"Dear Advertising, from Science" (No. 6)

One for the weekend. "When will it end?!?", I hear you shout. As soon as people stop reading it, I reply.

"Dear Advertising

I'm writing to you on the advice of my lawyers (I have about three). Please pass this message on to Marketing too, as almost all of this applies to him too. To be completely truthful, it wouldn't surprise me if you guys were the same person. I would say "I've never seen the two of you together" to support my argument, but seeing as you're both abstract concepts that's not surprising. But then so am I, so I can write to you and you'd better bloody read it or I'll come and find you.

Rest assured, I'll work out how, what with being Science and all.

Stop mentioning me in your work! Seriously, cut that crap out. We don't work together, I don't endorse you, if anything I wish you'd just piss off and die in a ditch, or some other filth-filled location, I'm not fussy. You make the money for all of Businesses evil henchmen, and they tempt my lot to go work with them on projects which are utterly meaningless. and generally detrimental to society. So to then claim I'm endorsing or somehow involved in the crap your flogging is just like a massive kick in the nether regions. Using my own leg. That you ripped off without asking.

I'll make this even simpler; I don't like you! I have to spend countless hours (on a shoestring budget) explaining to people the fundamental discoveries I've made, and they barely listen. You, however, get millions to spend and all the media exposure you want, and look what you do with it! And what's worse, it ends up making my lot look stupid!

Just to clarify, here's a brief list of things that, despite your claims, scientists don't spend any time researching;

• "What brand of cat-food cats prefer", especially when given a choice of '2'. A non-reasoning animal making an arbitrary choice between 2 options does not provide useful information. No, not even if it was a double blind. Anyway, aren't cats arrogant enough without extensive study into what particular type of reconstituted offal they will deign to consume? This is not a valid use of research funding.
• The design of the toothbrush is pretty much fixed now. A tweak here or there is fine, but one of us could do that on a Sunday morning while waiting for the centrifuge cycle to finish. It's not a series of monumental breakthroughs, as you seem to imply. And electric toothbrushes aren't much better. If you're the sort of person who can't be bothered to move your arm for a minute when cleaning your own teeth then they're screwed anyway, might as well glue a brush to a sex toy and call it good. And don't try the whole '4 out of 5 dentists recommend...' approach either. Dentists are overworked individuals who have to spend all their working lives fiddling about in the mouths of people who probably don't brush; they'd recommend daily bleach gargling if it made their lives easier.
• On a similar note, there aren't armies of scientists and technicians working on the next big development in disposable razor blade technology. It's a simple system, just add 1 more blade to the existing number then triple the price. Then wait until every posing vain idiot has bought one, then claim that, actually, 'the best number of blades on a razor is one more than we thought'. Repeat until disposable blades are bigger than the human face, then say 'oh no, wait, just the one blade is better'. Cycle repeats.
  

Just a few examples there of things I'm not involved with in any great way. But you also need to stop criticising the stuff I am involved with.

I've spent decades working with the food industry to make food more commercially viable, better tasting and long lasting, and then you imply that I'm basically pissing in it? Oh no, now you go and really emphasise 'natural' ingredients. Like what? Arsenic? Sulphur? Magma? Mmm, natural! And everything is natural at some point, before it undergoes processing, as I've not yet cracked the process of creating fresh matter from sunbeams or happy thoughts. Have you? I notice you never stipulate how 'natural' something is in relative terms, which isn't even slightly suspicious, of course.

I genuinely saw a bag of crisps the other day which boasted the claim 'Made of REAL ingredients'. I was reassured, those holographic crisps are never as good, and it's nice to have the possibility that we are all part of the Matrix ruled out by a fried potato snack.

And another thing, stop using my words when you clearly have no idea what they mean! 'High in polyunsaturates'? 'Contains Omega 3'? 'Rich in antioxidants'? You don't have a clue, do you? Why are these good things? Are they, in fact, good things? The phrase 'if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all' has never been one that I've adhered to, so I use my own.

"If you don't have any idea what you're saying, shut your stupid face!"

It's potentially dangerous, too. How many things do you say 'help boost the immune system'? 'Boost'? That must be a good thing, of course. What harm could an artificially increased immune system do? Tell me, are you familiar with the term Anaphylactic shock? I doubt it. But if I'm wrong, and you have discovered a manner to quickly and easily improve someones immune system, could you at least do the decent thing and let me know how? I have some AIDS sufferers who'd love to hear about it, and it would save a lot of time looking for bone marrow.

Speaking of discoveries, isn't it illegal to claim to have discovered something when you haven't? Case in point, that Oil of Olay crap where the secret ingredient is pentapeptides? A string of 5 amino-acids? If this is such an incredible achievement, can you point me in the direction of an organic compound that doesn't have any pentapeptides? Take your time. What does the next miracle cream contain? Revolutionary new 'atoms'? Ooh, wizz-bang!

But seriously, stop it. Stop telling people we're in agreement, stop using my words to confuse them and stop telling them that my work is bad for them.

