Science 2.0

"I feel your pain" is a common empathy cliché but we know the opposite is true in some, and it changes how they interact with the world. 

After Dutch film director Theo van Gogh put out "Submission: Part 1" , which criticized the treatment of women in Islam, he was murdered by Mohammed Bouyeri, who ranted about a "Jewish cabal" and later directed to van Gogh's mother, "I don't feel your pain, because I believe you're an infidel."

Racism and intolerance take away empathy for others,(1) but so does alcohol.

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Vaping in kids had its day. While useful before and since for smoking cessation and harm reduction in cigarette smokers, vaping only became a fad in teens when, as predicted, social authoritarians in the Obama administration declared it an epidemic - if on a survey a young person claimed to have tried one in the previous year and began rolling out commercials of children filmed in black and white looking like zombies.(1) 

It was Reefer Madness for the 2010s and did the same thing Reefer Madness did; it caused teens to think it was cool to outrage their elders.

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Vaping in kids had its day. While useful before and since for smoking cessation and harm reduction in cigarette smokers, vaping only became a fad in teens when, as predicted, social authoritarians in the Obama administration declared it an epidemic - if on a survey a young person claimed to have tried one in the previous year and began rolling out commercials of children filmed in black and white looking like zombies.(1) 

It was Reefer Madness for the 2010s and did the same thing Reefer Madness did; it caused teens to think it was cool to outrage their elders.

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The 'natural' movement is not evidence-based but the beliefs of progressives that modern science is killing us and ancient ways are more nutritious usually aren't harmful. Your risk of E. coli and higher levels of toxic pesticides from organic food is certainly greater, but in a relative risk sense all food is safe.

Except raw milk. Like sushi when you are pregnant, the risks, in this case 700X the harmful outbreaks of pasteurized milk, are not worth it, and anyone who has seen a dairy farm and isn't selling raw milk to rich coastal elites knows it.

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The 'natural' movement is not evidence-based but the beliefs of progressives that modern science is killing us and ancient ways are more nutritious usually aren't harmful. Your risk of E. coli and higher levels of toxic pesticides from organic food is certainly greater, but in a relative risk sense all food is safe.

Except raw milk. Like sushi when you are pregnant, the risks, in this case 700X the harmful outbreaks of pasteurized milk, are not worth it, and anyone who has seen a dairy farm and isn't selling raw milk to rich coastal elites knows it.

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If you read Twitter, and probably Bluesky, if anyone reads that, Republicans are in a War On Science and the proof is (1) being Republican and (2) Robert F. Kennedy Jr., former darling of Democrats and once pushed to run EPA by President Obama, is in their camp.

Except he didn't take his allies against science with him. They are still firmly anti-science progressives, which means they still vote Democrat, and they are still cheering every time science is suppressed.

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If you read Twitter, and probably Bluesky, if anyone reads that, Republicans are in a War On Science and the proof is (1) being Republican and (2) Robert F. Kennedy Jr., former darling of Democrats and once pushed to run EPA by President Obama, is in their camp.

Except he didn't take his allies against science with him. They are still firmly anti-science progressives, which means they still vote Democrat, and they are still cheering every time science is suppressed.

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Electric cars and solar and wind energy alternative schemes have a few crippling limitations; low energy densities and unavailability when people need energy most. Batteries could help with that second one except current batteries are legacy technology that are held back by subsidies and mandates, not improved.

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Electric cars and solar and wind energy alternative schemes have a few crippling limitations; low energy densities and unavailability when people need energy most. Batteries could help with that second one except current batteries are legacy technology that are held back by subsidies and mandates, not improved.

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Since being discovered in 1993, microRNAs have gone on to win a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, thanks to private sector uptake with the COVID-19 vaccines that saved the world during the pandemic that emerged from Wuhan, China in early 2020. 

