A friend sent me this today with the following comment:
“Got this today from overzealous redneck buddy. Thought you’d find it frustrating and annoying. If you read the commentary after the clip, the guy who created it admits that it’s a fake, but ya think that stops anyone? Nah.”
The truth won’t matter to serious TeaBaggers. They prefer to take comfort in their delusions. Unfortunately, it’s viral, and as my friend says, the disclaimer is probably not going to make a difference. What occurs to me, with Tucson in the back of my mind, doesn’t it seem kinda irresponsible to put this sort of thing out there, knowing full well that those short on brains will take it all in - hook, line and sinker?
Here are some rightwing sites that are promoting this video as actual fact, not as a humorous prank - and if you glance through the ‘comments’ on each you’ll notice that the owners of the websites eventually admit the video is fake - and then say they don’t care, preferring to believe the error:
The bright spot - if there is one - in most of the ‘Birther’ websites I visited is that they seemed to be shoddy one trick ponies, that went up quickly and went dormant for lack of interest in the lunacy they were selling.
But this all comes down to the question: Why do people believe in dippy, improbable conspiracy theories anyway? Especially after so many people have publicly looked at something as high profile as Obama’s election?
Convicted Watergate conspirator, G. Gordon Liddy - who should know a thing or two about consipiracy - made the point that the more complex the conspiracy, the more likely somebody will spill the beans in order to get their fifteen minutes in the media spotlight. The more elaborate the conspiracy - such as faking a sitting president’s birth certficate - would necessarily involve many dozens of people, through numerous public agencies. Any one of them could become a weak link in the chain of silence - especially if money problems ( due to the collapse of the housing bubble for example ) became a factor.
Yet, it persists.
This is from a site that factchecked the video, noting several things that should send up red flags of doubt for those who have the mental faculties to question:
Forget a birth certificate from Hawaii. Forget the fact that two Hawaiian newspapers published notices of his birth from 1961. A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released Aug. 4, on Obama’s 49th birthday, found that 27 percent of Americans still think Barack Obama was probably or definitely not born in the United States.
So what should we make of an e-mail that sends readers to a YouTube video in which Obama blandly states that he was born in Kenya?
“Obama admits he is not a citizen — read before this is pulled,” the e-mail says. “Unbelievable!!!!!” “Why has he not been impeached?” “The amazing part of this travesty is Americans continue allowing themselves to be ruled by an illegal alien.”
The 11-minute video, which has been online since May 2, is titled “Not Natural Born — TRUTH MATTERS.” It starts with a 30-second clip of Obama speaking before a group of adults. It begins in mid-sentence: ” … that maybe I’m not an American citizen. Some people said he has a forged birth certificate. Well, first of all, it’s true I’m not an American. I was not born in Hawaii. I wasn’t born in the United States of America. I come from Kenya.”
If you listen closely, you can hear bad editing. The volume and sound quality of his voice change at key points, such as between “it’s true I’m not” and “an American.” The video never shows his lips where he makes his key admissions, so you can’t see if his lips are in sync with what he’s saying. And his audience offers no reaction to what should be a stunning admission.
So where did that portion of the video come from? The logo at the bottom of the video reads obamasnippets.com, which takes you to a YouTube humor channel that features seven videos in which Obama’s words have been edited for laughs.
One example is the “Obama DRUNK!” video, where his comments have been slowed to make it sound as if he’s intoxicated and hitting on an audience member.
The YouTube channel makes the intent clear: “This is not ‘political.’ This is just for fun. This is not an ‘Anti-Obama’ site. This is not a ‘Pro-Obama’ site. This is an ‘Obama Humor’ site… . All Snippets made with 100% Obama’s voice. No imitations! (That would be too easy.)”
The video in which Obama is heard saying “I’m not an American,” called “Birthers’ Delight - Part 1,” includes a disclaimer indicating that it’s a spoof.
The “Truth Matters” video has stripped away the disclaimer and added background music, perhaps in an attempt to disguise the telltale signs of editing.
There’s one other indication that the Obama “confession” is a hoax. Some anti-Obama sites that have posted the video have included a description beginning, “This video starts out with some content from obamasnippets.com, which, of course is contrived.” But on the YouTube page, the word “contrived” is not visible, unless a viewer opens the full description box.
However, nothing in the video itself warns viewers that the Obama clip is fabricated and the video includes a photo — proven fake more than a year ago by our friends at Snopes.com — of Obama holding a landline telephone receiver upside down.
