Monthly Archives: September 2012

Snake oil: Alive and Well

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Light shined into dark corners will make the cockroaches scurry for cover. Today we’re talking about Ketonic Labs Green Coffee Bean extract.

Executive Summary: This product is a fraud, this product is a scam, and this product is snake oil.

Here’s the spam email I got this morning:

The spam issue

In the first place, I shouldn’t be getting this junk because I’ve never done business with Ketonic Labs, Micronet Tech or Performemmbers.net. That’s the beauty of the toothless CAN-SPAM act passed by our amazing congressmen, it means that anyone “can spam” you by simply offering an unsubscribe link: thank you very little, you gutless cabrones. Comcast does a pretty good job keeping most spam out of my inbox, but image-based ads like this continue to slip through their filters.

The scam issue

Supplements are almost totally unregulated. You can claim that a product will give you wings and allow you to mate with sphinges (that’s plural for sphinx), as long as you tack on this little disclaimer: “These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.” The FDA will, in general, only come after companies whose ad copy actually does claim such things, despite the disclaimer, and they’ll only take the time to prosecute the biggest players because their resources are limited. But from where I sit, the email itself violates all the rules, and the web page is even worse.

Notice the almost-invisble “ADVERTORIAL” at the top of the page. I hate that word, for what it’s worth.

  • Melt away fat
  • Get high-school slim
  • Potent Fat Burner
  • Effective Appetite Suppressant
  • Works Quickly, Proven Results
  • Affordable Prices
  • Tremendous Weight loss results
  • Increase in Focus
  • Energy Throughout the day
  • No Crash

In short, these people, like hundreds of thousands of others, are dazzling you with weasel words and pseudo-scientific horsehockey, and it’s almost a guarantee that enough people in our country will believe it that they can recoup their costs and walk away with a tidy profit before moving on to another fraud. Make no mistake – they know they are shoveling out the barn- just have a look at this great disclaimer at the bottom of the page:

DISCLAIMER
*THIS PAGE RECEIVES COMPENSATION FOR CLICKS ON OR PURCHASE OF PRODUCTS FEATURED ON THIS SITE.
*The story depicted on this site and the person depicted in the story are not real. rather this story is based on the results that some people who have used these products have achieved. The results portrayed in the story and in the comments are illustrative and may not be the results that you achieve with these products. The depictions on this page are fictitious and indicitive [sic] of potential results. Actual results may vary.

Of course, none of this is new. People have been hawking snake oil since the earliest days:

The less educated a population, the more likely you are to be able to sell them anything. You’d think as the availability of information increases, people would become more enlightened, but the general trend in my own experience is downward; mass media caters to the lowest common denominator and good information on the internet is covered with a layer of bovine ejecta worthy of the Augean stables. The older I get, the more cynical I become about sales and marketing in general, and that’s a problem because I have products of my own to sell, and it’s a constant battle to figure out how to carve out market sector without being a douchebag.

With thanks to B. Kliban

Here’s the product label:

So what is Ketonic selling you for $50.00 a bottle? Caffeine, which has long been combined in numerous diet pills and combined with other quack ingredients including PPA, ginseng, green tea extract and countless others. Double-blind, placebo-based trials, however, seem to indicate that caffeine is not effective as a weight-loss aid. But please, don’t confuse us with the facts – where there’s money to be made, the marketers will sell you all they can.

Conclusion

There are some solid principles for losing weight, but as I have said elsewhere, there is no magic bullet. Do yourself a favor and stay away from the snake oil.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Hqiz! Hijacked by Bing!

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Update: It appears that I have found the solution to the problem below. It’s more detailed than I thought, but fairly simple.

The problem is not Bing itself, but a piece of camel ejecta called “conduit.”

Going to about:config and typing in “conduit” turned up a veritable plethora of infected entries (here I have already cleared the first three).

Right-clicking on each entry allows you to select a pick called “reset.” Once I had done this, and closed out Firefox, my URL bar search remained pointed to Google. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the problem doesn’t return. For what it’s worth, it appears that the culprit that brought it along was uTorrent.

*yarg*

I’ve been over this before. On May 3rd of this year, I posted the following over at my Livejournal:

Hijacked by Bing once again – and what to do about it.

I have been told that it’s not becoming of a Christian soul to consign others to Hell, even in jest, regardless of the magnitude of their transgressions. Ultimate judgment does not rest in our hands, and in the end, we all fall short.

Heck, however, ruled over by Phil, the Prince of Insufficient Light, is another matter.


©1989 United Features Syndicate

Every now and then, some piece of hqiz software that I install brings an unpleasant and unexpected “bonus” along with it: the infestation of my browsers with “Bing.”

My home page gets changed, my search engines get shuffled, my URL search bar default is hijacked, and I’m gifted with an unasked-for toolbar.

And mind you, I’m very careful when installing things to uncheck all the little extras that many packages hope you’ll opt-in for.

Surely people who write such installation packages deserve to spend Eternity in Heck.

If you’re a Firefox user and this has happened to you, here’s how to exorcise the demons.

1) Close Firefox, and via Control Panel, navigate to “Uninstall or Change a Program”. I’m using Win7 Professional, but all recent Windows operating systems have some variation of this. Look for and nuke anything that says “Bing” in it. This should get rid of the Bing toolbar.

2) Open Firefox, go to Tools/Add-ons. Look at both “Extensions” and “Plug-ins” and clobber anything that says “Bing” in it.

3) Next to your URL bar you’ll see something that looks like this:

By clicking on the little triangle, you’ll get a drop-down menu. Choose the option that says “Manage Search Engines.”

