Militant progressives in academia are determined to fix a problem that does not exist - how to get more females in science.    Despite there being no gender difference in math scores for the first time in history and more Ph.D.'s for females than men and more hiring for women in faculty positions than men, a subset of people lament it isn't enough.

The National Science Foundation and various other government groups with more funding than knowledge of the public wastes billions of dollars on STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) outreach, using the strange mentality that smart kids who might otherwise become veterinarians or game designers need to become scientists and engineers or America will collapse.

Progressive kooks in San Francisco want to ban Happy Meals but they can't have a beef with vegan burgers, right?    Just down the road from 'Frisco, at Stanford, biochem professor (and founding co-director of PLoS - yayy, open access!) Pat Brown is trying to make vegan burgers that will appeal to humans and maybe keep McDonald's in business in the bay area.

Brown wants to make a vegan cheeseburger to replace what you get at fast-food franchises like McDonald's, his goal being to decrease the global impact of animal farming.   

Pesky animal rights activists may complain if you eat veal but they can't complain if you eat larvae, right?    Those are bugs and people sitting in trees have to eat something while they keep the forest commission from clearing brush or removing dead trees to prevent wildfires.

The California State Fair is coming up in a few weeks.   It is earlier the last few years, because the old August dates were darn hot and with that sumbitch global warming it was only going to get hotter so they moved it back to July and, today, it is a balmy 70 degrees.   For residents of the once-hot Sacramento area, climate change has been a real boon, though drought in the South shows that they are not so lucky.