Tetherd Cow Ahead

I fear I have crossed some kind of invisible line. The Spawn is not happy. I swear when I put this on his collar there were sparks.

In all seriousness though, I have done exactly as recommended on the ShooTag packaging, and aim to report any results here on The Cow. In the interests of full disclosure, it has to be said that it’s turning cold here and flea activity is ramping down. However, the Spawn is still scratching on a regular basis and his chemical flea treatment is overdue. I aim to watch him carefully for the next two weeks or so and report on any change in his condition. If ShooTag is providing the 75% reduction in fleas promised on the product website, it should be very obvious.

Glitch notices that I have two ‘cat’ ShooTags on my desk. Not only am I afraid, but so should you be.

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*Spawn Of Satan

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The return of One Eye.

Does your pet have fleas? Do you laboriously de-flea Fido or Felix every few months, dreading the inevitable infestation when summer arrives? Is your flea comb blunt-to-the-blade from the amount of use it gets? Well my friend THOSE DAYS ARE GONE! The wondrous ShooTag™ has arrived! No more chemicals! No more squishing the little blood-suckers between your nails! No more WORK! Just clip on the ShooTag™ & kick back with another mojito as the miracle of ‘science’ brings its quantum electro-dynamic guns to bear on the field of pest control!

It is to employ teh Sarcasm.

Yes folks, it’s another nutty scam from the same mindset that brought you unlimited free energy, clairvoyant pens and magic water. Swinging in with that Ol’ Reliable of pseudoscience, ‘magnetism’, ShooTag™ uses a ‘three dimensional electromagnetic static field embedded in a magnetic strip’ to rid your pet from pests for up to 4 months! I know – it sounds incredible! Because it is! Entirely incredible, as in, ‘not credible’.

Let’s examine some of the claims that the purveyors of ShooTag™ offer up on their site. This is a terrific opportunity to observe the workings of a classic con in action:

First, pick an outcome that is difficult to determine in a real world situation: Of course, you know when your pet has fleas – it’s fairly obvious. You might possibly even know when your pet doesn’t have any fleas at all – but that’s a lot harder to tell. The gamut of possibilities between those two extremes, though, is highly difficult to gauge outside a controlled laboratory setting. It’s the rich, vast exploitable landscape of anecdotal evidence. Perfect! Line the suckers up!

Next, make some extravagant but hard-to-disprove claims: ‘ShooTag™ combines cutting-edge science and technology to produce a “green” product that emits electromagnetic frequencies to keeps pests at away!’; It ‘uses electromagnetic frequencies to create a protective barrier from pests that lasts up to 4 months!.

Let’s examine some of those words: What evidence exists to say that electromagnetic frequencies keep pests away? There’s none that I could find (except on the websites of people selling products similar to ShooTag™). Why are electromagnetic frequencies ‘green’ here, but ‘toxic’ when you use your mobile phone? How come the barrier ‘lasts up to 4 months’? If it’s a magnet, shouldn’t it last forever? Or, if it is an electromagnet and has batteries, then couldn’t you replace them? Are we supposed to believe that the elecromagnetic properties of ShooTag™ sort of fade away over time? Could it be that, after four months you have to (gasp) buy another ShooTag™? And those two words ‘up to’… ‘Up to’ could be anywhere from a couple of days onward… It’s advertising-speak piled on hogwash piled on flim-flam.

The next step: blind them with science: There’s a tab at the top of the ShooTag™ home page that takes us to ‘The Science Behind ShooTag™’. Let’s see now… hmmm. ‘Atoms are mostly space…’ yes, well, OK…‘magnetic static…’ (Magnetic static? What the…?), ‘quantum and gravitational fields…’ (is this a flea-control system or a warp drive?) and best of all ‘produces an expanding barrier effect, keeping away the targeted pests’. ‘Targeted pests’? The electromagnetism has the ability to discriminate?

In case it needs to be said, the ‘science’ offered up on this page is what I shall henceforth call ‘sausage science’, ie, baloney. The fancy-sounding phrases and the faux lesson in quantum electrodynamics are as nonsensical as a jabberwocky. The word ‘quantum’ itself has become the modern equivalent of ‘magnetism’; a mysterious force that [cue theremin] ‘No-one understands!’ Heck, why shouldn’t it repel fleas!