If Bing is there, make another option your default search engine, move it to the top, and delete Bing. Delete it hard, and sing “My Way” while you do it.

4) This is the tricky one, because it’s buried deep. If you type key words in your URL bar, you’ll be redirected to some Bing search helper.

This will return the default URL search results to Google. If you want another search engine here, you’ll have to hunt around for the appropriate string – Google is all I ever use.

That should do it. If you execrate Bing as much as I do, perhaps you will find this useful if you have ever been “Bung.”

You’re welcome.

But you know what’s driving me nuts? I have followed my own advice, and what I find is that replacing Keyword:URL only works for the current session. As soon as I close and re-open Firefox (currently v. 15.0), the value pops back to “http://search.conduit.com/ResultsExt.aspx?ctid=CT3072253&SearchSource=2&q=”

Now I really want to slap someone. That’s just downright dirty. I’ve searched my registry (Win7 Pro, 64-bit) and “search.conduit.com” doesn’t exist anywhere as a key. I’m totally at a loss to what to do next.

At least I was, until I finally found what I desperately hope to be the proper solution.

Food Irradiation

Posted on by The Old Wolf

I’ve long had in my library a September 1958 National Geographic entitled “You and the Obedient Atom.” It’s an intriguing look at the scientific applications of nuclear radiation, and one of these has always intrigued me.

Ektachromes by Gervase A. Arndt ©1958 N.G.S.

“Bombarded Foods Stay Germ-free as Others Rot

Using gamma rays to destroy micro-organisms that cause decay, the Army Quartermaster Corps preserves foods for weeks and months at room temperatures. When exposures are light, changes in taste are scarcely noticeable; gamma radiation does not linger.

Foods irradiated in Argonne’s pool (illustration not shown – Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago) and elsewhere were first fed to rats, without harmful effect. Later, military volunteers tried samples. Congressmen have eaten entire gamma-sterilized dinners.

Both samples of frankfurters were kept three months in air¬tight plastic wrappers. Irradiated meat on right looks as fresh as ever. A potato sprouts six months after harvesting; in its opposite, sprouting is delayed. Treated oranges stay fresh and juicy. Moldy bread contrasts with a two-month-old treated loaf. The Food and Drug Administration has not yet certified gamma-treated foods for the market.”

National Geographic, September, 1958

Wow. What a way to reduce spoilage. Yet despite the massive consumer push-back against GMO’s or “frankenfoods,” we hear almost nothing about irradiation today. Doing a bit of research, I came across

Apparently foods treated by radiation will display the “radura”

And yet despite the initial approval by the FDA of irradiated foods for certain applications and continuing research showing its safety, I have never once in my life seen the radura on any food label, anywhere.

“Irradiation has not been widely adopted due to an asserted negative public perception, the concerns expressed by some consumer groups and the reluctance of many food producers.[47]

Consumer organizations, environmentalist groups, and opponents to food irradiation refer to some studies suggesting that a large part of the public questions the safety of irradiated foods, and will not buy foods that have been irradiated.[48]

On the other hand, other studies indicate the number of consumers concerned about the safety of irradiated food has decreased in the last 10 years and continues to be less than the number of those concerned about pesticide residues, microbiological contamination, and other food related concerns. Such numbers are comparable to those of people with no concern about food additives and preservatives. Consumers, given a choice and access to irradiated products, appear ready to buy it in considerably large numbers”

Wikipedia, Food Irradiation

Irradiation works by destroying DNA, preventing microorganisms from reproducing or creating toxic byproducts. Obviously people are going to have concerns about consuming modified (destroyed) DNA in the same way as they will about consuming transgenic foods, but that doesn’t mean the issues are the same. Still, given what we know about how prions work and the devastating effects of BSE, people are right to be concerned enough to do their homework.

Given the relative paucity of irradiated foods on the market, it’s probably safe to say you are not likely to encounter any, but I’m going to do a bit more digging. If it is safe, it could go a long way to reducing food waste, which at this point reaches a level of about 40% of all consumables in the US alone.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

 

 

Y solve for X?

Posted on by The Old Wolf

“As you can see, I have memorized this utterly useless piece of information long enough to pass a test question. I now intend to forget it forever. You’ve taught me nothing except how to cynically manipulate the system. Congratulations.”
-Calvin (Bill Watterson)

When I was in high school, I remember thinking similar things on a regular basis. Why in the world do I need to know this? And to some extent, it’s true. While I can remember the quadratic equation, I have never once needed to determine the roots of ax2 + bx + c = 0.

Funny thing about that. It seems to be a more popular perception than I thought.

Randall Munroe, XKCD. Posted by permission.

This philosophy taken to its logical conclusion is probably what led Isaac Asimov to say, “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” (Newsweek, 21 January 1980).

However, Munroe’s alt-text for the above cartoon is “The only things you HAVE to know are how to make enough of a living to stay alive and how to get your taxes done. All the fun parts of life are optional.” That’s just what I was incapable of getting my head around at the time: oftentimes the only purpose in learning is to teach us how to learn, and what a joy that is in itself.

When I was a kid, librarians were held in high esteem. If you couldn’t find something you wanted you went to the librarian, who either knew the answer immediately or knew exactly where to find it. They were the living Wikipedias of the era, and they understood the joy of learning.

“Were man to live coeval with the sun, the patriarch-pupil would be learning still.”
-Young, “Night Thoughts.”

There’s something to be said for a broad-based education in preparation for choosing a career, but better than teaching endless rafts of facts in preparation for the almighty standardized tests, schools ought to be teaching kids how to learn and how to think and how to question; minds that can do this are the fertile seedbeds of innovation and social justice.

The Old Wolf has spoken.