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The Big Oil Company Behind Those Lithium Mines Being Stripped For Electric Cars

Posted by on Oct 8, 2022 in Energy | Comments Off on The Big Oil Company Behind Those Lithium Mines Being Stripped For Electric Cars

When French and German intelligence agencies passed along to the U.S. CIA that Iraq was acquiring components to build weapons of mass destruction, they did it assuming President Bush was like President Clinton and such information would send America to the negotiating table to loosen restrictions on the Iraq embargo that France and Germany were violating on the black market anyway. 'Promise not to build bombs and we'll let you buy more stuff' tactics that had worked for North Korea.

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Marin County, An Anti-Vax Nexus Of California, Has Flipped To Team Science

Posted by on Oct 3, 2022 in Immunology | Comments Off on Marin County, An Anti-Vax Nexus Of California, Has Flipped To Team Science

Marin County, An Anti-Vax Nexus Of California, Has Flipped To Team Science
In "Science Left Behind", Dr. Alex Berezow and I recounted the numerous ways that science denial and acceptance solidly came down along political lines. With minor exceptions, if you found someone who denied climate change, you were going to find a Republican. If you found an anti-vaccine type, or anti-nuclear, or anti-GMO, you were going to find a Democrat.


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Disease Spillover Risk Was Oversimplified During The COVID-19 Pandemic – And It’s A Chronic Problem In Science Journalism

Posted by on Sep 16, 2022 in Public Health | Comments Off on Disease Spillover Risk Was Oversimplified During The COVID-19 Pandemic – And It’s A Chronic Problem In Science Journalism

SAR, R0, these are all terms that became part of the pop culture lexicon during the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, because they were used in simplistic fashion they were more helpful for those engaged in wedge politics than the public.

Part of the problem can be laid at the feet of social media. COVID-19 was the third coronavirus pandemic of the last 17 years but it was the first to truly spread worldwide and have so much concern that the country where it originated created a campaign of disinformation, and even got the World Health Organisation to be complicit. And it all happened in real time on social media.

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Detecting Seafood Fraud Using Chemical Maps

Posted by on Sep 13, 2022 in Chemistry | Comments Off on Detecting Seafood Fraud Using Chemical Maps

Food fraud is common. Probably 25 percent of imported food with an "organic" label is just conventional food and even in America some organic farmers are just selling regular food. In Europe, everyone knew that Russia was not magically producing all of the organic food they were selling to France and Germany so those companies could pretend it works to feed the world.

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Survey Results Show That For Many, Vaping Was A Fad And Not An Addiction

Posted by on Jul 25, 2022 in Public Health | Comments Off on Survey Results Show That For Many, Vaping Was A Fad And Not An Addiction

Vaping devices, e.g. the unfortunately named e-cigarettes, were a valuable tool for smoking cessation and harm reduction, with better results in ending smoking that nicotine patches and gums.

Then suddenly they were everywhere, a market so large that a tobacco company whose primary business was cigarettes spent billions for a small stake in Juul, which had become the leader in vaping products. Now they have written 90 percent of that investment down because it turns out that while nicotine is addictive, vaping never had the 'cool' factor of cigarettes. Cigarettes were boosted in culture by film and television prevalence but vaping never attained that kind of traction.

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If You Don’t Get A Third COVID-19 Shot, Are You A Narcissist?

Posted by on Jul 15, 2022 in Psychology | Comments Off on If You Don’t Get A Third COVID-19 Shot, Are You A Narcissist?

One thing that must annoy psychiatrists is that everyone will try to claim expertise in their field if they want to make a political point - in the case of a recent paper it is literally humanities scholars who want more mask and vaccine mandates.

To achieve that, and despite having nothing we might consider qualifications, they used profiling to suggest a clinical diagnosis. They did it by creating their own custom analysis to claim that while other studies showed there were lots of reasons people might not like to wear a mask, opponents casually claiming they were selfish or even narcissistic are clinically correct.

Let's unpack that. 

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Observations From The Past Can Help Inform Climate Changes

Posted by on Jul 7, 2022 in Atmospheric | Comments Off on Observations From The Past Can Help Inform Climate Changes

Prior to the 1980s, most thermometers were both inaccurate and not placed using scientific methodology. But tree rings need time and ice cores even longer, which means for recent periods of time have to rely on observational claims and hope to control for their accuracy.

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Would Peer-To-Peer Charging Reduce Range Anxiety And Make Electric Cars Mainstream?

Posted by on Jun 17, 2022 in Energy | Comments Off on Would Peer-To-Peer Charging Reduce Range Anxiety And Make Electric Cars Mainstream?

One of the sillier commercials for a cell phone I have seen in recent memory is some guy shaking his head in sadness that his phone is out of battery and a kindly person places her phone on his to give him a boost. They were able to use the Qi wireless charging capability to share energy with each other.

This looked like a solution without a problem. If you are going to be that despondent without your phone, you bring one of those little charging packs, you bring a power cord, you are not shaking your head like you unwittingly got placed into an episode of "Alone" and have been dropped into Alaska with nothing but a neck gaiter and a frying pan. You are prepared.

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The Biden Admininstration Is Mandating Condensing Furnaces – That’s Bad For People And The Environment

Posted by on Jun 15, 2022 in Energy | Comments Off on The Biden Admininstration Is Mandating Condensing Furnaces – That’s Bad For People And The Environment

The Biden administration has issued a decree that any furnace sold after 2029 must be a "condensing" furnace, and his environmental group allies are thrilled they have locked in another win.

It may not be a win for the public.

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For Electric Cars To Be Viable, Charging Station Locations Need To Be Optimized

Posted by on Jun 6, 2022 in Energy | Comments Off on For Electric Cars To Be Viable, Charging Station Locations Need To Be Optimized

One thing electric car owners who have lost the mystique tell you is that you live your life around them. Some report going to a store like Costco to charge their cars, they need new service panels at their house, and one owner famously blew up his Tesla with dynamite rather than pay $22,000 to replace the batteries when they wore out. An article in the Wall Street Journal was by someone excited to rent an electric car for a trip, only to find they spent more time charging it than sleeping.

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