JonStarbuck.co.uk

Monthly Archives for March 2008

Magnetic nonsense

[this page is getting a lot of hit at the moment, must be somthing to do with fuel prices, I'd apprecate your opinion and feedback, comment at the bottom of this page]

Too good to be true
You instinctively know what something is too good to be true, don’t you? And things which seem that way almost always turn out to be just that, too good too be true. I am constantly coming across products for sale on the internet which are such obvious bullshit, and yet someone must be buying them.

MagnoFuel
Recently, while researching for my book on bio-fuels, I am coming across loads of magnetic miricles. These things simply attach around your engine’s fuel lines, attached with zip-ties, and enhance the fuel magnetically; reducing pollution, increasing performance, reducing consumption, increasing range.

Sound too good to be true? Well obviously! If these things worked they would be fitted as standard to all new cars, in fact it would probably be compulsory.

The “science” behind them
The makers offer very pseudo-scientific language to explain what they do and how they work and then fail to back any of it up with any proof, beyond the dubious and anecdotal, that they have any effect whatsoever.

For example, ecozone.co.uk say here that:

“Magno-Fuel has been tested to give fuel savings of up to 15%, provides better combustion and more power from your engine while reducing pollution.”

Tested by who? When? Where? Or am I meant to just take your word for it?

“Only after a short time will oxygen molecules be embedded between the fuel molecules, ensuring a better combustion.”

What does thins even mean?

And they go on to say:

“Bloch and Purcell were awarded the Nobel prize for their work on magnetic fields on solid, liquid and gas substances.”

Sure they were, Physics prize in 1952 “for their development of new methods for nuclear magnetic precision measurements and discoveries in connection therewith”, what does thins have to do what the MagnoFuel? Nothing whatsoever, that is what!

Other magnetic bullshit
One can also buy magnetic toilet descalers, magnetic washing machine descalers, an amazing array of magnetic jewelery and loads of other miracle magnetic gizmos avalabel to the gullible, from water treatment and fuel treatment to health (for you or your dog or cat or horse); there is tones of it and all of it complete bullshit!

And even more nonsense
EcoFlow and MagnoFlow and BioFlow, BioGuard pendants to protect you from your computer, BioPhone to protect you from your cell phone, Vitaflow for your water, Motoflow for your fuel, Thermoflow for your boiler/furnace and (my favorite) Vinaflow to protect you from your wine!

How can this be legal?
Well how can this be legal? I have no idea, I guess it isn’t. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof, this is blatant modern day snake oil, a scam, a con……. it is complete bullshit!!

Written on 20 March 2008 by Jon under Bad Science, Eco Nonsence, Miscellaneous, Myths & poor logic with 1 Comment

Eco Balls are no better than nothing, they are just another eco-scam.

I have been running a little, admittedly unscientific, experiment; I don’t use any laundry liquid, or other detergent, when washing my clothes and I have not noticed if they come out of the wash any dirtier than if i did use detergent. They don’t come out of the machine smelling of detergent and fabric softener, but they don’t come out smelling dirty either, they just smell of nothing much and appear clean.

There are exceptions, heavily soiled clothes do not come up clean, but how much of ones washing is heavily soiled and I can always use some detergent if I need to, the point it that about 95% of the time I don’t.

There is a product on the market called Eco Balls, it has been about for years, it claims to use “ionized oxygen” to get your clothes clean, no need for any nasty washing machine detergents. All you have to do is pop them into the machine along with your clothes and, as-if-by-magic, they come out clean. There are exceptions, apparently, heavily soiled clothes need some detergent, as well as the Eco Balls, to get them clean.

According to the literature they “produce ionized oxygen that activates the water molecules naturally and allows them to penetrate deep into clothing fibers to lift dirt away” but they fail to provide any evidence to support this claim, let alone explain what this pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo means. I have emailed then several times to ask, but they choose not to answer.

Somehow Eco Balls simultaneously reduce your need for detergent by 85% and cost you only £0.03 per wash. Eco Balls, it seems, don’t last forever, they have to be refilled every once and a while, not that there ire any chemicals getting into the wash, of course, so I guess they must just vanish. They cost £35 and last 1000 washes, that is £0.035 per wash not £0.03, a 20% inaccuracy in their maths. Additionally, they “reduce the cost of detergent by 85%”, so you are still using 15% as much detergent as you were? I cant make any sense of it, can you?

