Science 2.0

The Lancet, which championed both the 'vaccines cause autism' and the 'Frankenfood' movement, is now promoting the same bad epidemiology in their claims about ultra-processed food.

Scientists may be concerned that a prominent journal is giving credence to scaremongering but we are talking about The Lancet - no journalists except Guardian and New York Times consider them scientifically reliable. Yes, they will have producers at "60 Minutes" repeating it and then SEO bloggers at Gizmodo and Daily Beast too, but the public are so jaded by epidemiological misinformation and disinformation, they have learned not to trust anything.

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For decades, scientists have assumed that the Holocene—the relatively quiet geological epoch spanning the last ~11,700 years—was marked by only a handful of small meteorite impacts, most of them modest in size. But a newly confirmed structure in southern China is now challenging that narrative.

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A new paper says that before your blood pressure rose, hypertension was already damaging blood vessels and brain matter.

How is that even possible? It won't matter, if history is any indication, career bureaucrats at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are already scheduling a briefing before Congress to ask for more money to prevent this new pandemic. 

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Ranchers and vegans don't agree on much but they agree that lab-grown meat is a bad idea. Not for science ones, for economic and psychological ones.

Still, activists are in a war of extinction against the modern world, so they are confident they will eventually win, either with allied progressive politicians like Secretary Robert Kennedy, Jr. banning products, or by regulating them so they are unaffordable, like California Governor Gavin Newsom has done with energy, home insurance, and healthcare.

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Among others oozing angst about “democratic socialist” Zohran Mamdani’s election were two refugees from the USSR (one was Garry Kasparov) speaking on an anti-semitism panel Tuesday. Socialism, they declared, leads to communism! Even democratic socialism does! Just wait ‘til Mamdani shows his true colors!

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Adults with atrial fibrillation (AFib) who are not diabetic but are overweight and took the diabetes medication metformin after a rhythm-correction procedure had decreased risk of AFib episodes for a year. Weight loss would usually be a confounder, since lifestyle changes such as that are often a big help, but in the data sample the weight changes were low.

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The pathogenic avian influenza (bird flu) that caused chicken and egg prices to skyrocket after millions of birds died was helped by the raw milk vector. Pasteurization, which has saved a billion lives, kills the virus. The same people who buy organic food and don't want chickens that have ever taken medicine also think pasteurization ruins some ethereal property of milk that no scientists can detect.

A new study shows that chicken production can be safer in the future, no Big Medicine or Big Dairy bans needed. Researchers revealed that Salmonella infections, which also overwhelmingly happen in the organic manufacturing process (though not as often as E. coli) can be mitigated with 

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Truth is under attack. It has always been, of course, because truth has always been a mortal enemy for those who attempt to seize or keep power in their hands. But the amplification of the phenomenon by today's information technology is extremely worrisome. AI today can generate fake videos and images that even experts have trouble flagging as such. This, combined with the different news value and propagation potential of false information with respect to typically less attention-grabbing true facts has created an explosive situation. What to do?

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In 2016, President Obama listened to reason and signed the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act, which amended the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) and created a mandatory requirement for EPA to evaluate existing chemicals using transparent methodology and risk-based assessment.

No more simplistic epidemiology. Which meant no more junk that had anti-science activists declaring that a weedkiller turned frogs gay or PFAS in pizza boxes created greater risk for obesity than pizza.

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People are concerned about cranberries again this November, but it isn't a new phenomenon.

Cranberries were actually the first modern chemophobia scare, when anti-science activists got government to first do what they have since done to weedkillers, trans fats, ultraprocessed foods, BPA, you name it - terrify the public about a product using bad epidemiology despite there being no science basis for it.(1)

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1980s photo of the author, right; his father, center; and his sister, left.

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At the upcoming American Heart Association meeting, participants will learn of the epidemiological results of 63,656 military veterans with Type 2 diabetes in the Million Veteran Program who took GLP-1 receptor agonists (semaglutide - "Wegovy", dulaglutide - "Trulicity", etc.). The survey analysis found that those who also changed their lifestyle habits had a 50% lower risk of serious cardiovascular events(1) compared to those who didn't report a healthier lifestyle and received diabetes care without GLP-1 RA medication.

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In the various 'Predator' films, the alien hunter can see across various spectra while enabling camouflage from our vision.

That happens in nature. Octopuses, squids, and the scariest of them all, cuttlefish, in the cephalopod family have evolved the ablity to modify their skin to blend in with the environment. That is due to the presence of xanthommatin, a natural pigment with color-shifting capabilities.

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America uses less energy per capita than we did in World War II, and even World War I. Thanks to natural gas, we provide energy in most states at an affordable cost.(1) With the help of a new data set that shows where air conditioning is used, it will be even easier to know where things can be improved.

In France, you have to get permission from both the government and your neighbors to put in air conditioning. You will also want to be wealthy because it is more profitable to sell it to the rest of Europe than domestically.(2) America has far more equity, about 90% of people have air conditioning but the new AC Map shows that not all of it is optimal. Portable units in a humid area are not very effective, for example.

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Today is November 1st, the day dedicated to the dead, and I am in northern Sweden where daylight is scarce this time of the year. The two things conjure to arise thoughts of a darkish nature. 


[Above, a lousy picture taken this evening in a cemetery in Gammelstad, close to Lulea, in Norrbotten, Sweden. Sorry for the bad quality... Yet the landscape with all those small lights was really inspiring.]

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A commenter contested my statement that gang murders are a much greater menace to public safety than homelessness – at least, here in Albuquerque. So let’s unpack.

Preliminaries

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When I wrote Halloween Science 2.0, I wanted to get it down to a brisk 150 pages, which means taking a chainsaw to a lot of the material I had.(1)

Like the woman who left her corporeal significant other to become a ghost groupie. Amethyst Realm, that is not her Dungeons&Dragons name, she calls herself that for real, cheated on her totally organic fiancé with a ghost but she suggested it was kind of his fault. He moved them into a haunted house.

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There is legitimate concern about increased social authoritarianism in governments worldwide. The state has gained more financial control everywhere. Even in the U.S nearly 60% of wealth is controlled by politicians, and it is the most "capitalist" country.

It led to a culture where the American federal government forced employees to get a COVID-19 vaccine or be fired. Yet 20,000,000 government employees were not given that same ultimatum.
The same mentality has led to countries where companies in the organ transplant business want you to be an organ donor by law. It would create another schism in U.S. culture, where body autonomy remains an issue. There can be no body autonomy if the government can force you to donate your organs.

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The older you get, the more frail you become. The more frail you become, the greater the risk of falling, hospitalization, and shorter life expectancy.

Doctors talk about physical activity to reduce frailty but less attention is paid to biology. A new paper suggests that the hypothalamic–pituitary–gonadal (HPG) axis, the body’s system of regulating production of the hormone testosterone, can impact frailty.

"Suggests" means this is only EXPLORATORY, not human science, but a relationship between 

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In early 2018, colleagues and I released The Next Plague and How Science Will Stop It and coronavirus was in there, because there had already been two coronavirus pandemics, SARS and MERS, this century.

No one anticipated that SARS-CoV-2 would erupt in Wuhan, China, and be the worst pandemic since the 1950s but one thing I had long been concerned about was how unprepared the CDC was. Thanks to government becoming more overlords and less public servants - sorry, George Soros and friends, 'no kings' was a problem decades before President Trump was elected - and government employees spent their days grasping for more money rather than helping anyone.(1)

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