LifeWave goodbye

So the other day I was driving to work and almost crashed into the car in front of me because I was overcome by a sudden rage. LifeWave, who I had heard about on James Randi's Swift newsletter, had purchased some advertising time on Radio 702 to peddle their Nanopatches: devices supposed to use nano-quantum-kungfu-whatever to give you psychic superpowers or something. Take a look at their website and see for yourself.

I try to avoid listening to the radio because it's littered with all kinds of crap. But Hide's been trying to get me to listen, so as to keep up-to-date on everyday happenings of the sort that most people care about (as opposed to the ones that I care about). So every now and then I turn it on for a few minutes until my Crap-o-meter hits the red and I have to put on a George Carlin CD or something to calm me down.

Having become somewhat desensitised to the usual nonsense that our ignorant and talentless radio presenters spew, I was surprised to hear 702 stoop to this new low.

So I wrote a little email to their marketing department.

To whom it may concern.

I was surprised and disappointed yesterday morning when, on my daily
commute, I heard a radio advertisement on 702 for the "LifeWave
Nanopatch".

As an advertising division of a media corporate, you are all, no
doubt, very busy. I therefore assume that your team lacks the capacity
to examine the credibility of every advertiser who wishes to purchase
air-time on 702.

I also assume that the credibility of your advertisers is of
importance to you, as they are a reflection on the credibility of 702
and Primedia as a whole.

I therefore take it upon myself to inform you that this particular
product, and company, has been exposed as a scam. The "science" behind
the nanopatch devices has been well debunked
(http://www.worldwidescam.info/lwresearch2.htm) and LifeWave must go a
long way to prove their gadgets' efficacy.

Their advertisement makes a string of medical claims despite the fact
that their devices are not medical in nature. The fact that their
website includes a disclaimer stating that they make "no medical
claims" loses its credibility when that disclaimer is followed by a
list of four separate medical claims!

Although I cannot say whether or not the nanopatch actually works (as
I have not tested it myself), LifeWave have not met the necessary
burden of proof to demonstrate their product's efficacy, and therefore
have no right selling it to a misinformed public.

Of course the choice is yours as to what action to take from here, but
I would be very pleased if this advertisement were to be pulled from
the air with immediate effect until such time as LifeWave can produce
evidence supporting their claims.

In the words of Carl Sagan "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary
evidence." In this case the claims are certainly extraordinary, but
the evidence is not even ordinary, it is practically nonexistent.

Thank you for your consideration.

Owen Swart

That was two days ago now. As I should have predicted, there has been no response from Primedia yet. And I don't expect one.

I haven't heard the advert again, but then I don't listen to the radio very much. If anyone hears it, please let me know. If I get no response from Primedia, my next stop will be the Advertising Standards Authority.

Comments

In order to satisfy the hordes of you who have been wishing - hoping against hope - that you could leave a comment on my endlessly entertaining, or infuriatingly idiotic blog posts but haven't had the time or inclination to sign up for a Google account, your wish has come true.

I have once again enabled anonymous comments!

[Waits for the cheers and thunderous applause to subside]

Just because I've decided to allow anonymous comments again doesn't mean I encourage it. If you're going to leave a comment, please identify yourself. I don't mind if you want to leave something critical or even abusive, so long as I can track you down see who left the comment. My identity is no secret, so I ask the same courtesy of you.

If it gets abused again I, of course, reserve the right to delete comments that go too far, or deactivate anonymous comments again. But if we all play nice, that never has to happen. Kay?

Mbeki still an AIDS Dissident « moonflake

I haven't had the time to verify the claims made in this yet, but I think it's fairly safe to take Moonflake's word on it.

If it is true, then holy crap! What is the use of fighting for human rights if our own president denies the humanitarian crisis on his doorstep?

I've tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, assuming that Mbeki was merely misquoted, and avoiding the temptation to become embroiled in a PR battle with the media. But if this story checks out, then I have misjudged him.

Stupid South Africa

Okay, I’ve had a few hours to sit and digest the impact of the survey conducted by Sceptic South Africa. As upsetting as it is, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised by the results. Knowing that HIV infection rates are higher here than just about everywhere else is testament to the fact that South Africans, as a whole, are indeed colossally stupid.

I must qualify here that SSA’s survey was the first of its kind to be run in South Africa (as far as I can tell… please let me know if there have been any before). Being the first, and so far only, the results should be treated with a fair degree of scepticism. I haven’t inspected the protocol for the survey, so I can’t speak to its accuracy or lack of bias.

