So when my mother read that last post of mine, boy did I hear about it... She's certainly passionate about this subject. In my information gathering I had already learned just about everything she stated in its defense, but she couldn't answer some of my particular critical questions:
1. Why the lack of ingredients labeled?
2. Why the specific duck ingredients if it's the imprinted vibration that's doing the healing?
3. Why have any sugar in the pills at all?
4. Wouldn't a larger dosage of the main ingredient allow for more potent healing? The imprinted vibrations would carry over in greater potency is the dosage were upped, would they not?
With every question I didn't hear a valid explanation to, I instead would hear another story of when homeopathics saved my brother's life from bee stings and fevers...
But if it was truly a sugar pill with an imprinted vibration of the active ingredient that saved him and not his own immune system, I feel as though this is no longer a talk about the pill being the saviour. This is a talk about faith and spiritual healing.
Like any beliefs, I don't want to bunk something that someone else believes in just because I don't think it's true. Maybe the pills' vibrations actually did work.
Maybe it was healing energy from my mom that did the healing rather than the pills.
Maybe my brother's immune system was better than she thought.
Maybe God was watching over him and decided it wasn't his time.
Maybe the Flying Spaghetti Monster slipped a noodle up his nose and pulled out the venom/virus.
Many things are possible, and I shouldn't be one to judge. I guess I'm not accustomed to the idea of taking a pill for something other than the physical ingredients in the pill, so if it seemed like I was attacking the idea of this medicine working, that wasn't exactly my intention. My intention was to bring into light the things that seemed deceptive.
Personally, I believe that we should all know what is contained within what we buy. I am an advocate that the GMO labeling i-522 bill should have passed, being that it would be a step in the right direction. But just like I believe the deception behind not labeling GMOs is wrong, I also believe that not containing all the ingredients on a pill bottle is wrong. This bottle contains 99.999etc% sugar. And they could at least write "extract of duck liver and heart" in a parenthetical. If the average person today can't even understand how to use a semicolon with English as their primary language, how can we expect them to know that much Latin?
(I'm pretty sure "healing vibrations" wasn't on that ingredients list either.)
Also, these things are being marketed as though it's a pill you take to get better, when in fact it is a method of spiritual healing; not so much a compound of physical ingredients, but rather a product made through a process of vibrations, and taking the pill melds the pill's vibrations with those of your own body. But putting it like that would make them far less money, I'm sure. They could at least sell some that are sugarless. Make them out of stevia or something... Don't they know their target audience?
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
Oscillococcinum
So I took some of my mom's Oscillococcinum this morning to see if it might help calm down my coughing fits (I think I might have fractured a rib). It occurred to me after taking it that, to my memory, all round-white-pill homeopathics I have taken in my life have had the same sweet taste, so I looked at the ingredients. They were in Latin, for some reason:
"Anas barbariae hepatis et cordis extractum 200CK"
With Google Translate, that became:
"Barbary duck liver and heart extract 200CK"
So I had the question at that point... Why would duck liver/heart be the color white, and why the hell would it taste sweet? And what is this 200CK?
Well after a bit of research I found some answers. First of all, 200CK is apparently an indication of dilution. The C stands for Centesimal (a division into hundredths), and the K stands for Korsakov. Not Korsakoff syndrome, but rather the Korsakov method of making homeopathic remedies (Yes, his full name is Semen Nikolaevich Korsakov... Poor guy). Basically, his method was to use the same container for mixing the diluted extracts with water.
So now we know that this Oscillococcinum contains 200 of some division of barbary duck liver and heart extract mixed with water using the same tank for each mixture. I feel like if they just said it like this in plain English it would feel a lot less shady. But I'm getting ahead of myself...
Feeling as though I had more yet to discover, I researched Oscillococcinum itself, and found an interesting fact... Not only are the ingredients on the bottle printed in Latin, seemingly on purpose to prevent their knowledge, but not all of the ingredients are even printed on the bottles. Oscillococcinum contains 1x10-400 (ten to the -400th power) grams Anas Barbariae Hepatis et Cordis Extractum as the "Active Ingredient," and the "Inactive Ingredients" are 0.85 grams sucrose and 0.15 grams lactose. So... Yeah, that explains why this duck liver/heart would taste sweet. I wonder if the sugar is organic?
