It's no secret that California is having a crisis of confidence. Water is too expensive and too scarce but politicians jammed through the implosion of four more dams anyway, while energy costs are high due to solar and wind subsidies. The state refused to pay for schooling for poor kids but is saying that college graduates who get their student loans waived won't have to pay taxes. While the state has a $25 billion deficit this year. It turns out that people selling stocks in a bad economy and paying capital gains taxes is not a business mode.

It is sort of forgivable if the wacky head of the Crossfit company claimed Coca-Cola causes diabetes because at least it has calories. And if you consume too many calories, be it in the form of Coca-Cola or salad, you will get fat. And being obese is the number one risk factor for Type 2 diabetes.

But light?

Welcome to epidemiology, where anything can be linked to anything and, if you can claim statistical significance, turn it into a paper you hope science will one day show to be true. 

Cultured Gallus gallus cells, with characteristics of myocytes and fibroblasts, don't sound delicious, but it one day soon could be.

It's chicken, except chicken without dreary activists going on about cages and without any heads being chopped off. And now it has FDA go-ahead. After looking at all of the data and the methodology, FDA has determined that it is as safe as chicken or other substitutes.

Given how it is created, it is likely far more safe. They call it 'cultivated' meat to distinguish it from its conventional counterpart and it is already approved in Singapore.

Years ago, California asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for permission to remove Klamath River dams that are currently part of a vast network of water and energy supply in the state.

What two things does California lack? Water and energy. And this will make it worse. But California invoked native tribes and environmental laws it helped push into existence as a reason to say the dams needed to be removed - at a cost of $500,000,000 and with very little study of the environmental impact of removing them.

Worst of all, a state that routinely has to ask EPA for permission to void all emissions regulations and run conventional fuel plants at full blast to avoid brownouts due to bizarre belief in solar and wind schemes now has even less clean energy.

If you live along the coastal US, you are almost certain to be a wealthy progressive, which means you are almost certain to nod your head at President Biden's pledge to cut climate emissions by 2030.

Yet progressive enclaves, which mean 9 of the 10 wealthiest counties in the US, are least likely to support climate-friendly plans that don't involve having poor people pay higher utility costs to subsidize solar panels for the rich. 

Writing in Reason, science journalist Ron Bailey notes that 18,000 megawatts of offshore wind power, on the coasts, are being tied up in federal environmental permitting battles, because either activists want concessions or residents don't want their expensive view affected, and any permit is a slippery slope to being overrun.

Is Senator Elizabeth Warren a Native American, as she routinely claimed she was when it helped her career? Actually, sure, in a world where anyone can identify any way they want it is logically (and increasingly legally) difficult to tell someone they can't feel like part of a group, especially if the history is limited to stories and scant archeology.(1)

After Democrats passed the 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, and the Obama administration tightened the noose even more, the smoking cessation and harm reduction movement outside Big Pharma products has been slowly strangled.

With Honest company stock down 83% in the last 18 months, co-founder Jessica Alba is making the media rounds to try and avoid a shareholder lawsuit. (1)

Nothing wrong with that, she has a responsibility to make them money. Unfortunately, she is still trapped in 2012 when it comes to marketing. She thinks she can only win if she tears science down. Her appearance at the 2022 Makers Conference did more than just lie about her products being safer, she tried to suggest that she faced sexism getting the company launched.

Averages don't tell us much about actual people or individual risk. After all, the average man has fewer than two testicles and the average woman fewer than two breasts but that doesn't tell you anything about your risk of testicular or breast cancer.

Though abused by epidemiologists hoping to become expert witnesses in lawsuits against companies (an alarming number of participants at both IARC and NIEHS), absolute risk tells us as as little as averages, because '10% more risk' is silly if the relative risk is 1 in a million. Yet IARC, the UN body claiming to be the world leader in epidemiology, uses suspect methodologies and bizarre doses to claim things like drinking hot tea or eating meat increase your risk of cancer.