65 replies to this topic

[phantom]

Don't dismiss traditional medicines just because they aren't sold for a small fortune at a pharmacy counter, or distributed in a pill in a little plastic bottle.

There is also a significant difference between using a plant to cure something and using a 'cure' which is something which has been dilluited to an insane degree and apprently still works because 'water has a memory'... The first is science, the second is what we call 'magic' or 'bullshit' depending on your frame of mind

To summerise;
- clove oil = science
- magic water = bullshit

[Yann L]

Many "homeopathic medicines" are legitimate herbal combinations with very good results. Others, less so.

Frob, what you are talking is herbal medicine. And I agree, it can indeed be very effective. A lot of modern pharmaceutical research is about extracting and synthesizing the active substances of naturally occurring organisms (often toxins, ironically).

But this is not homeopathy. There is no active substance in homeopathy. The very principle of this concept is that you don't even ingest a single molecule of the remedy, but only water. The supposedly occurring effects are explained by new-age ideas (energy fields that were left by the active molecules before dilution and such nonsense) that completely lack any scientific basis. It has been proven again and again that under controlled conditions, homeopathy has the same effects as a pure placebo. Which seems logical, since it's just plain water (or ethanol or whatever is used for dilution).

So yeah, homeopathic 'remedies' classify indeed as useless and dangerous. They should be made illegal.

[Servant of the Lord]

The first one is certainly not dumb. If I interpret your description correctly, it's the kind of faucet they use at hospitals for hygienic reasons. The problem is not turning it on, it's turning it off. My kitchen has something similar: it's elongated and needs to pushed vertically, so that I can easily turn it on and off with a tiny part of the back of my hand.

It does seem though that the advertisement itself is dumb.

Very common in kitchens are also foot switches to turn on the water (they also have them for trashcans), so you don't spread bacteria from raw chicken or raw eggs onto the faucet handle - a very serious consideration.

Or "before and after" pictures with completely different people:

I find those type of advertisements very funny. I especially love the 70-80 year old women on one side, and the 25-30 year old women on the other side, and the words "new wrinkle removing cream/gel/etc".

Don't dismiss traditional medicines just because they aren't sold for a small fortune at a pharmacy counter, or distributed in a pill in a little plastic bottle.

There is also a significant difference between using a plant to cure something and using a 'cure' which is something which has been dilluited to an insane degree and apprently still works because 'water has a memory'...

Even worse is that stupid "geometrically perfect" water that is made by "speaking good words" over the water. The scam "research" has it that if you speak 'negative' words over the water, it turns "bad", but if you speak positive words over it, it somehow changes the molecular structure of the water. Examples were speaking "hitler" spoiling the water. Apparently water molecules are up to snuff with history.

To summerise;
- clove oil = science
- magic water = bullshit

No, no, I'm afraid your wrong. The guy who sold it to me told me it gives +10 to my intelligence and after drinking it my super enhanced mind still thought it was a good deal, so it couldn't have been fake.

[froop]

[tstrimple]

Wait, what? Who wouldn't want an oral sex light?

[way2lazy2care]

Wait, what? Who wouldn't want an oral sex light?

you read my mind.

[Casey Hardman]

Bravo, froop, that's what I was really looking for.

I still don't understand what's wrong with the faucets without touch sensors. Even if you've been sticking your hands into someone's open chest at the hospital, you still have your elbow to push up the knob. The faucets I use (kitchen sink and bathroom sink) both have handles that go forward/back towards the user to control pressure, and left/right to control the temperature. I think this is the one my bathroom sink has.

I can't imagine surgeons and such would have bloodied elbows.

And as for the soap pump, why is the cook who's handling raw chicken breasts pushing the pump down with her hand? Why doesn't she (she because it was a girl in the commercial, not because I think "all women belong in the kitchen") push it down a few inches past the wrist of one hand while her other hand is under the opening? It seems like obvious tactics such as this replace the need of motion/touch sensors.

[Cornstalks]

Page two and we haven't had this one yet??? I... can't... RESIST!

[tstrimple]

Page two and we haven't had this one yet??? I... can't... RESIST!

[zedz]

A remote power control button? I could see it being extremely useful if the layout of the work area made it less than handy to reach the normal power button on the case.

wait, so do you turn off your PC with the power button (OK if it crashes yes I do that) but its windows/mac/linux aint happy if you do that! hell you will lose unsaved work.

A/ turning off a PC is easily done already with a few keypresses already
B/ Its not a frequent activity thus doesnt require a special key

[cowsarenotevil]

wait, so do you turn off your PC with the power button (OK if it crashes yes I do that) but its windows/mac/linux aint happy if you do that! hell you will lose unsaved work.

Wait, is it 1997 again?

[ChaosEngine]

Many "homeopathic medicines" are legitimate herbal combinations with very good results. Others, less so.

Frob, what you are talking is herbal medicine. And I agree, it can indeed be very effective. A lot of modern pharmaceutical research is about extracting and synthesizing the active substances of naturally occurring organisms (often toxins, ironically).

But this is not homeopathy. There is no active substance in homeopathy. The very principle of this concept is that you don't even ingest a single molecule of the remedy, but only water. The supposedly occurring effects are explained by new-age ideas (energy fields that were left by the active molecules before dilution and such nonsense) that completely lack any scientific basis. It has been proven again and again that under controlled conditions, homeopathy has the same effects as a pure placebo. Which seems logical, since it's just plain water (or ethanol or whatever is used for dilution).

