Photos of the 55th Annual Butter Sculpture have been spread far and wide thanks to the New York State Fair. It's a train, which is on brand with the theme of how dairy helps brains, bones and bodies work together grow. It's an important message; thanks to bizarre fads and activist campaigns, kids probably don't get enough food-based calcium and Vitamin D. New York, like California and a dozen other states, instead prefer pills and supplements because they think 'food is medicine' - unless it is yogurt.The conductor of the train is, unsurprisingly, a cow.State Fair attendees won't get to eat it, though. After the event it will be recycled.

In 1994, President Bill Clinton listened to his constituents who said Big Pharma was a corporate conspiracy and instructed the FDA to waive away any real control of the alternative-to-medicine industry. Unless they will kill someone, as long as the $35 billion industry writes a tiny disclaimer noting that there is no scientific basis for their claims and that therefore FDA doesn't agree with any nonsense on the label, they could be set free on a gullible public.Dr. Mark Hyman, one of the Four Horsemen of the Alternative, was pleased that his future "patient" did all that for those who think powder made from endangered species has magical properties. It's Big Business now.

Do you think particles so small you need an electron microscope to view them can cause dementia? Then my guess you are a trial lawyer looking for something new to sue about, a greedy person hoping to leverage a family member's illness to get rich, or an epidemiologist trying to get an expert witness contract.

Greenpeace is a horrible organization. I used to wonder how anyone could support them, but even the KKK has 3,000 members so awful people can do awful things and rationalize why they are saving us all.Greenpeace doesn't wear funny white hats and burn crosses, but they sure hate minorities. They hate them so much they claim brown and black people are too stupid to farm using science. Greenpeace is steadfastly opposed to all genetic engineering that could make locally grown, affordable food available to countries that are not rich - unless it is a corporate donor to Greenpeace. Like the organic food companies who use lobbyists, trade groups, and marketing reps to create an 'organic' standard that exempts anything about their products from scrutiny.

Racism has been technically banned in California higher education since 1996 but schools have routinely gone around it with a wink from a majority party that never followers voter mandates they happen not to like.Instead of using race for admissions - but only preferred minorities determined by secret sauce, which is why racism in admissions went to the Supreme Court multiple times - they declare they're doing enrollment based on needs of the state work force. And the background of applicants, except for race.Little surprise that ends being the same racist policy that got it banned by voters, who went around the legislature to do it. Asian heritage kids without American last names are still penalized by California.

In 950 AD, the first beekeeping document was created. An Irish monk noted their hives had mysteriously died off.Flemming G (1871) Animal plagues: Their history, nature and prevention. London: Chapman and Hall.Bees have been recording dying off en masse ever since. Just like they died before. What was the cause before pesticides existed? The same cause as kills bees today, except lacking $3 billion in revenue and allies in corporate journalism; parasites. 

If you have ever visited the Terracotta Army in China, you know they are guarding an old emperor. That emperor was Qin Shi Huang, from 2,200 years ago.The tomb has not been opened. The Chinese are superstitious, they believe in acupuncture and that grinding up the bones of endangered animals gives them superpowers, but apparently even some western archaeologists believe in magic. They are worried about crossbow and mercury traps.You know, like "Raiders of the Lost Ark." Fiction.No bow on earth is working after 20 years much less 2,000 and detected mercury near the tomb is probably because he drank it after listening to Chinese shamen who still sell woo today.

California is having a mild summer but some regions are having their hottest season in 10 years. Scientists who used to note that weather is not climate have now retired and their Gen X and Millennial replacements know that citations aren't the road to new grants, media coverage is, so a whole lot of them will try to say any incremental finding has 'implications' for climate change or social justice.The uncomfortable truth is that we don't know a lot of about climate, and denying the impact of the sun is weird. The good news is that modeling by academics is much better than it was 20 and certainly 25 years ago, when Frankenstein hockey sticks and hiding the decline were problematic.

The dirty secret of university admissions in the Affirmative Action era is that it was only affirmative if you matched the preference of the committee creating the secret sauce for admissions. In 2012's "Science Left Behind", written with Dr. Alex Berezow, we noted that Asian students with American last names were told to put Caucasian on the admissions box.It was so well-known among Asians that being an Asian minority incurred a huge admissions penalty in universities that touted affirmative action that families told young people to deny their heritage. Even white kids had a better chance of getting than Asians.

It is common for internet influencers to secretly be lying about their behavior but 'fruit only diet' guru Zhanna Samsonova was actually practicing what she preached. And it killed her at age 39.She had survived COVID-19, she claimed, thanks to 'dry fasting'- though obviously billions of people survived it on a normal diet, and refused to seek medical treatment while everyone who saw her worried she was dying from malnutrition.Zhanna Samsonova claims people would tell her they couldn't believe she was approaching 40. Maybe she misunderstood and they thought she was approaching 80.