Idiot tiger in the tank

Those of us with any sort of scientific bent have groaned for years over the misuse of sciencey words in cosmetic adverts. Practically any cosmetic ad seems to try to do two things:

To use emotional trigger words like 'natural' to make us think the product was practically squeezed out of a fruit or leaf, rather than blended in a vast industrial complex. Also words like 'nourish' however ridiculous this is when talking about something like (dead) hair.
To use words that have real meaning in science, but removed from their context. So, for instance, putting 'DNA' into the description of your product, or some wonderfully obscure compound name like pro-boswellox-retinox-B.

Now an oil company has got on the bandwagon (not an entirely strange jump, since most cosmetics contain a fair amount of processed oil of one sort or another). When selling petrol, the oil companies have a real problem, because petrol is a commodity. We don't really care what brand it is, just how cheap it is. Esso's answer to this is to resort to the cosmetic world's plan B.

In recent ads, Esso makes a big thing of the fact that their new fuel (ok, petrol with a tiny bit of additive) works at a molecular level (specifically to help remove deposits). Now unlike many of the cosmetic adverts, this isn't just a use of magic words. The fuel does work at a molecular level... but then so does pretty well every chemical compound that isn't part of a larger structure. Okay there will be sub-molecular activity - hydrogen bonds, for example. And I suppose it's possible they could produce a fuel that undergoes nuclear decay and so works at the nuclear level. But otherwise how else is it going to work?

I am now going to drink my coffee. It works at the molecular level, you know. I might watch myself a classic Esso ad as I do so:

Comments

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp...

Murder by Candlelight - Ed. Cecily Gayford ***

Nothing seems to suit Christmas reading better than either ghost stories or Christmas-set novels. For some this means a fluffy romance in the snow, but for those of us with darker preferences, it's hard to beat a good Christmas murder. An annual event for me over the last few years has been getting the excellent series of classic murderous Christmas short stories pulled together by Cecily Gayford, starting with the 2016 Murder under the Christmas Tree . This featured seasonal output from the likes of Margery Allingham, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ellis Peters and Dorothy L. Sayers, laced with a few more modern authors such as Ian Rankin and Val McDermid, in some shiny Christmassy twisty tales. I actually thought while purchasing this year's addition 'Surely she is going to run out of classic stories soon' - and sadly, to a degree, Gayford has. The first half of Murder by Candlelight is up to the usual standard with some good seasonal tales from the likes of Catherine Aird, Car...

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5. However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor...

Search This Blog