For decades, the anti-vaccine movement was squarely on the left. Anti-vaccine, anti-cell-phone, anti-everything lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was even on the short list for a cabinet position in the Obama administration before we got Democrats who cared about science and reason to join us in pushing back on that, leaving only over-representation of UFO believers and a guy who thought girls can't do math as part of the concern.

Tom Girardi, the lawyer whose big claim to fame was a game of chicken with Pacific Gas&Electric over a chemical detected in the water of a small town in the Mojave, was long suspected of being ethically challenged, but as long as he was sticking it to corporations it wasn't a concern for journalists.

The wine industry has been on a tear for two decades. Where once Napa wines were so second-rate they had to pay Orson Welles to try and gain credibility, the California landscape is now dotted with vineyards.That may be coming to an end due to demographics; the same people drinking wine then are drinking it now, but they are 20 years older. The recession has not impacted the Boomer crowd much yet, older people who drink wine have IRAs, but the median age for them is now 66, and younger people are not taking it up as much. Costs are showing no signs of slowing down and everyone thinks wages should be higher - until their indulgences get more expensive.

The Biden administration has made a number of political and economic missteps - e.g. an Inflation Reduction Act that has nothing to do with inflation and won't reduce it - but its science and health gaffes get less press.When Scott Gottlieb, MD, was in charge, FDA was on the road to becoming more nimble, but it took the COVID-19 pandemic, and watching other agencies like the CDC run in circles and demonstrate true incompetence, for FDA to really understand they are not protecting anyone by being bureaucratic roadblocks. No one is safer if a company needs 18 months and a room full of lawyers just to get permission to change the color of a font on a drug label, but that was what FDA had become.

One thing Arizona,
Colorado,
Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming share in common is getting water from the Colorado River - and being frustrated that California, which takes the most, refuses to join their plan to cut water consumption before it's too late.

The Biden administration has not been shy about reorganizing science and health until it does what they want, and a new move to block a mine in Alaska will probably not pass legal challenges, but is he right on the science this time?(1)First, it is important to know politicians are rarely correct. There is no 'party of science' and no 'scientist in chief'. that is just an intellectual halo elected officials wrap their constituents in to feel good. Name a president you think is pro-science and I can tell you how they were the opposite.

Starting in 1970s America, Democrats began to wage total war on nuclear energy. The risks were exaggerated but emotion sells, especially when it was promoted by their allies in media.In 1994, they got their wish. Senator John Kerry and Bill Clinton congratulated each other on finally strangling U.S. nuclear science, and therefore nuclear energy, into a coma.What happened next is well-known. The war on nuclear had meant an increase in coal. Environmentalists who hated nuclear more than coal had touted biofuels and natural gas. Then natural gas took off and they hated that. Then they hated the biofuels they had lobbied to turn into law.

Do you think hot tea causes cancer? A common weedkiller? Do you think red wine is good for you?If so, you have been duped by scientific-sounding epidemiology that has long been finding a correlation between a product and an effect and then "suggesting" causation in press releases. And far too often is set off by anecdotes, as happened with monosodium glutamate - MSG.If you decided you should take horse dewormer for COVID-19, that was epidemiology. If you decided flipping a mask up and down between bites of food prevented anyone from getting COVID-19, that was also epidemiology. Both are as wrong as low-fat milk, which was also epidemiology.

Food Tank, run by organic food industry proponent Danielle Nierenberg, says everything you are supposed to say about being non-partisan, but not only do they exclusively virtue signal to one political party, they basically cater to one demographic; rich white women on the coasts.And that means being opposed to science - except climate change, because it is a disaster narrative and that means something to complain about, and now COVID-19 vaccines, because Republicans were dumb enough to oppose those so Democrats flipped from being 9X more likely to be anti-vax to quietly being anti-Pharma while pretending they are not confused why they suddenly support non-alternative medicine.

In engineering, an old joke goes that customers want cheap, accurate, and fast - but can only have two of those.Business is about compromise. In food, the USDA says all farmers are farmers so they turn a blind eye to the sleazy marketing tactics of the organic segment, like paying trade groups to defame conventional food and scientists who defend agriculture while the companies themselves make advertising catering to the whitest, richest people imaginable.Yet their customers already hate science, they think everything is a conspiracy by Monsanto, Exxon, or someone named Sackler. It does no harm to promote conspiracy theories and feel-good fallacies among True Believers. Yet it's bad if you want to appeal to normal people.