I’m usually a pretty patient guy about marketing. Unlike some, I am not educated by it and, unlike others, I don’t look down on it. I know why it it exists and I appreciate its value but at some point in advocacy issues ( in this case the environment ) it invariably crosses a line from being funny to offensive and then it goes completely over the line into being the kind of junk science that needs to be ridiculed.

My latest gripe is the claim that low energy bulbs are a magic panacea for the environment and that they are wonderful in all respects. I don’t use them and there are a few compelling reasons why you should focus on other ways to save the environment also.

The main reason I don’t use them is because I am not smug enough.

You know what I am talking about. Who actually laughed at those Apple television ads where the smug, hipster guy is the Apple user and the buffoon uses a PC? It takes some true marketing incompetence to make Microsoft seem lovable but they did it. The only people who liked those ads were Apple users, who are already smug.

Now we have commercials where a hip CFL bulb guilt trips a traditional light bulb in the same condescending manner - and without about the same level of actual data behind it. It will sell some lightbulbs - and maybe make your cat insane, but we’ll get to that in a minute. First, let’s discuss light.

The whole point of light bulbs was to give us daylight at night - at first, anything was better than dark but we later discovered that the closer you can get to natural light, the better off you will be. Here is a chart showing the light spectrum, including daylight, incandescent and fluorescent bulbs.

(more…)

There’s a war that’s brewing and you may not be aware of it. It’s right under our noses but it has been kept out of the mainstream media due to a growing web of deniers and obfuscaters who regard misinformation and doubt as allies. Like many insurrections it has been funded quietly but it’s effects can be devastating to people in the war zones, like the line that stretches out the door at Tully’s.

That war, my friends, is the War On Coffee.

Coffee is good. Coffee is good for you. Science has proved this on numerous occasions yet time and again I see sources in the mainstream media trying to establish doubt about the total awesomeness of coffee.

I saw yet another hit piece on coffee today, this one titled Researchers Discover How Coffee Raises Cholesterol. Where did they get that idea?

But I am a fair person, I want to know if my health is at risk, so I took a random sample of 928 articles on coffee, none of which were found to express doubt in its total awesomeness. That is a consensus, people.

Yet the deniers will not accept it. The issue, they say now, is Cafestol, a diterpene molecule found in coffee. Well, diterpene molecules are our friends, since that’s how we get Retinol, the animal form of vitamin A and an important antioxidant. Unless you like having lousy vision and brittle bones. Why are they blaming Cafestol? Who is behind this? The only answers I found came from one source, not surprisingly the exact same source behind the recent study saying coffee is bad: Baylor University. The folks at Baylor wrote a similar hit piece in 2005.

So off to Baylor I went, to the Department of Molecular & Cellular Biology. But they were on to me. When I arrived, the place was cleared out. Mostly. I did find this.

(more…)

I read an article from Men’s Health talking about how women get aroused during exercises.

Specifically, hanging leg raises. “Coregasm” they called it, because some women can, apparently, have an orgasm while doing these exercises.

Aside from the fact that it’s a really cool term, I was a little jealous. Men need to do some real work to climax. Sure, we all know women have it easier in that regard, much like they have it easier than men in all aspects of life, but women can get off while exercising now? As if they need any more advantages. Anyway, I had never heard of it and I have dated some fit women, including a few for whom I am certain sex was just another way to “feel the burn.” I never had one tell me she could could get off while lifting weights though.

So I decided to do some investigating. As most of you are aware, I am something of an expert on female orgasms, and not just because my intellect and humor are the causes of more web-based rubouts than Brad Pitt and George Clooney combined. It’s also because I do the research. You’ll recall I wrote an article on whether the Theta waves in female orgasms would kill men and I even reverse engineered the female orgasm including how a calibrated vaginal stimulator works, for those of you unlucky enough to have never dated a scientist.

So I am the perfect person to answer this question for you. It turns out there may be some science in this, though I think most female orgasms usually involve a combination of alcohol and magic.

(more…)

There’s a lot of “Can X make you gay?” articles being written these days. This fellow says soy is making you gay and even the New York Times wonders if you have a gay car.

Now a study from the University of Pittsburgh says that fish from Pittsburgh rivers contain substances that act like estrogen.

Estrogen. The female hormone. So you’ll have to forgive me for the topical television reference, but when a show called Queer As Folk is set in Pittsburgh, ‘fish’ is going to jump in there rather naturally.

(more…)

I got some questions from a writer named Captain Carrot, i.e. a stranger, who deduced that, because I write this column for free, I must also be available for free science consultation and/or general life and relationship advice.

Here is a sample:

I am 27. Should I try to stop smoking, or will I regret it later in life?

Most of you know me well enough by now to realize that, unless you provide webcam proof you are a supermodel, I am unlikely to even bother learning to spell your name.

Yet something in his plea struck me. Maybe because it’s Easter Weekend and I feel bad that Jesus died so most of you could tell George Bush how much smarter you are than he is, or maybe it’s because I feel a twinge of guilt at Photoshopping a picture of myself in a picture as a half-Crusader/half-Crusaded warrior of the 12th century, or maybe it’s because I am saddened that this poor monkey can’t even decide for himself whether or not he should ingest carcinogens that we’ve spent trillions of dollars telling him he should not ingest.

It doesn’t matter. I felt his pain so I answered his call. However, I am a busy man - if I am to have an orgy of unprotected sex with supermodels this weekend to celebrate the Resurrection of the Messiah, I need to make a coke run. And don’t let me forget to buy a grape for them to share when they have the munchies.

(more…)