There is some science to advertising, admittedly. You know how almost every system or process can be boiled down to a series of equations? Here's the equation for advertising.

N = n+1

N = Necessary number of things/services for an individual
n = Number they already posses.

There. That's it. All of advertising rests on this equation. Everyone needs one more of something, be it shoes, computers or level of whiteness provided by a washing powder.Of course, if they obtain one more of whatever it is, N become n. And so it goes on.

If this equation stops, you will cease to exist. I'm working with Maths to try and figure out how to make that happen.

Love and kisses

Science (BA hons)

P.S. That equation also seems to calculate the required number of films about 'Shrek', but I think this is a coincidence

email: humourology (at) live.co.uk
Twitter: @garwboy


N.B. After writing this, was reminded of several instances where advertising has been used as a force for good, such as the Atheist Bus Campaign. I really should have titled it a letter to 'advertising which incorrectly uses science for comemrcial gain', but that would have been quite unwieldy

Another Round up of Science Stuff

General perspective on Science Stories and whatnot:

Screw you, Icarus!

Solar powered planes, seem like a good idea to me. The Icarus thing is clearly flipped over here, as the closer the plane gets to the sun the more power it gets, and the longer it can fly. Nice. It's a military thing, which explains why they could afford the best technology and support. The company 'QinetiQ' were involved, and I was at a seminar by a representative of them once. They spent around £500,000 on their logo. Money to burn, clearly. But as with most military applications, I'm sure this will be available to the general public before long. Not sure what we'd do with lightweight planes that can stay in the air for the best part of a week. Any suggestions?

Face on, Face off!

Face transplant surgery is improving, with more successful results. We're still a long way from the John Travolta/Nicholas Cage style direct swap seen in Face Off (although a bit of that film they just skimmed over was where Travolta's character had to be slimmed down to replace Cages, but then Cage took Over Travolta's role, so he had to be fattened up, so was there some form of reverse liposuction going on?), but face transplants seem to be more of a reality all the time. It's good news for those people who suffer serious injuries obviously, but I anticipate some problems in future.

• Who's going to donate these faces? People are reluctant enough to donate organs, but whole faces? Would they be more or less pleased about a complete stranger walking around with their visage?
• I.D. theft is a common problem, what if this technique become freely available on the private market, and they find a way to make new faces from scratch, what's to stop people stealing your identity quite literally? From 'don't throw out old bank details' to 'just don't ever show your face to anyone'. Add to this the possibility of the propagation of human cloning and we'll be advised not to leave any DNA lying around anywhere. Maybe we'll get a future where people wander around wearing full length impermeable body suits and black bike helmets. might be funny.

Stem Cells from Teeth

You can obtain stem-cells from teeth now, apparently. That's nice, might get away from the controversy of using embryos. But now the tooth fairy seems like a legitimate career move. Can we expect genuine hard cash for kids teeth now? I've actually heard the phrase 'I'd give my eye teeth for that', will that now be a legitimate option rather than just an obscure phrase. Although a lot of the support for stem-cell research is based on the argument that they could be used to replace lost or damaged tissue from their own stem cells which won't be rejected by your body. Statistically, the one body part people are most prone to losing is teeth. But it's OK because they can make new ones from . . . wait . . .

Bloody birds, coming over here...

Because of global warming, birds are moving northwards sooner than usual, but still not fast enough. This is obviously bad for birds, but probably good for global warming proponents. Birds have specific migration patterns and behaviours, so this is bad for them overall. This suggests that birds from France may even end up in Britain t some point as the global temperature bands fluctuate. But I wonder how the BNP will react to this, because you know if this happens the tabloids will completely undermine the seriousness of it with headlines like "THOUSANDS OF FRENCH BIRDS HEAD FOR BLIGHTY". A massive mix of confusing emotions, hatred of dirty foreigners coming into our country, lust and pride combined at the thought of all the naive French ladies leaving those useless Frog men and looking for some proper British blokes, confusion at all the stereotypes coming to mind, with hairy armpits but Mediterranean passions, all to lead to confused disappointment as it's actually regarding small feathered creatures looking for food sources. Silly old Bigots.

And finally...

I don't really follow the regular news, so was surprised to such outrage as Gary Glitter re-enters the country. Do people really hate Glam Rock that much these days?
Of course, I'm aware that he's a filthy child molester. But I do question his sanity. I think he should be back in the UK, why should other countries have to deal with our perverts? Is it fine of foreign kids get horrifically abused, as long as their not good old British children? But Glitter seems to be worse than a regular paedophile, he's a smug paedophile. The article says he plans to start his singing career again. Good for him. Bare in mind this is the country where all kids have knives (apparently) and paediatricians get their offices torched because it sounds vaguely similar, I would love to see the audience at his next tour.

Also, I put the word paedophile twice (well, three times now) in this entry and mentioned child molesting a few times, so I may be getting some very questionable hits in a bit.