Heavy Rains and Storms in Egypt's Aswan Unleash Scorpions in People's Homes (aljazeera.com) 71
Heavy rain and flooding in Aswan, Egypt, have driven drifts of scorpions to seek shelter in people's homes. From a report: Three people died and more than 400 were hospitalised across the governorate to receive anti-venom treatment after being stung by the panicking arachnids, according to state-run media. However, acting Health Minister Khalid Abdel-Ghafar said in a statement that no deaths were reported from the stings. The Ministry of Health has reassured the public that it holds a large enough stock of anti-venom, noting that 3,350 doses were available in Aswan. The downpours and subsequent floods have also forced local authorities to suspend schools on Sunday, Governor Ashraf Attia said.
Why ... (Score:4, Funny)
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Does that lie get more or less convincing every time you tell it?
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You tell me. You're the one who bit on the baited hook.
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Re:Why ... (Score:5, Funny)
Why does Slashdot even post this? "News for nerds; stuff that matters". I couldn't care less about some Arabs getting bit on the dong by a bunch of ill-tempered insects.
They're Arachnids, you insensitive clod!
We broke the planet, so now we gotta pay for it (Score:2)
Well, I actually learned something there. Worth the price of admission?
No. It was just an accidental side effect of AC FP abuse. As an attempt to be funny, it wasn't. But of course AC has no motivation for a constructive or thoughtful or even a humorous contribution. But there is some mysterious and overpowering motivation for vacuous Subjects? (Empty Subjects are not limited to AC, by the way, but I think it's related to the FP thing.)
But the 8-legged arachnid thing explains a lot about the story. Many des
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Deserts are irrelevant to the properties of chelicerates - the group that includes spiders and scorpions (and mites, eurypterids and a whole rag bag of other arthropods including the chasmataspidids which a friend of mine did his PhD on). The group (and their characteristic fusion of head segments leading to their differing mouth parts from other arthropods s
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I think the desert aspect was relevant to this story because how the people were apparently surprised when the scorpions showed up. It's not like they weren't there the whole time. Lots of desert species evolve to move (or grow) fast and take advantage of a rare rainstorm.
And I knew I was too optimistic to hope for a Funny point for the "ship come in" joke.
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Oh thank you for responding, my pedant klaxon alarm was going off full blast!
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Scorpions are predatory arachnids of the order Scorpiones, not insects. The pincers count as legs.
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Why does Slashdot even post this? "News for nerds; stuff that matters"
Because climate change means droughts in every place where this would be a bad thing, and catastrophic floods in places where that would be a bad thing.
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No one forces you to read it, or even to comment on it.
And, FYI: the Egyptians are not Arabs.
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Why can't stuff like this happen in some place that deserves it, like London banking district or the New York stock exchange?
See here [wikipedia.org] for explanation.
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Once, a scorpion stung a banker. Because of the toxicity, after a day of agony, the scorpion died.
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Re:Answer (Score:5, Informative)
The fact that you're modded "Informative" makes me wonder why I spend time here on Slashdot.
The "Funny" mod doesn't grant karma. Mods often add Informative or Insightful to Funny in order to grant the poster some karma as well as kudos.
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It seems that the powers to cause this have a different idea about "deserving places".
Re:Why ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why can't stuff like this happen in some place that deserves it, like London banking district or the New York stock exchange?
Egyptians used to consider flooding a good thing. The annual Nile floods were called "the Gift of the Nile", and the rich agricultural lands it created on the banks made Egypt the breadbasket of the region. Then came modernization and the Aswan High Dam. Whenever man gets used to controlling nature for a bit, he's always freaked out when nature resists on occasion.
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I don't think anyone noticed, you know, with evolution reintroducing itself to humanity over the last two years with a nice fast-evolving RNA virus and all.
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Man made RNA virus evolution....?
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Even if that conspiracy theory is correct (and there's no real evidence that it is), RNA viruses, due to the structural instability of RNA itself, evolve very quickly and have unstable genomes, so however a virus enters a human population (and you are aware that this has been going on with viruses and most, if not all species since life first formed), it will evolve. The general trend will be towards higher transmission rates but lower virulence, because viruses survive best when they don't kill the host, b
Re:Why ... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think a lot of hard-of-thinking people confuse "made in a lab" (which is barely plausible given the RNA sequences of covid) with "caught by a person working on viruses in a lab" (which is a plausible scenario among several).
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(That's a direct quote from US Representative Clay Higgins.)
The Virus was actually made in a lab (Score:2)
And a lab worker was accidentally infected. The evidence is now overwhelming given that we know they were funded to do exactly that type of research.
Coronaviruses do not actually evolve that fast, not like flu. And one of the odd things was that is virus did not evolve much in the first months of its infection.
