Comments | lhynard: On Stupidity in Advertising

lhynard

On Stupidity in Advertising

Jul 12, 2005 14:55

Why do we live in such a dumb culture?

When I pick up a bottle of shampoo, it should not say proudly, "Now with aminoproteins!" Um, I hate to break the news to you, but every protein is made of amino acids. Even if the term "aminoprotein" made any sense at all -- which it does not ("Amino-" is a prefix to be attached to a chemical name, not the ( Read more... )

ignorance, culture

Comments 7

sadeyedartist July 12 2005, 14:56:27 UTC

"Amino proteins" is the dumbest phrase ever.

I'm not so sure that cheetos are organic... or certain artificial candies (Which does not prevent me from eating them.)

As for "trans", its just a lazy form of whatever trans-bla bla bla thing they are trying to impress us with, like "carbs". (Your other favorite word.) As for being a foreign prefix, I'm not sure I agree with you there. It has thoroughly worked itself into our English language. Transportation, transformation, transubstantiation (any Catholics out there?). I think we could safely call it a fully adopted member of the English prefix family.

lhynard July 12 2005, 17:09:21 UTC

I'm not so sure that cheetos are organic... or certain artificial candies

Unless they are made out of rock, they are entirely organic.

It's a foreign prefix for chemistry, being the opposite of cis-. The rules of chemical nomeclature require it to always be in italics. It has little to do with the English language prefix "trans-". It's usage is like this: "I transformed the cis-2-butene into trans-2-butene." Note that in "transformed" I did not italicize the prefix; in trans-2-butene, I do.

bigmister July 12 2005, 16:22:14 UTC

The nonsense seems to sell product, and that's really what they're interested in, not correctness.

lhynard July 12 2005, 17:10:15 UTC

And it sells product because our culture is so dumb....

mallon04008 July 13 2005, 04:41:11 UTC

I would say it sells because people are so dumb. Stupidity knows no cultural bounds :-)

Dihydrogen monoxide bpr July 12 2005, 17:52:00 UTC

While in high school, one of the chemistry teachers passed out (joke) fliers telling of the evils of the substance. After school, the academic team (which was coached by the AP Chem teacher) was on the way to a match, and one of the students (he knew lots of random trivia and was thus on the team) from the class was (in all seriousness) asking the coach why this substance wasn't illegal. Amused looks and hearty laughs were had by all, well almost all. So yes, most people aren't very bright.

Related to advertising stupidity, why does every can / bottle / serving of OJ have 100% Vitamin C? I probably receive 5 - 10x the daily value of Vitamin C each day, because the makers like to reach that 100% mark.

Re: Dihydrogen monoxide lhynard July 12 2005, 20:34:14 UTC

I've also seen similar e-mail scams about dihydrogen monoxide. :) I mean the stuff kills so many people per year.

I love how they all say 100% vitamin C as if the liquid is pure vitamin C when they really mean 100% of what is recommended per day.

But yeah, I think everyone in this country easily exceeds that.

But some of the stuff is hard to obtain. Now that everyone is afraid of fad, it's pretty difficult to obtain 100% of the recommended fat for one day -- assuming you do not eat bags of chips or McDonalds religiously. And then there are the random minerals such as iron and potassium.