But wait! There’s more! What’s this over in the corner here – a scientific document! It’s a pdf of a report to something called the Quantum Agriculture Journal by a Prof William Nelson.⁽ⁱ⁾ Let’s do a Search™ on the ol’ Quantum Agriculture Journal… that sounds like something I might want to subscribe to! Well, well – sadly (if a little predictably), only two lonely links⁽ⁱⁱ⁾, both of them pointing back to the ShooTag site. And as for ‘Prof’ Nelson… let’s just say that in the Quantum Hoodjy Goodjy Stakes he’s ‘got form’.⁽ⁱⁱⁱ⁾; The ‘scientific’ document itself (if you can be bothered) is a hare-brained ramble through a whole mess of abracadabra, beginning with some descriptions of chaotic attractors, jumping through magnetic resonance imaging and the electrical sensitivity of sharks, and ending up with the conductivity of chemicals in cells. It’s the most meaningless agglomeration of waffle that I’ve attempted to read in a very long while. If you’ve ever even seen a scientific paper, you know this ain’t one of those.

You might think, from reading through the ShooTag™ site that this is all a bit of harmless misguided opportunism, but Faithful Acowlytes, these disingenuous swindlers must know that what they sell is crap. The language they use, the fake ‘journal’ they invoke, their diffuse claims, the meaningless testimonials^(iv) – all these things are the conjurings of cynical rip-off merchants. If they have science, they’d show it. If this thing worked, malaria doctors from Bolivia to Eritrea would be all over it (otherwise, you’ve got to be thinking they either don’t know about it… um… or they are willfully letting their patients die. Why? Oh, that’s right: it’s all an Evil Plot by Big Pharma!)

Anyways, Cowpokes, fear not. Here at TCA Labs the boffins have been hard at work to remedy this appalling situation. Stay tuned for our Part 2 of this post when we will be bringing you the TCA ShooWooWoo™…

ADDENDUM: More about ShooTag™, including a ‘defense’ of the product from ShooTag™’s CEO here.

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Thanks (if that’s the right word) to Atlas for bringing ShooTag™ to the attention of The Cow

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Footnotes:

1. This has been removed from the Shoo!TAG site after my criticism. I’ll let that action speak for itself. [↩]
2. I guess I’m giving them three now… [↩]
3. You might, for amusement, like to look up his Xrroid Quantum Medical Consciousness Interface System. If anyone suffers from xrroids, it’s this guy, given the amount of utter crap that he generates. [↩]
4. These ‘real-life’ people (all from Texas it would seem) are credible exactly why? [↩]

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What kind of Friday the 13th would it be without a black cat crossing your path. Or clinging to your ceiling?

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*Spawn Of Satan

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Satan Claws has learned that a good strategy for this time of year is to act cute and lull passers-by into a false sense of security…

Here’s wishing all Cow Readers a Very Merry and Festive Yuletide. I hope the eggnog is a-flowing, the Lords are a-leaping and the partridges are piled high under the tree. Remember to stay tuned for January 1, for a whole heap o’ shenanigans to ring in another year of bovine fun!

I subscribe to one of those ‘wine clubs’ where every three months they deliver you a box of a dozen assorted bottles of wine: six red, six white. The club is good and it features wines from the various vineyard areas of Australia like Margaret River, Yarra Valley, Mudgee and so forth. The boxes arrive with tasting notes and other information about the wines. I like the idea – it gets me tasting wines that I might not otherwise buy in a shop and I’ve found a number of really good vineyards this way.

The boxes are delivered via courier, but since I’ve been in my new abode, not one has ever actually managed to arrive on my doorstep. Instead, each time a delivery is due I’ve been left one of those notes from the courier company saying that there was a problem with delivery and I would need to pick up the shipment personally from their depot.

On the courier’s note, under ‘Reason Unable to Deliver’ has always been scrawled the same explanation:

For Pete’s sake! This courier must be the only person on the planet to fall for the old beware-of-the-dog-sign ploy. Unbelievable. Burglars from here to Timbuktu superstitiously avoid houses that don’t have that sign.

Anyway, this morning I happen to glance out the living room window across the front garden and see the following two things happen:

1. A hand poke through the gate and experimentally wobble the latch, then withdraw.

2. Nothing else.

Puzzled, I open the front door and go out into the yard (our tall fence obscures the street so I can’t see anything outside). All is silent.

“Hello?” I call, craning my head over the fence. Well, you all know what I’m seeing: a courier van and a guy with a box of wine. He’s loading it back into the truck.

“Is that for me?” I ask, rhetorically.

He gives a little start. It turns out, apparently to his surprise, that it is! He stands there with the box, looking a little embarrassed. He glances at the sign on the gate and then back at me. There’s a slightly-too-long pause.

“You don’t have a dog, do you?”

“No,” I say.

“It’s just that I saw the sign and I thought…”

“Oh, that!” I laugh. “Well, that’s only there because they didn’t have a sign that says “Beware Of The Cat”!

“Hahahaha!” he says. “Hahaha! Right-o, so I’ll be perfectly safe to bring the deliveries in then!”

“Of course,” I say. “Perfectly safe”.

Yeah. Looks dead to me. Hang on, let me poke it with this stick…