Cool Links

Writing in European Scientist, Drs. Samuel Cohen, Penny Fenner-Crisp, Alan Boobis, and Angelo Moretto compare the International Agency for Research on Cancer to the Douglas Adams conservative science-fiction spoof "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy." The book starts off with out-of-control government that doesn't know why it does things, but using terms like eminent domain, on earth before veering to out-of-control government in space, including a self-appointed centralized research program that is out to discover "the meaning of life, the universe, and everything" - and comes up with the number 42 as the answer. 
The number of people with multiple booster shots versus the original vaccines is marginal - and new survey results may tell us why. I don't recall ever having any issue from a flu vaccine, maybe it is in people's heads, but there are so many stories of increasing side effects with each new COVID-19 booster taken that some are worried that a harmless flu vaccine may get worrisome if taken in conjunction.

I don't know how biologically plausible that is but all bets are off with COVID-19. Prior to 2021, California and other progressive states were way out in front in vaccine denial(1) and that only changed once Republicans didn't want the COVID-19 vaccine.
There is no truly positive thing about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but at least it exposed European hypocrisy when it comes to science. Experts knew most of their energy was coming from Russia, not domestic solar power, and their "organic" food was also labeled such from the east.

Or from countries forced to use an inefficient process or be blocked out of European stores - all so Europe could compete without paying higher subsidies. Former colonies of Europe were banned from sale unless they obeyed Europe when it came to food.
In the 1990s, President Bill Clinton did something for his constituents that had a devastating effect on public trust in science - he exempted the supplements market from real FDA oversight, as long as they wrote in small print that their supernatural claims had not been evaluated by FDA and therefore had no scientific backing.(1)

Supplements are not always garbage, if you have a diagnosed vitamin D deficiency those supplements help you, but most of the time when they do something beneficial, it is only because they contain real medicine illegally. And the "endurance" market, natural supplements claiming to reduce erectile dysfunction, are only ever working when they contain real medicine illegally. 
Environmental groups who spent a lot of time and money promoting a Beepocalypse (and blaming it on a class of modern targeted pesticides called neonicotinoids) are getting really desperate to shore up their campaign.

They have been promoting a 1994 quote from physicist Albert Einstein who worried about the loss of bees.

Einstein died in 1955.

But that is just a detail when the goal is saving Gaia. The ends justify the means and all that. 



“If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would only have four years of life left.” 

Wait, what? 
If Product A and Product B are identical in every meaningful way, and Product A is unavailable, is there any reason the government should make it illegal to buy B?

No, but that is government. The Biden administration first created an infant formula shortage by overreacting to contamination in a small batch. Then the president said he didn't know his actions would create a shortage. Then after he was reminded the companies who make formula told him his actions would create a shortage he replied that they knew, but he didn't.
Since 2017, avowed socialist António Guterres has led the United Nations. That means he has led the organization that has never once defended people in Taiwan or Mongolia but defended communist China when it was clear they were the source of the COVID-19 outbreak. 

The UN even did as told when China weirdly said to blame the COVID-19 pandemic on American frozen food. Rather than the Wuhan lab which deleted its coronavirus database after the pandemic raged, scrubbed the nearby Wuhan market clean, and only let UN investigators onsite for four hours, during which they were allowed to ask no questions the Communist Party had not pre-approved.
It is something we have all heard; educated, wealthy people who don't want to have kids, for various reasons. They are letting culture of the future be created by someone else. It is common to be voluntary now but in the past it was not a choice.

Demographers recently looked at the Skellefteå region in northern Sweden (since the work of digitizing population data from the 19th century on had already been done) and had access to 5,850 people and their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, which numbered in the tens of thousands.
Since 2021, journalists and their political allies have been acting like Republicans are anti-vaccine and Democrats have always been the party of science.

