A new survey has good news for the alternative-to-cattle market, Beyond Burgers and the like; 54 percent of surveyed Americans claim they have tried it and 70 percent of those thought it okay.(1)  

Burger King is a game changer on that, and over 40 percent reported buying it there. That all sounds great, but there is a confounder. The survey of 30,700 conflates lab-grown meat and vegetable patties, which have gigantic differences among consumer beliefs. That said, it still has some good news for companies in that space.

A new study statistically correlates wildfire smoke to pre-term birth risk. There are a number of confounders in that, of course, like that exposure to wildfires creates a great deal of stress and often hurried actions and those are huge factors, but they instead dredged up a link to something that makes little sense - air quality far from fires. And since they came up with a suitably cosmic number - 7,000 extra preterm births in just 5 years! - it is sure to get attention in a state where everyone hyperventilates over everything.

At the turn of the century, if you denied global warming or believed that vaccines cause autism, it was easy to know which political party you were in. When it came to acceptance of evolution, things were muddier. Though more Democrats than Republicans accepted evolution the margin was single digits and over half of all people didn't know what to make of it or flat out denied it.(1)

I am not running for President so I don't have any need to cater to Iowa corn farmers and voters, as former Vice-President Al Gore admitted he was doing when he broke a tie in the Senate and forced ethanol mandates on Americans.

A reader sent me an email asking about chewing gum and if it was really made of plastic and my first thought was 'Why ask me? Do what scientists do and go to Google, skip the first 10 entries, which will all be gamed by SEO experts at anti-science groups like Ecowatch, and then you will find the answer' but I was hooked when I saw the article linked was in The Economist.

Subway Brand Ambassador and soccer star Megan Rapinoe kneeled during the national anthem at the Tokyo Olympics and Twitter did what Twitter was designed to do and went into spasms, despite that being about as edgy and controversial as endorsing clean water in 2021. Subway still had reason to worry. How will it affect sandwiches?  That is what they need to know, because selling sandwiches to 2 Democrats and 2 Republicans is better than selling sandwiches to 2 Democrats, no matter how you spin the math.