Honeybees dying?

Here's "The Straight Dope" on colony collapse disorder.

First and most important: There are some 20,000 species of bees in the world, and many thousands more types of pollinating insects. What you're hearing about, "colony collapse disorder," affects one species of bee – the European honey bee. That species happens to be the one global agriculture relies upon for about 30% of its pollination requirements. So while we're not talking about losing all the world's pollinators, we are talking about losing a significant fraction of them. That's the worst-case scenario, with the species wiped out completely.

Second, there's no reason at this point to think European honey bees are going to be wiped out, now or ever. The die-offs so far appear to affect some beekeepers more than others, sometimes in the same area....

Third, it's almost impossible to get hard numbers on how many colonies have died recently, and how much of the current uproar is media hype based on guesses, estimates and anecdotal accounts from the handful of beekeepers who have had the most colony losses.

Fourth, even the original report describing and naming the phenomenon explicitly says it's something that has been seen before (repeatedly), named before, and studied before – in all cases without coming to any conclusion about the cause.

Sixth, it's never a good idea to trust what the media are telling you. At least once in the present case the media got something completely wrong and created a huge mess: The story about cell phones was basically a misrepresentation of what one pair of reporters wrote about a study that they misinterpreted. In a nutshell, the original research didn't involve cell phones, and the researchers never said their research was related to honey bee colony die-offs. Even details like the alleged Einstein quote are dubious. No one has yet found proof that Einstein said anything about bees dying off – the earliest documented appearance of the "quote" is 1994 and, yes, Albert was dead at the time.

Well out of commission

I see by the papers, one of the wells supplying water to Los Angeles has been shut down, on account of high levels of hexavalent chromium, or chromium ^VI. Other wells in the area are threatened, and will be shut down if the plume reaches them.

Los Angeles water officials have turned off a drinking water well near Burbank Airport, the first of what may be many wells to be idled as a costly result of a new spreading plume of underground chromium pollution.

You might also be interested in this, for reference, from the "hot topics" factsheet on chromium.

In the San Fernando Valley, 14 of 84 DWP wells contain detectable amounts of chromium. However, individual wells do not represent what customers actually receive since many well supplies are combined for use. The water served to LADWP customers is consistently below the detectable level of 5 parts per billion for total chromium. Nonetheless, LADWP is proactively researching treatment alternatives for chromium removal, and will be prepared to meet any new standard the State establishes.

About Filtration Systems

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is not recommending that its customers use filtration devices as related to the levels of chromium found in drinking water. The levels of chromium 6 in the water served to our customers is below 5 parts per billion (ppb), far below the existing drinking water standard in California which is 50 ppb for total chromium and the Federal standard which is 100 ppb for total chromium.

It is true that we have a few wells with total chromium values over 5 ppb, but their water is treated or blended, or the well removed from service to ensure that the chromium 6 in the water actually served to our customers, is always under 5 ppb.

Ultimately it is the customer's choice. There are a few products that can possibly further remove chromium 6 from your water. For the protection of our customers, we advise them to look for an NSF certification, specifically for chromium 6 removal, on the equipment, and require documentation from the manufacturer that proves that the equipment is certified for use in California by the State Dept. of Health Services as a water purification system.

There are always a few businesses that will try to capitalize on this issue without sharing the full story or misquoting facts to alarm or otherwise mislead the public. LADWP Customers are advised to get all the facts. For more information, visit the following official websites at:

California Department of Health Services http://www.dhs.cahwnet.gov/org/ps/ddwem/chemicals/chemindex.htm

Cal/EPA, Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment http://www.oehha.ca.gov/water/phg/

Los Angeles Department of Water & Power http://www.ladwp.com/ Last Updated: April 6, 2001

And I will mention that if you're really worried about chromium ^VI in your water, you can always add a little vitamin C. This vitamin is an antioxidant, and will change the chemical state of the chromium to chromium ^III, which is a nutrient.

To slay the worm

Happy groundhog day!

A worm making the rounds of the Net is set to destroy files tomorrow.

Even if you have great virus checking, a second opinion is always worth while.

Microsoft advises customers who think their computers may be infected with the worm to scan them with up-to-date anti-virus software or run a "protection scan" at the company's Windows Live Safety Center Web site (http://safety.live.com).

Shake, rattle, roll

Did you feel the quake? I did. It's a 5.3 in Yucapia, CA.

Public Service Announcement

From an e-mail going around the Department:

Please be aware that there has been a reported incidence of one or more persons posing as water utility personnel, trying to gain access to homes under a pretext of collecting water samples. Please report any similar instances to your District Engineer and to local law enforcement.