By Aug. 4, 2010, the Truth Matters video had been viewed over a million times on YouTube, 176 times more often than the original ObamaSnippets.com video, where its humorous nature is clear.
Truth does matter, but not to the makers of the Truth Matters video or to the creators of the “Obama admits” e-mail. We rate them both as Pants on Fire.
Gee, that looks kinda good. Shrimp. Some pasta. A few pieces of bell pepper. What could be wrong with that for a meal on the go?
I’m so proud of my husband. He ran over to me with this, “look at this. It’s simply outrageous!” I’ve trained him well.
He’s now turning the package over to peruse the ‘nutrition information’.
The calories per serving aren’t too terrible at 380 calories. But YIKES! The saturated fat is 40% and the sodium - get ready for the close-up of your heart muscle in the ER - is 51%! Whatever you paid for this crap, it’s not a bargain when you’re risking a heart attack or stroke.
I didn’t even bother to glance at the faux food ingredients aside from the sodium.
Jeeze, you have to do all this, just to get the following into a kid:
Ingredients - Chef Boyardee Ravioli
Water, Tomatoes (Water, Tomato Puree), Enriched Wheat Flour (Wheat Flour, Malted Barley Flour, Niacin, Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate (Vitamin B1), Riboflavin (Vitamin B2) and Folic Acid), Beef, Crackermeal (Wheat Flour, Niacin, Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate (Vitamin B1), Riboflavin (Vitamin B2) and Folic Acid), CONTAINS LESS THAN 2% OF: High Fructose Corn Syrup, Wheat Flour, Soybean Oil, Salt, Carrots, Textured Soy Protein Concentrate (Soy Protein Concentrate and Caramel Coloring), Onions, Flavorings, Caramel Coloring, Potassium Chloride, Oleoresin Paprika, Citric Acid, Maltodextrin, Enzyme Modified Cheese [Cheddar Cheese (Pasteurized Milk, Cultures, Salt, Enzymes), and Annatto (Color)] and Disodium Guanylate and Disodium Inosinate. CONTAINS: MILK, SOY, WHEAT
And don’t forget, that includes 780 mg of sodium, NO vitamin C from tomatoes (where did it go?), and 6 grams of fat.
Yeah, that sounds just like a plate of fresh vegetables to me. Oh, and when did tomatoes become a vegetable?
Now, more companies are making similar ludicrous claims about their ridiculous products.
Bolthouse Farms is claiming that their ‘juice’ provides 3-3/4 servings of fruit per 15 ounce bottle (340 calories). Never mind that a serving size is half that. Should I be impressed? Not really. Especially when you consider that the ‘fruit’ is apple juice from concentrate, banana puree and blueberry juice from concentrate.
I’d be far healthier, skinnier, and with more money in my wallet, eating an apple with some dried blueberries - accompanied by a tall glass of cool, clear water. I had the banana on my whole grain breakfast cereal.
“Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof” Carl Sagan
Did four-year-old Colin Burpo nearly slip away from life with a burst appendix to sit in the lap of Jesus and meet a ‘sister’ who had ‘died’ due to the mother’s miscarriage? Now an eleven-year-old, Colin Burpo is making the rounds with his father who has written a book about the boy’s alleged Near Death Experience (NDE), which I saw on the Today Show.
“‘Pops’ had huge wings in heaven.”
It’s such an appealing idea - a little boy who comes back from the brink of death to tell all about his experience in heaven - commonly referred to as a Near Death Experience or NDE. According to his parents, the boy only began recounting his experience some months after his recovery, and his father - a pastor - began relating the boy’s stories to his congregation.
There probably aren’t any ‘true believers’ that would be swayed by logical arguments contrary to the belief of life after death - or at least the belief that a person can somehow travel out of this corporal existence, visit another reality, and return. I’m not going to try and change any minds here. What I will do is pose some rather mundane possibilities that could also explain this phenomena, in addition to some things people should keep in mind when confronted by reports of extraordinary events.
“Boy’s trip to heaven blessing for family.”
The simple fact that Colton’s father is a pastor at the local Baptist church sends up red flags, since it’s been repeatedly observed that people react according to the dogma they adhere to. When confronted by things we don’t understand, as humans we try to restore order and fill knowledge gaps utilizing whatever is closest - the context of our closely held religious or philosophical beliefs. Given a set of events, Hindu’s will interpret them within the framework of Hindu tradition. The same holds true for any other belief system - including Colton Burpo’s father, Todd Burpo.