So basically Oscillococcinum pills are made of 100% sugar with maybe a single molecule of what might be a 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 chance of being duck liver and heart extract instead of water. And no, I did not make that number up. That is 10 to the -400th power - the amount of the active ingredient in this product.
When Professor Hubert Farnsworth from Futurama replied to Amy Wong's suggestion of homeopathic medicine with the retort: "Or a big fat placebo! It's all the same crap!" I gave it a laugh and gave the medicine the benefit of the doubt... But finally looking at the science behind much of this stuff, I'm afraid I don't see any possible conclusion other than, yes, these are sugar pills... I certainly welcome somebody to prove me wrong, but I'm going to need some good explanations about how a duck's liver and heart could heal my ailments in the first place. Apart from curing my hunger, of course.
"Anas barbariae hepatis et cordis extractum 200CK"
With Google Translate, that became:
"Barbary duck liver and heart extract 200CK"
So I had the question at that point... Why would duck liver/heart be the color white, and why the hell would it taste sweet? And what is this 200CK?
Well after a bit of research I found some answers. First of all, 200CK is apparently an indication of dilution. The C stands for Centesimal (a division into hundredths), and the K stands for Korsakov. Not Korsakoff syndrome, but rather the Korsakov method of making homeopathic remedies (Yes, his full name is Semen Nikolaevich Korsakov... Poor guy). Basically, his method was to use the same container for mixing the diluted extracts with water.
So now we know that this Oscillococcinum contains 200 of some division of barbary duck liver and heart extract mixed with water using the same tank for each mixture. I feel like if they just said it like this in plain English it would feel a lot less shady. But I'm getting ahead of myself...
Feeling as though I had more yet to discover, I researched Oscillococcinum itself, and found an interesting fact... Not only are the ingredients on the bottle printed in Latin, seemingly on purpose to prevent their knowledge, but not all of the ingredients are even printed on the bottles. Oscillococcinum contains 1x10-400 (ten to the -400th power) grams Anas Barbariae Hepatis et Cordis Extractum as the "Active Ingredient," and the "Inactive Ingredients" are 0.85 grams sucrose and 0.15 grams lactose. So... Yeah, that explains why this duck liver/heart would taste sweet. I wonder if the sugar is organic?
So basically Oscillococcinum pills are made of 100% sugar with maybe a single molecule of what might be a 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 chance of being duck liver and heart extract instead of water. And no, I did not make that number up. That is 10 to the -400th power - the amount of the active ingredient in this product.
When Professor Hubert Farnsworth from Futurama replied to Amy Wong's suggestion of homeopathic medicine with the retort: "Or a big fat placebo! It's all the same crap!" I gave it a laugh and gave the medicine the benefit of the doubt... But finally looking at the science behind much of this stuff, I'm afraid I don't see any possible conclusion other than, yes, these are sugar pills... I certainly welcome somebody to prove me wrong, but I'm going to need some good explanations about how a duck's liver and heart could heal my ailments in the first place. Apart from curing my hunger, of course.
Friday, November 15, 2013
Violence in Video Games
For many years now there have been arguments that video game violence desensitizes people from real life violence. Some studies even say that video games cause people to become violent themselves. Video games do not make people violent, nor do they cause people to believe that violence has no repercussions; video games merely show that poor sportsmanship, impatience, and a violent disposition can lead to violence.
Many studies seem to assume that violence in video games allows people to be violent without any repercussions. This is not true, because in order to add challenge (and fun) to any video game, it is necessary to have opposition – a way to lose. If a person attacks someone in real life, they are likely to be attacked right back. Video games work in the same way – you attack someone, they attack you right back. There are circumstances in real life where one may be, for some reason, unable to counter the opposition, and video games share those same conditional circumstances. But no matter what the circumstance, there is always a repercussion in some form or another, video game or no, for acts of violence. In the Grand Theft Auto series violent acts are treated in much the same way as in real life, resulting in the player being wanted by the police/military, and oftentimes the player gets killed trying to evade them. In the game Battlefield: 1942 the player is given arms and told to go out and fight in World War II. And not unlike the real war, the player is at constant risk of stepping on a landmine, being sniped, being bombed by a plane, etc. These games aren't showing the players that war and violence is okay, they're showing them just how devastating war and violence can really be.
