Media savvy

Erm, so if you pop a few pills your probability of dying is 75%???
And we thought we had an ageing population NOW.

Must confess: I got this from planet procrastination

Roots loses contact with planet earth.

A couple of weekends ago I was in the Eaton Centre when I was accosted by a young woman at the entryway to the Roots store. Spying our Gore-tex jackets and hiking boots, she correctly surmised that we might be "outdoorsy" types.

She wanted to sell us on this "great new product" that would help us on our hiking trips.

Air in a can. Yup, Roots is willing to sell us a can of 90% oxygen for the low-low price of $60. And once you use it all up, do not fret! It can be refilled for a mere $20!

According to Roots, flipping the little plastic nose cover up, bringing the cannister close to your face and spritzing while inhaling promotes mental alertness, relieves stress, increases energy and ability to concentrate.

WTF?!??

Uh, I have so many problems with this.

First - you have eviednce from what epidemiological/clinical studies exactly?

Second - My lungs are perfectly adapted to extract the amount of oxygen I need from the atmosphere thankyouverymuch.

Third - pure oxygen could damage my efficient little alveoli (the bits of my lungs that take in oxygen and release carbon dioxide). The atmosphere is actually made up mostly of nitrogen (not oxygen!) - it's only 20% oxygen. It's well-established that breathing 50-100% oxygen over a prolonged period of time causes lung damage. In fact, there are lung diseases where scarring occurs because of the presence of highly reactive oxygen radicals that are created when the lungs get all inflamed. Yuck. ...so is this cannister of 90% oxygen going to come with a warning label?

Fourth - $60 for something I can (continuously) get for free? You've GOT to be kidding me.

Fifth. Oh and so I'm going to lug this on the hiking trail with me?! Who did the focus groups with the outdoorsy people, I wonder? They didn't manage to figure out that most of us would want to reduce the weight we carry, that we're out there for the challenge and not a quick fix, that creating more "stuff" to send to landfill is unlikely to be our cup of tea.

Sixth - the salesgirl said "wouldn't it be better than breathing in that polluted air outside?" Aside from the fact I'd rather spend my $60 on reducing the amount of emissions I'm responsible for - is she suggesting I just attach this permanently to my nose? (besides, see #3) It's pretty hard to get away from outdoor or indoor pollution in Toronto and please tell me that they aren't really marketing this as a healthy alternative to our dirty air when the energy required to create and fill the cannisters probably caused some of the pollution?

Seventh - You know how athletes train at high altitude so that they can run faster? That's because there's less oxygen up there, so they are forcing their bodies to make more efficient use of the oxygen they do breathe. Which makes me wonder if overuse of Roots' new product could actually dampen the ability of your blood cells to transport oxygen around your body.

Eigth - are they trying to commodify air? I mean talk about tragedy of the commons. I think the most tragic thing would be that the commons ends up all owned and no longer common. (I'm not even going to get into bottled water here, people. But you can guess what I think of that). I refuse to even think about how someone could own my air.

Ninth - talk about a completely transparent attempt to sell me something, anything, for profit. Roots can take that attitude and shove it.

And ten: I leave this spot and all the numbers that come after ten open - for anyone who would like to add a thought.

A lot of hot air

Apparently the "origin of man" isn't the only "controversial" topic that must not be taught to impressionable young minds these days . A father in Washington managed to prevent his daughter's science class from watching Al Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth.

Apparently Frosty Hardiman thinks that it's Anti-American because it "blam[es] our nation -- the greatest nation ever to exist on this planet -- for global warming". Well, uh, it doesn't say that the US are the only ones on this planet who are emitting CO2, but it does paint a pretty grim picture of the American approach to the problem so far.

Hardiman managed to get it stopped because teachers have to obtain permission from the school board before they present "controversial" materials in their classes. I can't really imagine denying a teacher permission to show this particular (Oscar-Nominated) documentary.

Perhaps the issue of climate change is still under debate. I don't buy that, but even if I did, there would still be a benefit to showing the video - and discussing it. No kid is going to learn much if they're never allowed to question the status quo. Nevermind that the documentary is full of geography and showcases the beauty of our planet. And it introduces an important political figure in an accessible way.

Could he really, possibly, believe that his kids are probably better off watching stuff like American Idol?!

I spy, with my little dime...

Last week the US issued a warning to US defense contractors about Canadian coins that might contain radio frequency transmitters inside them. The transmitters could presumably be used to track the movements of the people carrying them (no hints about which coins had the transmitters).

It all sounded very odd to me. After all, if the person being spied on was staying in Canada, you'd think they might spend the coin without knowing it - which makes it, er, a little tricky to follow the person who doesn't have it anymore. And if they ended up back to the US - or in any other country, you'd think they would empty their pockets to avoid carrying around the useless coin. So you'd probably be tracking the location of the dresser in their bedroom.

