slamboard

This is an interesting coincidence…

Yesterday I posted a movie and some commentary on the ethics of manipulating photos. Now there is a viral video from diet.com talking about the same thing, but with a diet and body image slant.

I haven’t actually listened to the whole thing, as I am supposed to be working. Some of the tricks remind me of some things that I saw on the ‘Watch Us Lose’ table on the front page of Kimkins over the last year or so. Of course some of Heidi’s pictures needed nothing more complicated than a slight vertical stretch to help recreate past weight loss success.

That question is just an extension of what people were discussing in 1995 in relation to the picture in this video. I looked into it and it is indeed becoming a trend…

Vanity Fair

Carroll Daily Times Herald

Men’s Fitness

In the interest of ethics, I should point out that I got all those links from a blog that focuses on Ethics in a Digital World.

I have actually taken a course in Teaching English as a Foreign Language. I chose my title based on my experience. People who are learning English as adults generally love idioms. This post is mostly a shout out to a school with a very cool advertising campaign. I first saw this video on something called The Pop Culture Translator. This thing is a promotional tool for the Canadian College of English Language.

The headline in the Washington Post says Clinton Sorry. The report says that she apologized for her recent reference to the RFK assassination.

I don’t know if the quote at the end of the piece is complete, but I read it for context and I do not see the word sorry. An apology from Hillary Clinton is a lot like Heidi Diaz coming clean.

I wrote the first part of this entry without watching the video of Hillary’s comment (the one for for which she ‘apologized’). I have to admit that it doesn’t sound as bad as it looks in print.

The music industry has changed a lot as the information age has come to fruition. 25 years ago, this Florida band would not be have music available to everybody on the planet free of charge on Myspace. 25 years ago, you probably would not hear about a band like Megaphone outside of their local market. I say ‘probably’ because there was always that faint hope of getting a major record deal and cashing in/selling out. The silver lining in today’s music industry is the death of the power ballad. Band’s like Megaphone are not being pressured by suits to record a sappy song that makes them feel like cutting off their own air supply. Rock on, dudes.

You can, at your own discretion, buy Megaphone music online.

Seth Godin has at least one book that is basically a hardcover printed copy of dozens of blog posts. I may or may not have one of these. You see, I thought it would be a great idea to have it with me while I was in a long lineup at the bank. I accidentally left it there. While the information in the book was just like a blog, the hardcopy medium enabled me to leave it somewhere. Two things happened, this information is no longer accessible to me AND the information is sitting in the bank being readily accessible to its employees and customers. This is not how blogs work.

I commented here and there when Anonymous first set their sights on scientology. I suggested that the group would quickly lose interest in their campaign. It appears that they haven’t.

The media attention, however, has pretty much evaporated.

scientology is dealing with the situation with the same tactics that they have been using for years to deal with strong critics. They have named a few ‘Anonymous’ members. Those members will probably have to contend with a campaign of harassment and also litigation.

Seafood like Gulf oysters are a great way to make a low carb diet interesting. Six raw oysters add up to about 57 calories. They contain 5.9 grams of protein, 2.1 grams of fat and 3.3 grams of carbohydrate. They are also an excellent source of Zinc (76mcg), as well as Vitamin B12 (16.3mcg).

So what is stopping us from enjoying these slippery dudes on a regular basis? Well, some of us may be in the at risk groups for exposure to the food borne bacteria that is commonly in oysters. The bacteria that we are talking about is called Vibrio vulnificus and it does not make healthy people sick. However, people who suffer from conditions such as liver disease (from hepatitis, cirrhosis, alcoholism, or cancer), iron overload disease (hemochromatosis), diabetes, cancer (including lymphoma, leukemia, Hodgkin’s disease), stomach disorders or any condition that results in a weakened immune system are at risk. Go to BeOysterAware.com for more details.

If you want to minimize the risk, you have options. The easiest thing is to opt for fully cooking your oysters. If you prefer the raw experience, you can buy oysters that have been processed in such a way as to reduce the bacteria to non detectable levels. The industry has developed a few ways of doing this. Individual quick freezing works and so does a heating and cooling pasteurization method. They can also use a heat and pressure pasteurization method. I have to assume that there is a detectable difference in taste. Roughly 10% of the oysters sold in the USA are subjected to either individual quick-freezing (IQF), low heat pasteurization or heat-cool pasteurization (HCP), or high-hydrostatic pressure (HPP). I have purchased IQF seafood before and I was satisfied with the product.

Consumer Affairs journalist David Wood wrote an very good article about Kimkins and it hit the net early today. He was pretty critical of Woman’s World, so much so that I want to go back and see if they really wrote some of the stuff that he is quoting. A lot of the hype sounds almost insane in retrospect.

The only new news for people who have been following along are some frank quotes from lawyer John Tiedt.

I am glad to see the story retold on a website with the reach and traffic of a site like ConsumerAffairs.com.

The seven figure sales at Kimkins.com were due in no small part to the favorable coverage in Woman’s World Magazine. This publication has huge circulation, and the print versions will often sit in waiting rooms and salons enjoying months or years of repeated perusal. People seeking to expose the Kimkins fraud did not get very far in trying to convince Woman’s World to make any kind of reversal or apology. We personally received no answers to our questions last year and instead got a cease and desist order. In response to the letter, I made changes to the cover image that I was using to make it arguably transformative. There was no follow up from the magazine. I didn’t send any further correspondence to them. Many, many interested people did.

After a long wait, the magazine has finally apologized in detail, on their website. A print apology is also forthcoming. I thank them for it.