When extremely involved in, or passionate about something, it is easy for people to overreact. When playing video games in competition with another player, or sometimes even against the computer, a player can become frustrated from a losing streak. This highly depends on the individual person, but sometimes players can become so frustrated at their losing streak that they throw the controller, or even hit the friend who was constantly beating them. That is not an example of the video game causing them to be violent; it is an example of poor sportsmanship and self control. Being that video games are a form of media created by people, they also act as a kind of self-expression for the developers, representing their thoughts and ideas. If one is arguing with somebody else and begins to feel frustrated by his or her ideas, one must hold back feelings of aggression, just as one must hold back feelings of aggression when playing a video game. Video games are designed for recreation and entertainment; if the game isn't fun anymore, one can simply stop playing it. Sports fans who are really passionate about the team they root for might react in a similar way when they see their team make a stupid move during the game. The ability to lose, admit defeat, and shake the hands of the opposing team is something supposedly taught at a young age. Unfortunately some people never grasped the concept of losing with dignity during their youth and instead of congratulating the opposing team they get angry and make accusations. Video games are not the only devices that cause frustrated losing reactions; this behaviour is found all over the place, and video games are merely a convenient medium to pin the blame on due to their popularity among the younger generation (Ferguson 1).
The argument has been made that young children shouldn’t play violent video games because it could desensitize them to violence. Depending on the age and development of the child, this could very well be true, but this is also why video games are given a rating, just like movies and television shows. Many young children are impressionable, and game developers know that, so they rate their games for certain age groups. But even within the age groups of the rating, the parents themselves must decide whether their child should play it or not. If parents find that their child is outside stomping on turtles like the Super Mario Brothers, that isn’t the fault of the game, since he clearly wasn't ready, it’s the fault of the parents for letting their child play the game and not teaching the child beforehand that stomping on turtles is wrong. The same argument can be made for the television shows children watch. Just as parents would watch an episode of a television show and judge for themselves if their child should watch it or not, parents should also play a level or two of a video game so they can accurately judge if their child should play it or not. Children are impressionable in their early developmental years, and therefore parents should be the judges of whether their child is ready or not for various media stimuli.
When making the argument that violent games cause violence, people seem to ignore the possibility that the violence could have happened despite the video game. Dr. Patrick Markey stated in an article of The Escapist, “Individuals are not ‘blank slates.’ One’s general disposition moderates the effect of violent media” (Chalk). If a man played the game Modern Warfare and then went out and shot someone, that doesn’t mean that the game made him do it. Taking an example of a single individual who actually shot someone and correlating his shooting with the video game he plays is inaccurate because it does not account for the thousands of other people who have played that game and gotten no urge to go on a real life killing spree. If this guy can actually go out and shoot someone just like that, maybe we should consider the possibility that he is mentally ill, or that he has a history of violence. If violence in video games were making people physically violent, imagine how many people would be currently under attack by the approximated 9 million currently active World of Warcraft players (Holisky). People play video games that they personally enjoy, so telling a number of people to sit down and play games that they do not enjoy can cause them irritation in itself, thereby contaminating the results of the test. The humanity element is a difficult thing to measure and cannot accurately be portrayed in a laboratory; when testing for a correlation between violent gaming and and real life violence, the mental characteristics of the gamers should be taken into account.
Some people might question why violent video games are made in the first place and why people play them. People who play violent video games often play them as a way of relieving stress. Let's say a man by the name of Greg had a bad day at work; his boss gave him a hard time. He might have thoughts about punching his boss, or even throwing his boss out the window. These mental images are normal; it's acting on them that makes them bad. So Greg comes home and attacks a punching bag for an hour to relieve his stress. You see how Greg can relieve his stress through acts of violence against an object designed for receiving acts of violence? What if Greg came home and played Street Fighter on his gaming console? He takes control of a virtual avatar and beats on another virtual avatar, thereby taking out his anger on a virtual character designed to be attacked. Video games allow people like Greg in the modern age to have a sense of control during hard times, and many games offer virtual realities where people can create lives for themselves that could never be achieved in reality (CACM Staff 10). Video games allow people to experience their “happy place” in a fully immersive environment and help people to cope with the hardships and stress of their daily lives.
The reactions people have to the video game world vary highly depending on the person, and society has been known to shun every technological step leading into a new era. Radio was looked down upon when it became popular, television was looked down upon as its popularity grew, and now video games and virtual reality are being used as a scapegoat in much the same way. Video games may be addicting, they may bring out bad sportsmanship in some people, and for developmental reasons it may be a bad idea to let your 6-year-old play Mortal Kombat, but because there are so many gamers out there who aren’t attacking people, it is inaccurate to say that video games are causing violence.
