Your Ions. They Make Me Feel So... Confident

Recently a friend of mine - who wishes to remain nameless at this time - saw a product marketed at a CU Buffs football game. It's the Power Force Wrist Band.

I will note that the Power Force website is actually fairly unimpressive, particularly since it looks like a lot of the pictures are badly trimmed. But even more unimpressive is the description of the product in question:

Power Force's Innovative Products were developed to work with your body's natural inner force. Within each Power Force powerband are ions that work with your body's energy to give you confidence from within. Your inner force is limitless. Channel this force with Power Force powerband. Power Your Inner Force.

Emphasis mine. Now, it could be that I just haven't gotten far enough into chemistry, but what I do recall about ions tells me that they're ubiquitous, important, and have absolutely nothing to do with one's self-confidence¹. The phrases "your body's natural inner force" and "your body's energy" are essentially meaningless. They also strongly call to mind the justification behind many types of "alternative medicine," which is that the body has some sort of energy field that permeates it and can be manipulated. (Reiki is one example of this.)

I will also note that, upon inspecting the site, the products look eerily like another silly energy bracelet, the Power Balance Wrist Band, which claims:

Power Balance is based on the idea of optimizing the body’s natural energy flow, similar to concepts behind many Eastern philosophies. The hologram in Power Balance is designed to resonate with and respond to the natural energy field of the body.

The claims of Power Balance have been thoroughly taken apart by Dr. Harriet Hall at the Science-Based Medicine Blog and Device Watch.

To be fair, there is no solid proof that Power Balance and Power Force come from the same company; both are owned by LLCs of different names, and the two sites were registered to different people. Rather it's just the similarity of the claims and the look of the products that caught my attention. And frankly, it's an alt-med rip-off whether the silly plastic bracelet is claiming to optimize your body's non-existent energy flow or promote your "inner force" with ions. Both statements are the sort of thing that cause physicists (and biologists) to laugh uncontrollably or curl up in a corner, sobbing, because it's just not any fun to watch somebody torture your beloved science.

For more science and less sarcasm on this topic, I urge you to go read Stuart's post over at Exposing PseudoAstronomy.

Beyond the normal skeptic grumbling about ridiculous products, there's another reason this silly "ion" wrist band is upsetting. CU Boulder is most well known for two things - our football team, and our research. The University of Colorado at Boulder is a Research I University, which means we award a lot of doctorates and get a lot of federal research funding. We have three Nobel laureates in the physics department - a poster outside of the physics building advertises this fact.

So to advertise the brain power and research acumen of CU in one breath and then advertise a bunch of pseudoscientific crap in the next seems like a real problem to at least this little nerd.

It also sounded like a problem to my friend, who wrote an unhappy e-mail to the Chancellor of the University and the Athletics Director. The answer they got back was most unfortunate:

Dear [Name redacted at request of original e-mail recipient],
I asked our athletic department for an explanation for you regarding how products receive permission to use the CU logo and its endorsement. Buffalo Sports Properties owns the rights to all the advertising and sponsorship opportunities so this is their response.

" The company Powerforce went through all of the appropriate channels for approval to use the CU marks and logos. They applied for the CU license through CLC and based on the company's information, goals and objectives, a license was granted. Additionally, the company has paid for a sponsorship with CU Athletics, which is the product was promoted on the video board.

As for the actual product, there has been research about magnetic therapy and its effects on pain, stress, fatigue, and concentration. While I don't have access to our campus library (which may have better access to scientific research), here are two links to websites with articles about magnetic therapy.
http://www.articlesbase.com/medicine-articles/magnetic-bracelet-therapy-case-study-by-dr-carlos-vallbona-usa-2268067.html
http://www.magnetictherapyfacts.org/magnetic_therapy_research.asp

Thanks,
[Name and contact info also redacted by request of the e-mail recipient]



Thank you for your interest and support of CU.

Go Buffs!

Philip P. DiStefano, Chancellor
University of Colorado Boulder

Okay, I have no idea where this magnet therapy thing came from, considering the Power Force website only mentions ions. But lest we forget, magnet therapy is also largely crap as well. Dr. Steven Novella has a nice historical overview at the NeuroLogica Blog, which ends on this lovely research note.

I'll be writing my own e-mail to the office of the Chancellor shortly, just to add my voice. I ask that you consider doing so as well.

Oh, but it's just a silly little plastic bracelet. Really, Geek, what's the harm?