However, based on George Claasen’s writings he seems a competent sceptic, and I think it’s pretty safe to assume that he would be perfectly capable of designing and executing a reasonably impartial study with as diverse a sample group as is practical. And also to report the results honestly.

Even assuming a fair degree of possible error, the results are clear: South Africans have a tendency to believe whatever supernatural mumbo-jumbo they’re fed. This is, I suppose, not all that different to all humans, regardless of nationality. All other statistics of this nature that I’ve seen (particularly in the US) show a similar leaning.

Hide raised the obvious question this morning: why does it bother me?

This is why.

Considering that SSA’s survey was at least partially conducted via telephone, it is ironic, but not amusingly so, that so many respondents admitted to believing in a young Earth (less than 10,000 years old). Our knowledge of the fact that the speed of light is constant is one of the many scientific advances that have led to the development of technologies like the cellular telephone. That same knowledge has assisted us in determining the actual (estimated) age of the universe (around 13.7 billion years). These idiots are happy to rely on science for their everyday convenience, but deny its results when they conflict with dearly held ideological beliefs.

The reason why these sorts of ridiculous mistakes are made is not just sheer stubbornness, although that is probably a factor. I think a far larger factor is ignorance, specifically, scientific illiteracy.

Your average South African doesn’t know how a cellphone works. They’re happy to carry one everywhere they go, but probably don’t give a moment’s thought to the mechanisms behind this revolutionary technology. In fact, even if I were to attempt to explain the concept of a cellular communications network to an average South African, they wouldn’t have a clue what I was saying, because they wouldn’t have access to the scientific vocabulary necessary to parse the information.

In fact, I would be surprised if the average South African was even aware that the speed of light is known to be constant. Or for that matter, even of the fact that light travels at all!

Even those who have received high-school educations have largely obtained their matric certificate without ever having had the concepts of evolution properly explained to them (until now).

But why does it matter? What difference does it make to Joe Smith’s life if he plods through his daily existence unaware of the fundamental concepts of science? Why would Jane Jones care that energy equals mass times the speed of light squared?

If you had asked that question a century ago, or even a couple of decades ago, the answer would probably have been that it would, indeed, not have mattered very much. Despite the fact that they would have missed out on all the awesome beauty and sheer elegance of the natural world, their daily lives would probably not have been all that different.

But times have changed. In the 21st century it has become nigh impossible to navigate daily life without a basic knowledge of science.

An easy example is that of vaccines. Medical science has offered us a variety of medicines designed to defend against some of the most dangerous organisms known to attack humans with regularity. In some cases, proper use of vaccines has resulted in the complete elimination of these organisms, as was the case with Smallpox.

Despite these successes, there is a growing and vociferous movement of scientifically illiterate people who have cottoned onto the viral meme that Mercury contained in certain vaccines can cause autism in children. This sort of thing plays directly into the human cognitive tendency to believe scary claims, no matter how implausible they may be, because it’s generally safer to have a false positive than a false negative.

However in this case exactly the opposite is true. Not only do vaccines not contain any harmful Mercury compounds, but failing to vaccinate Junior could result in the illness and death of not only your child, but his peers as well. These people do not possess the necessary vocabulary to parse the medical literature, and are led entirely by specious claims and anecdotal evidence (which is not evidence at all) into believing this dangerous lie. By remaining scientifically illiterate, these parents are putting their children’s lives at risk, and setting themselves up for personal tragedy.

Then there’s the other example. The big one. Climate Change. Although there is much research that still needs to be done in this area regarding the exact causes and potential impact of Climate Change, it is undoubtedly a global issue. This is something we all need to be talking and thinking about, and figuring out what to do about it.

Without the necessary tools, average South Africans will waste their time on useless endeavours that have no impact on Carbon emissions whatsoever. And worse, could actually contribute to the problem by supporting environmentally harmful practices, like “organic” farming or using ethanol for fuel, because they simply lack the understanding to weigh their options effectively.

Only by possessing the necessary understanding, can we hope to engage in a meaningful and valuable discourse on this real and potentially dangerous anomaly. Our failure to do so thus far is probably what has resulted in this situation.

It may already be too late. For all we know, we may already have passed the point of no return, and our general stupidity may have set in motion a sequence of events that will lead to the collapse of our civilisation, or even our extinction, in the near future. That sounds alarmist, I know, and it is unlikely. But there is a non-zero probability that it is correct.

Of course there any many more examples I could cite, most notably the HIV issue, but I will save that for another post. I feel I have made my point sufficiently already.

It is an absolute imperative that we South Africans, and indeed all humans, become educated in the basic principles of science, to the point where we are able to make informed decisions on these and other important issues, as well as influence government policy in the right direction.