Many studies seem to assume that violence in video games allows people to be violent without any repercussions. This is not true, because in order to add challenge (and fun) to any video game, it is necessary to have opposition – a way to lose. If a person attacks someone in real life, they are likely to be attacked right back. Video games work in the same way – you attack someone, they attack you right back. There are circumstances in real life where one may be, for some reason, unable to counter the opposition, and video games share those same conditional circumstances. But no matter what the circumstance, there is always a repercussion in some form or another, video game or no, for acts of violence. In the Grand Theft Auto series violent acts are treated in much the same way as in real life, resulting in the player being wanted by the police/military, and oftentimes the player gets killed trying to evade them. In the game Battlefield: 1942 the player is given arms and told to go out and fight in World War II. And not unlike the real war, the player is at constant risk of stepping on a landmine, being sniped, being bombed by a plane, etc. These games aren't showing the players that war and violence is okay, they're showing them just how devastating war and violence can really be.
When extremely involved in, or passionate about something, it is easy for people to overreact. When playing video games in competition with another player, or sometimes even against the computer, a player can become frustrated from a losing streak. This highly depends on the individual person, but sometimes players can become so frustrated at their losing streak that they throw the controller, or even hit the friend who was constantly beating them. That is not an example of the video game causing them to be violent; it is an example of poor sportsmanship and self control. Being that video games are a form of media created by people, they also act as a kind of self-expression for the developers, representing their thoughts and ideas. If one is arguing with somebody else and begins to feel frustrated by his or her ideas, one must hold back feelings of aggression, just as one must hold back feelings of aggression when playing a video game. Video games are designed for recreation and entertainment; if the game isn't fun anymore, one can simply stop playing it. Sports fans who are really passionate about the team they root for might react in a similar way when they see their team make a stupid move during the game. The ability to lose, admit defeat, and shake the hands of the opposing team is something supposedly taught at a young age. Unfortunately some people never grasped the concept of losing with dignity during their youth and instead of congratulating the opposing team they get angry and make accusations. Video games are not the only devices that cause frustrated losing reactions; this behaviour is found all over the place, and video games are merely a convenient medium to pin the blame on due to their popularity among the younger generation (Ferguson 1).
The argument has been made that young children shouldn’t play violent video games because it could desensitize them to violence. Depending on the age and development of the child, this could very well be true, but this is also why video games are given a rating, just like movies and television shows. Many young children are impressionable, and game developers know that, so they rate their games for certain age groups. But even within the age groups of the rating, the parents themselves must decide whether their child should play it or not. If parents find that their child is outside stomping on turtles like the Super Mario Brothers, that isn’t the fault of the game, since he clearly wasn't ready, it’s the fault of the parents for letting their child play the game and not teaching the child beforehand that stomping on turtles is wrong. The same argument can be made for the television shows children watch. Just as parents would watch an episode of a television show and judge for themselves if their child should watch it or not, parents should also play a level or two of a video game so they can accurately judge if their child should play it or not. Children are impressionable in their early developmental years, and therefore parents should be the judges of whether their child is ready or not for various media stimuli.
When making the argument that violent games cause violence, people seem to ignore the possibility that the violence could have happened despite the video game. Dr. Patrick Markey stated in an article of The Escapist, “Individuals are not ‘blank slates.’ One’s general disposition moderates the effect of violent media” (Chalk). If a man played the game Modern Warfare and then went out and shot someone, that doesn’t mean that the game made him do it. Taking an example of a single individual who actually shot someone and correlating his shooting with the video game he plays is inaccurate because it does not account for the thousands of other people who have played that game and gotten no urge to go on a real life killing spree. If this guy can actually go out and shoot someone just like that, maybe we should consider the possibility that he is mentally ill, or that he has a history of violence. If violence in video games were making people physically violent, imagine how many people would be currently under attack by the approximated 9 million currently active World of Warcraft players (Holisky). People play video games that they personally enjoy, so telling a number of people to sit down and play games that they do not enjoy can cause them irritation in itself, thereby contaminating the results of the test. The humanity element is a difficult thing to measure and cannot accurately be portrayed in a laboratory; when testing for a correlation between violent gaming and and real life violence, the mental characteristics of the gamers should be taken into account.