Errors in the manufacture of over 1,000 microRNAs can put us at risk for developmental disorders, cancer, or neurodegenerative disease and a new study looks at a molecular machine called Microprocessor (MP), which trims longer molecules called primary microRNAs (pri-miRNAs) - without cutting other kinds of RNA that resemble pri-miRNAs.

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Since being discovered in 1993, microRNAs have gone on to win a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, thanks to private sector uptake with the COVID-19 vaccines that saved the world during the pandemic that emerged from Wuhan, China in early 2020. 

Errors in the manufacture of over 1,000 microRNAs can put us at risk for developmental disorders, cancer, or neurodegenerative disease and a new study looks at a molecular machine called Microprocessor (MP), which trims longer molecules called primary microRNAs (pri-miRNAs) - without cutting other kinds of RNA that resemble pri-miRNAs.

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“This is a new and emerging epidemic, and we must increase awareness of this disease process so we can avoid delays in diagnosis and treatment for our patients,” says University of California in Los Angeles radiology resident Sundus Lateef, M.D.

Epidemic? Again? No.

Americans are now so healthy that we have migrated from promoting nonsensical fear about virtual pollution (PM2.5) and weedkillers and lumber all the way down to...kitchen countertops.

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“This is a new and emerging epidemic, and we must increase awareness of this disease process so we can avoid delays in diagnosis and treatment for our patients,” says University of California in Los Angeles radiology resident Sundus Lateef, M.D.

Epidemic? Again? No.

Americans are now so healthy that we have migrated from promoting nonsensical fear about virtual pollution (PM2.5) and weedkillers and lumber all the way down to...kitchen countertops.

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At the IV Workshop in Valencia a student from my group, Emanuele Coradin, presented the results of a novel algorithm for the identification of charged particles in a silicon tracker. The novelty is due to the use of neuromorphic computing, which works by encoding detector hits in the time of arrival of current impulses at neurons, and by letting neurons "learn" the true patterns of hits produced by charged particles from the noise due to random hits.

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At the IV Workshop in Valencia a student from my group, Emanuele Coradin, presented the results of a novel algorithm for the identification of charged particles in a silicon tracker. The novelty is due to the use of neuromorphic computing, which works by encoding detector hits in the time of arrival of current impulses at neurons, and by letting neurons "learn" the true patterns of hits produced by charged particles from the noise due to random hits.

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Their Infiniti car couldn't ruin Nissan, but a climate where government mandates and subsidizes electric cars, which means deviating down to the revenue and running lean, are going to put them out of business. 

Because they were the world's largest electric car company, and they foolishly believed politicians who said if government forced the product on people, a miracle of capitalism would occur and consumers would like it.


Leaf. Credit: Nissan.

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Their Infiniti car couldn't ruin Nissan, but a climate where government mandates and subsidizes electric cars, which means deviating down to the revenue and running lean, are going to put them out of business. 

Because they were the world's largest electric car company, and they foolishly believed politicians who said if government forced the product on people, a miracle of capitalism would occur and consumers would like it.


Leaf. Credit: Nissan.

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Cannabis and THC, its main psychoactive compound, have been endorsed by people suffering from anxiety, sleep problems, epilepsy, and cancer pain.

What is missing from such claims is a plausible biological hypothesis for how it can be everything to everyone, which means scientifically it is still just a placebo.

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Cannabis and THC, its main psychoactive compound, have been endorsed by people suffering from anxiety, sleep problems, epilepsy, and cancer pain.

What is missing from such claims is a plausible biological hypothesis for how it can be everything to everyone, which means scientifically it is still just a placebo.

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Europeans who emigrated to the colonies in America had a dream of religious freedom, denied to them by European elites and government-mandated beliefs, and legal equality, absolutely impossible in England if you were poor, but they also believed in an economic Utopia.


That last belief nearly cost them their lives. William Bradford, the first leader of that Massachusetts Bay colony, eventually conceded their socialist ideal failed. Free riders who chose not to work nearly doomed them. By 1621, a year after landing in Massachusetts, they had changed from socialism to a system where each family owned their land and worked it for their family.

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