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A Demented Year: 2008 in Review

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Demented World - by Thoraiya Dyer

When did we start living in a demented world? When did it become possible to advertise a product that "brings health and life to your hair" when, in fact, hair consists of dead skin cells and lifeless keratin? How can something that HAS no life be healthy or unhealthy? When did it become possible to advertise that Echinacea is good for colds and flu, when The New England Journal of Medicine (Vol 353: 341-348, July 2005) in an article by R.B. Turner et al, it was concluded that the happy little plant has absolutely no effect at all? I'm ready to begin my crusade. Welcome to Demented World

Demented World

Natural Mineral Makeup

April 7th 2009 11:41

The latest fad in giving your face the “natural” look (because flaunting what nature ACTUALLY gave you isn’t natural, it’s just ugly) is mineral makeup.

Once again, we have a product that’s touted as being good for you because it’s “natural”, with the added buzzword of “mineral” inserted to describe “powder from crushed up rocks.”

Here’s what it says on the web site of Sheer Cover Natural Mineral Makeup ( Really Long Link of Minerals.aspx ):

“With the Sheer Cover ® Kit, you take control of your complexion and decide how you want the world to see you. If you suffer from uneven skin tone; redness; acne; or dark under eye circles, Sheer Cover will brush away your flaws and let your most beautiful skin shine through. The benefit to using Sheer Cover ® is it's makeup that's actually good for your skin!”

And here’s some more from Inika Natural Mineral Cosmetics ( Really Long Link ):

“We capture Mother Nature's richest and most flamboyant hues with makeup that is natural but sexy, with vibrant colours and versatile products," Miranda said. "Our goal with Inika is to introduce the world to a new era in cosmetics, one where you don't have to compromise colour or performance to be kind to your skin and gentle to the earth…Also, due to our dense pigments, you can completely hide skin conditions such as acne, rosacea, redness or scarring and your skin can still breathe. Many women who have severe redness are amazed at the coverage. Our foundations also have a built in natural sunscreen to protect the skin.”
The Free Dictionary Really Long Link defines mineral as “a naturally occurring solid inorganic substance with a characteristic chemical composition and structure.”

I’m feeling a little pictorial today, so get ready to see some natural minerals.

Natural Mineral 1: Zinc Oxide

Yes, that’s the active ingredient of zinc cream ( Really Long Link ) used in sun protection and anti-eczema medications.

It’s also the main ingredient in “Sheer Cover” – and here’s proof that zinc oxide can brush away your flaws:

(Taken from here: Really Long Link )

Not a hint of uneven skin tone underneath that coating of minerals! Hooray!

Here’s two more examples of minerals helping to conceal flaws in your skin:

And it looks so natural!

Natural Mineral 2: Mica

The main ingredient of Inika’s Eternal Marine Mineral Eyeshadow ( Really Long Link ).

Vibrant? Kind of. Natural? A hundred percent.

Sexy?

Take another look.

HMMmm.

Natural Mineral 3: Yellowcake

Uranium ore, for those out of the nuclear power loop.

Just as natural as mica, but WAY more vibrant.

That brings me to my final offering, which must be the ultimate in vibrant minerals:

Natural Mineral 4: Cobalt-60

This radioactive isotope is sure to change your appearance, forever! Try some today!

Or perhaps you could just wear no makeup at all – perhaps you could just go natural.

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Why Iridology Can’t Tell You Anything Besides Your Eye Colour

March 26th 2009 23:21

I’ve got a short, sweet message this morning for anyone curious about Iridology.

What is iridology? According to detox.net.au:

“Iridology is the study of the iris (the coloured part of the eye) to determine possible health problems. Iridologists look for certain colours and markings within different regions of the iris as a reflection of what is happening within the body (or even what has happened previously).”

They go on to say things like:

“And so how exactly does it work? The marks (or "lesions" as they are known) within the iris are made through abnormal nerve impulses, which cause the structures in the iris to stray from their normal arrangement. This leads to different colours and fibre markings appearing in the iris.

By taking a look at your eyes in the mirror of a clear-lit room, you may even be able to see some of the following signs that would indicate that a cleanse could be a fantastic choice for you!”

“This person has a genetic blue iris. The white fibres throughout the eye suggest that the body is in an acidic state (rather than a healthy alkaline state). This is a fairly acute or recent occurrence. On the other hand, the yellow colouring suggests other problems that have been more chronic – especially the overburdened lymphatic system.”

Please note my MOST HATED personal pet peeve of the scientific jargon kidnapped to give a veneer of respectability to this tripe. Words such as "lesions," “genetic,” “alkaline” and “lymphatic” were coined by people who dedicated their lives to the systematic discovery of physically verifiable anatomical truth.

So it makes me furious to see them used in this context.

How do I know it’s tripe? How do I know this “chocaholic” doesn’t need a “bowel cleanse”?

It’s simple. The iris is a fixed, unchanging structure.

So fixed and unchanging that it’s been used for security purposes in much the same manner as a fingerprint since the 1990s.

