Category Archives: woo

The Bankruptcy Of Power Balance

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You should have to work very hard to convince people that a bracelet made of plastic with a hologram has the ability to “mimic Eastern philosophies” and make you a better athlete. You have to work even harder to take a product that is worth mere pennies, sell it very successfully for $30 and more, and still manage to go bankrupt. So are the days of Power Balance.

Anyone reading their web site should immediately be skeptical. Programming holograms to mimic Eastern philosophy? That doesn’t even make sense. What does the programming look like? How does a hologram mimic a philosophy? Who taught these people English? And yet, they sold thousands of their product. Unfortunately, they were implying a lot with nothing to back them up, and they lost a class action suit. Now Power Balance is going to declare bankruptcy rather than pay back all the money they made.

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A Fine Example Of What’s Wrong With Alternative Medicine

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What’s the harm? It’s the mantra of alternative health. The implication is that if you are reasonably using western medicine and want to supplement with a little placebo-ridden woo, what harm does it do? Unfortunately, that isn’t what happens. In practice, people feel that they can deal with life’s curve-balls without involving the health care system, and human lives can be the cost.

Case in point, this article from The Telegraph about a four year old who had a cold with a fever. His mother used homeopathy to treat his woes, and as shocking as it sounds, sugar and water were not enough to beat what ailed him. After three weeks, they took him to the hospital, where he died.

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Powerful Psychics Are Powerful

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On the night of my college graduation party, as we sat drunkenly singing karaoke, I met a psychic. She was a friend of a friend who still reads this blog (Hi Jay!) and I’m sure was genuinely certain of her psychic abilities. She was entirely pleasant and nice to talk to, and as the night wore on she offered to read my then-wife and my futures for us. And so we did.

She told me about the company who would hire me. It would be soon, and in the lobby she saw dusty rose and gray. And she said that my then-pregnant then-wife was going to have a scary breach delivery, but that the boy baby would be safe. Not long after that, I got a call from a company I had been interviewing for. Would I like to come in for one final interview with the big boss? Things looked promising, but their building had no dusty rose and gray in it. I giggled and agreed to show up later that day. They called me as I was on my way out the door and explained that they had moved offices, and I needed to go to the new location. And in that location, where I would wind up working for the next three years… DUSTY ROSE AND GRAY TILE IN THE LOBBY! Coincidence?

Yeah. Big time.

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It’s Like A Grab Bag Of The Stupid

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Homophobia. Deprogramming. Catholicism. Homeopathy. I almost don’t know where to begin.

The Union of Catholic Physicians in Germany are offering homeopathic remedies for homosexuality. It’s cute, because they don’t want to look like the hate-mongering bigots they are, so they make sure to state that homosexuality isn’t a disease, just that they have treatment options for them queer inclinations.

Homosexuality is not a disease. Despite protestations to the contrary, homosexuality occurs in other areas of the animal kingdom, and one of our closest cousins, the bonobos, use sex, both homosexual and heterosexual, to relieve tension. It’s a hell of a lot better than beating the crap out of each other. The image of homosexuality as a disease comes from those who believe for whatever reason that it is an unnatural act to be feared. It certainly isn’t a normal behavior for everyone, but for those who are gay, it is much more natural than heterosexual sex.

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Grave Concerns About Some Courses

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I must admit, I totally missed the boat on this one. My good friend and fellow Shillelagh, Brad, handed me a pamphlet for something called Spectacular Saturdays which is being put on by Chinook Learning Services (CLS for the rest of this post). CLS is in some way related to the Calgary Board of Education (CBE), which is the public school board for Calgary. The CBE “provides adult and continuing education through Chinook Learning Services.”

Brad and I had been talking about going to this and choosing one of the courses that we found contentious so that we could absorb it (not insult it and not interrupt or prevent it) and provide our thoughts. I was especially concerned that this was tied so closely to the CBE, which is a publicly funded organization. Unfortunately, May 7 came and went, and I was in the midst of dealing with all the usual stuff in my life and totally missed out on it. Sorry, Brad!

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EU Requiring Herbal Regulation

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It’s about time, and of course, it comes with all the cringing and moaning that one would expect. The European Union are now requiring that herbal remedy products be licensed with appropriate safety and efficacy proof provided, and that they be prescribed by a licensed herbal practitioner. In other words, they are holding herbal medicine up to a weaker version of what regular medicine has to go through in order to be sold, and that is a very good thing.

The fact of the matter is that there are side effects and potential hazards to these products, and there are a large number of them that have no evidence whatsoever to back up their claims. If I were a consumer of herbal products, I would consider this a significant assist to my ability to make reasonable, informed choices about the products I am taking. I want to know if the thing I am taking could shut down my kidneys. I’m funny that way.

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Queen Of The Fruit Flies

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I just read an interesting bit of news and thought I would share it. It turns out that researcher Masaki Kamakura has isolated a protein within royal jelly that is integral in the formation of queen bees. Royal jelly, aside from being a major fixture in the alt med community, claiming to boost the immune system, lower cholesterol, and help with inflammatory diseases, is made by and for bees. All bee larvae eat it for the first few days of development, but the queen bee gets it all the time.

Kamakura has published a paper in Nature which describes how he isolated the protein in question, and what happened when he gave it to fruit fly larvae. Essentially, the fruit fly got big. Real big. And he was able to evaluate what genetic trigger he was pushing by exposing the larvae to the protein.

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My Ethereal DNA Is Unplugged

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Wow wow wow, thank you PZ Myers for posting this information! All this time I thought my various problems in life were based on environment, circumstance, and the fact that I am not the center of the universe! How wrong I was! It turns out I just need a DNAropractor.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “But Jim,” thinks you, “that sounds like complete and utter bullshit!” Well, as PZ has found out, it isn’t. Sure, on the surface all this talk of misaligned DNA code may appear to be the wash of the hog, but PZ had faith and it paid off both for him and the rest of us!

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Integrative Medicine

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Western medicine is good. If that sentence annoys you, then you’re probably not going to like the rest of this article. Sorry about your luck. Western medicine, or as its enemies call it, allopathic medicine, is not perfect, but it is far and away the most successful type of medicine going. Yes, some alternative medicines lay claim (accurately or not) to thousands of years of history, but they were largely ineffective for those thousands of years, certainly when compared with western medicine’s most recent years.

Of course, there were darker times. We didn’t understand things like germ theory and the importance of sterilizing our instruments between surgeries, and infections were widespread. But because western medicine employs science, it learns from its mistakes over time, constantly evaluates what it is doing, and tries to do things better.

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