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Happy Cows 1 - PETA 0

Happy Cows 1 - PETA 0

Sep 07 2012 | comment(s)

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is happy to objectify live human women in order to protest eating dead animals, but they aren't going to win every time, even when it comes to claims about the happiness of cows. A judge has ruled that truth in advertising doesn't always extend to humorous ads - if it did, we'd lose all those spots showing that every white man in America is unable to use a cell phone or cook a meal without assistance from a teenager or a woman.
Is Obama Delaying Food Safety Rules Until After The Presidential Election?

Is Obama Delaying Food Safety Rules Until After The Presidential Election?

Sep 06 2012 | comment(s)

Is food safety a contentious election issue?  The Center for Food Safety and the Center for Environmental Health say changes to the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) have been held up in review, much like the administration did with the Keystone XL project from 2009-2011, in hopes of delaying new rules until after the November election. And they are suing over it.
Millennials and Food: They Want Faux Environmentally Friendly And Microwaved

Millennials and Food: They Want Faux Environmentally Friendly And Microwaved

Sep 06 2012 | comment(s)

Millennials, depending on who you ask, are up to 34 years old and have their own children but they still seem to like shopping for food at gas stations so food companies are scrambling to create packaging that appeals to them.

Exit cans, enter microwaveable soup bags. And they want it to be healthy, microwaved food.

How do you make the same old soup seem healthier?  You put it in a carton instead of a can. Yes, perceptually, a carton looks healthier to Millennials than cans do. 
Joe DiMaggio Gets His Own Caffeine Drink

Joe DiMaggio Gets His Own Caffeine Drink

Sep 06 2012 | comment(s)

Joe DiMaggio was a great player. He holds the record for hits in consecutive games (56) and he had only 8 more strikeouts than homeruns.  He also married Marilyn Monroe.  In his older days, he sold Mr. Coffee automatic drip machines on TV.

Now he is getting a coffee of his very own; Joltin' Joe, a carbonated espresso drink courtesy of AriZona, which is actually located in Long Island, NY.  Seriously, click on that link. Their site is programmed in Flash despite the fact that it pisses off 100% of people who visit sites programmed in Flash. It feels like 2004 all over again and runs as slow as you expect.

"Biofuel is an aberration" - World Water Week

Sep 06 2012 | comment(s)

Nestlé, the world's largest food company, says the UN, the US and EU are all wrong on activist-created biofuel targets. As everyone who is not an environmental activist predicted, subsidies for biofuels have led to worse emissions to go along with looming food shortages and price rises.

Under current US laws, 40% of US corn must be used to make biofuels even though droughts have reduced crop yields significantly.  So while we keep hearing that current US policy had 'reduced oil imports' they leave out that the emissions are worse because of biofuels.  Only fracking has led to reduced CO2 emissions and activists have decided that natural gas extraction causes cancer now.
Ban BPA? We'd Be Safer Banning Electric Cars

Ban BPA? We'd Be Safer Banning Electric Cars

Aug 31 2012 | comment(s)

Sometimes kooky anti-science positions are academic; you have to fight against them because there is a slippery slope and social authoritarians will ban ten things if you let them ban one - because banning one is acceptance that they are 'right'.
NGOs And Journalists: Uncomfortable With Complexity

NGOs And Journalists: Uncomfortable With Complexity

Aug 31 2012 | comment(s)

The world is a better place when it is simple, black and white.  That is why campaigning NGOs and many journalists share a not-so-attractive sensibility: they are often uncomfortable with complexity, writes Jon Entine at Forbes. Dividing the world, and prickly science policy issues, into black and white makes for exciting narratives.

Unfortunately it’s invariably wrong, authoritarian and, as Freud would say, crazy (“neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity”).
Longevity: Caloric Restriction Doesn't Hold Up

Longevity: Caloric Restriction Doesn't Hold Up

Aug 30 2012 | comment(s)

While caloric restriction had its day in the hypothetical sun a few years ago among the 'longevity' crowd, science has remained a little more skeptical.  Interesting results in some mice weaned at birth on a starvation diet won't really be testable in humans.

A 25-year study in rhesus monkeys fed 30% less than control animals represents another setback for the notion that a simple, diet-triggered switch can slow aging. Instead, the findings suggest that genetics and dietary composition matter more for longevity than a simple calorie count.
For Entertainment Only: 3 Social Science Studies

For Entertainment Only: 3 Social Science Studies

Aug 28 2012 | comment(s)

Like with psychic readings, sometimes you need to post a disclaimer that the following is 'for entertainment only'.  No science sensibilities were actually harmed in the writing of the following article by Ross Pomeroy at RealClearScience:

Social scientists, he says,  have a hard time being taken seriously because they have a strong penchant for turning out laughable research, the media has an equal fascination for covering it, and we love absolutely reading about it.  True.  So if you want to believe stressed men find fat women more attractive, you are racist even if you are not and that hangovers are a bonding experience, it is a good week for you.
Catholics: Right Wing Pawns Or Left Wing...Pawns?

Catholics: Right Wing Pawns Or Left Wing...Pawns?

Aug 28 2012 | comment(s)

In a Protestant country, despite claims that religion does not matter, it's still a tough cultural road for Catholics.  Almost no conversation can be had that won't end quickly with Galileo or some pederast priest. Being anti-Catholic is ingrained in history.
Scientific Illiteracy Is An Attack On Science Integrity

Scientific Illiteracy Is An Attack On Science Integrity

Aug 28 2012 | comment(s)

New York Times opinion columnist Nick Kristof is at it again. Despite pleas, even from people inclined to like the New York Times and people inclined to side with him politically, he refuses to talk about science a little less or at least learn a little more.
GMOs: Food Science Grows Up In Europe As America Goes Backwards

GMOs: Food Science Grows Up In Europe As America Goes Backwards

Aug 27 2012 | comment(s)

For more than a decade, Europe has been as anti-science as can be imagined regarding genetically modified organisms —  consumer crops that have had their genetic code altered in order to make them easier to farm.