I guess you might get an idea of where these defense contractors live - but that's about it. I don't think you'd be guaranteed to find out anything about where they go day-to-day over the long term.

Well - lately, the US has retracted their claim about the transmitters. There seems to be no statement affirming that the transmitters weren't there. It's all so bizarre. Perhaps the Americans were just mystified by our two-toned currency?

I would like to think someone was doing some nifty study in Canada about where our currency goes while it's in circulation: "The Wonderful Journeys of Fred the Quarter or Terry the Toonie" sort of thing.

Now that would be cool.

iCool

...does anyone aside from me find it funny that the Globe and Mail's Report on Business section abbreviates to "ROB"?

But anyway, the ROB - and the front page of the main section actually, today is all about Apple's new "Phone". Computer. TV. Blackberry. Whatever it is, I have to say it looks pretty good. Despite trying very hard to resist the pull of "cool" that Apple's been exerting with all its nifty i-products, i-have to admit that this little gizmo is pretty smart.

There is no need for a number pad, since everything is done using a touch screen, so its entire face can be used to display video. It can tell whether you're holding it in "portrait" or "landscape" orientation and adjust the picture automatically. If you're listening to music and someone calls, it tuns down the volume automatically. It comes with either a 4 G or 8 G hard drive, and is equipped with a web browser, and built-in wireless.

And it even knows when you're bringing it close to your head so that you don't accidentally use the touch-screen with your earlobe.

'Course, at the moment it's still $500 USD which is way too much for me to spend on something that basically gathers a bunch of servicesI already have into one place. And seriously, the last thing I need is to be able to check my email more often.

Paid announcement...

We spent yesterday afternoon at the movies. It felt like celebrating the New Year by embracing advertising. Lovely.The theatre feels like an amusement part, with flashing lights, overpriced candy and popcorn, and even a bar (after all, who wouldn't want to relax after seeing a movie by having a drink in a loud, tacky, teenage-filled hallway, right by the lineup for the bathrooms).

Worse, the movie started a fulll 25 minutes after the advertized time. We were inundated with ads for cars, perfume, and video game consoles. Normally I don't mind the previews, but really, that's just another ad - and I was sick of waiting for the film I paid for to start.

Supid theatre - I paid $12 to see a movie. Not the commercials. It's completely scandalous that they can get away with showing them at all.

Mon(k)ey Business

I was walking down Queen St. the other day when I was offered a free reusable shopping bag by a rep from Telus. I confess to taking it - and I also confess that it was mostly because he said there would be a chocolate bar inside.

Since then, I have seen people carrying these Telus bags all over the place. Are they just handing out zillions of the bags over the course of several days, or are people really going to use this feebie? If so, it's magnificent marketing on the part of Telus. As Pat put it: you wouldn't really want to carry around a bag with the Rogers Telecommunications logo... but that Telus monkey is pretty cute!

Inside my bag I found (yes, my chocolate bar - which by the way tasted a lot like wax), plus some lime green wrapping paper and little gift tags featuring the abovementioned cute monkeys. Telus colour scheme: yep, Telus logo: nowhere to be found.

My first thought: I could actually use this, which might assuage my guilt about accepting a bag of stuff I don't need that required energy to produce and will otherwise end up as landfill.

My second thought: Telus is infiltrating my Christmas and I will be facilitating subconscious advertising to anyone who sees a gift I wrapped in green or tagged with a monkey.

So now I'll face the conundrum: do I use my shopping bag and thereby save plastic bags but advertise for Telus? Do I use other reusable shopping bags and chuck this one, thereby refusing to advertise for Telus but contributing to Toronto's already ridiculous waste management problem?

Honestly - I could have avoided this with just a tiny bit of willpower... and as if I don't already have enough chocolate around at this time of year.

A thing as lovely as a tree?

*sounds of Christmas carols playing softly in the background...*

Ahh, Christmastime. I'm thinking of smells of gingerbread and nutmeg, mulled wine, pine needles, and PVC fixed with lead.

*sounds of needle being scraped off record* ... What?!

Ah yes. I read an article today saying that most artificial Christmas trees are made of PVC - polyvinyl chloride, which is a known carcinogen at the very least. And lead, which is a developmental and reproductive health hazard, is apparently used to stabilize PVC compounds, so it might be in your fake tree as well.

So if you have an artificial tree, don't chew on it.

And real trees? Well, nice to think that they're out there sucking in some of that excess carbon dioxide while they're growing to be nice and perfectly conical for us - but sadly, they will just release it back into the atmosphere as they decay after you throw it out. Not only that, but depending on where you buy your tree, it might have been treated with insecticides or pesticides.

