bullshit
iPod porn and news that isn’t news
An interesting article (Salon.com, via Fark) on a rash of iPod-porn stories that appeared on US TV. Now, iPod/iPhone porn does exist - the porn industry isn’t exactly slow to embrace new technology - but what’s interesting is the content of the news reports.
Nine stations aired Raskin’s warnings. Her segments had the look and feel of ordinary local news: Super-coifed anchors offer alarmist assessments of everyday objects, story at 11.
But something here was amiss. In addition to panning the iPod, Raskin used her time on TV to push “safer” holiday tech gifts, including products made by Panasonic, Namco and Techno Source. These weren’t unbiased reviews. The local stations that featured Raskin were fully aware that the three companies had hired her to pimp their products during news appearances
Sounds like a pretty lucrative line of work. Maybe I should ask for cash to plug stuff on radio.
Robin Raskin, the iPorn-wary tech journalist, told me that between 2002 and 2006, she appeared in almost three dozen TV marketing opportunities — roughly eight a year, each of which was sponsored by three to five companies and was built around a holiday or news event.
It’s more fuel for the Flat Earth News argument that cost-cutting in media means that an increasing amount of “news” isn’t anything of the sort.
A great book, but the people who need it won’t read it
I mentioned this briefly before, but I’d like to mention it again: Suckers, by Rose Shapiro, is a wonderful demolition job of the alternative medicine racket.
Like all polemics, it sometimes crushes things that perhaps don’t deserve to be crushed - so it’s very hard on acupuncture, despite some indications that it can be useful in some circumstances - but the overwhelming majority of Shapiro’s targets deserve, and get, both barrels.
Here’s a short extract:
One American alternative practitioner and supplement salesman, Gary Null, tells us that “a solution to cancer would mean the termination of research programmes, the obsolescence of skills, the end of dreams of personal glory . . . Triumph over cancer would dry up contributions to self-perpetuating charities . . . It would mortally threaten the clinical establishments by rendering obsolete the expensive treatments in which so much money is invested . . . The new therapy must be disbelieved, denied, discouraged and disallowed at all costs”.
An imaginary researcher says: “Every year we must show you results. After all, you won’t support us if you don’t think we’re getting something done. On the other hand, we can’t be too successful — and we certainly can’t afford to come up with a cure. After all, if we did that, how could we come back to you next year and get more of your money?”
When in 2003 the US Food and Drugs Administration stopped Alpha Omega Labs selling Cansema, a worthless cancer cure, one supporter suggested that this was “no doubt because their products worked. The FDA has a long history of doing this to developers of successful cancer remedies”.
Alternative cancer therapists say their plant-based “cures” are overlooked by pharmaceutical companies because naturally occurring substances — rhubarb, for example — can’t be patented, precluding profit for “Big Pharma”. But David Colquhoun, Professor of Pharmacology at University College London, told me: “The kudos that a pharmaceutical company would get for finding an effective cure would be so enormous that it’s hard to imagine that they would decline to produce it, even if it didn’t make a lot of money. In any case, even when a plant-based substance (like Taxol, from yew) provides the initial lead, it is common for synthetic derivatives to be made that have better properties than the original.”
The book’s particularly good at characterising the typical alt-med consumer - well-educated, reasonably well-off women - and detailing the ways in which the alt-med industry targets them so effectively. Some bits had me jumping around in fury, and others were just desperately sad. Well worth reading.
Baby food bollocks from the department of transport
The Department of Transport (Aviation Security Domestic Branch) has replied to my query about air travel and baby food. I asked why all baby food had to be opened at security when it was potentially dangerous (baby food should be disposed of within two hours tops). The reply says:
The liquids requirements were introduced on 6 November 2006 to comply with EU legislation and apply equally across all EU Member States as well as the USA, Canada and others. Ready-made baby formula is not exempt from airport security checks. Although liquid baby food or sterilised water, sufficient for the journey, may be permitted in quantities greater than 100ml, the accompanying adult will be required to verify each by tasting before they can be taken airside. A small amount may be decanted from bottles for testing purposes.
Unfortunately, that isn’t true. The US rules are here, and in pretty much every other EU country the rules are that baby food “may” be tested - not that it *must* be tested, let alone that all of it must be tested.