Human nature is such that we also embellish - both consciously and unconsciously - events over time, again according to our belief systems. An oft used example is the ‘fish story’ - where the fish that got away gets larger and more fierce with each telling. We humans have a richly textured history of story telling that spans thousands of years.
That Colton’s pastor father might be innocently tempted to gradually embellish the boy’s tales to enlighten or engage his Sunday audiences wouldn’t be hard to understand. This would be especially so if the stories met with great approval from the congregation and an expressed desire to hear more of the youngsters ‘experiences’.
Colton’s alleged ‘knowledge’ of things that his parents claim he couldn’t possibly have known is a bit specious as well. To suggest that it was absolutely impossible for the boy to have somehow gleaned that an embryo had been lost to a miscarriage asks a lot of listeners. It has been observed a multitude of times in trial settings that people have a very hazy, and often inaccurate, memory for timelines - what was said, when and in the company of whom.
It wouldn’t have been terribly far fetched for the parents to have discussed - under the tremendous emotional stress of thinking their son may die at any moment - having also lost a potential child to natural miscarriage. It also wouldn’t have been surprising that the parents might have no conscious memory of such conversation as fearful and agonizing emotions tumbled and turned. Research about patients who are seemingly unconscious has shown that they ‘hear’ and are aware of much more than we previously believed possible. Even when under general anesthesia, patients have been known to have horrible ‘waking’ events when they are indeed ‘aware’ of their surroundings and the activities going on around them. Yet they appear to be completely unconscious to the observer.
If the parents could step back out of their belief system briefly, they might be able to see that it is unlikely that they didn’t in some way ‘contaminate’ an impressionable young mind. Is it so unlikely that, in a very religious household, that they might have unwittingly conditioned the boy to frame his puzzling experiences in a manner most familiar to the parents and their world view? This, of course, assumes there could be more than one possible explanation for the event. It doesn’t sound like the Burpo family can entertain any such possibility.
The very idea of Near Death Experiences (NDE) run across all cultures, and have become a huge presence in the popular media and the internet. There are entire websites dedicated to the discussion of NDE’s by those who feel they have experienced an NDE. Popular motion pictures entertain us with the idea that persons can come back from ‘heaven’ and tell us what they experienced.
According to RationalWiki:
“A near-death experience may refer to anything experienced by someone in clinical death, though usually refers to some kind of spiritual experience, such as an out-of-body experience, and is often cited as evidence for the existence of an afterlife by people who believe in an afterlife.
By the broadest definition, a near-death experience (NDE) can occur as a result of a coma, near-death accident, dreaming, drugs, stress, surgery, seizure, sudden oxygen deprivation, deathbed, brain stimulation, or orgasm. Around ten to 20 percent of people coming close to dying reported experiencing some form of NDE.”
Several shows on television and radio have looked at NDE’s, and pondered the possible causes. A 2010 National Geographic feature speculated that too much C02 in the blood (hypercarbia) could account for such experiences as feeling displaced from one’s own body, floating sensations and the reported perceptions of traveling toward a bright light, down a long tunnel.
In 2009, NPR’s All Things Considered ran a segment looking into the Near Death Experience phenomena - Decoding the Mystery of Near-Death Experiences. They recounted the NDE reported by singer-songwriter, Pam Reynolds, as she underwent dangerous surgery for a brain aneurysm. Also interviewed was Gerald Woerlee, and Australian anesthesiologist and researcher/debunker. He posed several possible explanations for her event.
You can go through an interesting multimedia tour of what scientists know about the brain and spiritual belief - including NDE’s:
Unfortunately, there are no established research criteria when it comes to the Near Death Experience, and the term itself wasn’t coined until 1975 in psychologist Raymond Moody’s book ‘Life After Life’. Another writer who was influential in sparking interest in NDE’s was author Elisabeth Kubler-Ross.
There are similar experiences and common elements that have been observed across the entire literature of NDE’s that stretch back as far as Plato’s ‘Republic’. They include:
A feeling of well-being. A trancendent mystical or spiritual state. All encompassing sense of love, peace, beauty, harmony, contentment, timelessness and painlessness. It should be noted that some who’ve claimed this experience have reported very frightening feelings and images, too. These either don’t happen as often, or simply aren’t reported. Our literature is filled with mentions of ‘life having passed before our eyes’ when near death, as ones life experiences are rolled like a film or life review.
