we have. Among them: apples, nuts, avocados, soybeans, asparagus, broccoli, celery, squash and cucumbers. And lots of the really sweet and tart stuff, too, including citrus fruit, peaches, kiwi, cherries, blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, cantaloupe and other melons.

In fact, about one-third of the human diet comes from insect-pollinated plants, and the honeybee is responsible for 80 percent of that pollination, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Even cattle, which feed on alfalfa, depend on bees. So if the collapse worsens, we could end up being "stuck with grains and water," said Kevin Hackett, the national program leader for USDA's bee and pollination program.

Get a grip. Seriously. Most of the crops mentioned here may be a nice side dish – but they are not and have never been the staple foods of the vast majority of the earth's population. Buried deep in the article is the fact that – lo and behold – these sudden disappearances have happened before.

Even though experts this year gave what's happening a new name and think this is a new type of die-off, it may have happened before.

Bromenshenk said cited die-offs in the 1960s and 1970s that sound somewhat the same. There were reports of something like this in the United States in spots in 2004, Pettis said. And Germany had something similar in 2004, said Peter Neumann, co-chairman of a 17-country European research group studying the problem.

So the difference is what exactly? The media hype? Gee, scientists have figured out, like Pavlovian dogs, that playing the media brings gobs of money. This is not exactly rocket surgery. Item to be looked at? Sure. Item to predict yet another end of the world? At this rate, who freaking cares what's going to end the world. Everything is a monstrous crisis the likes of which has never been seen. Until next week when something else is the monstrous crisis. And forget about those other bees, they aren't important any longer. So, on to the spiders!

British "experts" have declared, authoritatively, that global warming causes spiders!

It may be no bigger than a pea, but its bite can put grown men in hospital.

And thanks to global warming, the false black widow spider is on the march across the country, posing a threat to gardeners and anyone else spending time outdoors.

Officially called steatoda nobilis, it is closely related to the black widow spider whose poison can be fatal to humans.

The species had kept a low profile since arriving in Britain with a cargo of bananas from the Canary Islands 200 years ago.

But according to Stuart Hine, an insect expert at the Natural History Museum, it is rapidly spreading.

"There is no doubt in my mind that this is due to the milder winters caused by global warming," he said.

(Note the photo accompanying the story. The spider appears to have a peace sign on it. Interesting.) Local weather is not a sign of global warming. We had a mild winter where I live this year and a brutally cold spring. Last year, we had heavy winter storms and a warm spring. So is the spring the sign of global warming or the winter? Depends on the media hype and what can cause the most hysteria, I suppose.

Me, I think I'll break out a few Firesign Theater CDs. Seems fitting. After all, I think we're being treated like we're all Bozos on the bus.