Just the opposite was true. Prior to politicization of COVID-19, right-wing religious states like Alabama and Mississippi had nearly 100 percent vaccine uptake while cities like San Francisco, Berkeley, and Los Angeles had so much denial that California had more unvaccinated kids than the rest of America combined. After years of pressure because of the issue, Governor Jerry Brown was forced to sign a law removing those arbitrary exemptions.
Mother’s Touch Formula claims to be all of the stuff that the anti-science community loves; prebiotic, probiotic, Non-GMO, whatever.

The problem is it also claims to be FDA approved, and that is a lie.

Ignore the weird schism in culture that people who buy holistic goopy nonsense think FDA and most science is a Vast Corporate Conspiracy while seeking out scientific legitimacy, this stuff is fraudulent.


From the BBC to Daily Mail, corporate journalism is covering an app that claims to understand what your cat is saying and translate it for you.

If you have used Alexa or Siri, you know those can't even understand English all that well, so you are right to be skeptical they understand cat. But MeowTalk has help. You tell it what you want to believe your cat is saying.

It's like going to a psychic and latching onto any random thing they say - "I feel someone whose name starts with a J in the room" "WOW. I had an uncle named John!" - as affirmation that it is working. 

In chemical and food epidemiology and other fields that rely too heavily on surveys it is this:

Just 6 days after passing a law banning conventional cars, California is asking residents not to use electric ones either. It isn't the first time various parts of the state have undone themselves when faced with reality. 
Lori McClintock, wife of California Congressman Tom McClintock, believed in herbal remedies and has died from dehydration caused by gastroenteritis and whose inflammation was caused by “adverse effects of white mulberry leaf ingestion,” according to the Sacramento County coroner's report. 

Such deaths are considered accidental but if you wouldn't drink and drive on the windy roads of the Pacific Coast Highway, you shouldn't believe in folk medicine, traditional medicine, alternative medicine, complementary medicine, integrative medicine, or whatever else naturopaths and supplement charlatans are calling their dangerous money-making schemes these days.
An early document which seemed to be “observational data that showed objects orbiting a body other than the earth.” - later known to be moons around Jupiter - is not a product of early 17th century science at all, but a 20th century fabrication that capitalized on the attention Galileo received after the 19th century atheist wave in Italy.
There is a reason for 25 years the anti-vaccine movement was dominated by progressives - they believe in the naturalistic fallacy and that science is a corporate conspiracy. Progressive darling (because female, academic, conspiracy theorist) Dr. Marion Nestle claimed it again just a week ago, which sounds so anti-science and politically partisan it feels like 2005.

It took Republicans being opposed to the COVID-19 vaccine for Democrats to finally accept them for the first time since Reagan was president.
Beginning in 2010, the CDC, now under the moniker of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, used that new last part so aggressively that virtually no healthy person was going to be left in the US.

And it wasn't protecting the public, it was a money and power grab for the agency. Spending taxpayer money to try and convince Americans they had a manufactured conditioned called "pre-diabetes", all so they could go to Congress and get more money to fight the disease literally no other country accepted as anything but fantasy, was only one instance. They also claimed there was a vaping epidemic, and a prescription opioid epidemic, all the while being woefully unprepared for actual real diseases.
In an increasingly polarized political climate, media has taken clear sides. No one in Manhattan confuses the skew of the New York Times with the New York Post.
Another day, another all-natural sexual enhancement stimulant product has been shown to be a dangerous fraud. The US FDA has sent a warning to four companies claiming they are "all natural" but containing real drugs illegally; Cialis (tadalafil) and Viagra (sildenafil).
A U.S. Food and Drug Administration Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for Paxlovid (nirmatrelvir and ritonavir) now allows pharmacists to prescribe it.

The reason is because it needs to be administered within 5 days and in modern health care, you are lucky to get an appointment within 2 months - unless you have the same health insurance politicians give themselves. So FDA wants to make it possible for pharmacists to provide it and bypass the morass politicians created in health care.
In the waning days of the Obama administration, he did what presidents often do when they have no campaigns left - moved on pet projects. In this case, he had an irrational love of solar power, believing that if government threw $50 billion at it all at once, it would accomplish what the private sector had not been able to do for 50 years.