Another common element is the ‘tunnel’ experience where people have the sensation of traveling down a long, dark tunnel toward a bright light or place. This could be some sort of transitional zone.
Equally common is the reported presence - and even interaction with - godlike persons or beings, long dead relatives, friends, famous persons or even the living.
Finally, those claiming to experience a Near Death Experience also report an OBE or Out of Body Experience, and often say they were floating above their own corporal body during death or medical procedures.
I find it interesting that for all the claimed instances of NDE, nobody seems to ask “how many times hasn’t it happened?” Of the millions who nearly die every day around the globe, under all manner of circumstance, how many don’t experience NDE. A real insight into the entire question is whether or not the experience is rare.
One possibly explanation posed by psychologists is that such experiences offer a protective element during the process of dying. They posit that they brain’s automatic processes are such as to calm us during trauma. It has been noted that brain chemicals such as dopamine and serotonin can reproduce similar perceptions, as can certain anesthesia agents like Ketamine which is known for producing dissociative anesthesia. Ketamine has also been used as a recreational drug for this reason. Researchers have looked at chemical, electrical and mechanical causes - individually or in concert.
“Near-death experiences (NDE’s) can be reproduced by ketamine via blockade of receptors in the brain (the N-methyl-D-aspartate, NMDA receptors) for the neurotransmitter glutamate.”[8] Most of this explanation is based on well-understood observations of neurological processes.” Dr. Karl Jansen.
The notion of NDE’s has been taken into the academic fields for more rigorous study by Bruce Greyson, Kenneth Ring, and Michael Sabom - who launched the field of near-death studies. They have been developing assesment/evaluation tools for use in clinical settings. Unfortunately, funding has been a constant problem.
Neuro-biological factors in the experience have been investigated by researchers in the field of medical science and psychiatry. Among the researchers and commentators who tend to emphasize a naturalistic and neurological base for the experience are the BritishpsychologistSusan Blackmore (1993), with her “dying brain hypothesis”,and the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, Michael Shermer (1998).
More recently, following upon the heels of data collected in 25 UK and US hospitals among heart attack patients, there was an interview, in July 2010, of Dr. Sam Parnia of Southampton University - The AWARE Study - who designed the study.
This is what he said:
“evidence is now suggesting that mental and cognitive processes may continue for a period of time after a death has started” and describes the process of death as “essentially a global stroke of the brain. Therefore like any stroke process one would not expect the entity of mind / consciousness to be lost immediately”. He also expresses his disagreement with the term ‘near death experiences’ because “the patients that we study are not near death, they have actually died and more over it conjures up a lot of imprecise scientific notions, due to the fact that itself is a very imprecise term”.
Dr. Parnia stresses that, contrary to popular belief, death is not a specific moment, but a continuum of processes that wind down as the heart stops beating, the lungs quit working, and the brain’s activity ceases.
At the end of the day - or life - what remains is still a mystery. We have tantalizing glimpses of what may be the mechanisms at play during the most profound of all experiences aside from birth - death. But those glimpses have been provided courtesy of science and medicine - following the well-established criteria of critical thinking, scientific method and peer review.
The Burpo’s may not be guilty of anything more than theorizing in advance of the facts, in order to protect their own cherished worldview, and hold back ambiguity. Unfortunately, this type of fuzzy thinking can become problematic when it goes beyond a father writing a book about a supposed experience by his toddler son.
If we were to base our entire medical and scientific world on this type of unquestioned ‘thinking’ we’d be in very deep trouble indeed.
Finally, it puzzled me that nobody seemed to ask the obvious. Why did little Colton’s parents wait five days to get him into the ER with a burst appendix? Having known somebody that it happened to, the symptoms are fairly obvious and don’t take long to manifest themselves. It depresses me that everybody seems so willing to accept the Colton family’s explanation - and not wonder if they instead ‘loaded’ the kid up - post experience - with the requisite near death/afterlife thoughts.
In the end, it’s all rather like a Rorschach ink blot. Open to the interpretation of the viewer, but far removed from either fact, science or clear conclusions. The unexplained is not inexplicable, simply beyond our intellectual reach at the moment, people have once again engaged in ‘after-the-fact’ reasoning while rationalizing ‘facts’ that don’t fit their theories. Appealing anecdotes do not make science, nor do they satisfy the burden of proof.