“MIAMI BEACH, Fla., Dec. 8 /PRNewswire/ -- Marking a dramatic advance in the evolution of branch automation, four of the world's largest bank teller software providers announced today plans to showcase Sensar's iris identification products to financial institutions around the world.

The goal: to allow banks to instantly -- and with 100 percent certainty -- recognize every customer who conducts financial transactions at walk-up teller stations by the customer's unique iris (colored part of the eye). “ - Really Long Link

“A new development at some airports is ticketless air travel, allowing passenger and baggage check-in and other security procedures based on the traveller's iris patterns.

Beyond its use in financial transactions, iris recognition is forecast to play a role in a wide range of other applications in which a person's identity must be established or confirmed.

These include passport control, electronic commerce, entitlements payments, premises entry, access to privileged information, authorizations, forensic and police applications, computer login, or any other transaction in which personal identification currently relies just on special possessions or secrets (keys, cards, documents, passwords, PINs).” - Really Long Link

More recently (2006), iris identification has been implemented as a security measure in schools and day care centres in the US:

“The system's iris recognition technology provides an accurate method for personal identification that, unlike fingerprint identification, is quick and non-invasive. The Freehold deployment uses a special camera to take close-up images of an individual's irises, the colored part of the eyes. The images are converted to a digital template and then stored electronically in a computer database along with contact information, specific access permissions and a photograph of individuals associated with particular students.

If the iris images in the database match those offered by an individual seeking entry into the school, the school door automatically unlocks. Typically, access is granted or denied in less than two seconds. “ - Really Long Link

Here’s a whole page of iris scanners you can buy:

Really Long Link

The sad truth is that an unchangeable structure cannot give an early indication of illness.

So next time you see one of these:

…admit that it’s very pretty, but don’t even think about parting with your well-earned cash.

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Drugs and Creativity: The Lame Artist’s Excuse

February 19th 2009 13:24

You’ve heard it a hundred times.

“I need (Insert drug or alcohol) to be creative.”

In the words of Stephen King, from his memoir “On Writing”:

“I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to work any more if I quit drinking and drugging, but I decided…that I would trade writing for staying married and watching the kids grow up. If it came to that.

It didn’t, of course. The idea that creative endeavour and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time…substance-abusing writers are just substance-abusers – common garden-variety drunks and druggies, in other words.”

Yet so many musicians, artists, writers and philosophers claim that an altered state of mind is their source of inspiration.

Are they telling the truth, or are they simply deceived into thinking they are geniuses precisely because they’re off their heads?

Let’s examine the science, as is our wont here at Demented World.

From Creativity Research Journal, Volume 13, 2001 ( Really Long Link ):

“This research sought to evaluate the effect of marijuana use on creativity as defined by the term divergent thinking. Another objective was to verify if there was a difference in the creativity of regular users (60 participants) and that of novice users of marijuana (60 participants) under 3 experimental conditions: without marijuana, with placebo, and with marijuana.

The 4 divergent thinking factors (fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration) were measured by the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (Form A, Figural scale).

The results showed that the use of marijuana had no positive effects on divergent thinking (creativity) in novice users and reduced it in regular users.”

Awesome, dude. I gotted stupider!

More bad news for stoners in Runco and Pritzker’s Encyclopedia of Creativity:

“Marijuana use apparently results in increased originality, but has a negligible or slightly negative impact on creative achievement. Since marijuana use is associated with short-term memory degradation, text comprehension difficulties and slowed reaction time on some cognitive tasks, the apparent advantages of marijuana use may be balanced or outweighed by marijuana-induced cognitive detriments.”

Oh, dear. What about other drugs?

What about the famous Dr Janiger test where 70 artists took LSD and created 250 “amazing” artworks based on an American Indian doll? Doesn’t that prove that LSD enhances creativity?

BEEP.

There was no control group.

Thank you for playing.

You can’t just give drugs to a bunch of hippies and then ask them if they feel more creative.

When you do it properly, you find that there is no real difference.

“Overall, the LSD subjects and the placebo controls did not differ significantly in performance on a battery of creativity tests which included remote associations, originality of word associations, and creation of original designs from tiles.”

(Zegans, Pollard and Brown, 1967)

“In brief, although LSD did not enhance performance on creativity tests, it appeared…to produce a subjective feeling of enhanced creativity.”

(McGlothlin, Cohen and McGlothlin, 1967)

There it is. The delusion of genius. Here it is again, from a different source ( Really Long Link ), for those who missed it:

“Frank Barron (1963) administered psilocybin to a number of highly creative individuals and recorded their impressions…Barron's artists…were wildly enthusiastic about their apparently increased sensitivity during the drug experience only to discover, once the effects wore off, that the production was without artistic merit.

One painter recalled, "I have seldom known such absolute identification with what I was doing—nor such a lack of concern with it afterwards." This statement indicates that an artist is not necessarily able to judge the value of his psychedelically inspired work while he is under drug influence.”

Finally, there is alcohol.