Return of the son of ID cards
An excellent post by Mr Eugenides:
If you want to know what’s really happening… you watch the hands.
So never mind the cards; it’s all about the database. It’s always been all about the database. Don’t watch the cards. Watch the hands.
There’s something wrong with this swan story
About 200 years ago, I blogged about a Sun story claiming that asylum seekers were coming over here and eating our swans. The short version? It was bollocks. But it’s back! Back! BACK!
Immigrant was cooking swan surrounded by the bodies of slaughtered birds
Blimey.
In a squalid makeshift campsite by a north London waterway, a man was cooking his evening meal - surrounded by the bodies of slaughtered swans.
Mr Gibson did not need to look in the pot to know what it contained: the piles of feathers and stripped carcasses were evidence enough.
And that’s not all. The man was an immigrant!
By the time he had alerted the authorities, the man - believed to be an East European immigrant - had packed up his tent and fled.
Believed by whom? The article doesn’t say, but it does point out that the park is used by, y’know, foreign types. The article also reluctantly notes that by the time the authorities got there, the actual evidence of swan-cooking had magically disappeared.
The article continues:
Several of the campsites were littered with dozens of old car batteries but it was not clear what use these were being put to.
It’s obvious: asylum seekers are coming to our parks and electrocuting our wildlife! Happens in Eastern Europe all the time. My wife went to Poland once and couldn’t sleep at night for the sounds of quacking and zapping.
Far be it for me to suggest that the article’s a load of old bollocks based entirely on hearsay, but…
The war on cheese
A report commissioned by the Food Standards Agency suggests that cigarette-style warnings on dairy products could prevent all kinds of horrible deaths. The FSA says that reports are “overblown”, but doesn’t actually rule the idea out. So it’s going to happen, then.
It’s time for a crackdown on binge drinking… doctors
I’m sure this will be all over blogland, but I’m posting it anyway because it made me laugh.
The BMA, which condemned 24-hour drinking last week and called for higher taxes on alcohol, faces accusations of hypocrisy after complaints of drunken antics at its central London headquarters.
It has emerged that while blaming everyone else for Britain’s binge-drinking culture and demanding a general sobering-up, the BMA wants to stay open for two hours longer, until 1am. Its application to extend its drinking licence has attracted allegations of antisocial behaviour by partygoers.
…residents of nearby homes have complained of the guests “frolicking” on scaffolding outside the building, “urinating” outside neighbouring properties on Tavistock Square and “causing disturbances” in the early hours.
There’s no evidence for it, but it’s a scientific fact: the woman who makes lights flicker when she’s sexually aroused
Street lamps flicker when she passes, TVs change channels when she walks into a room and she sends electronic clocks haywire.
Debbie Wolf claims she is one of Britain’s growing army of “sliders” - people who believe their presence causes havoc with household appliances, radios and light bulbs.
Her bizarre abilities, dubbed by paranormal experts “Street Light Interference” syndrome or SLI, don’t just make life a nuisance for Debbie, they have earned her international fame.
…Sceptics say SLI is purely wishful thinking and coincidence - and has yet to be demonstrated by Debbie or anyone else in a controlled laboratory experiment.
But if Debbie and her fellow “electric people” are proved right, scientists will have to re-write all the known rules of physics.
If the only proof you need to get a story like this printed is your own-say so, perhaps we should sell our own real-life spooky stories to the Mail? I’ve instructed my agent to see what they’ll pay for “The spooky speccy Scot who can make magic monkeys fly out of his arse”.
Xbox is “crack for kids”, says woman
A nice, reasoned piece in The Times by Janice Turner:
I refuse to buy them portable gaming consoles, Xboxes, GameCubes, PS2s. These are Satan’s Sudoku, crack cocaine of the brain. Even the crappiest cartoon or lamest soap teaches a child about character, plot, drama, humour, life. Playing videogames, children are mentally imprisoned, wired into their evil creators’ brains.
Consoles are crack for kids? I suspect that increasingly, the crack for kids is, er, crack.
From The Independent:
Drug agencies in the city [Cambridge] report a marked increase in clients using crack cocaine in the past 18 months, mostly men in their 20s and 30s. Younger people are also getting hooked. Cambridgeshire Youth Offending Service is treating a girl aged 13 who is taking crack more than once a week.