Environmental activists have frequently responded to GM crop trials by vandalizing or destroying them, while scare stories about “Frankenfoods” have been a regular staple of the British media diet. But two developments in the last month show that Europe may be joining the science community again, while California prepares to leave it:
Prisoner's Dilemma Breakthrough: Zero Determinant Strategy Shows Winning isn't Everything

Prisoner's Dilemma Breakthrough: Zero Determinant Strategy Shows Winning isn't Everything

Aug 24 2012 | comment(s)

The world of game theory has been on fire since Freeman Dyson of Princeton and William Press of the University of Texas announced that they had discovered a previously unknown strategy for the game of prisoner's dilemma - and it guarantees one player a better outcome than the other.

The Prisoner's Dilemma is this: Alice and Bob commit a crime and are arrested. The police offer each a deal to rat the other our and go free while their friend does 6 months in jail. If both Alice and Bob snitch, they both get 3 months in jail. If they both remain silent, they both get one month in jail for a lesser offence. What should Alice and Bob do? 
Bought Chemical-Free Dirt? I'd Like To Sell You Some Organic Soap

Bought Chemical-Free Dirt? I'd Like To Sell You Some Organic Soap

Aug 23 2012 | comment(s)

"Earlier this week, the magazine "Mother Jones" posted a helpful little story on the question of whether the health-conscious consumer should wash organic produce. Was it necessary, the author pondered, after all “how bad could a little chemical-free dirt really be?”"

Chemical free dirt? If you are reading Science 2.0 at all, you know why that term sent Wired scribe Deborah Blum into a science fit. 

She writes, "By fostering a fictional world view of chemistry, it makes us less safe, not more; less aware of the world around us, not more. Because the only place where you might find chemical-free dirt is in the gardens of your fairy-tale imagination. And that’s not going to be all that useful back here on Earth."
Atheism+ : Because Secular Humanism Is Too Inclusive

Atheism+ : Because Secular Humanism Is Too Inclusive

Aug 23 2012 | comment(s)

Secular humanists not feminist enough for you?  Atheism not social justice-y enough for you?

Okay, on a science site you are stopping me right there and saying, "Isn't atheism just about believing on one less God than 90% of the world? And what's with all this social engineering business?"
Dinosaur Track Found At Goddard Space Flight Center

Dinosaur Track Found At Goddard Space Flight Center

Aug 22 2012 | comment(s)

Here's an episode of "Futurama" waiting to happen; a nodosaur roamed suburban Washington about 110 million years ago and evidence has just been found.

You'd think the ground near a sidewalk at the Goddard complex in Greenbelt, Maryland, home to 7,000 employees engaged in astrophysics, heliophysics and planetary science, would be pretty well covered but dinosaur tracker Ray Stanford found the 14" wide track this summer.
Cy-ber Young: High School Students Robot Gets To Throw First Pitch At Tigers Game

Cy-ber Young: High School Students Robot Gets To Throw First Pitch At Tigers Game

Aug 22 2012 | comment(s)

There's good stuff happening in Detroit too.  While journalists make political theater about golfing their way through the abandoned parts of the city (Detroit is the home of Great Society economic interference, where they advocated that janitors in car factories were $50 an hour union jobs, the same sort of micromanagement advocates claim will fix it) high school students are still getting cool things done.
John Mackey: Whole Foods CEO Makes The Ethical Case For Capitalism

John Mackey: Whole Foods CEO Makes The Ethical Case For Capitalism

Aug 21 2012 | comment(s)

I like John Mackey. He is a savvy food guy who enrages the bulk of his customer base with his libertarian economic policies while they make him rich.  I can't say I share his love for Ayn Rand but I get where he is coming from.  He believes in capitalism. and he should; only in America could you sell regular food grown a little differently and convince people it makes them healthier and they should pay more.  They'd shoot you for that in Russia.
Undercover Video Shuts Down California Slaughterhouse

Undercover Video Shuts Down California Slaughterhouse

Aug 21 2012 | comment(s)

Officials with the U.S. Department of Agriculture suspended operations at Central Valley Meat Co. in Hanford, Calif.,  due to video evidence showing dairy cows, some unable to walk, being repeatedly shocked and shot before being slaughtered.

Four minutes of excerpts the animal welfare group Compassion Over Killing provided to The Associated Press showed cows being prepared for slaughter. One worker is seen suffocating a cow by standing on its muzzle after a gun that injects a bolt into the animal's head had failed to render it unconscious. In another clip, a cow is still conscious and flailing as a conveyor lifts it by one leg for transport to an area where the animals' throats are slit for blood draining.
Deformed Fish: Nothing To See Here, Folks...

Deformed Fish: Nothing To See Here, Folks...

Aug 16 2012 | comment(s)

A short while ago, a member of Sierra Wave Media took a picture of about 15 dead and deformed fish. They were abnormally swollen and had 'tumor-like' lumps. 

They sent Andrew Hughan, Public Information Officer for Fish and Game in Sacramento, the photo and he responded. 

“These fish are not representative of what we hope the public identifies as a DFG planted fish. There are always deformities present in nature and in raised fish, especially in the bottom ponds of the raceways where weaker fish tend to congregate. Unfortunately Gull Lake was the recipient of such a group of fish,” he told them.

Well, sure.