It is an absolute travesty that this is not already the case. A travesty we may yet pay for with our lives.

Christmas? Really?

It’s getting to that part of the year when folks start making a fuss about the “Festive Season”. We use that term almost euphemistically to refer to Christmas so as not to offend the Hanukkah-celebrating Jews, Yule-celebrating Pagans and any other religious types who may have ‘circumstantially’ engineered some major holy day to occur around the time of the Winter Solstice*.

What about those of us who have no religious festivals to celebrate? I’m a non-believer, and therefore have none.

I was raised a Christian, so my family still practice the Christian tradition of celebrating Christmas. Come to think of it, I don’t think anyone in my family would self-identify as Christian anymore, but the celebration continues every year nonetheless.

Over the last couple of years I’ve become increasingly uncomfortable about participating in it. It seems almost hypocritical to reject a religion at its core and then continue to benefit from its traditions.

There is, of course, the fact that the whole festival of Christmas is merely an imperialistic re-purposing of an existing Pagan festival (Yule, as I mentioned before) celebrating the Winter Solstice**. Many of the traditional symbols of Christmas have absolutely nothing to do with the Christian incarnation myth: pine trees aren’t very common in Israel, nor are holly, mistletoe or fat men in red suits. With the exception of Father Christmas, these were all symbols of the Yule celebration that were co-opted by the early church in order to make the conversion of the European Pagans that much easier.

And don’t get me started on the Santa Claus idea (or as I like to call him: “GodLite”).

The only identifiable symbol belonging to Christian mythology that is associated with Christmas is the nativity scene. Thanks to political correctness we are seeing that less and less often. Also, much of it was lifted from earlier myths… such as the births of Horace, Dionysus and Mithras.

Knowing all of this, it still feels wrong to wish someone “Merry Christmas”. Must I resort to “Have a Cool Yule”? Maybe we should start celebrating Kwanzaa, Festivus or Friday instead.

Is it enough to enjoy the celebration, and use the tradition as an excuse to do the family thing? Since Christmas is a lie to begin with, is it okay to imperialistically re-purpose it once again as we see fit?

I don't have an answer here, folks... I'm counting on you geniuses to tell me what to think here (you don't often get that chance, now do you?)

*I say ‘Winter Solstice’ because most of said religions originate in the Northern Hemisphere, so from the point of view of the funny-hat-wearing folks who invented said Holy Days, that’s exactly what it is. Taking note of that fact may help to explain a lot of the seemingly ridiculous rituals associated with those Holy Days. Down here on the bottom-half of Earth it is, of course, the Summer Solstice, so most of those rituals make no sense whatsoever.

**Take a closer look at the biblical myths, you’ll see how it couldn’t possibly have occurred at that time of year.

88% of South Africans are stupid

I would go into a tirade about it, but this just makes me too sad.

Good job, Prometheus.

The ancestors totally saved us!

Well it turns out that the time (and presumably money) spent by the Dobsonville Roodepoort Leratong and Johannesburg Taxi Association and Faraday Taxi Association on having the Bree Taxi Rank in central Joburg cleansed of evil spirits was well worth it.

The two associations were so fed up at the violent rivalry between their own members that they hired had a team of sangomas (they like to call themelves "traditional healers", but I prefer the term "witchdoctors", or better yet "charletans").

So, instead of addressing their members and adjusting their business processes to ensure that these people refrained from murdering each other in the spirit of wild-west competition, these two corporate entities decided to appeal to the magical powers of the ancestors to settle it all. But I digress.

After the cleasing ceremony on the 25th of October, the taxi rank has remained entirely free of violence! Wow! The ancestors totally did it! Their magic fixed the problem.

That was until Sunday night when in two separate incidents, three men were gunned down in what is believed to be taxi-related violence. Looks like those sangomas have their work cut out for them. Blessing one taxi tank doesn't seem to have done the trick. They'll have to bless them all, as well as every road, intersection and parking lot where taxis are likely to travel.

Good luck to them!

No condoms for you!

As if the HIV situation in South Africa isn't bad enough, what with our Minster of Health promoting her personal ideology as a cure for AIDS. For the second time in as many months, a massively public retraction of condoms has been implemented by none other than Her Dumbassness.

Even though she allegedly stated that she didn't want these recalls to influence the public, I can just imagine her doing her little Happy Dance in her office at the news that real effective prevention strategies have suffered yet another blow.

