hopefully this means they’ll take them off the air
August 18th, 2008 by Ψ*ΨCBC readers in the US: surely you’ve seen those horrible commercials for Kinoki foot pads? The things that suck out all sorts of toxins through your feet? CBC usually reserves pop culture references for titles that reference songs that stick in your head, but these fucking commercials actually make me angry enough to merit a post.
Don’t know what I’m talking about? Oh, wait…here it is for everyone who hasn’t been subjected to the ridiculousness. First reader to point out all the hideous misspellings gets a prize!*
The concept is fucking ridiculous. Anyone with something in the empty space between their ears should also realize that FEET ARE OFTEN DIRTY AND SWEATY, which is why washing your socks is highly recommended.[1]
In case you missed it, there was a brief mention of them on NPR today. (Seriously, by “brief” I mean “less than five minutes long”.) Someone digested used & unused foot pads with nitric acid and then (I can assume the “green glowing instrument” is what I think it is?) threw them into an ICP-MS. Aaaaand…nothing of interest. Just as we expected.
Chemophobia is all around us, y’all. It’s especially prevalent in the hippie population. You know who I’m talking about. They’re easy to identify. Look for reusable shopping bags, organic produce, a certain affinity for alternative healing, and lots of hemp. Hippies may drive Priuses (if affluent) or bicycles (if not), and may also be unnaturally bendy because of all that yoga.[2] If you’re aligned with any environmentally conscious groups, or shop at farmer’s markets, they are likely already a part of your daily life. Don’t be afraid, though: most are harmless and tend to seek ways to use their energy constructively. However, there’s a lot of misinformation out there, and it’s easy for anyone (not just hippies!) to be misled. So: next time someone you know forwards you an email scare along the lines of “Microwaved water kills plants!”…send back a well-informed reply that explains why it is senseless. Or something along those lines. Whatever it takes to combat the endless BS, because if I see one more Kinoki commercial, my head will asplode.
* No, sorry, I’m lying. There’s no prize. But you’ll appease the spelling gods.
[1] In the case of my boyfriend, “often” should be replaced with “always.”
[2] This description is largely based upon one of my housemates. She is a super awesome person “with impecabble fashion sense” (Excimer’s words, not mine, but very accurate in any case). Lest she think I’m making fun of her in a mean-spirited sense, half of it applies to me as well.
I’ll take crap like this over ANY political commercial right now. Both are full of crap and designed to appeal to idiots who can’t think. At least the Kinoki commercials make me laugh at the fucking morons that fall for that crap.
Holy Shit. Dirt on my feet. I must have cancer!!!! WTF!
Crap!!!
I didn’t say “crap” enough.
Crap, crap, crap!!!!
You should be like me and live in a non-battlefield state. Very little in the way of political advertising. Either that or they just don’t buy time during MonsterQuest.
Also, I enjoy how, in the commercial, they highlight an area of the foot pad that’s particularly dark, circle it, and label it as “methanol”. Really? Huh. I guess that poor, attractive blonde’s alcohol dehydrogenases just aren’t working.
Geez, am I the only one getting the audio on like super-ultra-crazy-fast mode?
ANCIENT JAPANESE REFLEXOLOGY! THEN IT MUST BE RIGHT!
I just want to say I have used foot pads (at face value of course).
I have amazingly clean smelling feet, but I doubt they are good for anything else.
I also used reusable bags because plastic bags are annoying.
I wonder if there’s ANYTHING out there that could make James’ feet smell amazingly clean. Doubtful…
I’m becoming a fan of the reusable bags too. The plastic ones are extremely handy for throwing out used cat litter, though, so I’m at a loss for ideas there. Suggestions?
You could try the empty litter boxes – I usually change the cats’ litter out once a month, though, and after a month a month of used cat litter is likely to be aromatic. I use the plastic bags from stores for litter.
I’ve started using little biodegradable bags made from corn for cleaning the litter box. They cost more than (free) plastic grocery bags but I figure they’re a little better for the environment.
It is ironic to me that of the recyclable pastics, polyethylene is the most widely handled one – it’s what milk jugs and soda/ water bottles are. BUT, those plastic bags are, too, but are unrecyclable because they tangle and clog the shredders used in the recycling plants. There ought to be some other way to deal with them that gets all of that usable polyethylene into the system again and again.
I recommend bread bags, and take a collection from your friends.
Psh. Everyone knows the best way to purge yourself with toxins is with Indian food. And it’ll pretty much kill off anything else lying around in your body, too.
mmm. naan.
I think that’s the reason why we make our pilgrimage to the curry place for Friday Curry Lunch. Mind you, if you want to apply the same reasoning I drink Gin and Tonic just to make sure I don’t have malaria…
too spicy. maybe this is why i’m sick?
You can build up your tolerance gradually. Eat mild versions first or have non-spicy dishes with portions of spicy ones. Capsaicins are a very interesting class of compounds and have show anti-carcingenic properties, at least in lab rats. When fed the endo-epoxide of benzo[a]pyrene, the active DNA adduct forming compound, there were zero stomach tumors formed when capsaicins were added.
