JUST occasionally, a promotion for a commercial product is so misleading it makes us huff and puff. An example is the publicity for a new skincare product called Neaclear. It is apparently âcreating a big commotion in the dermatologic communityâ.
The companyâs website () helpfully explains how âthe body can only survive minutes without oxygenâ. âTodayâs breathable air,â it goes on threateningly, âcontains less than 20 per cent oxygenâ whereas âat one time, this number was more than 50 per centâ.
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Shock, horror! The atmosphere is losing its oxygen! Weâve come across this rubbish before, and as far as the planetâs recent history is concerned, it is simply not true. The oxygen in our atmosphere has been stable at about 18 per cent for at least 3 million years â and the last time it contained anything approaching 50 per cent was some 300 million years ago, when people werenât around to breathe it.
From the misleading to the absurd. Neaclear, we are told, contains a âpowerful combination of liquid oxygen, vitamins C & E, sage, chamomile, seaweed and rosemary, coconut oil, sweet almond oil and hydroquinoneâ. At first we thought this might be a typographical error, but no, the company goes on to explain that Neaclear skin care âis the first to combine stabilised liquid oxygen into all of its productsâ.
This is âdefinitely uniqueâ, says Neaclear, and we agree. We have certainly never heard of a skin cream that contains liquid oxygen, the temperature of which is normally somewhere below -183 °C.
TWO weeks ago we noted that you would be doubly truthful if you said of a computer-assisted tomography scan of a cat: âThis is a cat scanâ (20 August). We dubbed such statements diontologias and wondered whether there were any triontologias.
The challenge proved irresistible but hard to meet. The groan factor was high as readers struggled to find ways to satisfy the criteria using words such as âcatastropheâ, âcatalogueâ and âtomographyâ. None really succeeded, and it was left to Nigel Steel to come up with what we felt was the best solution: âIf you did a number of scans using positron emission tomography and an image of your own domestic animal companion was your personal favourite, then the statement, âthis is my pet scanâ, would be true to the third power.â
Quite right Nigel, and thanks. Thanks also to Tom Gallard who reached almost the same solution with his âpet pet projectâ. And we should mention the effort by Richard Saunders, who pointed out that if he bought a large musical instrument for ÂŁ1000 and thought it was quite splendid, then the statement, âThis is a grand pianoâ, would be true three ways.
NASAâs public relations department is crowing about drawing record internet traffic during the recent mission of the space shuttle Discovery. About 435,000 people watched the launch on its streaming video, and some 400,000 watched the landing. âWeâre so excited that the world wants to be a part of the ongoing mission of exploration and discovery,â said PR chief Dean Acosta at NASA headquarters.
But the main reason so many people watched was left unsaid: it was the nail-biting suspense of expecting the mission to go horribly wrong.
âA sign spotted on the A1 road near Harrogate in the UK tells drivers to âfollow the existing signs to Wetherbyâ. Chris Morley wonders how many drivers disobey this instruction and follow the signs that donât existâ
WE ARE sure that Jonathan Wallace is a brave man, but he admits that he has been struggling to summon up the nerve to ask his local library to obtain a copy of An Amateurâs Guide to Genitalia by P. W. Cribb.
This, despite the fact that it is a bona fide publication by the UK Amateur Entomologistsâ Society. It deals with the identification of moths, whose genital anatomy is often the key diagnostic characteristic in determining species.
PROPER capitalisation can be more important than you might think. Dave Zwolenski and a colleague were happily writing up a safety manual for their workplace, until they came across the injunction in a fire extinguisherâs instruction sheet: âRemove locking pin and Grasp Nozzle.â They spent 20 minutes looking for a Grasp Nozzle to remove, until sheepish realisation dawned.
FINALLY, John Elliott responds to our âunusual unitsâ theme by telling us that there is a valley in Australiaâs Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, ânamed for a very large unit of indefinite length. It is called Megalongâ.
Nice try, John, but we donât think this is what the Aboriginal people meant when they named it that.
