Tetherd Cow Ahead

I just paid a whole heap of money to have some American air freighted to Australia. Well, pretty much. I ordered a couple of tiny connectors from Amazon and this is the box they shipped in. Note the matchbox for scale:

This is all I actually needed:

It works really well for anyone wearing the special nose plugs. Otherwise it just makes everyone nauseous and gives them a headache. Personally, I don’t think it’s as effective as the Quantum deodorant I use.

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Special thanks to Atlas for undergoing the human trials for this one.

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Ah, dear Cowpokes. If there’s one thing that remains completely reliable in the World of Woo, it’s that people will relentlessly find ways to re-invent, repackage and re-market good ol’ H₂0 as some kind of miracle product. For your delectation this morning, I present to you the following newspaper snippet that comes to you courtesy of the Weekend Australian and my fellow tweeps ((You see how I’m actually warming to Twitter, don’t you now?)) @johncarneyau & @DrRachie.

It is to laugh. Now, I have not dined in chef Teage Ezard’s restaurant ((I have food allergy: I’m allergic to anything that contains hogwash. It causes me to launch into long raves about how stupid people can be. Ask Violet Towne. She’ll tell you.)) but when I read something like this:

It’s one of the cleanest waters on the planet. It’s totally pure. And it gives the food a completely different flavour.

…I already know, without the need to do any further research, that the person saying it is a nitwit. Understand this, Mr Ezard: it’s not hard to make ‘totally pure’ or ‘clean’ water. Millions and millions of litres of it are created every day for one use or another. It’s done very simply: you boil it and condense it, or you filter it. THAT. IS. ALL.

But of course for block-headed pretentious chefs-de-cuisine and air-headed credulous journalist gourmands, that’s WAY too prosaic. They don’t want ‘pure’ water, they want magic water – ‘2000 year old’ magic water from the bottom of the ocean, in this case.

Whoa, hang on there Faithful Acowlytes – no need to bang the tin cups on the bars. Yes, water from the ocean IS salty, even if it is old. So how can it be ‘pure’? Well, to answer that question we must visit the source of Chef Ezard’s mystical water, ‘the island paradise of Hawaii’ and consult the makers of the product in question: MaHaLo Hawaii Deep Sea Water.

[Cue Hawaiian guitars and hula dancers]

MaHaLo Hawaii Deep Sea drinking water comes to you from the island paradise of Hawaii, 3,000 feet below the ocean’s surface, where the water is naturally clean, pure, cold and filled with healthy minerals and nutrients.

Aha! Naturally clean, pure, cold and filled with healthy minerals! Righty-ho, that’s easy – nothing left to do but bung it in some bottles and ship it to the customers!

Koyo USA Corp. pumps the water into its ultra-modern processing facility, where it removes the excess sea salt and tests it for purity and content.

Wha? They have a processing facility? And they need to remove stuff? And then do tests? So when they told us before that their water is naturally clean and pure, they meant, ‘kinda sorta’, it seems.

Deep Sea Water contains abundant amounts of essential minerals like potassium, calcium and selenium, plus minute amounts of many of the trace elements such as iron, copper, zinc, manganese and chromium, which are missing from common surface water.

Maybe that’s so, but that’s not what’s getting into the bottle, is it? ((And what’s with the ‘common’ surface water?)) What MaHaLo is asking us to believe here is that they treat water in such a way that they can remove the sea salt, make the water ‘pure’ and still maintain its supposed magical balance of minerals. I’m highly skeptical of this. What I reckon happens in the MaHaLo plant is that they desalinate the water, measure its characteristics, and then add stuff back to it. This is not rocket science, nor is it particularly special – it happens in water bottling plants all over the planet.

These trace minerals help humans absorb the vitamins in food and pass these directly into the system.

Actually (and I’m prepared to stand corrected on this matter) I was under the impression that it’s vitamins that help the body absorb metals and minerals and not the other way around. Whatever the case, it’s plain bunk that you need to get necessary trace minerals from drinking water; whatever you need you can get from a healthy diet.

In some cases, bottled water marketed as “natural spring water” with pictures of mountain streams and lakes on the bottles’ labels is nothing more than filtered tap water.

That’s right. And in some other cases, bottled water marketed as “natural deep sea water”, with pictures of palm trees and rainbows on the bottles’ label is nothing more than filtered sea water.

We at Koyo USA take these deceptive claims very seriously and strive to meet and exceed EPA and FDA standards for our water.

The implication here is that there is something rare or special about meeting or exceeding EPA and FDA water quality requirements – this is a wondrous use of weasel language. ALL bottled water and even normal tap water is required to meet those standards. MaHaLo should be doing more than striving – they should be guaranteeing!