The conspiracy theorist in me tends to think that this was somehow deliberately orchestrated so as to convince the public that condom use is not an effective strategy to prevent HIV infection, a stance that Manto has tended toward in the past. At the very least I think this demonstrates gross incompetence on the Health Department's behalf that these condoms were not sufficiently tested before being released.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that these defects were found and the recalls executed. But I believe that if the Department of Health were as dedicated to combating this plague as they claim to be, those condoms would never have been issued to begin with.

Manto has shown time and again that she cannot be trusted, and that she does not have the welfare of the South African public at heart. Even when she does something that appears to be heading in the right direction, she has earned nothing but derision and ridicule. These ineffective and half-hearted attempts at appearing concerned do not detract from the fact that she is presiding over a genocide. She must be removed from office with a minimum of haste, and must be held accountable for her crimes against humanity.

I know, I've ranted about this before...

... but why the hell aren't we telecommuting?

The technology not only exists, but it is pervasive and even somewhat affordable. For a lot of people, possibly even the majority of people working in the corporate world, there is simply no need for them to be physically present in an office for eight hours a day, five days a week.

I realise there are exceptions. Some people really do need to be physically present most of the time. It makes sense for those people to commute. Is it true for everyone? Nope. Most people only need to be physically present for four or five hours a week (based on my own, completely thumb-sucked estimate... but I'm willing to bet I'm not far off).

I also concede that although the technology exists with which to have remote meetings through conference-calls and video-conferences, these are often awkward to administer and are usually an unfavourable alternative to a face-to-face meeting. But I also believe that this is a temporary situation, and as the technology matures it will eventually become the preferred option.

Exceptions aside, there are a great many people who spend a large percentage of their working hours in front of a PC and on the telephone. Is there any reason why such a person should have to spend hours in traffic (not only wasting time, but spewing exhaust fumes) when they have, in all probability, a PC (possibly even a laptop) and a telephone at home?

These people should be working at home most of the time, and only have to report to the office as needed, say for team-meetings or other such administravia that would be too difficult or expensive to orchestrate electronically. But even that should sort of thing should be phased out and replaced with cheaper and easier alternatives... it's just business sense!

The backward-thinking and change-phobic people who I have to share this planet with frustrate me no end. Even if shown in simple logical steps that the old way of doing things is now no longer the best way, they will still cling the the old ways, invoking silly non-sequiturs like "Email is not the best means of communication" and "you need to be able to share knowledge and experience with your coworkers." as if those problems hadn't already been solved by the technology years ago.

In the old days change always had to take a generation or two. Old farts, educated in a particular way of thinking would resist change as long as they were in power. Only once the next generation, educated in the newer way of thinking came to power, following the retirement or death of the former regime, could change be instituted.

Unfortunately we don't have time for that anymore. Change happens too fast now, and those blockheads who are incapable of rolling with it cost the rest of us time, money and, in the grand scheme of things, our very climate!

What frustrates me even more are those idiots who are in a position in which they have the authority to institute telecommuting policies in their own organisations, recognise the potential benefits such policies would bring, and STILL do nothing about it. I don't understand people like that.

The Rugby Cult

I am not a sports fan. I have nothing against sports in general, in fact I think it's a good idea. But I have absolutely no interest in any kind of sport.

What annoys me is this culture of rugby fanaticism in this country. Meeting after meeting is littered with one sports metaphor after another, most of which are lost on me. Although it's irritating, I can usually put up with it, but every now and then (around the time of the Rugby World Cup Final) it reaches a ridiculous fever pitch, and I feel like climbing out of my skin!

The Final is tomorrow night, apparently. So today, just about every male with an IQ <120 is walking around in a green and yellow shirt, chest billowing with pseudo-patriotic pride.

I think that's what irritates me the most about all of this. These are the same idiots who enjoy almost nothing more than to stand around the braai, with a Castle Lager in one hand, a cigarette in the other and spouting endless diatribes about how shitty this country is: crime this, BEE that. And they're right.

Things in South Africa aren't all puppies and rainbows. We've got some difficult stuff going on here. While I can appreciate the welcome diversion of some mass entertainment, I don't understand how an ordinary, more-or-less reasonable person can switch so wildly from being so anti-patriotic to being violently patriotic at the drop of an oddly-shaped ball. And then back again before the hangover has worn off!

So to anyone who I may not have told this to personally yet: No, I will not be watching the game tomorrow night. I would rather stick glass in my eye. You are welcome to watch and enjoy it to your heart's content, but don't expect me to. I am not being unpatriotic by not watching the rugby. "Supporting" the Springboks (or Proteas, or whatever the hell they're called now) does not equal patriotism. I don't know any of those guys personally, and I have no interest in the game itself... what possible reason would I have to subject myself to that? None at all. And 'none at all' is exactly how much time I will waste on that moronic game.