Apparently they also kill all sorts of nasty dangerous organisms which I did not know where in my clothes; frankly after reading the list of nasties in my wash-basket it is amazing that I am alive at all, for not using either detergent or Eco Balls, just forty-degree water.

One can also now buy Dryer Balls which apparently do way with the need for softening dryer sheets and fabric softeners. Again, no evidence or mechanism to explain how they work or how they differ in performance from, for example, tennis balls, or indeed, not using them at all. If you are looking for a green way to dry your clothes I recommend a washing line.

According to ecoballsdirect.co.uk Eco Balls are made by ecozone.co.uk - neither company has responded to my requests for explanation of how their product (or indeed, any of their other miracle products such as their magnetic toilet descaler or magnetic washing machine descaler) work, or any scientific data on them, or any peer reviewed studies carried out on them.

Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof these are blatant modern day snake oil, an eco-scam designed to part well meaning consumers from their cash, if they are not then feel free to sue me. I dont understand how this can be legal.

Written on 19 March 2008 by Jon under Bad Science, Eco Nonsence, Myths & poor logic with No Comments

San Francisco - March 2008

Started the month on a weekend, went cycling all over the city again with Amanda on the 1st - visited Coit Tower (good free stuff, murals on the ground floor and the obligatory car park on the top of a hill), up Lombard Street and Haight Street (which I hate). Got visited By Chris and Tara on their way back from New Zealand, which was such fun too.

Saturday night was a very sober 1990s-style-party in Fairfax, Marin. Not like I expected it to be at all, but very worthwhile and good to get out of the city.

Sunday we took another ride down to Heron’s Head Point and Hunter’s Point. Funny wasteland corner of The Bay, old industry awaiting cleanup and redevelopment.

Tuesday was this month’s free museum day but I did not get it together to go visit any.

Thursday was Balken Beatbox the the Filmore, but they canceled due to visa problems which is very odd as I thought they were all from New York.

Thursday the 13th is Gogol Bodello at the Warfield, Gypsy Punks in San Francisco. I can’t tell you how good they were, so amazing (awesome, even), they did something like two hours, maybe more, of non-stop high-energy tunes, loved every moment of it, spent half the gig right at the front, it was like being eighteen again, came out at nearly midnight dripping wet from (other people’s) sweat and came home to some weird fog over downtown.

On the 15th and 16th we hired a car from Rentawreck (first company to give us what we asked for, a small car!) and visited Hopland, one-hundred miles north of San Francisco, where the local equivalent of CAT is, The Solar Living Insinuate. There I took lots of Biodiesel pictures, visited a whole load of local eco-houses and hiked a little in the mountains of California. We also took in some Redwoods and drove the coast road home, Highway One, which is a much slower route but much more worthwhile, winding along the dramatic Pacific coast.

Eco-house in Hopland:

Drive home, through redwoods:

Hermit’s house in Nothern California:

Biodiesel stuff at the Solar Living Institute:

Amanda went to Washington DC for the last week of March 2008 leaving me home alone in the city over the Easter weekend. I went to The Opel 6 Year Anniversary Event at Temple SF with Nicola and Giorgia, walked home on my own at 5am which was a spooky experiences as, with the exception of one or two rough sleepers and the odd person going to/from work, I had what felt like the whole of downtown San Francisco to myself.

Amanda came home in time for the weekend of the 29th and 30th but we did nothing much but drink a few beers with Kate D who was in town for the weekend, eat a fabulous Mexican breakfast at 22 & South Van Ness, and later we just watched videos….. a lazy end to the month.

Written on 17 March 2008 by Jon under Miscellaneous with No Comments

Bicycle helmets

Recently I rediscovered cycling, I have been off my bike too long but I am back in the saddle (and motorised-vehicle-less) now trying to do an hour a day on the streets of San Francisco.

The law here in California with regard to cycle helmets is similar to the law elsewhere, if you are a child then you have to wear a helmet but if you are an adult you can choose for yourself. In countries where compulsory helmet wearing for cyclists has been introduced (Australia for example) cycling reduced, people became less likely to use bikes at all.

I don’t wear a helmet because I hate them, I hate wearing them and I hate having this extra thing to worry about when i am not on the bike. The chances are if I had to worry about a helmet i’d probably not take my bike. It is my choice and, like everything else in life, it is a calculated (well, estimated) risk.

Here in the US it is other cyclists that tell me I should be wearing a helmet, in the UK it is almost always non-cycling car drivers. There is no one way of looking at the figures, you can fudge them both ways by looking at injuries-per-hour-traveled or per-mile-traveled, or count hospitalisations or whatever, there is a statistic to suit your cause. The truth is that car drivers and walkers suffer fatal head injuries too, lots of them, and people dies in airplane crashes and skiing accidents and from just being alive in the first palce (after all, we all die sooner or later).

Hidden in all the cycling deaths and injuries is what I presume to be the majority of the data, the dangerous cyclist. This video shows one type in NYC and I see these guys in SF every day (and I am in truth kind of envious of them).

And what about all the people who live here in San Francisco? there is a 60% chance of there being a massive earthquake in the next 30 years; check out todays probability here.

I have never ridden a bike in place where drivers, with exceptions, are more cautious than here in SF. I am a relatively cautious cyclist, but i am trying to get some excercise in too so I am not so slow either.

Which brings me to my final point, just how likely am I to die from NOT cycling?

Do the health benefits of cycling out weigh the risks? Obesity, heart desiease and the like are far more likely to finishg me off before my time than an hour a day on my bike; in fact an hour a day on my bike, in all probiblity, is likey to save me.

Now I am off out for today’s hour, if i write no more you will know what killed me.

Great articles and more (better?) info here and here and here .

Written on 09 March 2008 by Jon under Myths & poor logic with No Comments

Why is the BBC iPlayer so crap?

I have been trying a little experiment with the BBC’s iPlayer, the radio player not the TV thing.

I am staying in San Francisco right now and I am missing Annie Nightingale’s two hour weekly slot. It is on air live at a more convenient time here in the US that it is in the UK (because of the time difference), but still I can’t manage to get it together to listen live, but that does not matter as the BBC have Listen Again!

Just a few clicks and I get Annie any time I like, right?

No. It is great when it starts, 250kbps (than is the speed at which the data is arriving at my computer) or more but as soon as it starts playing, nice and clear audio, but the speed drops quickly to the point it becomes so compressed and distorted that I have to turn it off (after about 5 minutes, at about 70kbps) - and if I don’t then it just gets slower and slower until it stops itself.

This is depressing, frustrating, boring and pointless. I used to have this problem when I lived in West Wales too, but i put it down to the internet being rubbish in such a rural location. But I am in San Francisco now - you know, California, Google, dot-com, Silicone Valley - and it is exactly the same.

What is the point it the BBC offering a service that does not work?

Just for comparison, Pirate Cat FM in San Francisco, who have zero budget, seem to be able to manage streaming media that works (and before you say “but they are just down the road from you!” like the BBC, Pirate Cat’s server is in the UK).

Meanwhile, I also listen to the BBC’s Today Program on the same technology as when I want to listen to Annie Nightingale (maybe i am odd, but that is not the point) and its audio is, more often than not, consistent and clear.

For now, does anyone know where I can download Annie’s show as an mp3 every week?

Test on 11th March 2008
Stared at 250kbps, 15 minutes later it is at 18kbps and sounds terrible.

Test on 12th March
Fine, all day, listened to show after show after show.

Written on 05 March 2008 by Jon under Miscellaneous with No Comments

Ecotopia and their Facebook Forest

Ecotopia, not the fine people who cycle across Europe every year but the peddlers of “environmental and ethical shopping” (an oxymoron if ever i heard one), have created the “Facebook Forest”, a place on Facebook where, in return for our joining up and inviting our friends to join up, Ecotopia will plant one tree for every fifty of us who join up.

Ecotopia are one of a large number of companies selling eco-nonsense, blatant eco-cons and fraudulent eco-snakeoil products. While I am sure some of the products Ecotopia sell are great, they also sell EcoBalls, magnetic toilet descallers, magnetic fuel savers, Aqua Balls and Magno Balls; none of these products offer a any proof that they work, indeed i am quite certain that they don’t work, they are a cynical exercise in extracting money from well meaning people. More info on what I think of EcoBalls here and the magnetic products here.

Ecotopia were shortlisted for an award for Observer Ethical Awards as Ethical Business of the Year, but they seem to have been removed.

