Is anyone really falling for this?
The TV ad for the new Bounce® Dryer Bar is really stretching the limits of consumer benefit credibility. In this brilliant example of snake oil salesmanship, a real actress pretending to be a real housewife extolls the virtues of the new product, which is intended to replace those old-fashioned, oh-so-inconvenient fabric softening dryer sheets by sticking right on the inside of your dryer.
And what is the miraculous benefit of this fabulous new product? Are you ready? Are you sitting down? It gives her more time to “think about what my boys are doing.”
Really? Just how hard is it to remember to throw a dryer sheet in the dryer? Is she standing there pondering the complex process of drying clothes? “Hmmm, I put the clothes in, I know there’s something else I’m supposed to do.” Is she calling up her factory-trained clothes drying expert? “Hi Marge, I’m drying clothes and I remembered Step 1, but for the life of me I can’t remember Step 2.”
And once she does remember, how long exactly does it take to throw the sheet in there? One second? Two, if she’s nursing a bad case of tennis elbow?
Okay, so let’s say she has managed to save all this time. Now she can spend it with… no, wait, not spend it with her kids, spend it thinking about what the little monsters are up to.
It’s a good thing I wasn’t the client when the marketing geniuses at We Play Golf Instead of Coming Up With Clever Ad Campaigns to Sell Your Useless Crap and Associates Ltd. came up with this lame idea because I would have been quickly moving on to the next advertising agency. Preferably the people who came up with the truly brilliant Diamond Shreddies campaign.
In fact, it’s a good thing I wasn’t the manager of research and development for Proctor and Gamble when the boys and girls in the white lab coats came up with this earth-shattering product idea because I would have been looking for new squints in a heartbeat.
Let’s think about the product itself for just a minute. The other alleged benefit is that once you install the dryer bar, you can forget about it for two to four months. There’s the key. You forget about it. Now, instead of remembering to throw in a dryer sheet, which becomes automatic after a few washes, I have to remember how many washes I’ve done so I will know when to replace the dryer bar. That’s never going to happen, so I will have to create a journal, or maybe put up one of those little dry erase boards to keep track and remember to record each wash, “Was that 25 or 26 washes?”
Even if I just replace it every two to four months regardless of how many loads I’ve done (wouldn’t they love that) I have to remember when I installed the thing in the first place or record and chart as above. Oh crap, now I’ve completely lost track of thinking about what my unholy brats are doing.
Furthermore, how exactly is this thing going to be affixed to the inside of my dryer. I’m guessing there is some kind of adhesive strip. What exactly is going to happen to that glue after approximately 120 hours of drying at 175C?
Katie Just, a product tester, reviewed the dryer bar for www.associatedcontent.com. “Not only is it almost impossible to remove,” she wrote, ”but I broke three fingernails trying to remove the plastic holder from the side of the dryer in the first place. Aside from defacing a brand new dryer, I noticed when drying dark colored clothing, white residue was left [in] spots all over my clothing.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson said: “If you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door.” The key to this memorable quote is “better.” Some mousetraps we’re just better off without.
Originally published on Blogging at the Big Dog on January 21, 2010. At first, I thought it might be kind of dated, but although the media has moved on to other disasters, problems in Haiti are ongoing and the piece has some pertinence to other situations as well.
It is heartening to see such an outpouring of compassion for Haitians in their hour of dire need. One thing that is completely lacking in the coverage of Haiti is analysis of why the need is so great. Why is an event like the earthquake of a week ago particularly devastating to a country such as Haiti?
Most people in Canada now know that it is because Haiti is incredibly poor, or, more accurately, 97 per cent of the population of Haiti is incredibly poor. In fact, Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, except, of course, for the three per cent of the elite who are incredibly rich.
Obviously, the immediate priority is relief, but if we really want to help in the long run, we need to focus on the question of why Haiti is so poor in the first place.
Prior to the “revolution” of 1804, Haiti was the richest colony in the world, “the jewel of the Antilles,” as it was known. The main reason it was so rich was because it was almost entirely populated by slaves. Then, as now, all of the wealth serviced rich overlords, just different rich overlords. The “revolution” made Haiti the second “free” country in the western world and the first black republic.