1 - Well, except maybe for the tungstate ion. It makes me feel all warm and squishy whenever I think about it.

MileHiCon and W00tstock: More Geek Than Should Be Legally Allowed

MileHiCon 42 was a lot of fun. At least the little bit that I saw of it was a blast. While I paid for a full weekend, I didn't make it on Friday since I was too busy punching things, and today I was helping someone move. (Or more accurately, waiting up in Westminster to help someone move who didn't get there until much later than expected due to a flat tire near the Wyoming border.)

So yes. Fun.

I got to go to several very interesting panels. One was a little workshop to make a two-sentence elevator pitch. I was very pleased with how mine turned out, since I tried to come up with one for Throne of Nightmares. I wrote my two sentence summary, the panel chopped about half the words out, and now it's quite lovely. Are you ready to witness its awesomeness? HOLD ON TIGHT!

Drew suffers a traumatic injury at the hands of his former friend, and emerges able to see interdimensional predators. Soon Drew must choose between godhood and a normal life, between saving his friend and saving himself.

BOOM.

Yes. I can sense that you wish to shower me with dirty handfuls of cash now. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Also I went to a panel about applying fiction skills to writing non-fiction. I was expecting it to be more about the actual writing process, but the panelists had a lot of useful advice on how and where to look for non-fiction work. So if I ever have time to do so, I will try to apply that advice. Some extra money would be quite lovely.

Late in the afternoon there was a fun panel about all sorts of misconceptions about fighting (of all kinds) that get perpetuated in books and film. Dan Dvorkin moderated it, and it was mostly a ridiculous amount of fun. I think "boisterous" or perhaps even "rowdy" would be a good word to describe the panelists.

And now... are you ready for the name dropping portion of this blog post? Because here it comes.

An event that I almost chickened out on - since I'm absolutely crap at meeting new people and not acting like a giant space moron - was "Speed Date a Science Fiction Author." I'm pretty sure that's what it was called. Anyway, I'm glad that I hung in and gave it a try. Something like 20 authors got packed into a room, and you could go around for three minute "dates" to get to ask them about their books.

I can't quite go down the list of all the lovely people I got a chance to (briefly) talk to. It took about thirty seconds to cover the "What of yours should I read" and then after that, conversations normally veered off into all sorts of random topics.

Ian Tregillis was the only one of the authors in the room I'd actually heard of, since I'd seen his book Bitter Seeds mentioned in io9 and it sounded like something I wanted to read. He was very sweet and seemed a little shy, but he was a lot of fun to talk to. His day job is as a physicist at the National Laboratories in Los Alamos (that's one hell of a day job) so I mostly just asked him questions about that. I'm really looking forward to reading his book.

Rather than repeat again and again that each and every one of these authors was nice, and charming, and lovely, I'll just say here that they all were. Then again, I wouldn't expect a writer willing to participate in an event like this would be an egotistical jerk. But yes, everyone was a lot of fun and I'm glad that I didn't wimp out.

I spent a lot of time before the event chatting with Donita K. Paul prior to the event. She's also doing an MDA lock up, so if you've got a few extra dollars, maybe consider helping her get out of jail a little quicker, since it's for a good cause.

I've actually sort of heard of Daniel Abraham before, to the extent that I've seen the book cover for his short story collection on a blog and thought it was very nice looking. (I'm a sucker for watercolors.)

Rob Rice was definitely the most snazzily dressed of the bunch. And yes, he was wearing exactly the same thing as he's pictured wearing on his website. He'd also been on the panel that did the elevator pitches, and he told me that he thought my novel sounded interesting. Squee!

Sarah Hoyt and the rest of the Hoyt trio were quite fun. I actually finished off the event talking with her son, who is in pre-med. We spent a lot of time mutually complaining about just how awful it is to be in school and have no time.

Melinda Snodgrass has the best last name ever. And I love her hair. And she wrote the script for the freaking "THE MEASURE OF A MAN" Star Trek: The Next Generation episode. I am unashamed of the amount of fangirling I did.

Nicole Kurtz was one I spent more than my three minutes talking with. She gave me a lot of really excellent advice. And she writes books where the heroines are best described as "sassy," which I just can't get enough of.

So that was at least some of the highlights of the speed dating. And I of course must also mention that I went to the one hour reading/Q&A that Paolo Bacigalupi did. I now now how to pronounce his last name, which means I'm at least one IQ point smarter than when I started out. (Clue: Not "bunchachalupas") He read a bit from his new novella, and talked a lot about his interest in environmental issues, economics, and the interactions between them.

