OLDER readers may remember the days when âholographyâ served as an all-purpose buzzword standing for âadvanced sciency thingâ. It seems, we fear, to be making a comeback. Gareth Davies, a medical physicist, was searching for information about the holographic process that can be used to encode data. What should he stumble across but an âessence for helping the body to holographically release the energy of acute trauma from the bodyâ. An accompanying picture of a âfrozen coniferâ is just one of a number of âonline healingâ pictures at .
Davies copied us in on the message he sent to the site, which said he was âcurious to know what you think the terms âholographicâ and âacute traumaâ mean, because while you use these (quite specific) scientific terms, Iâm pretty sure you will not find any randomised, placebo-controlled, double-blind trials that will demonstrate that looking at a picture of a fern with a bit of snow on it does anything at all to alleviate the effects of acute traumaâŠEven if it was a hologram (which it definitely isnât by the way), itâs not really an advisable course of action to stop serious bleeding. Your chances of surviving acute trauma would be substantially improved in the accident and emergency department of a hospital.â
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Like Davies, we await with interest the reply from New Millennium Flower Essences of New Zealand. Meanwhile, here is how their instructions for encouraging the body to release trauma âholographicallyâ begin: âWhile looking at photo of flower: Breath [sic] slowly and deeply, and imagine the old stale energy leaving your bodyâŠâ
It may even work, as long as the trauma is imagined, too.
SADLY, persuading people to stare at pictures of flowers on a computer screen does not generate much of an income, so how do the folk at keep the wolf from the door? Mainly, they market their own concoctions of âflower essencesâ in bottles, but they also sell other peopleâs products, including the âWillauTronic eSmog Chipâ. Surfing on over to we discover that this âuses the principle of destructive interferenceâ and for just $45 âcancels out the harmful parts of the mobile phone signalâ.
The information about this wonder cure is refreshingly â if perhaps unintentionally â honest. âCan you check to see if the device is operating by measuring the radiation levels?â is deemed a frequently asked question. The answer is, âNoâŠIt is only the negative âmessagesâ on the waves that are cancelled out using the inverse interference processâ. And another is, âCan âtraditionalâ medical instruments detect these positive results being experienced?â Unsurprisingly, âAt present there are no known reliable electrical instruments to consistently prove the positive effects of these devicesâ.
So you pays your money and you, er, guess whether itâs working.
THIS weekâs award for the âarticle we wish several people we can think of would readâ goes to âConsequences of erudite vernacular utilised irrespective of necessity: problems with using long words needlesslyâ by Daniel Oppenheimer of Princeton University (Applied Cognitive Psychology, DOI: 10.1002/acp.1178).
It concerns the ploy of beefing up your report or essay with polysyllabic words in the hope that the person grading it will think you are smart. But guess what? It doesnât work. Oppenheimer presented participants in his study with several essays that varied both in quality and in the number of long words they contained. Whether the essays were good or mediocre, the readers gave the unnecessarily wordy ones lower grades than the concise.
Come to think of it, the finding ought not be that surprising. Like practically every other psychology experiment ever performed, this one was done on college undergraduates, who probably use the long-word ploy themselves and know it when they see it.
A FRIEND of Feedback who lives in Camden, in north London, received an encouraging note from the local council about its new electronic parking permit. Presumably in deference to the expected longevity of the boroughâs residents, item 2 on the notice told him: âThis permit can only be used in vehicle(s) and is valid from 22/04/2006 to 30/12/9999 only.â
Learning French the Italian way
FINALLY, when Mike Steinbock wanted to expand his linguistic skills, he bought the AA Essential Italian Deluxe PC CD-ROM. Describing itself on the cover as âThe complete language learning solution right at your fingertipsâ, it went on to say: âWith AA Essential Italian Deluxe youâll be reading, writing and speaking French in no time at all.â
âDoes anyone know how this works?â Steinbock asks.
