The Vani Hari success story is remarkable. Here’s a synopsis from a recently syndicated article published in the Chicago Tribune: Less than four years ago, Hari didn’t even have a Twitter or Facebook account. She was afraid of social media, worried a slip of the thumb could jeopardize her consulting contracts implementing technology and strategy at Bank…Continue Reading…
In her last big superlative GMO story, New York Times reporter Amy Harmon wrote: Scientists, who have come to rely on liberals in political battles over stem-cell research, climate change and the teaching of evolution, have been dismayed to find themselves at odds with their traditional allies on this issue. Some compare the hostility to G.M.O.s…Continue Reading…
As regular readers know, I have done my share of kvetching about GMO media coverage. It’s easy to poke a stick at the stuff you take issue with, especially if you’re on the lookout for it. This is a form of selection bias that I need to be mindful of. It’s not that I haven’t…Continue Reading…
As I was plowing through my secret stash of Oreos today, I remembered this news from earlier in the month: Connecticut College students and a professor of psychology have found “America’s favorite cookie” is just as addictive as cocaine – at least for lab rats. And just like most humans, rats go for the middle…Continue Reading…
When I was a boy growing up on suburban Long Island in the 1970s, my grandfather had a chicken coop enclosed behind a mesh wire fence in his West Babylon backyard. Like many of his generation seared by the 1930s depression, he developed a self-reliance and waste-not ethic (dare I leave food on my dinner…Continue Reading…
When it comes to evolution, no reputable museum would dare “teach the controversy,” a catchphrase used as a ploy by creationists some years back, when they tried to put “intelligent design” on an equal scientific footing with evolutionary biology. The biotech issue, which is a source of much controversy in environmental and food circles, is…Continue Reading…
Would you eat a hamburger that was grown in a test tube? How about a chicken nugget from a petri dish? Sometimes called “shmeat” (as in, a sheet of lab-grown meat), in vitro meat might someday be an option for people with carnivorous inclinations who aren’t wild about the idea of killing and eating real…Continue Reading…
It’s hell on the planet, sadistic to our fellow creatures, and bad for your health. Nothing in this WaPost essay is new, but the main point is worth pondering: What I eat influences you. What you eat influences me. Our diets are deeply, intimately and necessarily political.