Between 2003 and 2014, consumption of sodas and other sugar-sweetened beverages declined and yet obesity has continued to rise. Yet governments seeking new sources of revenue are looking for…

The Chinese government’s ongoing attempts to create a social credit system aimed at rating the trustworthiness of people and companies have generated equal measures of fascination and anxiety around…

In Canada, even people with Celiac disease don't really think of it as a disease, so it's no surprise the more subjective gluten "intolerance", which food marketers have used to create a $5 billion…

It's been well-established by now but owing to a discredited International Agency for Research on Cancer claim, which environmental groups insist remains valid despite finding that a member of the…

German Chancellor Angela Merkel had unkind things to say about America after the country declined to participate in a new agreement, the Paris accords, knowing full well that China had been given…

A new Pew Research Center survey examining people’s experiences in the workplace and perceptions of fair treatment for women provides just the results you would guess; half of women say they have…

The title of this post is the password code required to connect to my wireless network at home. The service, provided by the Italian internet provider Fastweb, has been discontinued as I moved to…

North Korea is going to send a team to the Winter Olympics in South Korea. The news is looking promising with a significant thawing of relations between the two Koreas in advance of the Winter…

The most crucial to happy gambling generally (apart from being prepared for losing, since you create a losing copy of yourself with certainty) is your Happy-Enough-Ceiling, where if you reach it, you…

We all pay our electric and gas bills in winter with more urgency than in summer because cold can kill you.  Without both electricity and gas modern furnaces will not function.  So we pay…

In 1923, Frank Silver and Irving Cohn published a song that became a major hit for the Billy Jones Orchestra, with the signature line “Yes, we have no bananas; we have no bananas…

In the United States, we just had another Supermoon, and at the end of this month we will have a Blue Moon (the second full moon in a month) with a lunar eclipse, which is pretty special. Though…

Mental Health Warning: Many World/Mind (MW/M) descriptions may aggravate mental conditions; suicidal ideation has been recognized as a pitfall along the path of Zen-like wisdoms by a wide range of…

I was born and have lived in Venice for over 51 years now (omitting to mention some 2 years of interruption when I worked for Harvard University, 18 years ago), but this has come to an end on…

A new "raw" trend has made its way into the paper of record for anti-science woo and miracle vegetable fads - the New York Times. Along with articles about astrology and acupuncture, they have now…

With tax cuts in 2018, the federal government is going to either increase the deficit or cut spending. And conservatives argue spending should be cut. Will that impact science? It certainly will, but…

Since science is both corporate and political in the modern era (the private sector and government each fund about half of basic research in the U.S.), if you defend science you are implicitly…

Life is a gamble, every day, all day, in a most greedy casino with unwritten rules and players rewriting the rules, re-interpreting them if you accidentally won too much without having the right…

This is awful. A science writer and video producer who decided Christmas Eve is just the right time to publish a video claiming FALSELY that a small nuclear exchange of 100 nuclear weapons would…

Scared by the void of Christmas vacations? Unable to put just a few more feet between your mouth and the candy tray? Suffocating in the trivialities of the chit-chat with relatives? I have a solution…