In some homes, it is believed that static electricity can lead to inferior grinding, and that has coffee connoisseurs searching for answers.

Will water help, or is it just making a mess because while a little may help, people will use too much? 

Coffee is prone to fads the way athletics - nasal strips, cryo-therapy, those weird blue-light filter glasses - and certainly nutrition is. A study may create a correlation and people sell a produce. Giving coffee acupuncture before tamping in espresso was all the rage starting in 2020 and for the last year some have sworn by adding water to reduce static electricity.

No one likes to talk to elder family members about money, it can come across as greedy, but a sign of cognitive impairment that isn't obvious, like drastic memory loss, is 'wealth shock' - a sudden loss of savings.

Wealth shock does not cause dementia or Alzheimer's, sorry IARC epidemiologists, it does not cause cancer either, but it is a symptom of a decline. 

Jobs. Gates. Berners-Lee. They opened our worlds to wonders: Graphical user interfaces, PCs, the World Wide Web. They were my heroes, and probably yours, deservedly so.

The Universe is very large, and we are very small compared to it, not only in size. Creating a cosmology that attempts to explain the whole existing Universe is an obsession shared by all cultures. We think we now have the true cosmological model, like many civilizations that have come before us. There are, however, reasonable grounds for thinking that the total truth about the origin and evolution of the Universe is beyond our reach.

Once per year, America goes through cultural spasms over international standardized tests. One group says only more money for government union employees will fix it while another claims young people are just dumber today while another claims that only dismantling education will restore America to its former glory.

They all claim they are being critical because they care; "it's for the children."

It really isn't, it is just politics.

Sorry Boomers, you didn't lead the world in standardized tests. Neither did you, Gen X. Standardized tests were not your thing either, Millennials.

The federal government now mandates and subsidizes electric cars. Like with similar solar panels, ethanol, and compact fluorescent light bulb schemes, science shows it isn't helping anything except the companies getting taxpayer money.

With government providing corporate welfare, companies can cut lower-profit lines, including of electric cars, and focus on the fattest margins. Government funding is so lucrative that Buick dealerships are...plummeting?

Yes they are, they have declined 47 percent this year. The reason is because General Motors is buying out anyone who does not want to 'play ball' and invest heavily, about $400,000 of their own money, in electric car service and support.

Next month I will be giving three lectures to high-school students on using artificial intelligence for research in fundamental physics, and as usual I am not yet worried by the schedule enough to start thinking at the presentations. Except that in one case the school professor who organizes the event asked me for some preliminary task for the students "to get them in the mood" of the contents of the lecture. 

The Joint Task Force between the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology and the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology have released two new guidelines for allergic reactions.

The new recommendations are that calling an ambulance after use of an epinephrine auto injector  is not required if the patient experiences prompt and complete, and response to treatment. Paramedics should be called  for severe anaphylaxis, symptoms that do not resolve promptly, or nearly completely, or symptoms that return or worsen.

The recommendation remains not to give epinephrine preemptively to an asymptomatic patient.

December 23rd is 'Festivus', a not-real holiday invented by the father of George Costanza on the hit television show "Seinfeld", involving an aluminum pole, feats of strength, and, most fun, an airing of grievances.(1)

It's the airing of grievances I want to address.