Your cockroaches are going to win Friday open thread

by liberal japonicus

The NYTimes had this cheery science tidbit.

Some populations of cockroaches evolved a simple, highly effective defense against sweet-tasting poison baits: They switched their internal chemistry around so that glucose, a form of sugar that is a sweet come-hither to countless forms of life, tastes bitter.

Your other 'we're doomed' thoughts are welcome here.

Comments

[Laura Koerbeer]

http://bridgehunter.com/

I got that from Balloon Juice. It's a website called Bridgehunter, which rates bridges for safety. Why am I posting this? Because an interstate (I5) bridge collapsed into the Skagit River. Luckily nobody died.

But that's the state of the decline of our empire. It's so important to protect the wealth of the obcenely wealthy that funding for failing infrastructure is politicized by the Republicans in the House of Representatives.

And politicized at the state level too. My state, a blue state, was suckered into to a tax increase limitation initiative promoted by the Koch brothers, so that now we don't have a sufficient tax basse to fund anything properly. Anything at all.

I looked up a bridge I drive across daily and it is rated as "obsolete".

[wj]

We're doomed because we depend on crops which cannot propogate without bees. Bees which are typically taken around by professional bee-keepers. And which are suffering "colony collapse" -- for which, last I heard, we had no good idea of the cause or the solution.

So, a lot of us are doomed to starvation. Unless we take up eating cockroaches. ;-)

[Countme-In]

Ah, who needs bees?

We'll print our food and defend the stash with our 3-D weaponry:

http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/05/23/a-3d-printable-revolution-ctd/

Until the cockroaches fashion 3-D printable versions of themselves to forage amongst our powders and oils.

[Ugh]

So are cockroaches bitter or sweet? Or does it depend?

[cleek]

depends on the sauce.

[wj]

Tastes like chicken?

[Smelofful]

I prefer mine served this way

Garlic Butter Fried Cockroches
1/4 cup butter
6 cloves garlic, crushed
1 cup cleaned insects

Melt butter in fry pan. Reduce heat. Sauté garlic in butter for 5 minutes. Add insects. Continue sautéing for 10 - 15
minutes, stirring occasionally.

[hairshirthedonist]

The only bug I've eaten on purpose was at the bottom of a bottle of mezcal. But bugs would make for a far more sustainable protein source than just about anything else westerners consume animal-wise.

I'd have no problem eating bugs, so long as they were processed enough that I had no visual indication that whatever I was eating was made from bugs. I could probably even eat worms, other than those in mezcal bottles, without much processing other than cooking, just so they wouldn't be gooey, and maybe getting rid of the heads.

I'm not really sure why I can eat crabs, shrimp, lobsters and crawdads pretty much structurally intact without being grossed out. They don't really look all that different from bugs.

That said, of all the bugs I'd be willing to eat, cockroaches would be last on the list. I loathe those creatures to the point of irrationality.

[Doctor Science]

Fellow posters:

Check the typepad "spam comments" collection. Comments from long-time friends are ending up in there, for no discernable reason. A comment I left on *my own post* ended up there ...

[sapient]

Bees which are typically taken around by professional bee-keepers.

wj, I'm hearing you, and this is an important topic, certainly worthy of a front-page post. However, there's such a thing as amateur beekeepers, and ccd isn't as big a problem among them. Perhaps we should be inspired to become amateur beekeepers? It only takes a backyard, and some time. And it pays back in honey and enlightenment.

[wj]

sapient, the amateur beekeepers that I know do have fewer problems. But that's a 20-305 loss rate, vs the far higher rate for professionals. Agreed, it isn't as big a problem -- but it is still plenty big enough to be worrisome.

And the professionals are, after all, the ones who keep the food crops going. Even with a lot of amateurs still available, it would take some massive adjustments to maintain the food supply.

[wj]

That's supposed ot be "a 20-30% loss rate"

I really have to get someone to look at the caps key on this keyboard!

[CharlesWT]

"And it pays back in honey and enlightenment."

And lawsuits from the neighbors.

[CharlesWT]

Professional bee-keepers have been handling the problem by splitting hives and adding new queens. So far, the problem hasn't harmed production very much or the price of fruits and other foods that depend on bees would be going up more than prices in general.

[Slartibartfast]

But that's the state of the decline of our empire

Yes, we really need to be working on making our bridges truckproof, and ship-proof.

[ral]

Smelofful, when sauteed in butter and garlic, even snails are edible (to some people, anyway :-)

[Slartibartfast]

when sauteed in butter and garlic, even snails are edible

Ah, a solution to the problem of: