OpalCat - the ads on your site are hilarious - by the time I got to the one about the buttonhole napkin, my secretary was in here making sure I wasn’t having a siezure!
Regarding the “Crystaldyne Pain Reliever”: I once heard that a product similar to that turned out to be nothing more than gas grill igniters with finger grips.
Life is a tragedy for those who feel and a comedy for those who think.
My farrier (who has emphesema) has used magnets (bought from a horse supply catalog) on his chest and back. He said it helped his breathing, and I did see that he was able to work better while using them. Now if I could just convince him to stop smoking…
StG
MaryAnnQ, er, could I have those shoes?
Heh…sorry, Rich. I didn’t pool my money so I didn’t use them. I have no clue whre they are.
MaryAnn
No, stupid, it’s a boat!
Carl, how funny! I have a friend who trains and races thoroughbreds. They do not personally use magnetic theraoy, but several trainers do. It isn’t so much the belief that they work as opposed to the paranoia it MIGHT work and give your competition an edge. If anyone thinks baseball is rife with hocus-pocus voodoo ritual and paranoia, they ain’t seen the backstretch of thoroughbred racing. 
I get various equine magazines and supply catalogs, and am extremely amused by the magnetic boots and blankets they offer for your equine athlete. Freakos.
I used to think the world was against me. Now I know better: Some of the smaller countries are neutral.
OpalCat, thanks for the thread.
Erronious - I laughed my azz off!
MaryAnnQ - those shoes supposedly stimulate accupressure points. It’s not nerves, it’s “chi”, that mystical “energy” form that supposedly runs through the body and connects all points together.
Some comments on the ads:
Magnet and Copper - uses Capsaicin - a.k.a. pepper. Didn’t Cecil do a column on this? (I think that may actually be a semi-useful ingredient.)
Leg Cramps! is homeopathic - that’ll work.
Pure Gold - “Tiny 24K gold flakes dissolve with the warmth of your skin…” That’s why your jewelry keeps disappearing on you. It keeps dissolving away.
A friend who has standard bred race horses (the kind with a sulkey) said his Vet uses magnetic theropy & it works! No placebo effect with horses!
Actually, there might be a placebo effect with your friend.
Life is a tragedy for those who feel and a comedy for those who think.
OPALCAT.
Read your ads, and, tell me, how would YOU know about a penis pump?
I can’t believe that the federal government doesn’t step in and stop these scams. That no drug pain killer works by sending some form of a pulse into the tissue and is crap. I saw those power beads on sale at Kmart and in TEENY, TINY letters on the card it says ‘SIMULATED’ which means that the ‘power stones’ are not even real stones but glass beads!!
Lets see now. I have a bit of medicinal and herbal knowledge and a big patch of aloe. I’ll buy up some cheap aspirin, powder it, boil it up in water, scrape in a few pounds of aloe jell, toss in some salt, a bit of citric acid, add some green food coloring, scrape in some petroleum jelly and dump in some vitamin E oil. Then bottle it and sell it as an ointment good for relieving pain and revitalizing the skin at $29.95 for a 10 ounce bottle. Come on now, place your orders before it’s all gone. It won’t do you much good, but it will make me rich. Step right up and buy a bottle now. Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!
What? Me worry?’
(penis pumps) Well, I’ve seen them in the same catalog, for one thing. Also seen them in lots of other catalogs
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Teeming Millions: http://fathom.org/teemingmillions
“Meat flaps, yellow!” - DrainBead, naked co-ed Twister chat
O p a l C a t
www.opalcat.com
Well I don’t want the FDA regulating every damn thing! They may be scams, but one of the reasons this country is so great is the free enterprise system. So folks will try anything - so what – and so what if it is a placebo effect. If it relieves their problem, they’re happy. The only item on that list I’ve tried is magnets, and they work for me. After suffering excruciating pain in my low back in a boating mishap, and having to walk and sit very carefully, I got a back cushion for my office chair. It had magnets in it, but that isn’t why I got it - it was just the first thing I saw. A few days later, the pain in my back was gone. I’ve since been using a knee wrap with magnets, and my knee is much better. So there.
I have been collecting these (because I like the way they look) and recently I have been discovering how rampant the glass bead immitation “power beads” are. There are a wide variety of the genuine stone bracelets out there, but you won’t find them cheaply, and you have to be careful. Fun collectable for those of us who hated the beanie baby thing.
(I digress, sorry!)
Speaking of penis pumps, does anybody remember the Soloflex TV commercials from several years ago? They featured an announcer repeatedly saying “This is the number you call.” Interspersed with that, the announcer would say,
“This is what comes in the mail.” (Shot of exercise equipment.)
“These are the exercises you do.” (Shots of guy doing various exercises.)
“This is how long it takes.” (Clock ticking off 30 minutes.)
