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Epidemiology Paper Correlates Vaping To Anorexia – And Then We Wonder Why Anyone Is Skeptical About COVID-19 Data

Posted by on Sep 13, 2021 in Public Health | Comments Off on Epidemiology Paper Correlates Vaping To Anorexia – And Then We Wonder Why Anyone Is Skeptical About COVID-19 Data

In 2021, it is vital that the public trusts epidemiologists when it comes to disease transmission. The cultural obstacle is that epidemiology is such a large field, much of it populated by woo. Osteopaths hurt their own reputations by not demanding that hucksters like Joe Mercola have his license revoked, while epidemiologists who want to be trusted guides now need to recognize they have to overcome suspect claims about some new fad food linked to increasing longevity, trace chemicals linked to changes in hormones, and that particulate matter so small it takes an electron microscope to see it is linked to early deaths.

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California Hurt Themselves With Solar Power The Way Sri Lanka Did With Organic Food

Posted by on Sep 10, 2021 in Energy | Comments Off on California Hurt Themselves With Solar Power The Way Sri Lanka Did With Organic Food

Just a few weeks ago, Sri Lanka underwent a meltdown. The price of food had skyrocketed and it was all because instead of believing scientists they believed Russia or Pesticide Action Network or whoever claims the organic process "is ready" to feed everyone and switched. 

After a whole lot of people who have never farmed made the decision, its collapse was sudden. They switched to organic in May and by August exports were down because yields plummeted. People hoarded food because they knew what was happening and then the government had to create police units to raid homes and steal it so it would not be sold on the black markets that exploded in volume.

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Activists Who Spent 40 Years Blocking Water Projects Now Say They’re Unneeded Or They’d Have Been Built

Posted by on Sep 7, 2021 in Environment | Comments Off on Activists Who Spent 40 Years Blocking Water Projects Now Say They’re Unneeded Or They’d Have Been Built

In the midst of wildfires that occur with more severity because environmentalists block responsible logging and tree management in California, environmentalists who have blocked water infrastructure now say we don't need the infrastructure voters passed into law...or it would already have been built.

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We Don’t Need Facebook Authoritarianism: Casual People Spot Fake News As Well As Paid Fact Checkers

Posted by on Sep 3, 2021 in Technology | Comments Off on We Don’t Need Facebook Authoritarianism: Casual People Spot Fake News As Well As Paid Fact Checkers

We Don’t Need Facebook Authoritarianism: Casual People Spot Fake News As Well As Paid Fact Checkers
It has become common for political activists to demand that social media engage in bans and content warnings, because the other side is too stupid to know false facts from the real kind. In reality, everyone who takes their politics too seriously is inclined to believe the worst when it comes to others, and calling for bans is more of a patronizing way to pretend they care about discourse when they most just want to control it.

This has led to companies like Facebook and Twitter either outright censoring some content or putting nonsensical fact checking warning labels on it. Here is a case in point from our own Facebook page:



Here is what it was ridiculing:

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Extreme Pandemics Like COVID-19 Aren’t Rare, We Roll The Dice Each Year

Posted by on Sep 2, 2021 in Immunology | Comments Off on Extreme Pandemics Like COVID-19 Aren’t Rare, We Roll The Dice Each Year

COVID-19 is certainly worse than the SARS and MERS pandemics that occurred a few years prior, and the reasons why SARS-CoV-2 is worse than those others is open for debate, but one thing is not; pandemics, even extreme ones, are not as rare as many believe.

The big difference between pandemics now and those of prior generations is the prevalence of real-time media and worldwide connections never available before. We have no real way to know how many people the Asian Flu of the 1950s killed because there was even less transparency in China then than there is now. Likewise, the Spanish Flu may have killed far more than we know, just as we don't know how many died in a country like Brazil or China.

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Compact Speakers Can Be Better Than Ever, Thanks To Controlled Destruction Of Sound

Posted by on Sep 1, 2021 in Applied Physics | Comments Off on Compact Speakers Can Be Better Than Ever, Thanks To Controlled Destruction Of Sound

Devices we watch and listen on are smaller than ever, which means speakers for sound are as well. In the past, it was difficult to get quality sound from small parts because sound is still analog when it gets to us, and that takes surface area. 

Like synthetic grape flavor, using one important part when it requires lots means a result is not quite right. Today's compact speakers are more like synthetic banana flavor; you are unlikely to know the difference, and that is due to mastering physics beyond the surface area - controlled destruction of sound waves.

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Louisiana Has Important Things To Worry About, Lawyers Shouldn’t Invent A ‘Cancer Alley’ To Pile On

Posted by on Aug 31, 2021 in Chemistry | Comments Off on Louisiana Has Important Things To Worry About, Lawyers Shouldn’t Invent A ‘Cancer Alley’ To Pile On

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the American public fell back in love with science. In the first 19 years of this century, Californians denied vaccines to such an extent a law had to be passed to prevent coastal parents from creating a Whooping Cough pandemic. Every building had cancer warnings somewhere - even oncology wards in hospitals warned cancer patients they might get cancer by visiting their doctor - and Non-GMO Project rock salt(!) took off.

That has now changed.(1) For most of the country, Purell, Clorox, and Lysol replaced bottles of useless green-labeled goop that claimed to be natural alternatives. People wanted what worked.

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Exposure To Wildfire Smoke May Increase Preterm Birth Risk – But It Would Be The PM10, Not PM2.5

Posted by on Aug 25, 2021 in Atmospheric | Comments Off on Exposure To Wildfire Smoke May Increase Preterm Birth Risk – But It Would Be The PM10, Not PM2.5

A new study statistically correlates wildfire smoke to pre-term birth risk. There are a number of confounders in that, of course, like that exposure to wildfires creates a great deal of stress and often hurried actions and those are huge factors, but they instead dredged up a link to something that makes little sense - air quality far from fires. And since they came up with a suitably cosmic number - 7,000 extra preterm births in just 5 years!it is sure to get attention in a state where everyone hyperventilates over everything.

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EPA Is Lowering The Ethanol Mandate Below 2020 Levels – They Should Lower It To Zero

Posted by on Aug 21, 2021 in Energy | Comments Off on EPA Is Lowering The Ethanol Mandate Below 2020 Levels – They Should Lower It To Zero

I am not running for President so I don't have any need to cater to Iowa corn farmers and voters, as former Vice-President Al Gore admitted he was doing when he broke a tie in the Senate and forced ethanol mandates on Americans.

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Fact Check: Is Chewing Gum ‘Made’ Of Plastic?

Posted by on Aug 20, 2021 in Chemistry | Comments Off on Fact Check: Is Chewing Gum ‘Made’ Of Plastic?

A reader sent me an email asking about chewing gum and if it was really made of plastic and my first thought was 'Why ask me? Do what scientists do and go to Google, skip the first 10 entries, which will all be gamed by SEO experts at anti-science groups like Ecowatch, and then you will find the answer' but I was hooked when I saw the article linked was in The Economist.

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