Some people might question why violent video games are made in the first place and why people play them. People who play violent video games often play them as a way of relieving stress. Let's say a man by the name of Greg had a bad day at work; his boss gave him a hard time. He might have thoughts about punching his boss, or even throwing his boss out the window. These mental images are normal; it's acting on them that makes them bad. So Greg comes home and attacks a punching bag for an hour to relieve his stress. You see how Greg can relieve his stress through acts of violence against an object designed for receiving acts of violence? What if Greg came home and played Street Fighter on his gaming console? He takes control of a virtual avatar and beats on another virtual avatar, thereby taking out his anger on a virtual character designed to be attacked. Video games allow people like Greg in the modern age to have a sense of control during hard times, and many games offer virtual realities where people can create lives for themselves that could never be achieved in reality (CACM Staff 10). Video games allow people to experience their “happy place” in a fully immersive environment and help people to cope with the hardships and stress of their daily lives.
The reactions people have to the video game world vary highly depending on the person, and society has been known to shun every technological step leading into a new era. Radio was looked down upon when it became popular, television was looked down upon as its popularity grew, and now video games and virtual reality are being used as a scapegoat in much the same way. Video games may be addicting, they may bring out bad sportsmanship in some people, and for developmental reasons it may be a bad idea to let your 6-year-old play Mortal Kombat, but because there are so many gamers out there who aren’t attacking people, it is inaccurate to say that video games are causing violence.
CACM Staff. “War is No Game.” Communications of the ACM Mar. 2005: 10-10. Abstract. Print.
Chalk, Andy. “New Study: Most Teenagers are Unaffected by Violent Gaming.” Escapist 7 June 2010: n. pag. Web. 20 Mar. 2012. <http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/101160-New-Study-Most-Teenagers-are-Unaffected-by-Violent-Gaming>.
Ferguson, Christopher J. “The School Shooting/Violent Video Game Link: Causal Relationship or Moral Panic?” Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling (2008): 1-14. Abstract. Academic Search Premier. Web. 20 Mar. 2012. <http://168.156.198.98:2059/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=b42ecbc6-5561-40b3-a578-ec064e402798%40sessionmgr14&vid=4&hid=111>.
Giumetti, Gary W., and Patrick M. Markey. “New Study Examines Anger, Aggression, Videogame Violence.” Journal of Research in Personality (2007): 1-10. Web. 20 Mar. 2012. <http://www65.homepage.villanova.edu/patrick.markey/vg.pdf>.
Holisky, Adam. “World of Warcraft subscriber numbers dip 100,000 to 10.2 million.” WoW Insider 9 Feb. 2012: n. pag. Web. 20 Mar. 2012. <http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/02/09/world-of-warcraft-subscriber-numbers/>.Thursday, November 7, 2013
Buyer Beware! - HDMI Cables
If you find yourself shopping for HDMI cables, as long as it says "high speed" on the package, it is the same as any other 1080p capable HDMI cable.
Retailers are ripping people off by putting "3D capable" on the package and overcharging, when in fact all high speed HDMI cables are capable of 3D. I think some HDMI cables may be special due to supplying an ethernet connection, but the "HDMI v1.4" thing is actually misleading. HDMI v1.4 is referring to the version of the port, not the cable. The cables didn't change versions because they didn't need to - they are still capable of transferring massive amounts of video data. The port, however, needed to change the kind of video data that needed to be transferred through the cable.
Now this is not to say that some of the more expensive HDMI cables aren't superior. Some have gold plating, some are built out of cheaper or better materials, but ultimately they all do the same thing. They transfer video/audio data.
Retailers are ripping people off by putting "3D capable" on the package and overcharging, when in fact all high speed HDMI cables are capable of 3D. I think some HDMI cables may be special due to supplying an ethernet connection, but the "HDMI v1.4" thing is actually misleading. HDMI v1.4 is referring to the version of the port, not the cable. The cables didn't change versions because they didn't need to - they are still capable of transferring massive amounts of video data. The port, however, needed to change the kind of video data that needed to be transferred through the cable.
Now this is not to say that some of the more expensive HDMI cables aren't superior. Some have gold plating, some are built out of cheaper or better materials, but ultimately they all do the same thing. They transfer video/audio data.
Sources:
...and other misc Google searches.
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