Craptastical Technology

[Marc v4.0]

For the sake of my little rant, I have selectivly ignored those, as well as the old claims of cocaine being a cure-all

[TDK]

But it did cure your problems! ...By making a whole slew of new ones!

Like cocaine addiction.

[Eltargrim]

Originally Posted by TDK

She babbled something at me about it once, and I responded something along the lines of "you're dumb" and she said well there are positive and negative charges in science aren't there? "Yes." She went on to rant for a bit about how she was right and I should have more faith in her and not believe everything I read in science books. I then pointed out that positives charges (photons) can do just as much damage as negative charges (electrons), at which point she shut up.

Three things:

1) Protons. Photons are neutral.
2) You then have the antiparticles, which are still bad for you.
3) Finally, you then have neutrons, which are neutral, and still can cause lots of damage.

I mean, alpha particles are just a pair of protons, and they're a form of radiation. Beta particles? Electrons. Radiation. Gamma particles? Neutral. Will still fuck you up.

[TDK]

Originally Posted by Eltargrim

Three things:

1) Protons. Photons are neutral.

Huh...Could've sworn I said protons. *fixes*

2) You then have the antiparticles, which are still bad for you.
3) Finally, you then have neutrons, which are neutral, and still can cause lots of damage.

I mean, alpha particles are just a pair of protons, and they're a form of radiation. Beta particles? Electrons. Radiation. Gamma particles? Neutral. Will still fuck you up.

I know! I was just explaining to her the stupidity of what she believed, which was positive=good and negative=bad.

[Eltargrim]

Just elaborating for the uninformed; lets face it, most people don't know the difference between an electron and a positron, or that positive and negative could be replaced with Strange and Charm with very little effect (Except on the high-energy particle physicists; I'd think they'd be fairly livid).

Plus, I like emphasising the point that simple little particles can massively fuck shit up. I mean, alpha particles? Basically helium. How's that for a lighter-than-air gas :p

[Buddha Fett]

My dad used to be really into these kind of things.

He had a bunch of stuff like the magnets and crystals mentioned by everyone else; he also had a habit of carrying around a chunk of (I'm guessing fake?) silver, in case of werewolves. I shit you not.

Luckily, the poor man seems to have grown out of it.

[Bells]

It put's the whole Zombie-Survival Culture we have pretty much in check, dosent it?

[Kerensky287]

Originally Posted by Bellsouth Minion

It put's the whole Zombie-Survival Culture we have pretty much in check, dosent it?

Zombie Survival is a load of bollocks because humanity is so well-prepared for a zombie apocalypse. Nobody's gonna let some creepy, spaced-out person who smells rotten come close enough to bite them anyway.

But I gotta say, it strikes me as interesting how people actually get taken in by these Tesla Shield things sometimes. It just strikes me as just as obvious as those Nigerian e-mail scams (which, interestingly enough, ALSO snag people sometimes).

[Magus]

Originally Posted by Buddha Fett

My dad used to be really into these kind of things.

He had a bunch of stuff like the magnets and crystals mentioned by everyone else; he also had a habit of carrying around a chunk of (I'm guessing fake?) silver, in case of werewolves. I shit you not.

Luckily, the poor man seems to have grown out of it.

Doesn't the silver have to be in some sort of stabbing configuration to do anything anyway? Was he just going to use the chunk like a rock?

Obviously he was wrong, anyway. I know that the only thing we have to fear is vampires. People do complain about the garlic smell, though...

[bluestarultor]

Believe it or not, some things DO work. Magnets/jade/crystals are not among them, at least not in the ways indicated. Certain crystals, like quarts, are, in fact, piezoelectric, but I have yet to hear of anything that indicates the human electromagnetic field being enough to trigger a measurable reaction. The same goes for magnetism. We DO have some sort of radiation field which can be photographed under certain conditions, which correspond to some of what mystics say about auras, but such photos sometimes involve rather secretive development processes. I actually do believe in auras, but science has very little understanding of the solid evidence and tends to dismiss it as a curiosity. Until more scientific study is involved on the effects of certain crystalline structures and magnetism on these auras, I'll have to go by basic empirical evidence that flat-out shows it doesn't work on a physical level and at most acts as a placebo.

One thing that DOES work that I was rather surprised about is LED light therapy. The kind that people generally dismiss because it involves "medical grade" LEDs. When I was in organic chemistry, the lab was pretty much always unlocked, so any time of the day was "open lab." I was in there finishing up an experiment and had just screwed up my knee again, but Scott, the guy who set up all the chemicals, had won one of them in a raffle and just left it sitting in the lab plugged in. I'd laughed to myself about how silly it was, but I tried it on a lark, and it really did penetrate into my knee, which honestly felt very strange. It wasn't "hot" or "warm," but it did send infrared in like they claimed and took the edge off the pain before Scott showed up and had a laugh about it. I turned it off in embarrassment. XD