I’m often struck by those who would believe in absolute nonsense, and then when I express well… doubt, they fire back with “You should be more open-minded!” This seems to be their stock answer when facts or evidence - about everything from wacky vitamin regimens, detox ‘cleanse’ rituals, UFO’s, consipracy theories - fail them.
Actually, I like the folks who can fire back that they don’t care if what they believe is irrational. They just dig doing whatever it is. I knew a true-believer on the apple cider cayenne pepper maple syrup detox cleanse thing who was like that. And, she was a professional environmental scientist. There was some HUGE cognitive dissonance going on in there, and the detox thing was the least of her worries.
So, I rather liked this take on it all. As I watched, I got thinking about Tea Party true-believers … this fits them to a ‘T’.
Rigorous study has shown, repeatedly, that prayer does nothing … a null effect on the events or mankind. Even a randomized trial, published in the Lancet, found that prayer was useless beyond some imagined beneficial effect for the person offering the prayer. Yet, there are those who when confronted with tragedy, offer the comforting words that they will pray for (fill in the blank).
I try not to let their arrogance annoy me. Why would they think that I would want the prayers offered up to their imaginary god/supreme being? What if I were Jewish or Muslim or Hindu? Why would it help me for them to pray to a different god? To keep my own head from exploding, I tell myself that they offer this A) because they just don’t know what else to say, or B) actual effort to do something quantifiable hasn’t occurred to them.
So, if you really want to do something for the Japanese, why not contribute to MedicinsSansFrontieres? It’s a reasonable fall back position … you know, just in case the prayer thing doesn’t work out.
I hope you all have a Baloney Detection Kit handy, for in this world, you really need one! And, I would suggest that if you have children - say, over the age of 10 or so - let them watch this, and have a family conversation about what to believe and what to be skeptical about … say, drugs, sex and rock and roll. Scratch that last one. I believe in rock and roll. The first two aren’t bad either.
Really, have a conversation about ‘bold claims’ with your children and see what happens.
Today, I was reading an article by Sam Harris about Muslims and their apparent inability to come to terms with the reality that is the Qur’an. Harris is talking about moderate Muslims who claim that the Qur’an is a book of peace and love, while deftly ignoring or fobbing off the passages that are unequivocally violent, judgmental, intolerant, cruel et al. Obviously, all religious books seem to fall into the dualistic trap, trying to be both things at once, leaving the ‘believer’ or ‘faithful’ to figure out on their own which hat to wear today.
Since the horrific events of 9-11, more Americans wonder about the Qur’an, and how political/social/psychological honesty can possibly flow from such an obviously conflicted source. I’ve been asking this in regard to the Bible and other religious tracts for the better part of 30 years. In that sense, I don’t think we need to hold Muslims up to a different standard - especially publicly via Congressional hearings - than any other religious group. Why didn’t we hold similar hearings on Evangelical Christianity as a result of violent or socially disruptive tactics employed by the Westboro Baptist Church or anti-abortion ‘activists’.
Such is the schizophrenic nature of a so-called ‘christian’ nation as it attempts to view those of ‘other’ persuasions. If I were Muslim, I’d be pissed off. After all, the Constitution allows me to be just as muddled in my thinking as Christians and Jews, as long as I don’t break any laws.
What kept running through my head, was the logical fallacy referred to as ‘No True Scotsman’. Here is how Wikipedia explains it:
No true Scotsman is an intentional logical fallacy, an ad hoc attempt to retain an unreasoned assertion. When faced with a counterexample to a universal claim, rather than denying the counterexample or rejecting the original universal claim, this fallacy modifies the subject of the assertion to exclude the specific case or others like it.
The term was advanced by philosopher Antony Flew in his 1975 book Thinking About Thinking: Do I sincerely want to be right?.[1]
Imagine Hamish McDonald, a Scotsman, sitting down with his Glasgow Morning Herald and seeing an article about how the “Brighton Sex Maniac Strikes Again.” Hamish is shocked and declares that “No Scotsman would do such a thing.” The next day he sits down to read his Glasgow Morning Herald again and this time finds an article about an Aberdeen man whose brutal actions make the Brighton sex maniac seem almost gentlemanly. This fact shows that Hamish was wrong in his opinion but is he going to admit this? Not likely. This time he says, “No true Scotsman would do such a thing.”