So if you have a real tree, don't chew on it.

And if you aren't Christian, thank goodness. You get out of all of this bringing-a-tree-inside stuff which is a really weird tradition when you really think about it.

Erm, if Big Tobacco could just butt out?!

AUGH! Those slimy Tobacco industry types have generated horrible, deceptive communications tactics that have inflitrated the consciousness of a bunch of other industries.

First, it was global warming. Now, Gooderich Corporation and other polluting companies in California have adopted those same approaches in an effort to avoid dealing with perchlorate in drinking water. They have even hired a public relations firm that was used by Philip Morris - to develop an anit-regulation campaign. And they're churning out stuff that looks like scientific evidence of the safety of California's drinking water supply - but is actually poorly constructed science intended to implant doubt in the public mind.


Apparently Gooderich, which had a factory in Rialto, about an hour ouside of LA, decided to dispose of tonnes of rocket fuel in the late 1950s and early 1960s. And so they put in in a giant, unlined pit behind the factory. Natch, the stuff seeped into the water supply. Which is a huge drag, considering how precious water is in California.

In Rialto, they figured out that the water was contaminated over ten years ago. And Gooderich is still tryng to weasel out of the cleanup.

The company may be rich, but "good" doesn't even come into it.

The key to a good blizzard

I was in the grocery store last week, trundling my cart past the vast middle bit of the store containing inedibles. I can't understand how it's profitable for stores to be purveyors of everything from bean sprouts to deck chairs; to me it's analagous to that old saying "jack of all trades, master of none". How can they be any good at selling groceries when they're trying to sell all this other stuff as well?!

Anyay - I spotted a product that gave me the heebi-jeebies. Actually, a family of products. They were keychains, shaped like (i) a Dairy Queen ice cream cone (ii) a Dairy Queen ice cream sandwich, and (iii) some brand name mint-chocolate candy whose name presently escapes me. Probably because when I was a kid, I wasn't the focus of marketing efforts the way children are today. Each item had the appropriate logo prominently displayed.

I'm not a parent. But. I can't imagine buying my kid a toy with a food logo on it. To me, it's a gift that celebrates our unsustainable, consumerist lifestyle (useless plastic toy with no educational value, likely to be quickly discarded) and our unhealthy habits (message to child: candies and desserts are highly desirable). Not only that, but the product is straight up advertising - which I might alternately describe as cunning psychological manipulation.

Then again, lots of parents get their kids brand-name clothing. I suppose that's not so different.

Twisted

Smoking rates have been going down across Canada for at least a couple of decades now. That's great news for Canadians - smoking is related to a whole host of horrible diseases including lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, heart disease, and cancer of the mouth; ugh.

Teenaged girls are usually really prone to following trends, so here's hoping they'll pick up on this. Right now smoking rates among girls aged 15-17 are higher than among boys of the same age.

Apparently they think it will help them stay thin.

I think that most models and celebrities that are role models for teenaged girls these days are at an unhealthy weight. We also know that childhood obesity is on the rise in Canada - partly because our kids aren't getting enough exercise - and partly because of bad food choices.

This is so twisted. I mean, exposing yourself to a well-known toxin - probably in an effort to attain an unhealthy weight, instead of getting regular exercise and eating right.

Not only that - apparently it doesn't work anyway.

Your dinner might be a terrorist target

According to a recent New York Times article, 80% of beef consumed in the US is slaughtered by four companies, 75% of the precut salads are processed by two companies, and 30% of the milk is processed by one company.

The article points out that because the food processing and livestock industries in America are so centralized, it would be super-easy to attack (and completely disrupt) the food distribution chain.

What would happen if it actually was targeted? Increased imports of chilean oranges and costa rican bananas does not sound as if it would fill the holes in the food chain or in our stomachs. Foreign fruit does not a sustainable food supply make.

Sadly, neither do locally produced foods - for the moment, anyway.

Imagine if we all suddenly had to live according to the rules of J.B. Mackinnon and Alisa Smith (they of the 100 mile diet that was so ably pointed out to me by both Jordan and Simone). This is the couple who decided to eat only foods from within 100 miles of their home in BC for a whole year. They discovered that they couldn't use sugar or most grains in their cooking. They also had trouble buying meat from locally-raised livestock, since the feed was usually brought in from miles away.

Now imagine that it's not our deliberate choice choice to do this kind of thing and we're all forced to try and figure it out all at once because we actually can't truck in most of the foods we usually do as the result of a massive disruption in the food supply chain.

We'd be completely screwed.

...add one more point to the "eating locally" scoreboard, if you please...


Thanks Simone, for the link!