In 1989, the communist dictatorship oddly named Union of Soviet Socialist Republics reached the extent of a third giant hole in the Arctic Circle, Kola Superdeep Borehole SG-3, where they'd been drilling for 19 years. It clocked in at nearly 8 miles deep.
I rarely win when it comes to cultural language stuff. Before 1999, an attractive older woman, for example, was to me a "Momshell" and no woman had any objection to a portmanteau of mom and bombshell (if they heard it - but a woman should not hear it, or your charm goes way down) yet after 1999's "American Pie" film the vulgar acronym "MILF" became the default. I have maintained for decades that we are worse off for it. If a young man used it in my presence where the woman could hear, I'd correct him. Not in a mean way, just by explaining there is a term that doesn't make him seem crass.
If you're an agenda-driven, lawyer-funded epidemiologist and really want to move the needle in media on scaring people, be so bad at math - literally the only thing an epidemiologist does - that you are off by an order of magnitude.Because if 60 x 7000 equals 42,000, you're either in third grade or you are an anti-science mullah like everyone at Toxic-Free Future, who know a journal they pay to publish in isn't doing any peer review, and know that media allies like the SEO tinkerers who rewrite press releases for LA Times and Salon will be excited about the chance to pad their pageview quota.
Over 50,000,000 Americans get subsidized or free health under the Affordable Care Act but that doesn't mean usage of preventive care increased across the board. Instead, a new analysis found that the inflationary spike which led to much higher costs for housing, food, and utilities are barriers.Data from 186 community-based health organizations in 13 states found that despite higher rates of primary care visits, patients experiencing social risks like concerns about food or rent were less likely to complete screenings when recommended by doctors.
Friends of the Earth and other litigation groups opposed to science are cheering the closure of AquaBounty's AquAdvantage salmon - the poster-child (decades of regulatory roadblocks) for how the US regulatory system is manipulated by lawyers to hold back technology and medicine - but progress marches on despite the public relations campaign by Greenpeace, NRDC, and others who stand against it.Their persistent efforts to get pesticides either banned or regulated so tightly they act as bans have been wildly successful during the Biden years, but with Chevron Deference overturned at the Supreme Court political appointees can no longer get science banned by using agencies to create regulations that act like laws.
Two Presidents ago, political appointees engaged in behavior that didn't make much sense(1) and had no benefit for public health. For example, they declared there was an epidemic of something they invented called "pre-diabetes" and insisted that smoking cessation tools that were twice as effective as gums and patches but were not controlled by Big Pharma, plus cigars and pipes that have never killed anyone, were an epidemic in kids.
"I feel your pain" is a common empathy cliché but we know the opposite is true in some, and it changes how they interact with the world. After Dutch film director Theo van Gogh put out "Submission: Part 1" , which criticized the treatment of women in Islam, he was murdered by Mohammed Bouyeri, who ranted about a "Jewish cabal" and later directed to van Gogh's mother, "I don't feel your pain, because I believe you're an infidel."Racism and intolerance take away empathy for others,(1) but so does alcohol.
Vaping in kids had its day. While useful before and since for smoking cessation and harm reduction in cigarette smokers, vaping only became a fad in teens when, as predicted, social authoritarians in the Obama administration declared it an epidemic - if on a survey a young person claimed to have tried one in the previous year and began rolling out commercials of children filmed in black and white looking like zombies.(1) It was Reefer Madness for the 2010s and did the same thing Reefer Madness did; it caused teens to think it was cool to outrage their elders.
“This is a new and emerging epidemic, and we must increase awareness of this disease process so we can avoid delays in diagnosis and treatment for our patients,” says University of California in Los Angeles radiology resident Sundus Lateef, M.D.Epidemic? Again? No.Americans are now so healthy that we have migrated from promoting nonsensical fear about virtual pollution (PM2.5) and weedkillers and lumber all the way down to...kitchen countertops.
Cannabis and THC, its main psychoactive compound, have been endorsed by people suffering from anxiety, sleep problems, epilepsy, and cancer pain.What is missing from such claims is a plausible biological hypothesis for how it can be everything to everyone, which means scientifically it is still just a placebo.
If you have done nothing wrong, do you want to be treated like a criminal? That was always the failure of Social Justice Social Science efforts like the Implicit Bias test; you're a racist, the test will show you how racist you are. You may not hate anyone so it would be perfectly understandable if you resented being told you are a terrible human being and that if you believe you are not, you are a Fascist.
Minnesota is having a challenging year, so challenging they are approaching California as the wackiest state, according to other states. They have a chronic anti-Semitism problem, including a member of Congress who may soon have to register as a foreign national, a Governor so completely associated with violent protests that mainstream Democrats were baffled he was designated as their Vice-Presidential nominee in the 2024 election, and rampant distrust of science that made Robert F. Kennedy Jr. the darling of events there.
Once upon a time, stories were just stories. They were fantasies that took people to a new world. In the 21st century, cultural pundits insisted that books, films, video games and television shape our personalities. It began in the 1980s when Democrats wanted to censor lyrics in music, and then video games in the 1990s, and then smoking and guns out of films, and now they ban books by everyone from Hemingway to Chaucer to protect us from being poisoned by content not institutionally controlled.(1)First they came for the Disney princesses, and I said nothing, because I am not a girl...