Student: My uncle is a Scotsman, and he doesn’t like haggis!
Teacher:Well, all true Scotsmen like haggis.
So, if a moderate Muslim wishes, they can simply say that ‘No True Believer’ would cherry-pick the violent/intolerant passages of the Qur’an - instead focusing on the more pleasant passages. Yet, they do. Just like Evangelicals cherry-pick chapter and verse to suit their fearful agendas.
One thing that all believers seem to miss, is how an all-knowing, all-loving creator would impart holy books that are so ambiguous and open to flawed interpretation. Certainly the ‘creator’ ought to know that his flawed ‘children’ might get it wrong - all the while having the best, if misguided, intentions. When’s the last time you went to a movie with a teenager and wondered if you’d gone to separate films?
This doesn’t slow the ‘True Believer’, though. They simply side-step to another logical fallacy: Blaming the reader/messenger - AKA the Ad Hominum Attack. Blame the reader for misunderstanding an obviously poorly written/conceived text. There! That’s fixes everything! Except for the poorly written/conceived text. That stays blissfully the same.
There is another way of viewing belief and which aspects of belief that ‘True Believers’ choose, and it’s through social psychology and various permutations of Cognitive Dissonance.
Simply put, Cognitive Dissonance is that uncomfortable feeling you get when your closely held beliefs are at odds with perceived reality/truth. An example would be loving hamburgers and french fries - and reading that they are unhealthy. Continuing to smoke despite all the evidence that smoking is harmful, if not fatal, is another example.
People will go to great lengths to insert some sort of ‘modifier’ between the belief and that thing causing the dissonance. Smokers will point to the nearest really old person who seems to smoke and still live a long and healthy life. Fast food lovers will point to the nearest skinny, athletic person who can eat fast food and not gain an ounce.
‘True Believers’ - rather than change their beliefs - will point to others and say that they obviously misunderstood the text/concepts. Oh, and those ‘others’ have ‘politicized’ the beliefs in order to ‘justify’ their own interpretation … uh, kinda like Rep. Ellison did. Further, they will avoid associating with those who don’t share their beliefs, and find comfort in being around those who mirror their own beliefs without question, and hence reinforce the offending belief. Interestingly, politics falls into this. Having observed the Tea Party and extreme right/left wing ‘true believers’, they seem to do the very same thing.
I’ve wondered, too, if those who engage in evangelical or missionary work later in life - when they’ve become short of youthful enthusiasm and naivete - are attempting to protect their belief systems and restore consonance. This would obviously happen when ‘others’ willingly choose to adopt the belief you’re selling. Similarly, going to church is another means of reinforcement, seeking the support of others who share your beliefs.
And by so doing, avoid any association or possible uncomfortable dissonance by ‘No True Scotsmen … or Women’.
Well, at least Glenn Beck thinks it’s a possibility.
Let me know if you can tweeze out anything resembling facts, logic or critical thinking here.
Obviously, god would sit there and being omnipotent and all powerful, tease us with horrible earthquakes on the off chance that we’d connect the earthquake with something …. something that we were doing or had done that displeased him.
This is what all-powerful being do rather than simply saying what’s on their mind - in plain language, comprehensible by one and all.
I don’t need a god that’s nothing but a cruel tease, and expects me to read his omnipotent mind. That reminds me of my bitter, passive-aggressive 93-year-old Mother rather than a supreme being.
Vitamin Water, an ‘enhanced’ sports drink now marketed by Coca-Cola is in the news once again. This time the lawsuits are in Canada, where the brand is the target of scrutiny by the Canadian government over claims that the drink makes false claims about being healthy.
Duh. Vitamin Water, originally created by Energy Brands and marketed under the Glaceau brand, has been the object of concerned consumer advocates since 2009, when the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) initiated legal proceedings against the brand, claiming that it made false health claims. The company had been purchased by Coca-Cola in 2007. The CSPI lawsuit is proceeding, with a federal judge having tossed out a motion by Coca-Cola to dismiss the suit.
Promoted as a healthier alternative to sugary sodas, VitaminWater is essentially water … with 33 grams of sugar and a smattering of synthetic vitamins. But as Americans stuggle with weight, in a stressed out and time crunched life, they seem willing to grab for anything that - at least on the surface - promises a fast, effortless health benefit. When you consider that nearly 35% of Americans are considered obese, that’s a huge market - in more ways than one.
