Science 2.0

Twenty years ago I got access for the first time to the interface that allowed me to publish blog posts for the Quantum Diaries web site, a science outreach endeavor that involved some 12 (then 15, then 25 or so IIRC) researchers around the world. A week before I had been contacted by the Fermilab outreach team, who were setting the thing up, and at that time I did not even know what a blog was!

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In ancient civilizations, rulers and nobles exchanged gifts as acts of prestige. Only when Assyria came into existence, and it had a need for manpower and resources to feed its conquering empire, did gifts turn into taxes and government become overlord of its people, who were moved from place to place and told what to do by elites.

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A recent paper claims the common weedkiller known as glyphosate gives mice Alzheimer's and therefore is a risk to humans.

Arizona State University researchers created an association between glyphosate exposure in mice and symptoms of neuroinflammation, as well as "accelerated Alzheimer’s disease-like pathology", whatever that is supposed to mean, and claim that farming could mean a persistent risk to human health.

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“I am definitely not following the news anymore,” one patient told me when I asked about her political news consumption in the weeks before the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

This conversation happened around the time I talked with a local TV channel about why we saw fewer political yard signs during this year’s election season, compared with past ones.

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The Christmas period isn’t just for presents, sparkling lights and too much festive food – it’s also prime time for couples to get engaged. And for heterosexual couples, this is likely to happen in a specific way. The man will do the asking.

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A few years ago I noted that French motility was in freefall, down 30% in 30 years, and it was due in large part to the vast quantities of "organic" pesticides they consumed as the country switched to more organic food.

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Looking for a last-minute Christmas gift? Doctor Wilhelm Reich, who claimed to be the discoverer of orgone energy (e.g. what other hippies in eastern nations call "chi" and in western nations call "life energy") created the Orgone Accumulator, an alternating wood/metal layered hexagon that absorbed energy from the aether - basically The Force that Boomers like George Lucas still believed in when he was making the original "Star Wars" trilogy - and directed it at people inside.

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On this day in 1768, eight years before the Declaration of Independence, an anonymous article in the Boston Gazette protested the military presence in Boston as a violation of civil liberties.

In 2024, California Governor Gavin Newsom has issued another "state of emergency", this time over bird flu...in Louisiana.

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Environmentalism is a $3 billion a year industry and the trial lawyers they help are orders of magnitude greater. What is the last public health win they gave us? Name a hysteria, from dying bees to BPA to DDT, and I can show you where actions were taken over the objections of scientists, not because science showed harm.

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Ebba Busch, Swedish Deputy PM&Minister for Energy, says they need to go back to conventional energy, especially if they're going to continue to carry countries like Germany, that closed their nuclear plants.

Their decade-long focus on wind has caused prices to soar and reliability to decline, and even calls out Germany's Green Guru and Vice Chancellor, the philosopher Robert Habeck, PhD.


Ebba Busch, Swedish Minister for Energy, Business and Industry and Deputy Prime Minister

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I rarely win when it comes to cultural language stuff. Before 1999, an attractive older woman, for example, was to me a "Momshell" and no woman had any objection to a portmanteau of mom and bombshell (if they heard it - but a woman should not hear it, or your charm goes way down) yet after 1999's "American Pie" film the vulgar acronym "MILF" became the default. I have maintained for decades that we are worse off for it. If a young man used it in my presence where the woman could hear, I'd correct him. Not in a mean way, just by explaining there is a term that doesn't make him seem crass.

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If you're an agenda-driven, lawyer-funded epidemiologist and really want to move the needle in media on scaring people, be so bad at math - literally the only thing an epidemiologist does - that you are off by an order of magnitude.

Because if 60 x 7000 equals 42,000, you're either in third grade or you are an anti-science mullah like everyone at Toxic-Free Future, who know a journal they pay to publish in isn't doing any peer review, and know that media allies like the SEO tinkerers who rewrite press releases for LA Times and Salon will be excited about the chance to pad their pageview quota.

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Over 50,000,000 Americans get subsidized or free health under the Affordable Care Act but that doesn't mean usage of preventive care increased across the board. Instead, a new analysis found that the inflationary spike which led to much higher costs for housing, food, and utilities are barriers.

Data from 186 community-based health organizations in 13 states found that despite higher rates of primary care visits, patients experiencing social risks like concerns about food or rent were less likely to complete screenings when recommended by doctors.

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Over 50,000,000 Americans get subsidized or free health under the Affordable Care Act but that doesn't mean usage of preventive care increased across the board. Instead, a new analysis found that the inflationary spike which led to much higher costs for housing, food, and utilities are barriers.

Data from 186 community-based health organizations in 13 states found that despite higher rates of primary care visits, patients experiencing social risks like concerns about food or rent were less likely to complete screenings when recommended by doctors.

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Nearly 50 years ago, Democrats wanted to ban recombinant DNA technology while scientists wanted to make insulin without needing a pancreas from a steer. Both sides won. Beef pancreas is no longer needed and the FDA still treats GMOs like they are a 'cure for cancer' claim in the 1970s while using high costs and bureaucracy to prevent small companies from getting into the insulin market.

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Nearly 50 years ago, Democrats wanted to ban recombinant DNA technology while scientists wanted to make insulin without needing a pancreas from a steer. Both sides won. Beef pancreas is no longer needed and the FDA still treats GMOs like they are a 'cure for cancer' claim in the 1970s while using high costs and bureaucracy to prevent small companies from getting into the insulin market.

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Friends of the Earth and other litigation groups opposed to science are cheering the closure of AquaBounty's AquAdvantage salmon - the poster-child (decades of regulatory roadblocks) for how the US regulatory system is manipulated by lawyers to hold back technology and medicine - but progress marches on despite the public relations campaign by Greenpeace, NRDC, and others who stand against it.

Their persistent efforts to get pesticides either banned or regulated so tightly they act as bans have been wildly successful during the Biden years, but with Chevron Deference overturned at the Supreme Court political appointees can no longer get science banned by using agencies to create regulations that act like laws.

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Friends of the Earth and other litigation groups opposed to science are cheering the closure of AquaBounty's AquAdvantage salmon - the poster-child (decades of regulatory roadblocks) for how the US regulatory system is manipulated by lawyers to hold back technology and medicine - but progress marches on despite the public relations campaign by Greenpeace, NRDC, and others who stand against it.

Their persistent efforts to get pesticides either banned or regulated so tightly they act as bans have been wildly successful during the Biden years, but with Chevron Deference overturned at the Supreme Court political appointees can no longer get science banned by using agencies to create regulations that act like laws.

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Two Presidents ago, political appointees engaged in behavior that didn't make much sense(1) and had no benefit for public health. For example, they declared there was an epidemic of something they invented called "pre-diabetes" and insisted that smoking cessation tools that were twice as effective as gums and patches but were not controlled by Big Pharma, plus cigars and pipes that have never killed anyone, were an epidemic in kids.

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Two Presidents ago, political appointees engaged in behavior that didn't make much sense(1) and had no benefit for public health. For example, they declared there was an epidemic of something they invented called "pre-diabetes" and insisted that smoking cessation tools that were twice as effective as gums and patches but were not controlled by Big Pharma, plus cigars and pipes that have never killed anyone, were an epidemic in kids.

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