Science 2.0

Happy birthday to the World Wide Web, born on this day in 1991 with absolutely no attention.

Marek’s disease can wreck a chicken flock fast, causing tumors, paralysis, and then death in 100 percent of cases in organic chicken farms that refuse to accept vaccines.

In 1925, the Rivoli Theater in Times Square, owned by film mogul Adolph Zukor, created demand for summer movies. Because he had Willis-Carrier install the first large, modern air-conditioning system.

A populist campaign has built up around data centers and their impact on rural areas but, like with claims that natural gas and coffee cause cancer, they are lawyer-driven rather than scientific.

In modern times, breastfeeding has become more culture war than health epidemiology. Activists have created nearly as much disinformation around infant formula as they have weedkillers and food coloring.

In December of 1900, a civil engineer in The Ladies Home Journal made predictions so accurate about today it's spooky.

Humans are calorically dense enough that it is no surprise that some ancient cultures engaged in cannibalism - or even more modern people in the right circumstances.(1) Yet it is also taboo. In Christopher Nolan's recent version of The Odyssey, cannibals appear twice.

In 53 B.C., a member of Rome's First Triumverate, Marcus Licinius Crassus, wanted to show himself the equal of fellow rulers Caesar And Pompey.

Friends of the Earth was famously started by an anti-nuclear activist who felt like his employer, Sierra Club, did not hate science enough. You read that right. Sierra Club, founded by a rabid eugenicist, was too soft on science for David Brower.

The good news for Americans is that wages have outpaced costs since the Clinton years.

After President Bill Clinton ordered his US Department of Agriculture to make a government "organic" marketing designation for products that used older pesticides and genetic engineering, the industry took off and is now $150 Big Food segment in its own right.

If you are not currently smoking marijuana, do not start. It is a carcinogen, no different than cigarettes and alcohol. Most people recognize its effects on the brain are so broad it is about as safe as lead in drinking water. But if you already have cancer, that relative risk equation may change.