Biofuels. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. What was once a darling of the green energy contingent has now been shown to be another bust by the 'if we mandate it, capitalism will love it and make it better' hope-over-reality segment of activism.
Maxim Marketing Corp. of Los Angeles business writes in a 24-page Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit that Trader Joe’s peanut butter filled pretzels are a monopolistic effort by
ConAgra and Trader Joe’s
and claim breach of contract, intentional interference with contractual relations and violation of California antitrust law. “ConAgra and Trader Joe’s have engaged in an unlawful conspiracy to eliminate competition in, and ultimately to monopolize, the peanut butter filled pocket pretzel market,” Maxim wrote in the court filing.H/T Morning Cup. Thanks, Bob!
If you ask most people what Froot Loops taste like, they will give you a litany of flavors, based on the colors they remember, it seems. It's all in their heads, just like buying organic food or homeopathy flu medication. In reality, Froot Loops all taste the same. This is not news, it's been well documented since at least the 1990s but it got mentioned in TIME a few days ago and so the blogosphere has been engaged in faux outrage. Not the kind of hyper outrage a Nature editor gets if he uses a real person's name after being insulted over and over on Twitter, but outrage just the same.
The administration has never gotten tired of the idea that money is just something they print and so the solution to the student debt problem - which government created decades ago by declaring a college education a 'right' and making student loans unlimited - is to start forgiving student loans.This is the wrong approach. Writing in The Atlantic, Jordan Weissmann notes Department of Education data showing that undergraduate tuition at public colleges for the entire United States was under $63 billion.
On Christmas Eve, the Russian research vessel Akademik Shokalskiy, on an Antarctic expedition to duplicate a voyage 100 years ago, the 1911-to-1913 voyage of Australian explorer Douglas Mawson to Antarctica, and study the effects of global warming, became stuck in ice and its 52 passengers were trapped for 8 days before a helicopter from the Chinese ship Xue Long rescued them.Then the Xue Long got stuck in the ice.Like climate activists and journalists who insist they need to fly to every climate meeting to build relationships while they tell us to reduce our carbon footprint, it has to be asked how much carbon was created undertaking the trip and the resulting rescue. Answer: A lot.
PETA has decided to show it's support for animal rights by giving human animals hypothermia.But only female human animals. They seem to hate female humans. No idea why, but hatred is the only explanation for why they would send mostly-naked women onto the streets of Minneapolis wearing nothing but lettuce.Temperature: 0 degrees. At that temperature frostbite can occur on exposed skin within 30 minutes if the winds reach speeds of 15 miles per hour.
There are no chestnuts roasting on an open fire this Christmas if you live in San Francisco, But, really, if you cared about science, freedom or tolerance you moved long ago so you don't mind. You may even be a member of the SPCC - the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Chestnuts. The Bay Area Air Quality Management District says light winds mean the air would be unsafe to breathe if residents burned actual wood in their fireplaces, so they have announced that wood burning will be banned Christmas Eve and probably on Christmas Day, too.
“We’re not picking these days for the fun of it or anything, it completely has to do with the science behind air pollution,” said air district spokesman Tom Flannigan.
Holidays are a big season for anti-science groups. Greenpeace gave us a mopey, dirty Santa saying the North Pole was going to melt and now an anti-GMO group in Russia comes right out and says what most groups won't come right out and say - that GMOs should be banned.Most anti-science types at least establish a pretense of 'we distrust corporations' or 'this needs to be studied until we find someone to say GMOs are evil'. Not Russia. Irina Ermakova, vice president of Russia’s National Association for Genetic Safety says “it is necessary to ban GMO, to impose moratorium [on it] for 10 years. While GMO will be prohibited, we can plan experiments, tests, or maybe even new methods of research could be developed.”
A systematic review of studies has found insufficient evidence that vitamin and mineral supplements are effective for preventing cardiovascular disease, cancer, or mortality from those diseases in healthy adults.Two studies included in the review found lower overall cancer incidence in men who took a multivitamin for over 10 years. Those same studies showed no cancer protection benefit for women.
The eco-terrorism that made Greenpeace famous is no longer in vogue and a large part of their traditionally liberal base has been turned off by their irrational anti-science crusades against food, energy and medicine - basically, the only science they accept is climate science and only then as long as the IPCC continues to estimate our doom.They are dutifully trying to train the next generation of people scared about science - and they are willing to stoop to Santa to do it.