Unfortunately for the now “free” slaves, their former oppressors in France and other slaving nations including the United States (the first “free” country in the western world) would not recognize the new regime or trade with it. Also unfortunate for the “former” slaves was that the practice of forced, cheap labour did not leave with the French, it merely got passed on to the emerging Haitian elite. The slaves were no longer owned, per se, but how different were their lives, really?
This is classic human behaviour. If you’ve ever read Orwell’s Animal Farm you know what I’m talking about. The oppressed becomes the oppressor. What is amazing is that basically a handful of families descended from the offspring of French owners and black slaves have managed to keep this going for more than 200 years. Or perhaps not. They did have the help of the French who kept the country indebted from 1838 to 1922 in exchange for the recognition the native Haitian elite so desperately sought and, who else?, the United States, which occupied the country from 1915 to 1938 and dominated it economically thereafter propping up corrupt regime after corrupt regime. It may not currently be the intention of Americans to create misery among the Haitian masses, but its continuing policy of controlling the region through supporting friendly governments, no matter how corrupt, is legendary.
Also legendary, one of the worst human rights records anywhere on the planet. Two words: Tonton Macoute.
Of course, historical root causes are only part of the problem. The present institutionalized oppression in Haiti is perhaps unmatched. This includes, but is not limited to: the education system, which actively ensures the majority of the population remains illiterate and ignorant; lack of infrastructure, which prevents the development of a local economy; lack of access to potable water and adequate health care, which ensures the masses are incapable of providing for their basic daily needs much less getting ahead; and an export-exclusive agricultural regime that services only the needs of the few, not the many.
All of these realities exacerbate natural disasters such as the recent earthquake. Unfortunately the world’s attention is fleeting. What will happen to Haiti once the debris is cleared, supply lines are restored and the cameras are packed up and moved on to the next emergency?
People are very good at feeling sorry for people in need and even pitching in to help them get over an exceptionally bad situation, but we are not so good at identifying root causes and correcting long-term malaise. In other words, we are very good at treating symptoms, not so good at curing diseases.
The horrific human toll of the present situation is nothing compared to the past 200 years or the next 100 if we don’t provide the means by which the Haitian population can finally overcome centuries of oppression.
This is particularly pertinent for North Americans. We spend billions, even trillions, fighting wars in far away places like Afghanistan and Iraq ostensibly to uplift the people and promote democracy. Haiti is in our own backyard. If we know so little about and can’t help our own neighbours, what hope do we have of understanding and influencing the complex machinations of Asia and the near East?
September was barely in the record books before this stunning little factoid began appearing on blogs and social media and in inboxes around the world:
“This October has five Fridays, five Saturdays and five Sundays all in one month. It happens only once in 823 years…”
Ah memories of August, which started with: “This August has five Sundays, five Mondays and five Tuesdays…” Or was it July and Thursday, Friday and Saturday?
Literally within seconds of this revelation hitting the disinformation highway, debunkers everywhere were ready with published responses, often beginning with something along the lines of: “The Internet is making us more gullible,” or more crassly, “you’re an idiot.”
In defense of people who fell for this–no, I was not one of them–the Internet is not making us stupider, it is merely making us look stupider. I will let you draw your own inference as to what that says about the critical-thinking capacity of humanity.
To be sure, there is no shortage of idiots around, but plenty of smart people also routinely proliferate these harmless hoaxes only to smack themselves in the head and promise they will be more prudent with their [like], [share] and [forward] buttons in the future.
But if the Internet is not making us stupider, why are so many otherwise intelligent people so gullible? First, there is the argument from authority. Like it or not, for better or for worse, we tend to trust the people we know. For example, if this had come from my mom–who is one of the only people I know for certain always has my best interest at heart–I might have been more likely to think, ‘wow, that’s interesting,’ than ‘that ain’t right.’ I still would not have passed it along, though, because, having my best interest at heart, one of the things my mom instilled in me from a very early age was to never trust anyone or anything without verification.
In addition to those childhood lessons and a natural tendency toward disbelief, four years of university in a scientific field and nearly a decade of journalism experience have made me a world-class skeptic. We are taught to trust only primary sources. I would take it one step further. Even primary sources do not guarantee reliability. People can have ulterior motives. Data can be misinterpreted, inadvertently or purposefully. For me, it has become so ingrained, you guessed it, I wouldn’t even trust my own mother. Sorry, Mom.
