How Our Cell Phones Kill Gorillas

There was a snippet on the Today show today about the Serengeti National Park as well. The government wants to build a highway across the Serengeti to enable trucks to move the mined material more easily to a seaport. There is much concern about interruption to the wildebeest migration as well as creating roadkill. Also, the highway would enable easier access by poachers to game. Again, the mined material is (as you said) for cell phones.

 

Coltan.

Columbite-Tantalite, ores of niobium and tantalum. The later is used in tantalum electrolytic capacitors.

Why in the *@#%&$^%!!! is this group picking on just cell phones, when these caps are used in a huge variety of electronics, such as most things digital? And a good chunk of analog too?

 

So, could our cars be killing gorillas?

 

Well, for one thing, Gorillas should not be using cellphones while driving!!

 

never owned a cell phone, can't believe i'm finally doing something right.:whoo:

 

The digital device from which you posted is at least as guilty, probably more so, than a regular cell phone.

 

Yeah, that's what I was going to ask: I don't believe there's anything in cell phones (other than the phone) that's not used also in computers and other electronics. And nowadays everything has electronics, from your car to your washing machine to your alarm clock, unless you use the old-fashioned wind-up kind with the clanger bells on top.

 

I read too quickly...

I was expecting Youtube video of some guy trying to kill a Gorilla with a Cell Phone. Instead I just get a boring article about the rapid destruction of the earths resources...

Get back to me when Bubba Squares off against Konga with nothing more than his Blackberry...

 

First thought was that the Gorillas were falling out of trees because talking on their cell phones were distracting them.

 

Don't drink and drive. You might spill your drink.

 

We should note also ...TEXTING... Gorillas should not text while sitting in trees, or, driving a Prius!

 

uh-uh, i'm posting from an analog tin can and string.

 

And here I thought this was just going to be another lame thread.

 

tin can -> mining -> ore processing -> same problem.
string -> fiber harvesting -> deforestation.

We'll find some way to make sure you remain guilty.

 

Among my WAY too many (transistorized) amateur radios ... I DO have an old tube radio ... a 2,000 watt Johnson Viking, bought in kit form in 1960 by my wife's (now deceased) grandfather. MOSFET transistors didn't even get invented until the 1960's. I doubt any gorillas have obtained the general class amateur license necessary to run it though. Besides, NO one wants to see a gorilla's Johnson ... I'm thinking.

 

Thanks for the thread. Sorry it appears to have been hijacked by jokesters.

 

The points are valid. What is very peculiar is the singling out of cell phones, when apparently all electronics are equally to blame.

But the root problem is not cell phones or electronics. The root problem is that our ever-expanding reliance on gadgets, our ever-growing demand for more "stuff," and our exponentially multiplying population are together putting such a strain on resources that we are destroying the wild places, exterminating species, and generally creating a world where we ourselves will suffocate in our own waste.

Each one of us feels (and rightly so) that our meager purchases make infinitesimal difference. But when you multiply our one little footprint by six billion, or even by the 350 million (?) population of the U.S., the weight is enough to crush us all.