SLAMBOARD

I just saw this on the Daily Mail website…

Almost everything about Jackie Cox mirrors the Kimkins Controversy.

• 500 calorie diet -check.
• Weightloss guru who is discovered to be obese -check.
• Dieters reporting hair loss and other health side effects -check.

There is one very important difference. As far as I know, Jackie Cox has never posted fake pictures of herself or fabricated facts about her own successful long term weight loss. The other difference may be a direct result of that difference. Her diet empire, LighterLife, continues to thrive and Jackie lives the good life in the Bahamas (a popular tax haven with the Brits).

In real life, there is nothing funny about Super Lice. That being said, this item in The Onion about Head Lice Going Around Senate is quite hilarious. It puts things in perspective.

The fictitious lice outbreak was not dealt with effectively because the politicians could not agree on a plan of action. Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) even made a privileged motion that all affected heads be immediately soaked in kerosene (not really it is satire). Using kerosene or gasoline to kill head lice is very dangerous, DO NOT DO IT. A teen in Indiana is in hospital with life threatening burns after the gasoline on her hair ignited. Even if you do not have a problem with head lice now, you should educate yourself. Visit www.super-lice.com and get the toxin free method that works, even on Super Lice. The term Super Lice refers to lice that are resistant to most of the toxic shampoos that are available over the counter or by prescription.

My title is a bit somber, but these are interesting times. Almost every type of business whether it is online or bricks and mortar is struggling because their customers are afraid to spend money.

Making a purchasing decision ALWAYS involves weighing the joy of receiving the item or service against the sorrow of parting with your money. The two reactions trigger responses in two different parts of the brain. People with a shopping addiction are essentially addicted to the happy chemical that is released when they are about to buy something. They still feel the negative just like everybody else, it’s just that they ignore it for as long as possible. The worldwide economic collapse is essentially tipping the scales. People have their brains filled with the chemical usually associated with buyer’s remorse ALL THE TIME.

I am kind of conflicted about my purchases of used clothes in Africa. Used clothing is a booming industry here and items trickle in two directions once the export bales are opened. The best items will find their way onto hangers inside shops with all the conventions of retail. The less desirable stuff will sit on sheets of plywood in alleyways and on tarps along busy sidewalks.

I paid the equivalent of 70 US cents for the shirt pictured above. Can anyone tell me it’s original retail price?

This makes my head spin, and itch. An About.com expert recently advised people to consider using veterinary products to treat head lice. At least one commentator begged the author to take the post down.

The author has been a chemistry expert since 2001. This kind of bad advice makes me question the reliability of About.com and it has me wondering whether the site itself would be liable if some harm resulted from people following bad advice. The site has a medical review board that reviews any advice that is categorized as medical. The bad advice coming from a chemistry expert is very much medical in nature but is apparently not in the purview of this board.

EDIT: Here is the meaty part of the user agreement on About.com, I guess they are pretty much off the hook…

THE SERVICE AND THE SITES ARE PROVIDED ON AN “AS IS” BASIS WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF TITLE OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OTHER THAN THOSE WARRANTIES WHICH ARE IMPOSED BY AND INCAPABLE OF EXCLUSION, RESTRICTION OR MODIFICATION UNDER THE LAWS APPLICABLE TO THIS AGREEMENT. NEITHER ABOUT.COM NOR ITS AFFILIATES ENDORSE OR ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ACCURACY OR RELIABILITY OF ANY OPINION, ADVICE OR STATEMENT ON THE SERVICE OR THE SITES.

UPDATE: I emailed a few people about this issue on the day that I found out about it. Once my concern came to the attention of some doctors on the medical review board it was dealt with quickly. The article is gone.

When kids are sent home from school because of head lice, the part of a parent’s brain that is not in full panic/revulsion mode is often busy adding up the inevitable costs. There may be lost wages and various transportation and childcare costs on top of the actual cost of treatment. The last thing that anyone in this position wants to hear is that the treatment might not even work.

More and more lice are becoming resistant to the common insecticidal shampoos. They call them Super Lice and if a poison doesn’t make them go extinct on your child’s head the first time, chances are the 2nd or third try won’t be any better.

My wife and I went through this ordeal. We wasted time and money on the conventional treatments before finding an effective method in an obscure article in a UK medical journal. If you are worried about super lice, check out Super-Lice.com where you can get a detailed plan of action that is effective, economical and best of all non-toxic.

Everybody is blogging about today’s health science news item. It seems that women’s brains are not as effective as men’s brains at suppressing food urges. I read through a couple of media interpretations of these findings and they both highlight suggestions that pregnancy hormones may play a role. I can see how that makes sense, but I also want to suggest something completely different.

I think it’s possible that there has been an evolutionary advantage to having men resist the urge to eat things. They have been the strongest and largest of the genders since before we were even people. A short list of foods that a caveman might not have been able to resist include food intended for babies, babies and mothers. The caveman that was able to resist eating this stuff had a better chance of passing on his genes.

Jeeves was a fictional character created by what has become an ‘also ran’ in the cut throat business of search. He served a vital purpose to search because he encouraged participation by people who didn’t quite get the concept of search query. His influence is still felt today even though he retired years ago.

When I was checking stats on my environmental blog this morning I saw evidence of this phenomenon. Somebody asked Google what is the best choice for a toilet seat molded wood or plastic? I know that ranking number one for that query is not going to bring me much traffic, but it’s kinda cool that the person posing the question can get a relevant answer. I have to wonder if they got a more relevant answer than they would have if they had used conventional search query logic.

Contests have been pretty popular on the blogosphere over the past couple of years. The trend seems to be waning quite a bit these days. This could be the result of the economic crisis or it could be that many bloggers felt that they got a lousy ROI from contests.

I have run a few contests on this and other blogs. By and large I would say they were failures. I have learned from my mistakes and I figured that I could fill in some space on this blog by telling you about some of them.

One of the most common mistakes is giving away something that nobody wants. I found a good example of this at Six Different Ways. There may be a few people who would want something that may damage your wall, door or the product if removed.

I have held two separate contests that had ‘mystery prizes’ and it seems that people don’t like surprises. I had one entrant for the first contest and zero for the second.

Some people offer fantastic prizes, but ask for a lot in return. Tyler Cruz is giving away PS2s and wide screen monitors, but only to people who become affiliates (downline from him) and earn high revenues.

Personally, I think that cold hard cash is often the best prize. I had a very simple contest a few years back that involved awarding cash (through PayPal) to the first person who congratulated me on reaching a certain web traffic milestone. This was modestly effective because it encouraged frequent visits from the people who had seen the contest details and decided that they wanted to win.