Second, any good hoax draws you in with details. This one used an odd number, 823 years. Somehow, an odd number appears more plausible than a round one. If it had said 100 years, many more people would have thought, ‘that doesn’t seem right,’ and might have gone and looked at a calendar before reaching for their mice. It also invoked Chinese Fengshui. Not simply Fengshui, but Chinese Fengshui. Ah, the details. Nevermind that during the period the Chinese were developing Fengshui, the 12 Chinese months were generally 29 or 30 days based on the cycle of the moon. Extra days and/or months were sometimes added to adjust calendar drift based on the fact a solar year is roughly 365.25 days, or 12 x 30.44 days. Under this system, it may be plausible that a month comprising five each of any three given days might be very rare indeed, but my understanding of the traditional Chinese calendar is rudimentary at best and I was unable to find any evidence for the origin of this hoax being related to Fengshui. I was also unwilling to do the math because in the current context it doesn’t matter. In our Gregorian calendar, every 31-day month of every year has five each of three consecutive days.
More details: “Pass this on to eight friends and you will receive money.” Not five, not 10, but eight. Even if that doesn’t immediately register for you, subconsciously you’ve probably heard that eight is lucky in China making it consistent with the Fengshui ruse.
Finally, there is the nature of social media. Consider this: before the Internet, how would this myth have spread? It almost certainly would not have gotten by the fact-checkers of any legitimate news organization, so it would have had to have been spread by word of mouth. Long before you had, with one careless click of your mouse, informed the entire web-browsing world of your temporary gullibility and received the requisite 823 correcting responses, you would have told your best friend, who would have said, “you’re an idiot,” and nobody else would have been any the wiser.
The Internet is not making us stupider or more gullible. More susceptible to proliferating bad information, perhaps. More vulnerable to being ridiculed when we do have a lapse in judgment, maybe. More open to embracing our fallibility, I hope so.
In fact, the Internet may be making us smarter. At no time in history has the response to something being wrong been so immediate, so visceral and so widespread. Presented with compelling evidence, even the thickest among us usually come around eventually.
Although I decided to defend rather than berate the victims of this hoax, there is one thing to which I must take exception. The original post prompted many people to ask the question: “What does it mean?” Even if it were true that October having five Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays was a once-in-823-year phenomenon, it would not mean a damn thing except that trying to jam space-time into human constructs can be kind of quirky. Attaching some kind of metaphysical significance to it, well, that’s just dumb.
Originally published on Blogging at the Big Dog, Jan 7, 2o10 and definitely the post that generated the most interest in the history of this blog.
This post assumes the reader accepts evolution is a fact in the same way we now know the earth is round, revolves around the sun and the reason we don’t float off into space is because of a little thing we like to call gravity. Unfortunately, there are still a shocking number of people, even in Canada, who believe evolution is “only a theory” and that creation mythologies deserve equal credence. If you are one of these unenlightened “history-deniers,”1 please leave this blog immediately and go read Kenneth Miller’s book Only a Theory.
One of the most common misconceptions about evolution that even those who accept it sometimes hold is the old “missing link” fallacy. If everything we see today is descended from a common ancestor through gradual change over billions of years, then where are the intermediate species between, say, chickens and camels?
As evolved as we may think we are (more on why “higher evolution” is subjective later), Homo sapiens sapiens, the modern human, is generally a linear thinker and evolution is anything but linear. We do know, that sometime in the very distant past, chickens and camels shared a common ancestor, but the genetic lines that led to chickens and the ones that led to camels, have diverged so many times any similarities between the two species have been relegated to the level of DNA. That is why evolutionary biologists so often depict evolution as a tree (although, I think a bush may be a more apt analogy).
Similarly, we did not evolve from apes. Humans and apes evolved from a common ancestor. This is where evolution gets complicated because if it were only gradual change over time it truly would be linear. There would be only one line of descent (or ascent if you prefer) and there would be only one species at any given time.
There must be a mechanism or mechanisms, therefore, which cause the branching effect responsible for the myriad life forms that currently exist and the orders of magnitude more that have lived and become extinct during the 4.6 billion years of the planet’s history.
If there is anything still contentious about evolution, it is those mechanisms. But even that is not so much a mystery as it was when Charles Darwin published, in 1859, his seminal treatise On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Races in the Struggle for Life.
