In March of 2016, a game called "Tom Clancy's The Division" was released. Unlike other "shooter" games such as "Destiny" and "Call of Duty", "The Division" has a compelling science story.(1) And the plot began on "Black Friday", the busiest shopping day of the year.

Early this year, I testified at FDA in support of approval for a new smoking cessation tool called iQOS. While it may have seemed odd for the president of the American Council on Science and Health, which has campaigned against smoking for 40 years, to endorse a product made by a tobacco company, the reason was simple data.

Mommy shaming and chemophobia have long found common cause when it comes to the cosmetics industry.

Though mercenary, it is understandable why companies that make labels "certifying" something safe, and activists raising money touting our doom, prey on expectant parents; they are easy targets. Being a new parent is scary. Books are basically useless and 'better safe than sorry' is a well-worn cliché.

As I write this, our local school is closed due to concern about smoke inhalation. Other parts of the nation may not realize it but two severe wildfires broke out recently, in northern and southern California. If this had happened anywhere near New York City or Washington, D.C. it would be called Smokemageddon, or a Particulate Vortex, or something else clever, but because it's California we won't get Lester Holt in a facemask and 24 hour coverage on CNN.

Dams keep the boom and bust of flooding from being too severe, they prevent water shortages, they make human existence better. But they clearly change nature.

Why is a human building a dam unnatural but a beaver building a dam natural? Only an environmentalist can figure that out, but what was a great idea 10 years ago - hydroelectric power and storing water - is now the enemy of the paid activism community, and politically sympathetic researchers have increasingly begun to curry media attention by writing papers to prove them right, as has happened again in Nature Sustainability, a journal which, like something might be called Nature UFOs, was created to make money legitimizing the beliefs of the activism community inside academia.

In late 2014 I came downstairs from my home office and said to my wife, "Herb London just left me a message."

"Is he any relation to Stacy London?" she asked in her offhand humor way. Well, yeah, she is his daughter, if you are from California, but if you are of my generation and from anywhere near the orbit of New York, you know who Herb London is. And Herb London was getting a return phone call.