I want to be Paolo Bacigalupi when I grow up. But with a last name people can pronounce. And still be a girl. But really, I just mean I want to be able to write stories that involve big issues like that, and still have them be compelling and fascinating stories.

I fled from MHC at five, since I needed to get home for the Not-Quite-But-Almost-W00tstock in Boulder. I was hoping to get to eat dinner beforehand, but that was not to be. There was construction on I-25 and so I got home barely in time for David to collect me for the ride up to Boulder.

W00tstock was definitely worth it. Paul and Storm were HILARIOUS. Phil Plait's litany of astronomical dick jokes was likewise hilarious. (And even funnier, that was the first time David had actually seen Phil lecture. So there you go.) And Adam Savage? Oh, the glee. He got the one standing ovation of the night for making an absolutely horrific Michael Jackson joke that almost caused me to pee my pants, I was laughing so hard.

The Captain's Wife's Lament took 23 minutes to finish. I know that's not a record, but I still feel like I did my part.

ARRRR!

Goodbye, Realms of Fantasy

Realms of Fantasy looks like it's gone for good now.

The more I think about it, the more depressed I feel. I've actually been a subscriber to RoF since its first issue. It was what motivated me to start really trying to write, in a half-hearted, teenaged kind of way. While I make a lot of jokes about my collection of rejection slips now, the first rejection that I ever got was from RoF, years and years and years ago. It was my goal to some day get a story published in the magazine, because I just knew I had it in me to write stories that could make someone laugh, or sniffle, or cheer, or cringe, or think like the ones in RoF did.

And now it's a goal that I will never attain. I guess it says something that until this day, I've kept alive one of the dreams that I had as a nerdy, awkward fat girl pecking away at the keyboard of a 486. I've come far since then, but not far enough. What I took out of high school was mostly a lot of stupid insecurities and confusion. But RoF remained something that my adult self could share with the awkward teenager of my memories, and it was without question wonderful.

I'm going to miss you, RoF. More than I can say.

Curse you, passive voice!

I've been reading a lot of scientific papers lately; I'm in two classes, and I'm trying to get in a sufficient amount of reading on topic before my research starts up. Easier said than done... for the most part, scientific papers tend to knock me out, even if I'm not tired when I start reading. And it's not a fatigue issue, anyway; if I'm reading something that I'm interested in, it doesn't matter how tired I am. I'll stay up until four in the morning just because I need to read One More Page.

I think papers just knock me out because, for the most part, they're badly written. There's a lot of jargon, but that's unavoidable in a specialized field. I think the bigger problem tends to be writing style. I'll go out on a limb and guess that most scientists aren't like me (writing fiction as a masochistic hobby) or my friend Evan (who has a BA in English). When I took my "writing in the geosciences" undergrad course - which I wasn't terribly impressed by - most of the other students were just miserable about being there, because they hated writing so much.

Actually disliking the process of writing is not going to help when it comes to producing a coherent, interesting paper. I suppose the more the writer feels like he or she is fighting with the English language, the more the reader will feel like it, too.

There are a lot of things that make scientific papers a giant slog to read. I think one of the major ones is the ubiquitous use of passive voice. In prose, passive voice is the kiss of death. It's something to be avoided entirely or used only sparingly, because it tends to interfere with the reader's ability to connect with the action.

Of course, scientific articles aren't fiction. Most of the time.

But the thing is, a lot of people who write scientific papers tend to use passive voice. I think it's because it makes them sound somehow more impartial - one of the big uses of passive is to remove the doer from a sentence. "A simulation was run" as opposed to "we ran a simulation." I can understand that desire, but it makes it damn hard to read and stay interested, particularly when it sounds like the methods section is just kind of running itself without any sort of human intervention.

I bring this up because I read an article in Geology over the weekend that didn't hammer the reader with passive sentences, and it was a treat to read. I was tired, and it didn't knock me out. I was interested. I felt engaged by the writing. Now, I can't really say too much about the subject itself, since it deals with climate modeling and that's not something I personally do. But the writing was definitely a step above most of the other articles I've read lately.

Go check it out for yourself, if you have Geoscience World subscription: CO2-driven ocean circulation changes as an amplifier of Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum hydrate destabilization (Lunt et al)

It's a sad statement on the writing in this field when article that doesn't make me fall asleep at my desk warrants an excited blog post.

