Young People Have Become Jaded To Emotional Appeals On Screens – And That Is Good
Running a pro-science nonprofit is a poor business model. Especially compared to lawyer groups like Environmental Working Group or rich deniers like Greenpeace.'Your food is safe' is a terrible call to action but 'evil chemical corporations are killing you' gets the money rolling in - even though the former is true and the latter is a paranoid conspiracy theory with no basis in fact.
The Feel Good Fallacy Of Sugary Drink Taxes On Reducing Obesity
Social authoritarians like to make people more reliant on government and then control what people do with the government assistance they are now reliant upon. It keeps those in control in positions of power. The most recent example is with government funding for food coming attached to strings telling people what they can buy with the money.Environmental Groups Back In Court To Help Fellow Rich White People
The Usual Suspects of the anti-science movement, Center for Biological Diversity(1), Environmental Working Group(2) and more, are back in court to try and force California to accept that money is magic and rich homeowners with solar panels should be paid for electricity they send to the grid - at full retail price.It sounds ridiculous. Imagine if a customer buys a vegetable your farm grows says they should have the right to force you to buy vegetables they grow in their garden at full retail price from them. Not the price you get, the full retail cost.
You'd laugh. You have tractors and employees and materials. Liabilities. Even more ridiculous, you helped give them the money for the land they used to grow the vegetables.
Batteries Are Stuck In The 1990s Because Solid-State Batteries Keep Short-Circuiting
The electric car industry is held back by reliance on conventional energy. Despite spending trillions of dollars on mandates and subsidies, solar and wind alternatives have made little difference in the share of energy filled by natural gas and oil.Some of that is economics. A subsidy prevents innovation because it props up the status quo, and environmentalists and the politicians they support remain opposed to nuclear power, but some is plain physics. Lithium-ion batteries are stuck in the 1990s because there are real challenges to be overcome in the next generation.
Dogs Have Been ‘Man’s Best Friend’ For 14,000 Years
The bond between humans and dogs is one of the oldest stories in anthropology. It may also be a cautionary tale for other animals, though the organic, holistic, free-range, ayurvedic, shade-tree grown dog food is probably pretty good.
A new study of bones recovered from Gough’s Cave and Pınarbaşı says we may have been dressing pets up in funny outfits even farther back. Evidence shows they were actually accompanying us on walks over 14,000 years ago, even before agriculture created the spark of civilization.
No Danger, How A Stranger Can Be A Game Changer – A New Book About Making ‘Small’ Talk
The future career arc for my house is a library bed-and-breakfast. It will be just like it sounds; every bedroom is also a library, as is the house. Except not a government library, with sterile walls and floors that echo, the whole thing will be comfortable.Because some readers are less social than others, when they reserve a room people will be able to choose to designate Book Club or Book Worm. If they just want to be left alone, they are book worms so they'll get the polite basics. Warm but not outgoing, read in a comfy chair in front of the fireplace in peace. If they are book club, they can talk to me and have coffee and such.
Medical Marijuana No Better Than Placebo
"Medical" marijuana is legal in many places but often just an excuse to buy recreational drugs, as shown in uptake data that 60 percent of pain patients are older women while 75 percent of medical marijuana prescriptions are for young men.California Taxpayers Forced To Prop Up $2 Billion Ivanpah Solar Disaster
The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System "concentrated" solar thermal plant in the Mojave Desert is by any measure an unmitigated disaster.The party that is now claiming they are rescuing the Ivanpah they mandated to exist was scheduled to be closed this year - because it's low costs were always a pipe dream and it's maintenance estimates were the optimism no scientists believed.
But California ignores scientists. We ignore them on 80,000 Prop 65 cancer warning labels on harmless products, we ignore them on pesticides, and we ignore them on energy.
The Creepy Uncanny Valley Of Targeted Online Marketing
Personalized online ads must work for the same reason advertising must work; it wouldn't be a trillion-dollar industry if it didn't work. Even supplements and organic food are only $140 billion, and those are really popular things that don't work. Advertising is not popular at all but good luck succeeding without it.Yet there are limits for what people accept without being uncomfortable. In robots and animation, that has long been termed the 'uncanny valley' - where something is not lifelike enough to look real but too lifelike to be acceptable. Some digital marketing has its own uncanny valley; where it becomes unsettling. Examples are people who say they mentioned something in the presence of their Amazon Echo and then ads on Facebook began to target them.
Teens Are Getting Much Less Sleep Than In The Past
A new paper says teens are not getting enough sleep and a lot of parents with teenage children may disagree. Others reflexively blame phones and tablets.It isn't a new concern, though. Nor is technology new in getting blame. In 1905, The Lancet published a study saying that kids in British boarding schools were getting less sleep than was healthy, and the reason was the new popularity of affordable lighting. “Late to bed and early to rise is neither physiological nor wise,” the authors wrote.
By the 1950s, the concern was in culture again, this time due to radio and television keeping children up. In all instances, overstimulation, mental health, and poor academic achievement is invoked.