(cut and paste general displeasure)
(cut and paste general displeasure)
(cut and paste general displeasure)
You’ve nailed one of my pet peeves. CHEMICALS are all bad. To the point that people who know better advertise things like “Chemical Free Beer” (which I’m sure Chemgeek would agree takes all the fun out of beer), or locally, H2Oregon’s “Chemical Free Water”, which must be much like the aforementioned Chemical Free Beer.
Wow, I’m feeling bitter. Maybe I need to use my ozone generator to remove all the negative ions from my room…
The corollary :If it is natural, it cannot have chemicals. These people would shit if they compared “organic” produce versus non-organic. These plant hydrids for some organic growing are now so high in “natural” insecticides that workers must wear gloves to avoid skin rashes.
Yeah, you know what else is natural? benzo[a]pyrene. aka Mr. Cancer Molecule. Do you eat toast? Yes? You’re fucked.
Toast, grilled or roast anything – not just meat as the vegans would have you believe, smoked foods, just about anything cooked to browning, in fact. Benzo[a]pyrene is only one of the nasty PAHs produced.
My response to the phrase “all natural ingredients” is “Contains absolutely no supernatural ingredients!” Anyone for ectoplasm?
Similarly, I’ve been tempted to label a bottle of hexanes “100 organic”…
Most of foot smell is the various carboxylic acids, mainly those from C6 to C12. If you’ve ever done work with any of these, you know that already. The feet are no better than any other sweat-producing area of skin at removing toxins, other than those carboxylic acids they are so adept at producing.
Such psuedo-science is rife, especially in the US where the culture is inherently Luddite and anti-science (I love sending y’all off to a dictionary!). My friend Carl Sagan wrote a great book about a dozen years ago called The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark that describes why the US is so ripe for UFOs, Bigfoot, creationism, and all of that ilk of beliefs based on anti-science. Mainly our education system is so laissez faire that most people choose to avoid science and math. Their ignorance leaves them ripe for the shamans to explain that lightning is the gods requesting an offering.
Don’t go knocking farmers markets. The stuff is way better than what you get in the grocery store, and by “better’” I mean better in the only way that matters: TASTE. And not because it’s organic or local but because it’s been picked fully ripe in the last day or so. It’s that simple.
Yeah, and our farmer’s market has beer. And BBQ. Therefore, alcohol and PAHs! Whooooo!
Beer is one of the best sources of dietary chromium, in a form readily taken in and usable by the body. So beer is health food.
*jealous*
Maybe I should move.
I’m not knocking farmers markets! I shop there!
I figure you shopped there, otherwise you wouldn’t have been able to describe the people. But like you (I imagine), I always feel like I stick out as an outsider. Of course, if anybody from the RNC shows up in 2 weeks, then they would rapidly take that position from me. But what are the odds of that?! The state legislature passed a special law so that during the convention, closing time can be as late as 4 AM instead of the usual 1 AM. Given the late night drunks, the protesters and the huge mass of imported police/private security/Coast Guard (patrolling the Mississippi river!), please pray for us.
We have a large Hmong population in the Twin Cities that grows some exotic vegies that I’d love to try, but the rest of my household is not that adventurous.
I live in the East Bay of the San Francisco bay area, the universal center of hippiedom with both SF and Berkeley. A lot of those things, like farmers’ markets and reusable bags, are now mainstream here. You only see hippies at the farmers’ market in Berkeley, looking for macrobiotic bean sprouts. Those two things are good offshoots of the hippie attitudes. REcycling heavily is another. I hate going to places where they do not recycle glass, paper, aluminum, et cetera.
Welcome to OH. Columbus charges to recycle – I have no idea why (I thought that even if recycling itself cost money, the waste diverted from landfills and the cost of landfill space made up for it, but…). Columbus is an environmental paradise.
Oh, and we use lots of coal. Note to PA coal miners: just because you put a green light bulb on your coal advocacy signs or say its “green and clean” doesn’t mean it is. When you actually get a sequestrated coal-to-electricity plant going, please call me (and tell me how much its power costs).
Not to mention how they, uh, get coal. People in Kentucky tend to get a bit angry about that, ammirite, psi?
The same is true for shale oil, if that ever gets developed enough to make it economical. Whole counties in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and Montana will be transformed. One big difference, though. The shale is very friable and expands to a fine powder after extraction, so there will be even taller, but softer mountains there, at least until a chinook wind takes them into the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas.
The leftover ash- if the char is burned through enough to have low carbon content – can be used to make cinderblocks or other building materials. The shale ash has a ratehr high water-soluble heavy metal content, so the best way to get rid of it is to mixt it into concrete.
Shale mining/processing has just as nasty impact as coal mining but the shale oil yields are far worse than with the oil liquefaction.
if it’s NOT burned long enough to have low carbon content, isn’t there some concern about air entraining agents?
