Are you concerned about getting cancer from using weed killers? Unless you’re drinking rum and Roundup, or gin and glyphosate (the active ingredient in Roundup) in Rick’s Café Américain, I wouldn’t be too concerned yet about IARC’s indictment of the popular weed killer.
Read MoreFairy Godmother’s Magic Dress in Disney’s 1950 Cinderella
Salago-doola / Menchicka boola / Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo / Put 'em together / And what have you got? / Bibbidi-bobbidi-Boo
– From Al Hoffman, Mack David and Jerry Livingston in 1948
“Long ago, lawyers realized that they could make themselves culturally essential if they made the vernacular of contracts too complex for anyone to understand except themselves. They made the language of contracts unreadable on purpose.”
– Chuck Klosterman, I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling With Villains
Read MoreThe Supreme Court has, indirectly, chided Congress for failure to do their job by passing off hard jobs to the regulatory agencies (WEST VIRGINIA ET AL. v. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY ET AL.) Congress often enacts general and somewhat vaguelaws and leaves the agencies to promulgate regulations that are based on complicated scientific and economic issues. Once Congress has finished with their part (legislation), they don’t do much to monitor the agencies (regulation).
Read MoreWe have inflation, including high gas prices, a madman determined to restore Russia as it was under Peter the Great (including Sweden, for example), and a pandemic that won’t quit. And yet, the FDA has its own crisis where it’s in its fourth year of trying to determine whether “Almond Milk” should be allowed to be continued to be called “milk.” Names are a problem for FDA and have been since Congress instructed them eighty-four years ago to assign names to foods, either their “common or usual name” for a food made “like mother used to make,” or a fanciful name.
Read MoreStories are powerful influences on us. We have been telling each other stories as a way of relaying information or capturing history since the Paleolithic period when, perhaps, Og was telling the story of how he single-handedly slew a wooly mammoth. Today, among others, it is the province of writers, reporters and, of course, politicians. For many who adopt an alternative philosophy, there is a new word for stories - “Lived Experiences.” Although important, and welcome, these become a problem as they are considered to be truth that may not be challenged. They are also intended to serve as a replacement for all things objective or factual - such as is found in science.
Read MoreThose are some of the words in the 1977 hit Margaritaville by Jimmy Buffet that was so popular it produced fans that named themselves “Parrotheads,” after the laid-back, drinking lifestyle portrayed in Margaritaville and other Buffet songs. There are two things we can take away from them. First, there’s the false confidence– he initially “knows” whose fault it is (that he’s drinking that frozen concoction that helps him hang on). During our latest pandemic, there has been way too much “certainty” in some of the scientist’s pronouncements and way too much from the political decision makers.
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