Bacteriologist Richard Lenski of Michigan State University has shown that natural selection allowed populations of the bacteria E. Coli to adapt to a specific set of environmental conditions within just 2,000 generations. For a detailed description of this fascinating experiment suitable for non-scientists, I once again recommend Dawkins’ The Greatest Show on Earth. The real kicker, though, is that at approximately 33,000 generations, one population did not just adapt, it mutated into something far more suited to the environment and the population exploded.
This is a major breakthrough in evolutionary research. It proves, beyond any reasonable doubt, in a timeframe humans are actually able to grasp, that mechanisms in nature exist that can fundamentally change a species into something new. Of course, an asexually reproducing bacterium is a far cry from a chicken, camel, chimpanzee or human. Or is it?
To put the E. coli example in context, let’s look at human evolution in terms of generations. Two thousand generations of humans is only 50,000 years or about the time Homo sapiens was migrating out of Africa and developing spoken language. Thirty-three thousand generations places us at approximately 825,000 years ago, an incomprehensible period of time in human terms, but infinitesimal in geological and evolutionary terms. To go back to the point where the human line branched off from the Chimpanzee line, we are talking about between 225,000 and 315,000 generations. The equivalent for E. coli would be pushing 200 years, 10 times the length of Lenski’s experiment. A lot can happen in that kind of time frame especially when you consider what we have been able to do with artificial selection.
Take Canis lupus familiaris, or the domestic dog. It is hard to fathom that Chihuahuas, poodles, dachshunds, great Danes, Labrador retrievers and shih tzus are the same species, but they are. Perhaps even harder to fathom, is that every single one of those disparate breeds, and all other domestic and designer dogs are only a few hundred years removed from wolves. Indeed, despite the recent taxonomic reclassification of domestic dogs as a subspecies of wolf, all dogs are still genetically wolves. As hard as it is to imagine a wolf breeding with a Chihuahua (and the obvious logistical issues) it is technically feasible.
This intra-species variation also happens in nature and modern humans are a fine example. At any given time, the variation within a species is far greater than the difference between an individual and its immediate predecessor on the evolutionary bush. The San people of southern Africa and Hadzabe of east Africa are the closest living genetic links to our earliest ancestors and they probably more closely resemble those early humans than they do, say, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Olympic cross-country skier from Sweden. And those two examples are not even the extremes of variation among modern humans yet every single one of us can be traced back through the same lineage. If you don’t know about the Human Genographic Project, please check out www.nationalgeographic.com.
What does the future hold for humanity? “Survival of the fittest” is a phrase often used interchangeably with natural selection and misattributed to Darwin. Although Darwin did borrow the phrase from British economist Herbert Spencer2 in later editions of On the Origin of Species, he used it in the sense of ‘better adapted to a specific environment’ not in the commonly misinterpreted sense of ‘in the best physical shape,’ which is, of course, relative and subjective.
If we have learned anything from history (of the planet, that is) environment changes constantly and there will be more mass extinctions such as the one that wiped out most of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Whether humans survive and evolve is questionable at best.
1. I wish I had coined the description “history deniers”, but alas, it comes from the formidable mind of Richard Dawkins.
2. Spencer used the phrase “survival of the fittest” in the context of business acumen not biological superiority.
It’s been a while since I’ve visited this blog. A shame considering 2010 started with a grand plan to visit it every day. But life has a way of messing with grand plans and I was soon adjusting expectations. That adjustment just as quickly became abandonment.
I apologize to my loyal readers, but let’s just say the last six months have been some of the toughest of my life and leave it at that.
Now, with a new life in a new city and a new job as editor of Fine Lifestyles Regina and Fine Lifestyles Saskatoon magazines, I am revitalized and so too will be this space.
One of the strengths and weaknesses of the Internet is how easy it is to publish every random thought and let it live on in perpetuity, like a box full of diaries collecting dust in an electronic attic. When I started dusting off the three years of posts on this site, I realized much of it was dated and some of what wasn’t was crap.
I never intended for Blogging at the Big Dog to become Web clutter so I have pulled all the posts except the last. This blog has, at times, been a forum for personal rants; a vehicle for marketing my music and art; and an e-repository for the best of my editorials from my print column Barking at the Big Dog, which ran in the Smithers Interior News from September 2005 to October 2007, then in the Fort Qu’Appelle Times from January to December 2009.