That’s what Coca-Cola is banking on. I say ‘banking’ because they paid in excess of $4.1 billion to acquire the brand. That’s just how much profit potential there is in flavored, sugary water.
VitaminWater Defense Raspberry Apple nutrition label. The label understates the reality, the values are for one serving, but the bottle contains 2.5 servings.
I browsed through the nutrition labels of many of the different VitaminWater offerings, and could find little to differentiate one from another - beyond the color and the creative name on the labels. For the most part - in addition to the sugar and water - they contain synthetic versions of Vitamin C, B6 and B12 in amounts that border on the insignificant.
Vitamin C is easily available in our diet, and the body sloughs off excess amounts. Yet the Vitamin C in VitaminWater is essentially negligible. You’d get more from a small green salad. The vitamin B12 surprised me. VitaminWater has just a little, but according to the Mayo Clinic, the body stores ‘several years worth’ of the essential nutrient, and any B12 deficiency in our modern society is very rare, and due to serious illness’ like pernicious anemia - which causes the body to not be able to absorb the vitamin. Drinking VitaminWater wouldn’t help.
VitaminWater, depending on the flavor, has nearly as much sugar - in the form of possibly addicting High Fructose Corn Sugar - as a regular Coke. If the sugar isn’t enough to get you on a buzz, then certainly the caffeine in VitaminWater could.
There are those who would claim ‘buyer beware’. And certainly, consumers should start reading labels. But again, when harried consumers are bombarded with billions of dollars in advertising messages telling them - with the help of famous sports stars like basketball player Kobe Bryant - that something is good for them … what should anybody expect? VitaminWater’s advertising isn’t subtle. It tells consumers that VitaminWater is a ‘healthier way to hydrate’.
Healthier than plain water? Which is free? VitaminWater isn’t healthy for you or your wallet at $1.79 a 20-ounce bottle.
So far, Coca-Cola’s defense strategy has been to freely acknowlege that VitaminWater isn’t healthy, and gee, they just can’t understand why consumers are assuming it is …. WTF? That’s right. It’s a bizarre defense - just say it’s the fault of those consumers for not having the read the nutrition label. Coke’s attorneys replied in court briefings that, “…no consumer could reasonably be misled into thinking VitaminWater was a healthy beverage…”
The sad news is that there are billions of dollars to be made by never under-estimating the gullibility of the American consumer looking for an easy way out. It never ceases to surprise me how far people will go out of their way, and waste money, to avoid simply eating a varied and healthful diet of actual real food.
One apple a day would give a person all the nutrition that a VitaminWater would - and more in micronutrients - without the huge sugar buzz. And an apple is way cheaper!
As more folks succumb to the recession - with lost jobs, the end of unemployment benefits and more grief - isn’t it time to get off our expensive addiction to sugar …. and marketing hype?
Polls show that between one-third and one-half of Americans still believe that there is “no solid” evidence of global warming, or that if warming is happening it can be attributed to natural variability. Others believe that scientists are still debating the point. Join scientist and renowned historian Naomi Oreskes as she describes her investigation into the reasons for such widespread mistrust and misunderstanding of scientific consensus and probes the history of organized campaigns designed to create public doubt and confusion about science.
Quite by accident, I happened across an ad for a bison rancher in, of all places, Long Island, New York the other day, and watched a video for his expanding bison operation. The ranch is North Quarter Farm, which is connected with Tweeds Restaurant in Riverhead, New York.
I love bison meat, and think it’s a good alternative to the factory farmed beef coming out of the CAFO’s (Confined Animal Feeding Operations) - where animals are crowded together in muck, eating a completely unnatural diet of corn. There are a lot of reasons to prefer grass-fed, grass-finished meat, but when you can’t find it or the price is prohibitive, then bison could be an alternative.
Is this how your buffalo burger was raised? Probably not.Unless the bison is raised like conventional beef cattle. Huh? Yup. Not all bison are raised out on the prairie, lunching up on tall, natural grasses - which is the feed they evolved eating.
After a bit of research, I now understand that the majority of bison (buffalo) meat that is sold in markets and restaurants around the United States is corn-fed like conventional beef cattle, and may spend at least the last three months of life penned up in a feedlot with a corn-based mix for their meal.
My guess is that a lot of meat consumers would be very surprised to hear this.
I sent an email to the bison meat producers at North Quarter Farm, asking what they fed and finished their bison on.