There is no healthier way to obtain all the nutrition your body requires from water than MaHaLo Hawaii Deep Sea® Water.

Nutrition? Really? Er… actually, your body doesn’t require any nutrition at all from water. I think they’re getting confused with food. What your body requires from water is water. Counting on water to provide nutrition is almost as dumb as counting on air to provide nutrition.

But perhaps I have this whole affair arse-about. Maybe that’s what Teage Ezard is getting at with his fancy boil-in-a-bag haute cuisine: there’s no nutrition in the food itself, so he’s hoping you’ll get it out of the water! It’s at least as plausible as claiming that it makes the food taste any different. I guess Chef Ezard feels compelled to do something flamboyant with MaHaLo Deep Sea Water: for the $13,000 per pallet that they apparently charge for it, you’d certainly not be wanting to piss the stuff away. ((MaHaLo is certainly not spending any of their profits on their advertising. The commercial on their home page is one of the lamest, crummiest, least-persuasive ads I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen some.))

[More silly water stories here, here, here (bonus material in Comments), here and here.]

Acowlytes! From the people who brought you Special One Drop Liquid and ShooTag (Froot Loop Central, that is) I present today for your delectation a new wonder of the modern age. Allow me to introduce, direct from Somerset’s Maperton Trust, the astonishing HELRU:

The Head Lice Repelling Unit (HELRU) is a small device using the latest technology to repel head lice from infesting children and adults.

“Awesome!” I hear you cry. “My head lice infestation is OUT OF CONTROL. I want a dozen of these things right now! But before I spend my money, how does it work?”

Ah yes Faithful Cowpoke, I have trained you well. It’s the very question I asked myself when I heard about this wonderful gadget. Fortunately for us, the Head Lice Control website has a comprehensive FAQ and our query is the first one on the list:

How does it work?

Without a comprehensive understanding of technology e.g. that used in space travel, it is not really possible to provide a very satisfactory answer.

That’s right, dear friends. Frequently Asked Questions are not necessarily Frequently Answered Questions. The technology that HELRU, uses IS rocket science! There’s no use us worrying our pretty little heads about all that technical stuff! ((Perhaps the term ‘space travel’ is apropos in this context though; someone at the Maperton Trust is definitely on another planet.)) Just fork out £19 ($US31.00) and trust them! They say it’s science, and, gosh, therefore it must be! ((Seriously, why don’t they just say it’s magic and be done with it? They have a picture of a unicorn on the damn thing for chrissakes! Why even bother with the pretense of science??? Actually, let me answer that question: They bother because they know that science works. They are trading on all the credentials of legitimate science (which they eschew when it doesn’t suit them) because proper science, done by proper scientists using proper scientific method, quite demonstrably has credibility. Unicorns, quite plainly, do not.)) One thing is for certain – the cash you’re handing over for the HELRU gives you much better value than what you get from a ShooTag. The HELRU’s effects last for a very decent 2 years! And it has much more entertaining testimonials as well:

Please forward another head lice unit as soon as possible, my previous one went in the washing machine and now my son has started to come home with unwanted visitors.

Ma’am, it only protects against head lice, not Scientologists.

Elsewhere in the Maperton Trust Universe (which is most definitely not the same one in which the rest of us reside), you can get a free online treatment for anything that ails you! It’s as simple as clicking a button. ((I wish I could give you a direct link to this wondrous resource, but this site must be one of the very last to use frames. Most people have figured out that frames mean far fewer hits on their pages and have abandoned them years back. That Maperton is stuck in teh intertubes Stone Age hardly surprises me.))

Yes, indeed, it does sound ‘incredible’. As in: ‘having no credibility’. But what the hey, all they want is an email address, what have I got to lose! ((I probably don’t have to tell you that you should not, under any circumstances, leave a real email address on a site like this. Usually – as is the case on the Maperton website – you don’t need to. It doesn’t even do a rudimentary check of address viability. So use this random identity generator and have at it!)) Clicketty click!

The website counts down, during which time something is supposed to happen.

You know what, I have to confess I felt kind of ‘better’ afterwards. Not in a specific way, but a little more energized, maybe even a little happier… OH COME ON! Who believed me for even a second? The whole process is about as effective as putting Special One Drop Liquid on your CDs. I swear I could hear pinging sounds in my brain for the entire time. There is, however, a disclaimer (surprise!):

Not everyone ‘feels’ the effects of the treatment at the time it is being delivered. Sometimes no feelings are felt and no effects are noticed. Sometimes however, the benefits are only evident some time after the treatment has finished.

Righty-ho. So maybe I can expect a delayed effect. I fully expect it to kick in sometime this evening after a glass or two of the Quinta Ruban. Now that’s a proper special one drop liquid.