In the fascinating article, “I drink, therefore I am” ( Really Long Link ), by Beveridge (no, really) and Yorston, published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine in 1999, we find this little discourse:

“The medical view of drunkenness is a negative one…Clinicians who deal with the human consequences of excessive drinking – the broken homes, the victims of violence, the multiple physical and mental ills – feel justified in their condemnation of the drunkard. However, this view does not enjoy an untroubled consensus with the lay public. In particular, many writers and artists take quite a different view…Rather than being seen as a sign of personal failing, alcoholism is taken as evidence of artistic integrity.”

What would Stephen King have to say about that?

“The four twentieth-century writers whose work is most responsible for it are probably Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson and the poet Dylan Thomas….Any claims that drugs and alcohol are necessary to dull a finer sensibility are just the usual self-serving bullshit…Hemingway and Fitzgerald didn’t drink because they were creative, alienated or morally weak. They drank because that’s what alkies are wired up to do.”

And the science?

Here is another really intriguing article on creativity (are gays more creative?) ( Really Long Link ) which reports that alcohol doesn’t enhance creativity, but if you think you’ve had alcohol, you delude yourself into thinking you’re more creative:

“Further, Lang, Verrat and Watt (1984, as cited by Gustafson & Norlander, 1994) used a balanced placebo design and tested subjects on four different creativity tests.

Alcohol did not affect the creative process, but later when subjects evaluated their work, subjects who thought they had consumed alcohol evaluated their performances more positively than subjects who thought they had not received alcohol.

In a separate study, Gustafson reported that alcohol in fact reduces the number of creative solutions produced in response to a stimulus object on a traditional creativity test.”

But what about all those alcoholic writers? James Joyce? Hugh McDiarmid? Dorothy Parker? Jack Kerouac? “In the United States, five of the eight writers who have won the Nobel Prize for literature have all suffered at some time from severe alcohol abuse and/or dependence (Rothenberg, 1990).”

Well, maybe it started off innocently enough.

“Gustafson and Norlander (1994) found that people drink more alcohol after hard creative work than after hard non-creative work. Rothenberg (1990) collected data on the alcohol consumption patterns of writers and found evidence that supports this finding.

Very few did their actual writing, or even thinking about writing, while under the influence of alcohol. Or to put it more exactly, their writing was seldom successful when done under the influence of alcohol, and at various points in their lives, drinking absolutely interfered with their ability to do any creative work.

By and large, they did not use alcohol when they were actually engaged in writing, but tended to drink when they were finished for the day.”

Well, whatever the excuse, don’t let the creative people in your lives try and convince you that they need the stuff. Evidence is that they’d be even better without it.

Evidence is that EVERYONE would be better off without it.

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The Parasite Reflex: Another mangled take on mainstream medicine. Ban furniture instead.

January 19th 2009 00:27

The alternate therapy fliers are coming thick and fast these days. Most recently, it’s the so-called “Parasite Reflex” which has gotten my goat. Or should I say gotten my gastrointestinal Giardia?

“Novel forms of therapy,” I am told, “should not be rejected just because they come from an unconventional source

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A Demented Year: 2008 in Review

December 31st 2008 08:32

As the New Year approaches, let us take time to rediscover (and guffaw incredulously at) what we’ve learned since I started posting on Demented World in April 2008.

We learned that we, as consumers, are complete suckers

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Hematology: Leave it to pathology labs, not chicken entrail-reading fortune-tellers

December 17th 2008 21:12

Some outrageous baloney arrived on my doorstep this week.

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“Real ingredients” – includes real nitrous, real saturated fat and real propylene glycol

November 25th 2008 21:12

Advertising companies are getting lazier and lazier. Once upon a time, to sell us something, we had to be somehow convinced of its superior attributes. Not any more. Now all it takes is a buzzword or two, even when that buzzword doesn’t mean anything – like the word “real.”

How about “Mums are Reddi for Real Ingredients

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Can Stainless Steel in Your Toilet Sink Make It So Your Sh!t Don’t Stink?

October 27th 2008 20:47

People spend lots of money trying to make their toilets odourless.

The fact is, bodily waste smells bad, and if you’ve spent ten minutes in a very small room squeezing out the contents of your bowel, you just have to accept that it’s not going to smell like roses

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Rayfence: Protect yourself from radiation, blunder around in the dark

October 13th 2008 21:59

Just when you thought you couldn’t possibly fit another lifestyle hazard into your list of suburban dangers to panic about, here comes electromagnetic radiation, as explained by Ramsdals ( Really Long Link ), makers of Rayfence:

“Ramsdals policy is to help people suffering from electromagnetic radiation

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DVD and TV For Babies: Bring on attention deficit disorder, obesity and stupidity

September 25th 2008 12:23

What makes people plonk their innocent bundles of joy in front of the idiot box at an age when they are absorbing information at a phenomenal rate? Do we really think that TV can make our kids smarter, or are we so desperate for an hour to ourselves that we’ll do just about anything?

Everyone wants their baby to be a genius, but television and babies probably should not mix for the first few years of life. Demented World has already explored the fun of Unborn University. Now it’s time to take a closer look at the next phase of insanity: DVD and TV that targets babies. Or, rather, targets their parents

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April 2009

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March 2009

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February 2009