Junk Science

Via sclerotic_rings: after New Scientist mocked a skin cream for absurd claims, the makers actually ripped off bits of the mockery for their own puff pieces.

Excerpts from various pages on neaclear.com (irritating lack of capitalisation left as is):

our products include oxygen and natural energy blends which are specifically formulated for anti-aging. Oxygen is the most vital nutrient required by the human body for cell reproduction, optimal function and continued existence. studies have shown that the most significant factor in health and longevity is how well you breathe. the reason for this is because this directly determines how much oxygen is available for your cells.

300 million years ago, the air contained 50% oxygen. today’s breathable air contains only 18% oxygen...

many people feel that oxygen is one of the most powerful antioxidants that works to stop the damage caused by “unhealthy” free radicals...

neaclear® and neaclearPlus skin care products all have oxygen in them. the oxygenation is a special 4 step process that enables us to place oxygen into a stable liquid form. liquid oxygen normally exists only at the extremely low temperature of -183 degrees Celsius under normal atmospheric pressure. liquid oxygen in it's purest form is highly combustible and basically "rocket fuel". NO, we do not have rocket fuel (pure liquid oxygen) in our products. please realize the oxygen concentration in our skin care products is not a large amount, definitely less than 5%. again, we always recommend not placing these products close to any sources of fire or anything flammable (a good piece of advice with any skin care products).

(AFAICT, that last bit is a recent addition; earlier versions just claimed that 'neaclear' "is the first to combine stabilised liquid oxygen into all of its products", for which NS mocked them heartily. It's still pseudo-scientific bullshit, though. I blame the Kansas School Board ;-)

More blame-gaming

Everybody in Washington seems to have decided (about a week late) that the only priority now is to help Katrina's victims. Shouldn't we set politics aside and let questions of responsibility can wait until afterwards (i.e. when interest has died down)?

Well, no. Helping the victims is the most important thing right now, sure. But that process is going to take months, probably years, and we need to make sure that the same factors and people that screwed up the initial response so royally aren't going to screw up the rest of the process too.

Via remus_shepherd, this Washington Post article discusses one of the reasons why the Federal response was held up: ( They didn't just want to *assist*. )

Edit: The Washington Post article reports a 'senior Bush official' as claiming that "as of Saturday [Sept 3rd], Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency". In fact, as noted in a correction on that article, the declaration was issued on Friday August 26th (see press release here).