LA DWP policy may not be the same as everyone else's, but I don't think we're too far from the mainstream. For the record, LADWP personnel should not ever need "cold-call" access to anyone's water from inside the home. Ever.

Our water quality section will occasionally sample water from the front hose bib of a house, and we'll knock on the door so that, at least, the owner or resident knows what's going on. We've had a few programs where we sample for lead inside of private residences, but the initial contact is always by mail first. We don't have any program where employees will walk up to a home cold and request access to water inside the home.

All our employees carry photo ID cards, and almost always have a car or truck with the city seal and LA DWP markings on it. (Some rental cars don't have these markings, which has been a bit of a nuisance on occasion.)

If in doubt, you can call the water department for your city and ask them to confirm that any people at the front door are real employees. If you can't get confirmation for an unexpected visit, you don't have to let the person in. Speaking for myself, I won't take offense. I can always call in to let people know there's a problem and get an alternate location if one's available. There's always a next appointment to hit.

Feeling insecure yet?

(Hat tip: Jerry Pournelle.)

A new, improved, phishing scam has surfaced.

Normally, phishing involves sending the intended mark (you and me, guys) an e-mail warning of some problem with his account. The e-mail helpfully includes a link to a page where you can log in and resubmit your information, and presumably, change your password to prevent this kind of thing from happening in the future.

Since most people know the target of a link displays on the status bar, at the bottom of a browser, phishers have started using the "on mouseover" command to change the text on the status bar to look like a valid link.

If you follow a link to a scam website, you can still discover whether it's bona-fide by entering a bogus name and password combination in the login form. If the form lets you in, it's a phishing site.

Now, e-bay has a script, available to anyone, that can be used to verify whether a user-name/password combination is valid.

The phishing site accepts a user-name and password, then runs it through the script. If the script rejects it, the phishing page rejects it. This may lead a person to believe the page really does belong to E-bay.

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Now, before we get all hot and bothered at E-bay, it occurs to me upon reading this report that you may not need a specialized script provided by a company to pull this off. If you set up a scam to obtain someone's user-name and password at his bank, you could probably write a script that would pull up that bank's page, and try to log in with any name and password that's been handed to your form, and then report "success" or "failure" back to the phishing site.

This might introduce a second or two of delay, but that's indistinguishable from normal net congestion, and it would "clear up" once the user has "logged in".

Be careful out there.

Indeed.

How about a fan letter?

Over the e-mail transom...

Hi, I was mentioning to Laura Brodian-Freas at Gallifrey how much I enjoyed her show on KMZT K-Mozart. She said thank you and if you wouldn't mind telling her bosses, it would be helpful. She gave me the following contact info: KMZT 1500 Cotner Ave L.A. Ca 90025 (310) 478-5540 So, if you are like me in enjoying her program, please take the time to write a fan letter to let her bosses know. Hugs, Joan

I'll have to send something. I make a point of tuning to KMZT during the hours when I know she's on.

Boil water notice is lifted...

As of 9:00 AM, residents of Westwood and Bel Air no longer have to boil their water.

Boil that dust speck water...

I might as well comment on it.

Yesterday afternoon, about 3 PM, judging by when the calls started coming in, the 36-inch water line carrying water through the Stone Canyon area broke. This left one pressure zone out of water for a time, and the whole area is under a boil-water notice until further notice. The area affected is near UCLA and in Bel Air.

The boundaries are Beverly Hills on the east, Sepulveda Blvd on the west, Somma way on the north, and Santa Monica Blvd on the south.

Whenever a water outage occurs, and indeed, whenever the water pressure drops below 15 pounds per square inch, there's the chance that some water services may have negative pressure, and when a tap is opened, instead of water coming out, air gets sucked in. And if the tap is connected to a hose immersed in water, that water gets sucked into the system.

So, I was up until very late, collecting samples for bacterial testing. The lab started analysis around midnight, and if they push it, they can probably get preliminary results in 12 hours. The chlorine levels looked good, so I suspect the results will be fine and the boil-water notice will be lifted today.

But you never can tell. That's why we test.

Asteroid news

Jay Manifold reports on a new asteroid, 2001 DA42.

No, it's not going to hit us, or even come close. So DON'T PANIC. I'm posting about it because it's just been named for Douglas Adams.

But keep your towel handy anyway.

Splash!

A quake, measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale, set off tsunamis across Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. The current death toll is 21,500, and will probably rise as more of the missing are accounted for.

A 9.0 quake is not unheard of, but it is the strongest in "the past 40 years".

More information on the quake itself can be found here.