Don’t try to give a bouquet of these to your girlfriend.
The Kadupul flower, or Epiphyllum oxypetalum, blooms rarely, only at night, and its blossoms wilt before dawn. Even if you live in it’s native habitat of Sri Lanka, you’re unlikely to see its delicate beauty. And, it doesn’t smell very nice, either.
The world is so full of a number of things…
The Old Wolf has spoken.
I still get mail addressed to my mother on occasion; she left this world last year at the age of 94. But she was getting ads like this regularly for about 15 years before she finally caught the bus, and as time went on (before we took over her financial affairs) she ordered lots of products, either on her own or at the insistence of skilled but sleazy telephone salesmen. As a result, she ended up on every sucker list out there.
If you have older loved ones, please make sure they throw solicitations like this into the trash, even if they come from places as respectable as the Mayo Clinic – they’re not above drumming up business in the elder sector, and there are thousands of others who are looking for a chance to separate mentally-diminished but resource-wealthy seniors from their incomes, savings, and pensions.
The letter above is pure crap. The company makes a glaring mention of the FDA and implies that said agency has endorsed their product. This is a load of hqiz: the actual FDA letter is here, and if you read it you’ll see that the agency is clearly saying that evidence for effectiveness of phosphatidylserene as a memory-enhancer is feeble at best, although the product is Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) based on the information provided to the FDA by the company involved, with the additional disclaimer that the FDA has not done its own research. They went on to say, “FDA continues to believe that the science provides very limited and preliminary evidence sufficient for qualified health claims about phosphatidylserine and reduced risk of these conditions.FDA continues to believe that the science provides very limited and preliminary evidence sufficient for qualified health claims about phosphatidylserine and reduced risk of these conditions“.
Now don’t get me wrong; I’m a long-time proponent of optimal nutrition and there is a lot of science out there about vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and other co-factors that do benefit health. What I object to is outlandish claims and weasel words from companies looking to make a quick buck from the unsuspecting and uneducated, and there are far too many of those out there.
If you’re looking for things to help your loved ones, be sure to do your due diligence. Research as much as you can on the product involved, and make sure you’re not buying smoke and mirrors, which is what 90% of the stuff being marketed out there really is.
The Old Wolf has Spoken.
Be very careful about clicking links in emails, even if they seem to come from a legitimate source.
Notice the email below, which I received this morning – red flags are marked in color, with explanatory notes:
Dear Comcast Member, The credit card we have on file for your Comcast Internet service was declined when we attempted to bill you on 11/29/2012 for your most recent service fees. For this reason, your service could be suspended. Update your credit card information as soon as possible. Once your credit card information is updated, you will be charged immediately, as soon as payment is received. [3] ************************* E-mail ID: 87326473233 ************************* Sincerely, Comcast Customer Care |
This email arrived the day before my actual credit card was set to expire. While the message looks convincing to the untrained eye, it’s phonier than a 7-dollar bill.
Things you can do to protect yourself:
There are countless scumbags out there, and they want your money and your information. Be safe, be careful, and watch out for your loved ones.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
Footnotes
[1] Email from a legitimate source will never have alphabet soup as part of the email address.
[2] Look at that URL up there: account.comcast.net.1r9.is-into-cars.com. A web address for a legitimate concern will not have jumbles of letters or numbers, or extraneous words in it. This website had been taken down by the evening, but I’m guessing the douchebags got a few uneducated people to enter their information with the millions of emails they sent out. The URL led to a very realistic-looking website with a login request. As is my wont, I went there and entered scathing obscenities for my username and password.
[3] This is lousy English. “you will be charged immediately, as soon as payment is received” makes no sense. If your payment is received, there is no need to charge you.
“Simply want to say your article is as surprising. The clarity for your publish is just excellent and i could think you are knowledgeable on this subject. Well with your permission allow me to grasp your RSS feed to stay updated with forthcoming post. Thanks one million and please continue the rewarding work.”
Lousy grammar, simpering flattery – standard hallmarks of a spam post. The user who made the comment? “how to make money online,hyip sites,search engine optimization,learn seo,download softwares and application for free,learn blogging tips and tricks“. But before I could even blow the comment out of the water, the web page at a spam link aggregator had already been deleted.
Oddly enough, this one made it past WordPress’ spam filter, but into the trash it goes anyway.
If you’re ever wandering down Leinster Gardens in Bayswater Road in London, take a careful look at Numbers 23 and 24. These houses are in fact just façades, built to disguise an exposed part of the Metropolitan underground railway that runs behind them. In the 1930s, a man famously sold hundreds of guests tickets to a black tie charity ball there – only for them to turn up and discover the houses were fakes.
Edit: Since I wrote this little post, these building fronts have featured prominently in an episode of “Sherlock Holmes,” the wonderful new series staring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman. I was delighted to see them written in to the plot.