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Via Professor Bruce Hood

♫ Everybody’s talks about a new world in the morning… new world in the morning so they say-ee-ay-ay… ♫ I myself don’t talk about a new world… Hey! WTF! What are you all doing here? Weren’t you killed by the earthquakes and the volcanoes and the asteroids? Goddamnit! Do you mean to say that I spent all that money on a Vivos Underground Fallout Shelter for nothing? You’re not going to tell me that noted astrologer Richard Nolle, who predicted apocalyptic events as the FULL moon approached perigee, and who was quoted on Space.com, ((Who, I hope, are still sitting in the corner with their dunce cap on…)) was wrong? Son of a bitch!

Yes loyal Cowpokes, it’s true. Once again, the unhinged blathering of a woo personage turns out to be categorically and unequivocally wrong. I’ll just say that again:



WRONG.

You can read about Space.com’s embarrassing article (which tries to pretend it’s not really quoting an astrologer), here, but for the real meat of this sandwich you need to read what Mr Nolle said, in his own waffly words:

Of course you can expect the usual: a surge in extreme tides along the coasts, a rash of moderate-to-severe seismic activity (including magnitude 5+ earthquakes, tsunami and volcanic eruptions), and most especially in this case a dramatic spike in powerful storms with heavy precipitation, damaging winds and extreme electrical activity. Floods are a big part of the picture in this case, although some of these will be dry electrical storms that spark fast-spreading wildfires. ((Gee, care to add anything else to that, Mr Nolle? Just in case that wide net misses something?))

No doubt Mr Nolle will do what all purveyors of this kind of nonsense do when they are shown to be WRONG, and start claiming everything in the vicinity as an endorsement of his prediction, including the recent tragic Japanese tsunami.

That makes this [the date of the ‘extreme supermoon’] a major geophysical stress window, centered on the actual alignment date but in effect from the 16th through the 22nd.

Geez. Even when he hedges his bets with the dates, he’s WRONG. ((I’m posting this on March 20, Australian time, so there are are still three more fudge days to go, but you know what? I’m saying here and now that in those three days nothing at all of any geophysical significance will happen. I’m sure Mr Nolle is well on his way, though, to claiming that what he REALLY meant by his predictions was that the UN would endorse military strikes on Libya. That’s the way this stuff invariably works…)) The Japanese tsunami occurred on March 11. Of course, that won’t stop him!

The March 19 SuperMoon is by far the most significant storm and seismic indicator this month, but it’s not the only one. Lesser geocosmic shock windows also up the ante for unusually strong storms ((‘Unusually strong’ could mean anything more than a bit of blustery wind.)) and moderate to severe seismic activity ((Moderate to severe? That’s really narrowing it down.)) (including ((Including??? There’s a weasel term if ever I heard one – the addition of ‘including’ actually means that this sentence says in effect: “Any earth movements of any kind”)) magnitude 5+ earthquakes, subsequent tsunami, and volcanic eruptions). These lesser windows include March 1-7 (surrounding the new moon on the 4th), March 23-26 (bracketing the lunar south declination peak on the 25th), and from late on the 31st on into early April. ((Into early April…? When’s ‘early’? April 5th? April 10th? Fuck me.))

Hahaha. Look at all that risible equivocating (I’ve enumerated all the hedging for you in the footnotes). That covers just about every possible day in March and every possible earthquake above a magnitude 5. Since the planet experiences more than 1500 earthquakes of magnitude 5 and above every year (divide that by 12 months and you get over 125 magnitude 5+ earthquakes somewhere in the world every month) Nolle can make a prediction like this with complete impunity. When you include his dates for the Super Moon, Nolle has every day in March covered except March 8 – 15 and March 27 – 30! That’s predicting 20 whole days of March might possibly have an earthquake of magnitude 5+ somewhere in the world! And he still missed March 11! Whoopsy. I guess a fucking ginormous earthquake that causes massive tidal surges and kills thousands of people is easy to overlook with that extreme spike in electrical storms and amongst all the floods and volcanic eruptions. Oh wait. None of those happened on March 19 either. ((I’ll just note here for the sake of amusement, the introduction to Mr Nolle’s pages which says in part “If you were expecting some kind of sun sign nonsense, forget about it. This is real astrology for the real world, not some mystical mumbo-jumbo word salad.” Got that? No mumbo-jumbo in this town, no way!))

So, let’s just see what scientists predicted for the approach of the Super Moon. John Bellini, a geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey:

Practically speaking, you’ll never see any effect of lunar perigee. It’s somewhere between ‘It has no effect’ and ‘It’s so small you don’t see any effect.’

Oh, lookit that. Once again, science is…



RIGHT.

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Earthquake chart purloined from IRIS with thanks. I’m pretty sure that, in the interests of proper science, they will be OK with it.