At face value the Facebook Forest seems a worthy enough cause, does it not, or at worst a fairly benign, albeit cynical, marketing exercise? However, they came in for a lot of hard questioning and criticism on the Facebook site (at least in part from me, but from many others too) which they chose to edit and delete rather than publicly respond to. Sure some of people were out-and-out nasty but others, such as myself, were not; we asked fair questions and Ecotopia deleted them. Funnily enough this annoyed people and they posted their outrage on the Facebook Forest site, resulting in further deletion until eventually Ecotopia withdrew the facility to post messages to their page entirely.

Now the FacebookForest page of Facebook is rather dull and lifeless because the “wall” and the “discussion” sections have been removed, making it a very one way experience; a very old school, read only internet rather than the bold, two way, “web 2.0″ Facebook experience.

It seem obvious to me, though clearly no to them, that it is a bad move to use social networking sites and viral marketing to jump on the environmental bandwagon to try to sell pseudo-eco ideas and products. This is presumably because they don’t see the irony of selling the idea of planing trees, with Ecotopia-branding on them, to somehow offset their/our guilt for having bought into the oxymoron of eco-consumerism and selling eco-shit, while trying to get us to attract our friends to their web site, presumably to sell them things they otherwise would not have bought and do not need and probably don’t work. They seem to be muddling the altruistic idea of planting trees with the not so altruistic idea of marketing crap, and they have chosen the wrong place to do it.

Problem for Ecotopia is that if they censor people on the internet in one place then the censored material will pop up elsewhere on the internet, where they can’t do anything about it. Anyone who would like to comment on this is welcome to, please fill in the form at the bottom of the post.

[ Facebook Forest on Facebook and Facbook Forest on Ecotopia's site. ]

Written on 01 March 2008 by Jon under Bad Science, Eco Nonsence with No Comments

Earthquake Appeal

An Appeal For Your Help

A major earthquake measuring 5.3 on the Richter scale, hit in the early hours of Wednesday morning at 12:56am. Epicentre: Barnsley, England. News of the disaster was swiftly distributed to all betting offices by the town’s 35000 racing pigeons, as victims were seen wandering around
aimlessly muttering “What the chuff wer that?” and “Na then, wots guin on?”.

The earthquake decimated large inhabited areas of Hoyland near Barnsley causing £30 worth of damage. Several priceless collections of Franklin Mint and mementos from both Tenerife and the Spanish Costa’s were damaged beyond repair. Three areas of historical burnt out cars were disturbed in nearby Kendray. Sounds levels reached an almost unbearable peak during the quake when an estimated 14,000 Staffordshire Bull Terriers began barking in synchrony.

Many locals were woken well before their Giro arrived. Radio Barnsley reported that hundreds of residents were confused and bewildered, still trying to come to terms with the fact that something interesting had happened in Barnsley. One resident, 15 year old mother of three, Tracey
Sharon Braithwaite, said, “It was such a shock my little Chardonnay Madonna came running into my bedroom crying. The twins, Tyler-Morgan and Megan-Storm slept through it all. I was still shaking when I was watching Jeremy Kyle the next morning”. Locals were determined not to be bowed as looting, muggings and car crime carried on as normal.

So far whilst the British Red Cross has managed to ship 4000 crates of Sunny Delight to the areas to relieve the suffering of stricken locals, rescue workers searching through the rubble have found large quantities of personal belongings including child benefit books, CSA claim forms and
jewellery from Elizabeth Duke at Argos, plus bone china from poundstretcher.

Can you help?
Please respond generously to our appeal for food and clothing for the victims of this disaster.
Clothing is needed most of all - especially
* Burberry or Fila baseball caps
* Kappa tracksuit tops (his or hers)
* Shell suits (female)
* White sports socks
* any product sold at Primark
* new dog leads suitable for Staffordshire Bull Terriers

Culturally sensitive food parcels are harder to put together, but your efforts will make a difference. Microwave meals, tinned beans, Netto ice cream and cans of Colt 45 or Special Brew are ideal. Please do not give anything that needs peeling.

Remember
* 22p buys a biro for filling in compensation claims
* £2 buys chips, crisps and a blue fizzy alco pop drink for a family
of 9
* £5 will pay for a packet of B & H and a lighter to calm a child’s
nerves.
* Urgently required: Tinned whippet food. Bones for Jack Russells.

Please do not send tents for shelter. The sight of such posh housing will cause discontent in the surrounding South Yorkshire communities of Rotherham and Sheffield.

Written on 01 March 2008 by Jon under Miscellaneous with No Comments