So yeah, homeopathic 'remedies' classify indeed as useless and dangerous. They should be made illegal.

There is no such thing as herbal or alternative medicine. There is only that which has been tested and found to work (we call this medicine) and that which has not (homeopathy, crystals, vitamins to cure aids, reflexology, acupuncture and so on).

As stated earlier, Aspirin is a prime example. Willow bark was tested, proved to work, and is now in common use. No-one would call aspirin "herbal medicine".

[Luckless]

A remote power control button? I could see it being extremely useful if the layout of the work area made it less than handy to reach the normal power button on the case.

wait, so do you turn off your PC with the power button (OK if it crashes yes I do that) but its windows/mac/linux aint happy if you do that! hell you will lose unsaved work.

A/ turning off a PC is easily done already with a few keypresses already
B/ Its not a frequent activity thus doesnt require a special key

Does the keyboard button allow you to turn the system on? If so, then yes, it is very useful.

[mdwh]

For canned vegetables - even for people who eat them often, not everyone has big freezer space (especially say in shared accommodation).

On homeopathy, it depresses me to see this listed as medicine on sale (here in the UK, and I've seen it in the US too). If I sold water as "medicine", I'd be arrested for fraud - why should it be a different rule for homeopaths?

One medicine may claim to help with gas and bloating to be taken at meals, and contain some crushed fennel. Others may be a supplement containing ginseng for virility, or ginkgo for memory, or a mild antidepressant containing St. John's Wort. All these are simple herbs, and all have been shown clinically to have very real results.

Yes, these are medicines. Homeopathy has been tested to show it doesn't work; it is not medicine. It's not even clear how it could work, without violating a lot of what we know about physics.

If you want to suck from willow trees to avoid paying a small fortune to the big corpororations, great, but that's nothing to do with what anyone was talking about.

And on the contrary - the problem here *is* that homeopathic medicine is something natural (water, sugar etc) being sold in a manufactured pill form for a small fortune. The homeopaths are on the same side as corporate money grabbers, not the side of traditional free natural methods - with the added problem that their product doesn't even work.

[Yann L]

There is no such thing as herbal or alternative medicine. There is only that which has been tested and found to work (we call this medicine) and that which has not (homeopathy, crystals, vitamins to cure aids, reflexology, acupuncture and so on).

Herbal medicine = informal way of saying that you eat the freaking plant/fungus/whatever directly instead of taking the extracted or synthesized compound as a pill.

[DigitalShadow]

No one has mentioned the shake weight yet. I have no idea if it's effective or not (I would guess not), but I don't think it's possible to use one without looking like a complete idiot. I saw a late night commercial with a guy using one and couldn't stop laughing for 5 minutes.

[zedz]

Wait, is it 1997 again?

I dont understand

Does the keyboard button allow you to turn the system on? If so, then yes, it is very useful.

thats been available since last century, perhaps not all bios's allow it though, eg on one PC in the 90s I set it up so all I need to turn on the PC is to press any key on the keyboard, yes that can be handy.
Im talking about the when the PC is going youre typing and accidently press the power button (on the last one I had it was the same place as the pause/break button & same shape/size as any other button) and the PC instantly switches off,
Im still waiting for a single reason why this key is a good idea?

[cowsarenotevil]

Wait, is it 1997 again?

I dont understand

The power button doesn't immediately cut power to the machine, nor does it cause you to lose unsaved work. It also doesn't make Windows (or any other operating system that I've used) unhappy. In fact, it's the same as doing Start->Shut Down. It's been that way since old computer cases where the power button was physically connected to the power supply stopped being used (you know, with the "It is now safe to turn off your computer" message).

[BeanDog]

There is also a significant difference between using a plant to cure something and using a 'cure' which is something which has been dilluited to an insane degree and apprently still works because 'water has a memory'... The first is science, the second is what we call 'magic' or 'bullshit' depending on your frame of mind

To summerise;
- clove oil = science
- magic water = bullshit

This. My wife came home from Wal-mart the other day, happy to have finally found something in the pharmacy section that would treat a 6-month-old's cold symptoms safely. When I explained to her how homeopathy really works, she was pretty seriously pissed (and of course returned the product).

[Luckless]

Does the keyboard button allow you to turn the system on? If so, then yes, it is very useful.

thats been available since last century, perhaps not all bios's allow it though, eg on one PC in the 90s I set it up so all I need to turn on the PC is to press any key on the keyboard, yes that can be handy.
Im talking about the when the PC is going youre typing and accidently press the power button (on the last one I had it was the same place as the pause/break button & same shape/size as any other button) and the PC instantly switches off,
Im still waiting for a single reason why this key is a good idea?

As Cowsarenotevil said, the power button on modern computers are actually 'soft keys', that can be programmed to do different things, and even be context sensitive. I think windows defaults to "Pressing this button turns the system off", and most hardware is configured to have "Holding this button will eventually force a hard reboot" as standard. But you can also usually configure it to "Pressing this button brings up the shutdown" menu, or the sleep menu.

Poke around in your computer's power settings and change it to something else.

One of my classmates even configured his computer to take input from the power button for startup reasons. (A hardware hack) So anyone who just pressed the power button to start up got a very limited user account in a sandbox, but tapping it in the correct code booted into the real OS.