Over the next few weeks, I will be reviewing and editing. I will republish my “greatest hits,” or, should I say, those posts that received the greatest number of hits. I will also be adding new ones.
You can also read my Fine Lifestyles blog at www.finelifestyles.ca and my geology column, Tectonic Tremblings, in Spirit of the North magazine, www.spiritnorthmag.ca.
Remember that episode of Seinfeld in which Jerry’s cop friend puts him on a polygraph machine to determine if he is lying about watching Melrose Place? That’s kind of where I have been with the show Survivor.
For the past few seasons of the long-running granddaddy of reality TV, I have been guiltily tuning in while not really discussing it with anyone or even admitting I watch it. I have rationalized my guilty pleasure by convincing myself Survivor is different than its progeny, the plethora of vapid tributes to greed and the cult of unwarranted celebrity. I have justified my obsession with the show by characterizing it as a fascinating socio-anthropological experiment of which I am a dispassionate observor.
Today, I am outing myself because, like Jerry, I just can’t keep my ire bottled up any more. Ultimately, Survivor is probably just compelling entertainment, but it does seem to scratch at the deep, dark crevices of the human psyche. What might I be capable of doing to win a million dollars?
The latest instalment, concluded Sunday night, was the most poignant of the seasons I have watched pitting ten of the greatest “villains” against ten of the most popular “heroes” from past seasons. The fact that the last four contestants standing were “villains” appears, at least superficially, to confirm the old adage “nice guys finish last.”
Keeping in mind, of course, that on-screen personas only provide a made-for-TV snapshot of the real people behind the viciousness and deceit selected by a handful of the most professional producers, directors and editors in the business, here are a few thoughts:
The final three, Parvati Shallow, Sandra Diaz-Twine and Russell Hantz, epitomize characteristics that are all too often rewarded just as lucratively in real life as they are in the game show.
Shallow—yes, that is her actual last name, but you could not invent a more appropriate moniker if you tried—smiled, flirted and undressed her way to the end of the game. For the third time! Like Paris Hilton and a host of other unaccomplished, famous-for-being-famous airheads, the former Playboy model doesn’t even have to try to be successful.
Diaz-Twine—who unbelievably won the competition for the second time—is simply vindictive. “I don’t forget and I don’t forgive,” she hissed in one of her “off camera” interviews. In the heat of the game and with the help of judicious editing, I cannot honestly say I would not come off as a huge asshole myself, but she followed that up with a vicious personal attack on Hantz during the live wrap-up show. After several months of reflection, even after winning a million bucks, in front of a worldwide audience and, more importantly, Hantz’s family, she just could not help revealing her true colours.
And then there is Russell Hantz. Psycologists must have a field day with this guy. I am not an expert, but I know enough to guess he would score highly on a sociopath test. Not as highly, obviously, as truly accomplished heavyweights such as Ted Bundy who are at least able to feign empathy and insight, but off-the-scale in comparison to your everyday, ordinary misogynist bully.
During the final tribal council, Hantz had the opportunity on at least three occasions to demonstrate some degree of humility and perhaps sway the vote of undecided jurors, but was unable to overcome his arrogance. Like Diaz-Twine, even after several months of reflection and being pressed by host Jeff Probst during the finale to acknowledge his weakness in the social game, Hantz was unable to muster even a modicum of insight.
None of them, not the final three, nor the nine who made it to the jury, nor the other eight who suffered ignominious early departures, deserve a million dollars. Oh, except for the fact that that is the game. To paraphrase Season 10 winner Tom Westman, whomever wins in a given season deserves to win because, well, they won. Profound.
Perhaps the most disturbing result, however, was that when it came to the fan vote, Hantz was handed $100,000 by the viewing public as player of the year. Whether Russell Hantz is a real person or a fabricated personality as the conspiracy thoerists who believe the show is completely scripted espouse, the message is clear that a majority of the audience—at least among the purported 38 million who cast votes—believe it is okay to do just about anything in the pursuit of cash.
I cannot help thinking the continuing popularity of Survivor and its ilk says something unflattering about our culture. That being said, it is like a bad car wreck. Even though I know I’m going to see something disgusting in it, I can’t stop rubbernecking.