Honestly, it depends on the mining practices. There are ways to go about surface mining that are sane and reclaimable, and then there is mountaintop removal. Go tour a site and talk to some of the locals. It’s depressing to find crumbling bridges where coal trucks use community roads instead of alternate routes. Valley fills are fucking disgusting. Diesel fuel doesn’t belong in drinking water, but it happens. There are small towns where residents can’t go outside because the dust from the coal trucks is so thick. Never mind that the trucks themselves are often overloaded and speeding (see also: nearly killed one of my cousins). The worst of it might be that, in some areas, people are convinced that mining is their savior–it brings jobs–and that any attempt to force companies to comply with existing regulations will drive away employment opportunities.
/soapbox
Hey, you brought it up…
A friend of mine is an attorney for the commonwealth, and at one time, his job was suing the bejeebus out of coal companies for environmental damage. It never seems to stop the worst of them. There’s just too much money involved.
I don’t get it. What’s wrong with reusable bags? The question of whether recycling is always environmentally friendly is valid, but reduction in consumption seems pretty foolproof. That said, I admit to using reusable bags because I don’t have a car, and there’s nothing worse than the thin plastic handles snapping and bringing down a glass jar of olives crashing down on the pavement as you walk home.
I fucking need a car.
Clarification: Thin plastic handles on the disposable plastic shopping bags. I have had no problems with the reusables.
Yeah, the reusable bags are much more hand-friendly. Unfortunately, they are not catproof. One of mine now has a rather inconvenient hole.
Please! At least do some research as to how they work, because they actually work exactly as they were designed.
…By this, I mean the pads contain a material that, when wet, turns brown and expands. Seriously.
But do they draw toxins out of your body any more than those toxins your feet secreet anyway? You could put just about any acid-base indicator in there and the acidity would give the acid-version color. I’d rather have mauve, vermillion, or puce over boring brown.
[...] Toxic sucking footpads don’t work. This must be big news, because both Carbon Based Curiosities, and Uncertain Principles have posts about [...]
Hmm. Sorry about that. That is annoying. I just wanted the two or three readers of my blog who might not read yours to come see the video here. Feel free to delete that comment (and this one). I’ve managed to turn of the pingback feature on my blog now.
’sall good, yo. Blogs are fine, spamblogs aren’t. Pingback away!
Do they still work if you sleep standing on your head? Or if you get *REALLY* pissed. Cos if they take the edge of a hangover well then…bad science be dammed!
Sorry. Translation for non-UKians: Pissed = drunk, sloshed, shitted, rat-arsed, hammered, pie-faced, trashed, tipsy, blotto etc.
Ah, caught it!
They spelled “Alcohol” as “Alchohol” I used to see it all the time when I graded lab reports, clearly they weren’t in my class
Of course it brings up the question, why would you have methanol and isopropanol in you system? Must be made for chemist or something.
Good catch! But there are at least two more.
Went though it again (yeah, gots me some free time) they used “PCB’s” which isn’t correct either, but I just couldn’t find anything else, curses!
Alcholol (on the same SLIDE as alchohol! they misspelled the same word twice! differently! on consecutive lines!) and thullum. The last one is debatable, since there COULD be an i lurking in place of the second l, but I don’t think that’s the case (IIRC, the TV commercial had much better resolution and it was easier to pick out the mistakes).
Wow, didn’t see that second one, figure that if they’d get wrong on the first one that the same was true for the second as well. Teach me to scan over stuff
Saw the “thullum” but thought it might be due to the resolution, we may have to send that to the committee to get their opinion 
AlchoLOL? I think that’s what happens when the undergrads return to town (this weekend! yikes!)
Oh, Jes, I think coming to California is probably a bad idea for you.
Nooooo! I like it out there! (See the last bit of [2]: I should have made it more clear that I like making fun of myself)
Different parts of California can be very different, but Santa Barbara is an enclave of northern California thinking in southern California. It used to be an “artists’ community” way back when.
I want to make a shirt saying something along the lines “This person contains chemicals known to do this and that etc.”
http://liquidcarbon.livejournal.com/26089.html
it always shocks me how americans don’t reuse their shopping bags …
and there’s nothing better than bike riding
i am sorry this is the only serious reply to your post. but just to say it again: caring about the environment is not the same as stupidity …
Oh, I reuse my shopping bags. Two words: cat. litter.
for a moment I was worried you’d say “the bags taste just like a plastic chicken”
Recycling: I would love to print Christmas greeting cards on brown recycled paper, with a tiny print on the back “contains 60% of post-consumer dietary fiber”
hells yeah! try it with THREE!
SO MUCH MORE CAT SHIT OMG
speaking of which…
did NO ONE catch that I was being facetious?!
seriously.
how am I supposed to catch that you are facetious if I don’t even know what that word means
You’re in america. Learn to speak American.
Is that eastern Kentuckian or Las Vegan or even a pahk-tha-cah Bostonian version?
Well I say ‘hella’ a lot, so let’s say Californian
Like fer sure, dude.
Does PHB-ese count as an American dialect or a completely different language?
I lol’d
We suffer from our past and our image. Americans are a consumer society that have always used and discarded a lot more than most places. Our per capita use of just about anything is higher than anywhere else. Our houses are bigger, our cars are bigger and heavier. We love what’s new and bigger. We just mess an area up and move somewhere else.
well i had chicken wings and potato wedges today, so maybe it’s enough if I eat american?