What it’s like to work for a holiday club sales firm
A wee while back I ranted and ranted about firms flogging holiday clubs. John - not his real name - has been in touch to describe what it’s like to be the person doing the phoning. He’s a 21-year-old student who, like many students, decided to get a part-time job to help make ends meet.
Over to you, John…
I was first aware of something strange on arrival. I stood outside in the rain, completely soaked, and wondered why there were no markings indicating the company name. No sign. Nothing. And I was worried about being soaked, partly because I was attending a job interview and looked like a twat, and partly because I was afraid I’d drip water all over their computers if I had to do a data entry test.
Turns out I didn’t need to worry, because there were no computers and there was no interview. Well, almost. It lasted about 30 seconds, and if I’d quacked like a duck or baa-ed like a sheep I’m confident I’d still have been offered the position.
There’s a small office at the front - with computers! - but I’ve no idea what actually occurs there. It was never mentioned. The main area is one large room and it’s the call centre. One lonely computer sits on a desk at the front manned by a manager, who’s about 20, and the rest of the room is filled with scabby desks equipped with two phones each. There is a complex filing system consisting of state-of-the-art cardboard pigeon holes randomly dumped on the floor, each one overflowing with sheets containing names, addresses and telephone numbers. Random coat hangers decorate the wall.
Basically I was told that they are a travel agent, and that my job would be to call people who’d filled in a survey and won a free holiday. I was to call them and inform them that they’d been awarded a free holiday consisting of luxury accommodation for up to four people and two return flights. I would then have to arrange appointments for the people to come and collect their prize.
I would be paid £6 per hour, and I’d be paid £10 commission for every person that collected their prize.
I’d done cold calling before and this sounded like a piece of piss. If people had filled in surveys to win a holiday, then surely they’d be well chuffed to have won.
Yes, the place looked like a squat but I was broke - and being fairly well trained on the phone in previous jobs, I was confident that I’d make loads of cash from the commission. And I probably would have done, if anything they’d told me was true.
So it’s my first day and I arrive an hour early for training before starting my first shift. The group consisted of me, one other guy and our manager. After training the other guy bolted for the door with such pace and conviction that he nearly bowled over a poor girl who had arrived for work, still wearing her school uniform. I looked at the manager with astonishment, and he was exchanging looks with another manager - but without any obvious dismay or signs of caring. On retrospect, it occurs to me that it probably happens a lot.
I was directed to sit beside some guy who I was to watch working for the first half of the four hour shift, and then I’d be let loose on my own. I say “watch”, not “listen in”, because there wasn’t a second headset, so I could only hear his side of the conversation.
I watched as he worked his way through - not surveys, but sheet after sheet of names, addresses, phone numbers and credit card details. I’m kidding about the credit card details. But still, it didn’t look as if this stuff came from surveys. He did have the odd survey form, but from what I could gather they were only given out a few times per week and only if you were doing well. I also noticed that half the time he wasn’t offering free holidays; he was telling people they’d won a shopping spree.
For the two hours I was there, he didn’t have much luck. He got through to about ten numbers, of which half hung up immediately. And no wonder, because everything’s scripted. You basically start by saying “Hi, my name’s Gus from X Company, and I’m calling regarding a holiday survey you filled out for us.” You then ask if it’s okay to check a few details to confirm that you’re speaking to the right person. That checking is to see if you’re not married, don’t own your own property, are too old, are too young or don’t earn over £20,000. If you are, we say sorry, you’re not the person we thought you were, our bad, no holiday for you.
Halfway through we get a break, during which two or three people are sacked for not reaching the target of four appointments per hour. You’re warned about this at the very beginning of the shift. Apparently they can’t afford to pay people who underperform, even for just two hours.
The next two hours were the longest two hours of my life. I finished my shift and swore that I’d never again cross the door.
My friend - the guy who’d told me about the job in the first place - quit about a week later over a dispute with his pay or lack of pay. You’re paid cash, so I suspect they’re probably skimping on tax.
In summary, then: if they call you, please be polite - there are human beings on the other end, so don’t lower yourself to the company’s level. Say you’re not interested and if they persist, hang up.