The Weekend That Wasn't

I did survive the Rocky Mountain Rendezvous, though at this point I'm still not sure if that's an entirely good thing. Two days of questionable food and a ridiculous amount of stress have taken a toll on my insides. I'm a miserable human being at the moment.

I did all of the driving, which was awful in a special way. I normally drive a Honda Civic with a manual transmission. On the trip I drove a Suburban with an automatic transmission. It made me feel strangely bloated. I think the only reason I was able to handle the car without going completely out of my mind was that I've still got some memory of the ol' ambulance driving days. As it was, the defensive driving I learned then served me well when someone did a dead stop in front of me on Grand Avenue without signaling their intention to turn. I apparently did a masterful swerve into the right hand lane, which I got a lot of compliments for once my passengers had gotten their hearts restarted. I also apparently reached across the seat to hold on to my friend Gaby with my hand that wasn't clutching the steering wheel. I don't actually remember this, but Gaby insists it's true and it likely means that I'm turning in to my mother.

The Suburban and I disliked each other to the bitter end. I managed to lock my luggage in the car and then returned the key before I noticed, and I blame the Suburban for that as well. I had to drive up to the motor pool early this morning to retrieve my luggage. The woman behind the counter handed over the key without argument, though she did accompany it with a look that clearly said, "You are a moron." Which I suppose I richly deserved.

And if you haven't figured out how this works yet, the minute I do something mortally embarrassing and stupid, I have to tell everyone about it.

Generally I feel like the weekend was a colossal, stressful waste of my time, and I'm sorry to say that. I only had three interviews, so I should be grateful just for the chance at practicing my interviewing skills. However, once I got there I realized that the meeting was more supposed to be a chance for students to schmooze potential recruiters. And to say that I'm not much of a schmoozer is an understatement. A couple of my fellow students were Born To Schmooze, so to speak, and watching them in action just left me feeling like the awkward fat kid on the playground.

We'll see if I get an internship out of this, but I'm not going to hold my breath. I only feel like one of the interviews went really well. And everyone was surprised that I only got three, since I have five years of industry experience on my resume. Considering that in one of the interviews I was asked pointedly if I couldn't just go back to my old company and get a job this summer, I'm thinking it's something of a two-edged sword.

There was also some excellent highschool-style drama during the trip, which is a good reminder for me that while we all can't help but get older, we definitely aren't required to get any wiser. And I ruined my dress shoes somehow; the sole on one of the shoes developed enormous cracks in three places. Cracks bad enough that they cause me to wobble as I walk. This means that there is shoe shopping in my very near future. All I can hope is that the evil fascist conspiracy taking place in my digestive tract will finish me off before I get that far.

On a positive note, the Comfort Inn we stayed at had waffle irons in the breakfast room, so I got to make a fresh belgian waffle for myself two days in a row. And that's certainly worth something.

Meandering thoughts

The last two weeks have been absolutely ridiculous, in terms of my free time suddenly melting away and drying into a gross chalky powder like an unattended ice cream cone in the Mojave. I somehow got myself put in charge of a wad of department funding for the student trip up to the Rocky Mountain Rendezvous this weekend (an event where students go to beg petroleum companies to hire us and shower us with wads and wads of dirty oil money) so maybe that's what's been sucking all of my free time away.

What little time I've had left, I've used to do kung fu, or writing stuff. I just finished polishing up about five stories, so I'm bouncing those around and collecting an exciting new round of rejection notices to pin to the wall over my desk. No, I'm not kidding. I actually do that. It makes a rejection feel less like a punishment and more like an exciting collectors' item.

Last night I didn't actually make it home until midnight, since I was late at school working on a stratigraphy lab and finishing up my grading. I'm thankfully starting to figure out some grading strategies that make the process faster, or I probably would have ended up just sleeping in my office. Or I hear the couch in the undergraduate lounge is quite comfortable.

At least we're in to October now. This is my favorite time of the year; the September heat is finally going away, and we're getting cool, cloudy skies. It feels like autumn ought to feel. And of course the leaves turning makes it extra pretty.

Anyone starting the betting pool on if it'll snow this Halloween? My money's on yes, since we've had such nice weather the last several years. It can't last. And the kids need a good Halloween snow storm. Makes 'em work for the candy.

