With so many real and pressing environmental crises threatening to harm Planet Earth, why are so many well-meaning environmentalists so easily diverted into foolhardy projects like the campaign to ban plastic water bottles? On January 1, the Town of Concord, Massachusetts, prohibited the sale of "non-sparkling, unflavored drinking water in single-serving polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles of 1 liter (34 ounces) or less." To be clear, it's still OK to sell small, plastic bottles of Coke, Red Bull, colored sugar-water, and carbonated water, and it's OK to sell Just Plain Water in 40-oz plastic bottles or gallon jugs. In an approving report on the ban, the Globe and Mail...

03 January, 2013

A British group calling itself 10-23* will stage a mass self-inflicted overdose of homeopathic remedies to protest the Boots pharmacy chain's continued sale of the worthless** nostrums. At 10:23 a.m., January 30, 300 protesters will down a whole bottle of homeopathic pills each. The joke is that homeopathic mixtures have been diluted so many times, they no longer contain any of the original putative active ingredient. From an open letter to the Boots chain: The majority of people do not have the time or inclination to check whether the scientific literature supports the claims of efficacy made by products such as homeopathy....

19 January, 2010