Picture: Murray Sanders / Daily Mail /Rex Features
Found at The Telegraph.
Obviously, the muggles would never notice…
The Old Wolf has… *obliviate!*
Clara Luper, an Oklahoma history teacher, ordered thirteen Cokes at Katz Drugstore in Oklahoma City on August 19, 1958 for herself and twelve children, ages 6 to 17. Lunch counters in Oklahoma, like much of the South, were segregated. This wasn’t just a request for drinks, but a request for civil rights.
Waitresses ignored them. Other patrons did not: leaving the restaurant, pouring drinks on them, cursing at them. The group left after a few hours without their drinks. They returned the next day and were served their Cokes, and burgers, too.
“Within that hamburger was the whole essence of democracy.” – Clara Luper
Note: This took place a year and a half before the much more famous sit-in at the Greensboro (NC) Woolworth’s on February 1, 1960. Luper would continue her fight to desegregate public spaces in Oklahoma City. She was arrested 26 times between 1958 and the passage of Oklahoma law to desegregate. (Passed two days after the Civil Rights Act.)
Found at Frog Blog
Found at Frog Blog
I previously posted about Denmark’s Fastelavn, but I had no idea that we had a similar tradition in the US prior to Hallowe’en.
Found at Retronaut via This Circular Parade
Before Halloween was the holiday known for dressing up in costume and begging for candy (this practice did not become common until the 1940s and 50s), children in NYC often participated in what was called Ragamuffin Day. On Ragamuffin Day – which was Thanksgiving Day – children would dress themselves in rags and oversized, overdone parodies of beggars (a la Charlie Chaplin’s character “The Tramp”). The ragamuffins would then ask neighbors and adults on the street, “Anything for Thanksgiving?” The usual response would be pennies, an apple, or a piece of candy.
In 1936, The New York Times’ only mention of the ragamuffins is to state:
Ragamuffins Frowned Upon: Despite the endeavors of social agencies to discourage begging by children, it is likely that the customary Thanksgiving ragamuffins, wearing discarded apparel of their elders, with masks and painted faces, will ask passers-by, ‘anything for Thanksgiving?’
In 1937, organizations such as the Madison Square Boys Club were reported as having Thanksgiving parades as an effort “to discourage the Thanksgiving ragamuffins.” By 1940, that parade had grown in size to over 400 children and sported the slogan “American boys do not beg.” Though the parading boys still dressed in costume as ragamuffins, many donned costumes of other things and people – such as alarm clocks and Michelangelo. – New York Public Library
According to one expert, “Ragamuffin parades, which harkened back to European traditions, were a chance for the poorer immigrants of New York to march through the streets in extravagant costumes, begging for change.” (From Bank St. Irregular)
I learn something new every day!
The Old Wolf has spoken.
Rejection slip sent by Essanay (most famous for the Chaplin films) to screenwriters who sent them hqiz. Pity “Gigli” didn’t get one of these…
Found at Retronaut
Actually, it’s bad news.
On November 1, the FTC announced it had shut down 5 companies that were participating in the “Rachel from Cardholder Services” scheme, but over the last 3 days I have been being called relentlessly by “Ann from Cardholder Services”; I have been receiving phone calls from 701-671-9224, which is apparently a new prefix for Pacific Telecom Communications Group.
This article from the Telecom Compliance News Press gives abundant information about the scam and, based on the area code and prefix that is calling you, places you can lodge a complaint. Here is the salient text from the article:
If you’ve received an unsolicited telemarketing call from Rachel at “Cardholder Services”, Tom with “Home Security”, or other robocall originating from a phone number listed below, it likely came from a telemarketer that has entered into a revenue sharing agreement with a public utility named Pacific Telecom Communications Group. Pacific Telecom is involved in a scheme whereby they profit from the millions of seemingly illegal unsolicited telemarketing sales calls made each week that are identified with their phone numbers, all in apparent violation of 16 C.F.R. §310.3(b) of the Federal Telemarketing Sales Rule. Pacific Telecom has a foreign “subsidiary” registered in Belize, which seemingly acts as a “shell” company to hide the identity of the individuals who initiate these outbound telemarketing calls and makes it difficult for regulators to investigate this activity. Our analysis of FTC consumer complaint data shows that Pacific Telecom phone numbers are the target of over 25% of consumer telemarketing complaints to the FTC. A staggering 208,362 complaints were filed with the FTC against Pacific Telecom phone numbers over a recent 3 month period alone. The mastermind behind these schemes appears to be an attorney in Portland Oregon named F Antone Accuardi. Although multiple State and Federal investigations are under way, so far Accuardi has not been brought to justice.The more people that complain, the more the authorities will be motivated to keep working on shutting these bottom-feeders down.
This has been an Old Wolf public service announcement.
Playing in the World Game 