Recent Articles

When you hear cable news people talking about why the Democrats ought to pass health care reform -- and fast -- it's generally all about political calculations. The president, they say, will suffer the same fate as Bill Clinton in 1994 if he doesn't pass health care. The congressional election will...

You might have heard about something called the Pinto Memo. The Ford Motor Company created a formula for determining whether to recall the notorious Pinto hatchback for safety concerns. And by "safety concerns," I mean, "they would randomly explode during rear-end collisions." The calculation...

When we consider the rogue's gallery of devilish, over-sized, greedy and disproportionately powerful corporations, we generally come up with outfits like Microsoft, Bechtel, AIG, Halliburton, Goldman-Sachs, Exxon-Mobil and the United States Senate. Yet somehow, Monsanto, arguably the most devilish,...

I'm certainly not the first person to make this declarative statement, and I certainly won't be the last: I'm done with Microsoft Windows PCs. Done. Over. Once my current array of four Windows XP computers die, it's all Mac from that point forward.The awesomeness of the new iPad and another weekend...

If you're drinking a fountain beverage from a restaurant right now, you probably want to skip to the next blog entry. You've been warned. A team of microbiologists from Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia have conducted one of those studies that we never -- ever -- like to hear about. They...

Maybe you spotted the box labels claiming that Cocoa Krispies somehow "helps support your child's immunity." As you can probably guess, this isn't exactly true, and Oregon's attorney general has forced Kellogg's to stop saying that it is. Kellogg's has officially settled with the Oregon Department...

The New York Times reports that one of the main suppliers of processed beef filler to fast food restaurants like McDonald's and Burger King -- not to mention school lunch and grocery store meat -- had been using ammonia as a means of killing E. coli O157:H7 and salmonella. Yes. Ammonia. Years...

Here's the latest word on the E. coli O157:H7 recall I blogged about earlier. The USDA has categorized this recall as a "Class 1" event, indicating a "high health risk," according to the Washington Post. The tainted beef recall has encompassed 16 states and has poisoned 21 people so far -- several...

The most under-reported news item from the Christmas weekend was the recall of 248,000 pounds of factory beef due to E. Coli O157:H7 contamination. The USDA reports that the source of the poisoned beef is National Steak and Poultry, a meat processing company out of Owasso, Oklahoma. There's no...

There are about a million (mostly bad) jokes about airline food, but if you're traveling over the next several days you might want to pack a lunch or take your chances on the plane. It turns out the food served in airport eateries and grab-and-go stands are worse than what is served on the plane....