Me: “I saw the film about your bison, and was wondering how they are fed and finished. Corn?”
Them: “Yes mostly corn”
Now, there’s a way to preserve an icon of the American West. Change it’s diet and import it to Long Island, New York.
Telling some bison meat loving friends this news, it caught them completely by surprise. They were eating and buying bison because they thought it was more ‘natural’ - as in raised on grass.
We got an email from a friend today with the following video that’s pretty scary regarding photos you casually post online at social media and photo sharing site. The point of this video is about the ability of bad people to track locations of persons posting the photos or videos.
This is especially frightening when it comes to our children. Watch:
I’m ambivilent about this particular report. I can’t seem to verify - on a responsible, authoritative website - whether or not this is true in each respect. However, it started a train of thought, and for safety sake, I just went into my iPhone - version 4 - Settings, General, Location Services, and turned OFF my location for certain Apps. You can do this for iPhone 4, but not so easily for iPhone 3. It’s all or nothing for location reporting, but you can have the phone ‘ask’ if you want location reporting, and if so turn it on.
Furthermore, I went looking for social media, internet safety sites and found some that I think every parent and grandparent will want to know about.
I’ve listed them below (each link is ‘live’ so just click on it):
I love Barbara Ehrenreich, and have read all her books, including the one she’s referring to here (Bright Sided) about the darker side of positive thinking, and how it’s shaped our politics and economy.
If you’re of an artistic mind, you will love watching the illustrator …
A sharp-witted knockdown of America’s love affair with positive thinking and an urgent call for a new commitment to realism
Americans are a “positive” people—cheerful, optimistic, and upbeat: this is our reputation as well as our self-image. But more than a temperament, being positive, we are told, is the key to success and prosperity.
In this utterly original take on the American frame of mind, Barbara Ehrenreich traces the strange career of our sunny outlook from its origins as a marginal nineteenth-century healing technique to its enshrinement as a dominant, almost mandatory, cultural attitude. Evangelical mega-churches preach the good news that you only have to want something to get it, because God wants to “prosper” you. The medical profession prescribes positive thinking for its presumed health benefits. Academia has made room for new departments of “positive psychology” and the “science of happiness.” Nowhere, though, has bright-siding taken firmer root than within the business community, where, as Ehrenreich shows, the refusal even to consider negative outcomes—like mortgage defaults—contributed directly to the current economic crisis.
With the mythbusting powers for which she is acclaimed, Ehrenreich exposes the downside of America’s penchant for positive thinking: On a personal level, it leads to self-blame and a morbid preoccupation with stamping out “negative” thoughts. On a national level, it’s brought us an era of irrational optimism resulting in disaster. This is Ehrenreich at her provocative best—poking holes in conventional wisdom and faux science, and ending with a call for existential clarity and courage.
The part of these sort of infomercials that really grinds my grits, is the fact that the FTC allows such obviously mis-leading, and often demonstrably false nonsense to clutter up the airwaves. File this under both “money talks” (industry lobbying of government to back off) and a right-wing agenda to dismantle the regulatory agencies that would otherwise have shut scams like this down.
How much money is behind this? You don’t hire Hollywood leading men - even washed up ones, like Robert Wagner - for cheap. The production costs are considerable. In 2009, it was estimated that advertisers spent more than $150 billion on infomercials.
A Newsweek article from 2003 is highlighted as some sort of ‘proof’ as to the efficacy of the treatment, but for what disease or disorder? A look at that article is revealing. The article refers to a study of diabetes mellitus patients having peripheral neuropathy. I know something about that. My late father, and his mother, both died of complications of diabetes mellitus, and both suffered from peripheral neuropathy - or loss of the protective sensations, usually in the feet. Diabetes patients have to be particularly vigilant of foot health, since untreated ulcerations or wounds won’t heal and can lead to gangrene and amputation.
Unfortunately, the article goes on to talk about the use of the the MIRE (Monochromatic Near-Infrared Photo Energy) light not in treatment of peripheral neuropathy but lower back pain complaints. The low back pain complaint described in the article was not clinically diagnosed, but merely self-reported by a Marine. When he used the ‘light therapy’ purchased from one of the infomercial companies, he was ‘cured’.
A bit of research led me to a 2007 review of studies, including the diabetic peripheral neuropathy study, in Podiatry Today. The conclusions reached by the reviewers was less than stunning.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011 at 14:23 
