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.
President Biden is using his Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) agency to mandate vaccines for companies - by saying they need it to protect workers' safety.
There is no question that COVID-19 is the worst pandemic of my lifetime. It has led to greater absolute US deaths than the Asian Flu of 1957 and the Spanish Flu of 1918, though obviously we are 2X and 3X the population, respectively, of those pandemics so in relative terms they remain way ahead.Where we also lead over the two other large US pandemics of the last 100 years is fear and misinformation. That is due to corporate media. Thanks to corporate media, an anti-vaccination movement that was overwhelmingly Democrats two years ago has now lurched to being Republicans. Thanks to media, the risks of COVID-19 are so blown out of proportion that neither group has a real handle on facts. They are just yelling at each other.
The US military has quietly led to a lot of technological advancements that few know about. One recent example; before we had a serious COVID-19 infectious disease problem to worry about, the US National Institutes of Health tried to use Ebola in parts of Africa to ask Congress for $100 million in emergency funding to combat it. In the US. Where it did not exist.
If a group of astrologers all write papers endorsing astrology and then another astrologer comes along and does a meta-analysis of those, they can conclude authoritatively that astrology works. As a smart reader, you know it's nonsense, but if you are selling astrology services, you either set out to deceive people or you want to believe so badly you lose your ability to reason.
A new analysis finds that if there ever was a "Beepocalypse", it hasn't been during this century.Using data since 1961, they found that the number of managed honey bee colonies has risen by 85%. Managed colonies are the only way to create reasonable estimates, that is how surveys of losses are done annually, but in the past activists trying to create a new fundraising target leveraged blips in averages to claim that a Colony Collapse Disorder was being caused by...farmers.
As we are hopefully exiting the third coronavirus pandemic of the last 17 years, it is time to consider that it might become an annual event, like the flu. Since it mutates, there could also be an annual vaccine, but if flu is any indication half of people won't take it.What if there are more passive ways of preventing transmission?
Imagine I mention that a small group of people not only distrust science and technology despite thorough testing by government scientists, they don’t trust it because it was tested by the government.
A consulting firm that charges you to tell you how to cut your emissions is now claiming that properties which don't spend a lot of money will plummet in value in the near future.So if you own commercial property, you have been warned.
Not a lot is truly known about the cultural world of early mankind but one thing is settled; when food insecurity dropped and it became more affordable, in terms of time or money, culture flourished and expansion began.Domestication of animals and farming took humans out of foraging and secured our place as the dominant species. Becoming a farmer meant reliable food, then domestication of the ox made it possible for a farmer to feed dozens, and the heavy plow and then later science boosted those to a point where in the developed world, we now only need 2 people to feed 98.
Before COVID-19, it was a large number of Democrats and a tiny number of Republicans who distrusted vaccines, believing something like that they caused autism, or that FDA was in cahoots with Big Pharma, or some weird supplement was just as good as medicine.(1)While on surveys they all claimed to believe in natural medicine and that communicable diseases were no big deal(2), when the pandemic hit, not only did they buy up all of the Clorox and Purell, celebrities and other wealthy coastal elites who denied vaccines for their kids were paying their way to the front of the line to get this one - and ironically demanding it for their children.
In 2021, it is vital that the public trusts epidemiologists when it comes to disease transmission. The cultural obstacle is that epidemiology is such a large field, much of it populated by woo. Osteopaths hurt their own reputations by not demanding that hucksters like Joe Mercola have his license revoked, while epidemiologists who want to be trusted guides now need to recognize they have to overcome suspect claims about some new fad food linked to increasing longevity, trace chemicals linked to changes in hormones, and that particulate matter so small it takes an electron microscope to see it is linked to early deaths.
Just a few weeks ago, Sri Lanka underwent a meltdown. The price of food had skyrocketed and it was all because instead of believing scientists they believed Russia or Pesticide Action Network or whoever claims the organic process "is ready" to feed everyone and switched. After a whole lot of people who have never farmed made the decision, its collapse was sudden. They switched to organic in May and by August exports were down because yields plummeted. People hoarded food because they knew what was happening and then the government had to create police units to raid homes and steal it so it would not be sold on the black markets that exploded in volume.