A child should be a choice

Today I hung my No On 62 sign on my patio door. I don't actually have a yard, so yard signs aren't really possible. I also got my Blue Book today, which I tore in to immediately. Mostly because I was curious about what the Blue Book had to say about Amendment 62, since the proponents of the measure tried to sue over it a couple weeks ago.

"They have not included a single word — not a single word — of our arguments," Garcia-Jones said.

Likely because the arguments of the proponents are either filled with emotionally charged language, which has no place in the exceptionally dry and matter-of-fact style of the Blue Book, or because the arguments were patently untrue.

Garcia-Jones said that the Blue Book's arguments against Amendment 62 are false because it could never, as the booklet states, cause women to be denied medical treatment for a miscarriage. The amendment could not, he said, put doctors and other health professionals at risk of legal action for providing medical care to women of childbearing age.

I will Give Garcia-Jones the benefit of the doubt and not accuse him of lying in this case. I think he simply does not understand the unintended consequences of banning abortion absolutely. Take a look at what's happened in El Salvador; doctors become reluctant to give care for miscarriages, since they may be afraid that they will be accused of causing the miscarriage, or the miscarriage itself might be the result of an illegal abortion. And frankly, I think if abortion were made absolutely illegal, doctors might very well not want to treat women of childbearing age because they may become pregnant at any time and not necessarily realize it. If you want to define a fertilized egg as a person, well, last I checked even if you accidentally kill a person, you don't just get a pat on the head and a wave to go on your merry way.

Of course, I'm naughty for even using the phrase "fertilized egg." One of the proponents said:

“I think it's important to note with the term fertilized egg, that's the same thing as using the N word for an African American,” said Mason. “Because it's a dehumanizing term and it's not based in science. The term would be a zygote, or an embryo, speaking of a unique individual.”

A fertilized egg is a zygote is a fertilized egg. ACOG certainly uses the term "fertilized egg" without blushing. I think it's really an attempt by the 62 proponents to up the emotional charge on the language, because they know that they can't win with either logic or science. I'm actually quite surprised Mason isn't insisting on calling it a baby from the instant of conception onward, but that's probably a little too extreme.

I'd like to throw one more quote at you, where the proponents try to squirm out of the fact that the amendment would ban many extremely popular forms of birth control, including my favorite, the pill:

True contraception prevents fertilization and personhood for pre-born babies will legally protect every baby from the beginning of his or her biological development," said Hanks in an e-mail. "Only those forms of "birth control" that extinguish a life that has already begun will be impacted. Many of the oral "contraceptives" have an action that makes the womb inhospitable to a developing embryo and hence, the new living, growing baby is prevented from residing where his or her Creator intended until birth."

This quote characterizes everything that is wrong with the position of the Amendment 62 proponents - and delineates why I don't just think they're idiots, I actively hate them.

To begin with, Hanks brings up the "Creator" and the Creator's intentions as a means to justify banning birth control. For those of us that don't believe in gods, this is an argument that holds no water. It makes the point very clear that Amendment 62 is about making a personal religious belief into a law that would control the lives of all women that live in Colorado.

But even more to the point, everything in that quote is about the baby. The woman is reduced to a womb, to "where his or her Creator" intends the baby to reside. In their efforts to grant "personhood" to a fertilized egg, they simultaneously remove "personhood" from the woman involved.

That is what makes me angry, and filled with hate, and very afraid. Since I first became aware of the abortion debate, I honed in immediately on the fact that efforts to ban abortion reduce women to less than full citizens, chattel who do not truly own and control their own bodies and can be forced by the state to complete a pregnancy. I don't appreciate my rights, my life, my existence being reduced to the state of one organ within my body.

And perhaps that's the cruelest joke of this horrible debate. These people have made me resent the very idea of being pregnant, have made me resent babies. Because I can't help but resent anything and anyone that would reduce my life from a glorious adventure that I (mostly) direct to an existence that is wholly outside of my own control.

I often see bumper stickers around here, that say: "It's a child, not a choice." I could not disagree more. It is a choice. It should be a choice. It must be a choice.

I have several friends that have children, who they love very much. Each and every one of these amazing women, whether the pregnancy was intentional or not, ultimately chose to change the course of her life and become a mother. That choice made the baby a cherished and loved member of the family, rather than a burden forced on the mother by the state.

I don't want to be a mother right now. I may never want to be. But I want that chance, to decide for myself. I want that choice. I want all women to have that choice. In the future, I want my niece to have that choice.

No on 62.