Fun With Fuzzy Logic

[bloodyrosemccoy]

While watching late night TV, my brother, mom, and I started, once again, to snark on some of the more bizarre commercials. And after a particularly mumbo-jumbo one, we started talking about how people know science terms without knowing what they actually mean.

“Tell me about it,” said Mom. “Once I had a guy try to sell me a cleanser that got rid of ‘all the negative ions.’”

It may say something about us that this caused me and my brother to howl with laughter. Because, y’know, the negative ions are the bad ones.

(I love how much ions seem to irritate people—this isn’t the only commercial I’ve seen opining that they aren’t desirable. All that unbalance throws off their groove or something.)

Comments

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

A cleanser so powerful it eliminates ionic bonding!

I seem to recall back in the '80s ions were considered a good thing. Lots of people had ionizers, which were basically just little devices you'd plug in containing electrically charged gratings that would sit in your room pumping out ozone.

[dark-phoenix54.livejournal.com]

But only the negative ions were good; positive ions were considered to make one migraine-y and grumpy.

My favorite ion bullshit product was the copper bracelet my FIL bought for his arthritis. Not just plain copper that they've sold people for many years, but IONIZED copper! I tried to explain what an ion *is* to him, but failed. He finally said "Well, it makes me feel better, so don't fuck it up for me by telling me it doesn't work!" He knew himself very well.

[elvenmoon.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there was a commercial a few years ago for baby food, and they claimed it had "comfort proteins." It always made me laugh. What the heck are comfort proteins!?

[dark-phoenix54.livejournal.com]

I assumed they were trying to convey that they were proteins that wouldn't make baby fart, but who knows. Maybe those little proteins sang lullabys.

[dark-phoenix54.livejournal.com]

Ions are on their way out, though. Now it's all quantum this or quantum that. Or maybe the ultimate will be quantum ions!

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

Quantum mechanics: the pseudoscientist's bestest friend