Yesterday, the Senate confirmed former Congressman Lee Zeldin to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. Though the Trump administration has promised reform, there will be big challenges in that. Though high-profile jobs are appointees, the nuts-and-bolts work of governance is done by career employees, and nearly 90 percent of them are Democrats.

Gym Bro, Curl Gurl, Gym Rat if you choose not to identify as any gender - everyone knows what it means, and it can be pretty intimidating if you walk into a fitness center as a new member. Imagine feeling like you have to get in shape before you can join a gym to get in shape.

Fitness executives don't want that but store managers know not to alienate their best customers for someone who will join on a special deal, go for a month, and then cancel the first time they download RocketMoney and remember they have a gym membership.

When people see labels or menus listing the calories in their food, it doesn't change their consumption in any way beyond what experts call "statistical wobble." About two fewer almonds worth of calories per meal. But two almonds over time can add up to a lot.

That's the conclusion in the data of a systematic review by The Cochrane Collaboration. The team of academics reviewed 25 papers which discussed the impact of calorie labeling on consumption and found a minute reduction in the foods selected - about 11 calories.

Science is always looking for new ways to protect plants and the environment. In Hawaii, for example, when their staple papaya was under attack by aphids that transferred the "papaya ringspot virus" to plants, legacy breeding and pesticides did not work. A gene gun sending in a GMO did.(1) In the Wall Street Journal, I discussed how a non-corporate, free modification by academics could save the American Chestnut from the natural blight that had devastated billions of trees.(2)

With Burns Night this weekend,  Scotland will celebrate its heritage. In the First Among Equals country to the south that controls them, Scottish accents used to mean trouble. Now, it is the sound of safety for both English men and women.

A new study finds that the English, even some Welsh and Scottish, associate a "working-class" accent with criminal behavior. In a jury trial, that could have serious ramifications, but it likely also matters before that. Arrests and voice identification, for example. You're more likely to be one of The Usual Suspects(1) if your accent is criminal.

Doctors who would never tell a patient to smoke cigarettes in moderation, they are a legitimate class 1 carcinogen, oddly say just that about an identical class 1 carcinogen, alcohol, and as recreational marijuana has become legal they have given it the same umbrella.

Legal or not, marijuana is a drug just like alcohol, and it includes the toxic smoke of cigarettes.

I am not a social authoritarian progressive so I won't tell you how to behave just because my health insurance premiums went up so 50,000,000 others could get it cheaper, but you absolutely should not be smoking marijuana around kids. It ain't the 1980s, hippie.