“This is how many times a week you do it.” (Some calendar thing indicating 3 times a week, don’t remember what.)
My version of that would be:
“This is what comes in the mail.” (Shot of penis pump.)
“These are the exercises you do.” (Shot of ecstatic guy pumping self like a crazed chipmanzee.)
“This is how long it takes.” (Stopwatch ticking off about 20 seconds.)
“This is how many times a week you do it.” (Shot of a hand ripping pages off of a desk calendar in super-fast motion.)
Solosex.
This is how you clean it. (Shot of guy blasting the thing with a fire hose.)
I just saw another really crazy scam on ebay. There was an auction for some kind of weight loss substance that you spray into your mouth.
From the auction:
Your metabolism will be instantly ignited to such warp speed . . . you are absolutely guaranteed to burn fat . . . minute by minute , , , 24 hours a day.
Life is a tragedy for those who feel and a comedy for those who think.
from Opalcat:
And it doesn’t even say what it is, or how to take it - drink it, snort it, rub it on your… neck?
Actually, I just ran across an article on this topic in The Skeptical Inquirer - “The Pseudoscience of Oxygen Therapy”.
It talks about people ingesting hydrogen peroxide (probably what this is) and breathing ozone to cure their ills by getting more oxygen. This is total quackery, and can be very serious.
Hydrogen peroxide bought in stores is about 3% concentration, and can be used for external abrasions and to rinse the mouth (ew). The stuff they sell is about 30% concentration, is highly corrosive, and can burn tissues. You’re supposed to either ingest it or take it as an enema.
Ozone is the reformulated oxygen molecule - O3 instead of O2. It is naturally occurring in the upper atmosphere and protects us from radiation. However, it is also a product of pollution (component of smog) at low elevations, and aggravates breathing problems. In fact, here in Houston there are Ozone alerts on the news when the concentration is high - they tell you not to exercise outdoors, etc, because it can harm you by damaging lung tissue. But the quacks want you to breath this stuff on purpose.
What’s even more mystifying is the notion that excessive oxygen is good for you. Sure, we all need a certain amount of O2 to survive, but in high doses, oxygen is toxic.
What about body chemistry? Well, oxygen is a detriment to body chemistry. Ever hear of “free radicals”? You know what they are? Molecules that oxidize your biomolecules (lipids, proteins, DNA, etc). Free radical oxidants kill cells and destroy tissue, and are linked to aging, heart disease, carcinogenesis, and Alzheimer’s disease. The medical community advises taking antioxidants, like vitamin C.
(By the way, not too long ago antioxidants were a boon for the pseudoscience crowd. Picnogynol (sp?) comes to mind.)
Don’t have any info handy on magnets.
Clear Lungs – Ephedrine used to be sold in truck stops and convenience stores under various names. I think it was removed from circulation by the feds about 4 or 5 years ago. How are these guys allowed to sell it?
Years ago, somebody gave me a small supply to use on a long trip. I stayed awake until about 4 in the morning, which I probably would have done anyway. The instructions said to take one every 4 hours. I had just taken one while stopping for gas, but had to pull over to sleep about an hour later.
Maybe Majormd could comment further on ephedrine.
I have magnets on my refrigerator. They don’t seem to make it any colder, though.
One of James Randi’s Geller-exposing tricks involves hiding a magnet on one knee, putting a compass on the other knee, waving a hand over the compass without touching it, thereby keeping the viewer’s attention away from the magnetized knee as it moves ever-so-slowly toward the magnet, making the needle move.
That’s probably what “aquagen” is. A few years ago a guy in Tucson was killed after he accidentally took a drink of “theraputic” H[sub]2[/sub]O[sub]2[/sub] that his his father left in the fridge in an unmarked gallon jug.
Come let us go, I’ve a cask of amontillado.
You can still find ephedrine over the counter here in Michigan, except it goes under the brand name “Mini-Thins”. I used to take these when I worked midnights because they worked a lot better at keeping me awake than caffeine does. It says right on the bottle that you are only supposed to use them if you have asthma, but most people I know take them either as an upper or for weight loss. I stopped taking them after I started developing heart palpitations.
BTW, I just started taking Metabolife a couple of days ago, and it also contains ephedrine. According to the bottle, I’m supposed to take eight of these pills a day. Needless to say, I’ve only been taking two or three a day because if I took eight of these things a day, I would never sleep.
Shadowfox
“We are what we pretend to be.”
- Kurt Vonnegut
Regarding the magnet/compass trick – a friend of mine pulled a similar stunt on the production assistant for a TV show we were going on. The show was about “psychics” and the assistant didn’t know we were the skeptics. He borrowed her watch (not digital) and made it stop. She was sure he had psychic powers. Nope. He had a powerful magnet hidden behind his tie.