the Media's "Aflockolypse" Cluck Up

There are sensation media reports of "mass animal deaths across the globe" in the past two weeks, which some have dubbed the Aflockolypse. Is it a sign of the end times, they ask?

No.

But, sadly, it is a sign of the end times of decent journalism.

There are basically two categories of "mass animal death"; birds and fish.

The fish (including some devil crabs, which I realize are technically not fish) seem to have mainly died from .... cold.

In case you haven't noticed, the northern hemisphere has been a tad cold this Christmas and New Year. Humans weren't the only ones to suffer. Some sea and river species are very susceptible to extreme temperature changes like those that have been experienced lately.

So the UK's Devil Crabs (oooh, devil, does that mean the Aflockolypse is biblical?), Chesapeake Bay's fish, and even Brazil's fish deaths are all down to cold weather (and currents). How ... boring. It happens all the time, but normally it goes unreported by the global media.

But it wasn't just fish in the Aflockolypse ... there were birds! lots of birds just dropping from the skies, dead. The sky is falling!

The media suggested the large numbers of birds dropping dead from the sky on New Year's Day could be a sign that the year was cursed, or that the world was going to end. 2012 was mentioned (because many journalists don't seem to know what year it is), and all sorts of conspiracy theories were 'reported'.

So what killed the birds?

Fireworks.

Again, this is a common event, usually unreported by the media. Every New Year's (and on other festive occasions) there are firework celebrations at night that startle birds, who fly about blindly in the dark. The crash into things (and each other) and die of blunt force trauma, as autopsies have showed.

Only the "hundreds of snapper" found dead on the shores of New Zealand seem to have a sinister side to their demise. They appear to have been dumped illegally by a fishing vessel.

So much for the Aflockolypse. But reason and logic are too dull and boring to sell newspapers and gain advertising revenue. So expect more conspiracy theories.

Copernicus calling collect

Window-pane glass is not a liquid.* Despite the number of textbooks that will tell you so, a pane of glass does not obviously ooze to the bottom over time. Some older panes do have a bulge, but that was created in the cooling process when the pane was made, and often that bulge is at the top or side, depending on how the glass was fitted.

Spinach is not packed with iron. It was a misprint in one publication that was slavishly copied again and again. But that mistake did give us Popeye, so it wasn't all bad.

I once talked to a dead scientist on the phone. Spooky? No, his date of death had been accidentally given in a cheap encyclopedia and copied into other publications. He laughed. I turned a bright shade of red, which I could get away with on a phone.

But wouldn't it be fun to live in a world where glass was a liquid? Where spinach did make you strong, instantly? Where dead scientists could be contacted by phone? Where the moon landings were fake? Where gravity could be switched off with a utility belt?

I was recently given a book that is a hodge-podge of bad science throughout the ages. Atlantis, perpetual motion machines, cold fusion, twin earths in opposite orbit. It gave me story ideas, one of which I have started writing down. The others are still wriggling around in my head waiting for their opportunity to fly out one day.

Maybe that's why I like writing so much. It allows you to create worlds where just for a while you can believe the impossible is commonplace. Where fish swim in your window panes, and Einstein is on line three. On Heisenberg's party line you're never certain who's listening in ... and why can't I get caller ID to work for Schrödinger?

* at normal temperatures. It becomes molten only at temperatures higher than 500°C (900°F), usually much higher depending on the type of glass. While glass, like all materials, could be technically said to flow at normal temperatures, it is at a rate so slow that it would take longer than the age of the universe to notice any change.