WHY WE LOVE SCIENTISTS

Only they could think up a scheme whereby we fight pollution using a critter whose primary environmental activity is pooping all over the environment.

Comments

[mudstuffin]

I will take this opportunity to snork at myself.

*snork*

Thank You

[Texas]

Damn Dave....machine-run blogging !

[VictoriaE77]

Giving the pigeons cell phones?

They'll just use them to coordinate the attack plans with the squirrels.

[NOT ACTUALLY Dave]

In the immortal words of Mandy Rice-Davies, “Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?”

Let’s take a jaundiced view of the case, OK? On the one had, we have a set of officials who hage lied about the benefits of these programs in that past, whose interests are clearly served by making a case for “damage”, and who are now asking us to take their claims on faith. On the other hand, we have other unnamed individuals whose interests are not served by their claims, and who aren’t being served by their disclosures.

I’m willing to be open-minded zbout the possibility of damage—but given the number of lies we’ve gotten about that so far, I’m demanding real evidence. Negroponte has plenty of time to find a “damaged asset” and demonstrate the damage.

NOTE FROM THE REAL DAVE: Whoever you are, please use a different name when you post. Thank you.

[crossgirl]

apparantly there are no people left to sign up for cell service. i think the phone company is backing this project.

[Blue Meanie]

And will this equipment have the capability of filtering out pigeon farts from the air pollution data? If not, some scientists need to get busy.

[Texas]

Smog monitoring ? Right. I can see those little cameras on their feet with little earphones on their feathered heads.

[CoastRaven]

OH NOOOO!!! Mobile Carrier Pigeons!

[Blue Meanie]

Cheezit! HSA is here!

*WTD, Dave (the new one)?*

[Texas (not Dave)]

Dave has spoken. We are humbled (not !) by your presence.

[insomniac]

from the pigeon blog...

"Well me amd a few thousand of my friends were taking a dump on City Hall, when this cutie asks me, "What's that strapped to you?" I say "Who wants to know?" She says ,"We're pigeons . We don't have names. Even if we did, we're so dumb we couldn't remember them." I say,"Oh,yeah, but I think I'm on the Web."

[Christobol]

And then I suppose we're going to act surprised when the pidgeons use this technology to summon Zlathgor, Pidgeon God of War from Andromeda?

[Texas (not Dave)]

"Pidgeon God of War from Andromeda" WBAGNFARB.

[Marlin Perkins]

Pigeons mate for life and rear their broods together, although if one dies the other will take a new mate. Once the simple nest is built, the female lays an egg and then another a day or so later. The incubation period for common pigeons is 17 to 19 days. The female sits on the egg from late afternoon through the night until about 10AM. The male then takes over and does the day shift. Once the eggs hatch, both parents feed the young squabs. The first food is pigeon milk or crop milk, a cheesy substance that appears in the crops of the parents at hatching time and is fed for a week or so. Then the adults start regurgitating partially digested grains for the young. By the time the squabs are ready to fly, about 4 weeks, the father is doing most of the feeding. The squabs are fed for another week to 10 days after they are free-flying.

[mudstuffin]

"Crop Cheese" wbagnfa pizza you could eat with a straw.

[Texas]

Martin. Ummm..thanks for the humorous post. I think you got lost searching for the blog you really wanted.

[MOTW]

Multiple pigeons carrying home-made cellphones and no one's noticed that cooking smell yet?
Blog entry: image of pigeon #512 really smokin'

*Snork* at mudstuffin

[Lisa Bisa Fo Fisa]

What's to stop them from using the cellphones to make personal calls overseas?

There's going to have to be some strict monitoring here. Any pidgeons caught in cellphone misuse will be fed stale breadcrumbs and old french fries for life.

[MOTW]

*tap* *tap* . . . hello?
I didn't mean to kill this thread, folks.

[queensbee]

boids, filthy disgustin boids. [from the producers]

pigeons are rats with wings [woody allen]

[Lairbo]

Society might be better served if they revealed what sort of bong they were using when they came up with this idea.

Still, here's a likely resulting conversation when these birds hit NYC.

1st Pigeon, answering cell phone: "Hey, hi, where are you?"
2nd Pigeon: "Crapping on the Teddy Roosevelt statue at the Museum of Natural History. You?"
1st Pigeon: "Crapping on the General Sherman statue outside the Plaza. Ya wanna meet up in the park and crap on people walking by Bethesda Fountain?"
2nd Pigeon: "Sure, see ya there in 15."
1st Pigeon : "Okay. Woops, here comes a hawk. Gotta go."

[Really Cheryl, also not Dave]

Okay ... so I just wandered in to check on my friends and neighbors on Blogsteria Lane -- and I read the pigeon post and the first four comments.

I am lost, confused, my assets are damaged, I'm disoriented and I think a bird just pooped on me.

*backing slowly out of room*

[kibby F5™]

...SIM card and communication chips, a GPS receiver, and sensors capable of detecting carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide.

H3ll! That's more technology than most humans have!

And a pigeon blog? Dave? Worried about competition?

... suppose we can get the pigeon's cell numbers? I'd like to call a few. Mainly for distraction purposes.

[Eleanor]

Thanks Lairbo! :)

I was hoping for a pigeon cell phone conversation - well done!

[kibby F5™]

Oh, and those camara's (Rhyms with Tamara) are disturbing. What if one lands on your bedroom window sill and captures you on film with your neighbor's mother?

Come to think of it, Tamara's disturbing too - in a good way.

[CoastRaven]

El of course that would be in Pigeon English wouldnt it?

[Crabby Appleton]

I have a son who would become the world's greatest pigeon hunter if he could figure out away to bogart the pigeon cell minutes. Oh, the carnage he would leave in his wake.

[crossgirl]

we don't need all that equipment on the birds to tell when the smog is bad....just wait for them to fall dead from the sky. then you know.

[Charlotte]

The only thing I can think of is the "Goodfeathers" from the cartoon "Pinky and the Brain". Anyone else hear the pigeons speaking with a Jersey accent into a cell phone??

[Blue Meanie]

Will pigeons be allowed to post comments on their blog?

"Twelfth!" [pigeons are notoriously stupid birds]
"*Snork*@C-Bird!"
"Pigeon Cell Phones WBAGNFARB"

[Christobol]

It won't be long before cooler pidgeons will be showing up with the flip phones and downloading hippity hop ringtones.

This won't end well, mark my words.

[Brad]

A flock of pigeons fitted with mobile phone backpacks is to be used to monitor air pollution...

"A flock of pigeons" WBAGNFARB.

[Christobol]

*meanwhile, at Mai Lan*

"Pardon me, waiter? There seems to be a GPS satellite tracking receiver, air pollution sensors, and a basic mobile phone in my Banh Hoi."

[KCSteve]

"Text messages on air quality will be beamed back in real time to a special pigeon "blog," a journal accessible on the Internet. "

Man! *Everybody's* got a blog these days.

[Eleanor]

Remember Jimmy Smits with his pigeons in NYPD Blue?
*sobs*

[Crabby Appleton]

Oh, thank you Eleanor, you made my day. (Deep lusty sigh).

[qetzal]

What are those scientists thinking?! Jack Bauer can blow up terrorists with his cell phone. Now they're gonna give cell phones to the pigeons? You think pigeons don't watch 24 while they're sitting on the ledges outside people's windows?

[daisymae]

I'm thinking...cell phones + pigeons = voila roasted pigeon. Squab on the blog.

[Eleanor]

You're welcome, Crabby. Isn't he just the - the - sexiest best!!!
*fans self*

[crossgirl]

i hope they warn them to keep those phones away from the eggs.

[crossgirl]

heyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy, wait a minute. that's IT! cell phones are birth control for pigeons.

[MOTW]

crossgirl - I thought of that (see 10:35AM post)

[kibby F5™]

Terrorists could outfit the pigeons with bombs connected to their cell phones!

WHERE'S HOMELAND SECURITY!?

...come to think of it, so could I.... I wonder how many credits they'll get and can they go 'roaming'?

[Bumble]

How will this tell them about air pollution? My recollection from my trip to New York is that pigeons spend most of their time on the ground, fighting over bits of pretzels with sparrows and losing.

[crossgirl]

motw, apologies.

[Mad"ly in love with weasel" Scientist]

Wow I can feel the love for the scientists here!!!

I think these research dollars would be better spent on a remote controlled robot pigeon so the scientists can actually get data about the places they want rather than where ever the bird actually goes. Oh why don't they just use the weather balloons that already exist for this purpose?

*thanks God that her graduate work at UCI did not involve catching pigeons around campus and then trying to put backpacks on them*

I have a hard enough time clipping my cat's nails.

[Tamara Rhymes With Camera]

What if one lands on your bedroom window sill and captures you on film with your neighbor's mother?

BWAHAHAHAHAHA!

[CoastRaven]

It just occured to me ... these birds are just flying rats, right? And they will eat just about anything, right? So lets say they get ahold of something that doesnt agree with them and get a bit flatulent. Wouldnt their own farts mess up their enviro-phone-backpack-blogging-thingy? Just thinkin...

[Nannie]

Madly - The weather balloons are all busy substituting for UFOs.

[fivver]

*wonders*

Wouldn't ducks be better for this. I mean they already have web feet?

*runs like a bunny*

[Blue Meanie]

CoastR - you're more cretinous than you realize; see post above at 9:46am.

[MOTW]

*snork* @ Mad!
no problem, crossgirl. resume having a good day!

[Mad"ly in love with weasel" Scientist]

SNORK @ Web feet

[CoastRaven]

Huge apologies to ya Blue - cant believe I missed that. Although I am honored in a way to have a small part of my brain warped in the same shape as yours.

[Mahatma Kane Jeeves]

It might be difficult for them to take off . . .

[slyeyes (Not Dave)]

Can you hear my now?

coo coo

*poop*

[Johnny Urinalcakes]

the ultimate mission of this subterfuge is to allow the government to start tracking the homeless, who are the defacto heirs of pigeon possessions

JU

[random "wishes he were Dave" thunking]

I can see it now. Every night pigeons will be searching the city for an electrical outlet so they can recharge. Then all day they will be cooing loudly on crowded statues--angering nearby pigeons. Laws will be passed restricting calling while flying. It's only a msatter of time before pigeons get PDAs and Ipods.

[Kathy P.]

I figure the damn pigeons will be headed for NJ where everybody seems to have a %$*$@ cell phone.At least the pigeons won't be driving - at least I hope not!

[Mike "Dr. Mad's Dork" Weasel]

I love my scientist!

(peeking in naughtily)

[azred (divorced from a different dave)]

I once divorced a dave who never stayed on topic either, but he never let the pigeons borrow his cell phones. ???? HUH ???

[Papadan]

Can science prove there were dinosaurs on the arc?

[AlanBoss]

Cell phone, GPS, camera (ryhmes with Tamara) etc.

That's not a backpack. Those pigeons got freakin' utility belts! Holy bird poop, Batman!