But specifically, for anyone that is actually interested in knowing,
1. The bat coronavirus outbreak occurred in Wuhan, home to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), the world
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It's why influenza is so successful, but E. bola is not
Escherichia bola: A bacterial species worn as a tie by very small Arizonans.
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Case A:
The general trend will be towards higher transmission rates but lower virulence, because viruses survive best when they don't kill the host, but maximize transmission. It's why influenza is so successful,
Over some billions of years perhaps.
Case B:
but E. bola is not, because E. bola is so fucking deadly that it basically kills almost everyone it infects and burns itself off.
You get it completely wrong.
Obviously Ebola is a nice counterexample to your silly /. theory that a "virus always gets more trans
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Yeah, but no one likes scorpions.
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> Then came modernization and the Aswan High Dam.
And with it came the requirement to use fertilizer, which wasn't necessary when the Nile deposited fertile mud on its banks every year...
And increased coastal erosion in the Mediterranean coastline, and the Nile delta, because the mud gets stuck at the dam.
And some say fisheries are now missing nutrients because the dam keeps them.
> Whenever man gets used to controlling nature for a bit
He then gets surprised by long term consequences...
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"I know, how could we have predicted this? That's so unfair! Who was responsible for this!"
"Hold on
"Ok
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And that region included the entire Mediterranean Basin. In the last century of the Roman Republic Egypt supplied Rome with enough grain to feed it for three months out of each year, and in Greece, it was cheaper to buy Egyptian grain than locally grown even after you factored in transportation costs.
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The normal flooding of the river is in spring: due to melting snow in the mountains.
It fertilizes the fields etc. p.p.
This flood is due to rain, and is destroying the harvest
Can't be so hard to distinguish one kind of flood from another one.
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Professional courtesy.
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Sorry, but if there is one thing that is a good reason to lose your shit over it is invading hordes of scorpions.
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Because the scorpions at the stock exchange were already inside and safe from the rain.
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Scorpions only live in the desert.
Ah, yes. (Score:2)
The 11th plague arrived kind of late.
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Well the advantage of locusts as a food source is it cuts down on the size of the plague.
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If you resist the plague of locust, the the evil diety just ups the game an turns the river red.
Ants (Score:1)
Massachusetts got a crap ton of rain last July. First my driveway and the street was crawling with ants. Then my house too.
I recommend pesticide. And lots of it.
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Re: Ants (Score:2)
Unless they decide to make a nest inside your floor joists or rafters.
King Scorpion (Score:3)
Maybe King Scorpion, as in Selk, not The Rock, has been awokened?
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It's been a while, but he is back [wikipedia.org].
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Why not The Rock? Some people wouldn't mind him! :P
Anti-venom? (Score:2)
I've been stung by scorpions so many times that I've lost count. Not once have I ever heard of an anti-venom for them. You deal with it the same way you deal with a bee sting: just put up with it until it's over. Also, like bee stings, nobody actually dies from a scorpion sting unless they're allergic to it and don't have any epinephrine.
Yeah, it's more painful than a bee sting, and the tip of your tongue might get a little numb, but if you live in an area that scorpions are native to, you just deal with it
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there was a foolish craze a couple of years ago with a drink containing a live scorpion.
I think you swallowed it whole with the drink, or something similarly stupid.
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Professional nitwit ArmoredDragon blathered:
I've been stung by scorpions so many times that I've lost count. Not once have I ever heard of an anti-venom for them. You deal with it the same way you deal with a bee sting: just put up with it until it's over. Also, like bee stings, nobody actually dies from a scorpion sting unless they're allergic to it and don't have any epinephrine.
Yeah, it's more painful than a bee sting, and the tip of your tongue might get a little numb, but if you live in an area that scorpions are native to, you just deal with it.
You speak as if there were only one species of scorpion in the world.
When we lived in Mariposa County, we encountered brown scorpions all the time. You barely notice their sting. If you live in Arizona, you might well run into a yellow "Deathstalker" scorpion - and it's a whole other story. The Deathstalker's venom is so potent that it will kill a small child or dog. And it is by no means the most poisonous scorpion in the world.
The most dangerous scorpion species
that's quite the Zionazi pile of BS (Score:1)
...in a most mocking willful ignorance.
You mean when Israel started the 1967 war with a sneak attack on Egypt, clown shoes. Every last conflict has been started by racist colonialists from Europe who think they have a greater right to the land than the people who have already been living there for centuries or longer. With one
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Use the natural enemy of scorpions (Score:3)
Sounds Awfully Biblical (Score:2)
Egypt. Plague of scorpions. I can't be the only person who thought of this.
Ethiopia's dam (Score:2)
Damn (Score:2)
Ok I have made cracks in the past about people needing to have a live scorpion dropped down their pants, but I didn't think God was going to take it to heart!
Also, I can think of a few places off hand that are far more deserving of this than Egypt.