Tetherd Cow Ahead

You may remember that I wrote, some time back, about Dr Masaru Emoto, a man who believes that water has feelings. Dr Emoto has a fairly substantial following in the magic water fraternity and his name is used to promote products such as H²Om Vibrational Water, which we’ve had cause to discuss previously on The Cow.

Well, it seems that Dr Emoto is happy to lend his name (and image, it would appear) to quackery, but is most reticent to appear anywhere that is critical of his ideas. This morning I received a letter from his office:

Hello,

I’m Michiko Hayashi from OFFICE MASARU EMOTO LLC in Tokyo, Japan.

I would like to let you know that your use of water crystal photos has not been approved by OFFICE MASARU EMOTO. Please find attached the letter “Use of water crystal images on websites” and make the appropriate procedure to use water crystal images legally.

This is part of the attached letter:

– IMPORTANT NOTICE –

Use of “water crystal” images on websites without permission

Please be informed that water crystal images are intellectual property, and OFFICE MASARU EMOTO LLC owns the copyrights to the water crystal photos that you have posted on your website. It is important that you obtain an official permission for such use authorized by OFFICE MASARU EMOTO LLC. The fee for the use on the website is 1,200€ (one thousand and two hundred Euro) or $1,400(one thousand and four hundred US dollars) for one year.

You what? 1,400 US dollars! Hahahahaha! I wonder if anyone would be daft enough to actually pay that? And I wonder even further whether they try this on with people who aren’t critical of Dr Emoto? Let’s do a quick image search, shall we… Oh, what a surprise! almost a hundred thousand images of Dr Emoto or his water crystals. And virtually none of them on sites that are critical of his silly ideas. The letter goes on to say:

If you have Mr. Masaru Emoto’s face photo (portrait rights) and/or his name on your websites, please delete it/ them IMMEDIATELY. The use of “Masaru Emoto®” and his portrait rights are strictly prohibited.

Ha. I hope that they aren’t thinking they can get away with his name being intellectual property too! Just sticking a ® on the end of something means toss-all folks.

I won’t bore you with the rest of the letter – it’s basically just repetitions of the same thing, coupled with a vague threat of legal action that doesn’t really scare me in the least. I have, however, um… altered the images I used on the original post because, quite frankly I can’t be bothered getting into any kind of legal dispute with people who aren’t able to think rationally.

I am a little disappointed in Dr Emoto and his office, if the truth be told. He got off pretty lightly on The Cow, all things considered. I cut him a bit of slack because I think he’s just a misguided old duffer, rather than a cynical con artist, ((Emoto is one of the very few of his ilk that has, at least, the courage to call his ideas ‘magic’. The problem is that he does so while wearing a lab coat and calling himself a doctor. Unfortunately most people aren’t able to understand that just because he has a laboratory and does ‘experiments’ doesn’t make him a scientist)) and he certainly didn’t get the roasting that many of his fellow loonies have copped on my pages. But it is immediately apparent from today’s letter, that, like all practitioners of pseudoscience, one of Dr Emoto’s raisons d’être is the financial reward his nutty beliefs bring.

Michiko signs off…

With love and gratitude,
Michiko Hayashi

… an unusual (to say the least) salutation for a legal letter. Perhaps you will not continue to feel much gratitude towards me Ms Hayashi, when you know I have no intention of paying you any money, and have not changed my opinion of Dr Emoto in the least. As for the love, well, I have a feeling that yours is nothing more than the watered-down kind.

Sometimes teh stoopid in the world is so profound that I fear alien civilizations from other galaxies will first detect us not via radio transmissions or atmospheric chemistry signatures, but by the massive volume of idiot particles that we radiate out into space.

Take this latest ‘health’ warning from Samsung advising viewers of the potential hazards involved with watching 3D television.

If you experience any of the following symptoms, immediately stop watching 3D pictures and consult a medical specialist: (1) altered vision; (2) lightheadedness; (3) dizziness; (4) involuntary movements such as eye or muscle twitching; (5) confusion; (6) nausea; (7) loss of awareness; (8) convulsions; (9) cramps; and/or (10) disorientation.

I don’t know about you, but I frequently experience symptoms 2 through 7 (especially 5 & 6) while viewing normal 2D television, so on a 3D tv I’d be hard-pressed figuring out whether they were being caused by the 3D effect or the program content.

The Samsung advisory goes on to suggest that it is a bad idea to watch 3D tv ‘if you are in bad physical condition, need sleep or have been drinking alcohol’ instantly alienating about 75% of their possible customers. It also advises that you should not ‘place your television near open stairwells, cables, balconies or other objects that may cause you to injure yourself’.

So, to clarify: don’t watch 3D tv at the top of an open stairwell whilst drunk and sleep-deprived. It’s not the alcohol, the lack of sleep or the plummet to the marble foyer that need worry you – it’s that woo-eee-ooo spooky 3D vision!

You have been warned!

(Everyone probably knows someone who needs the kind of warning issued by Samsung, and therefore also needs a Simple Graphics Man coffee mug from the TCA Shoppe. Send them one today and help them avoid a horrible disfigurement!)

Faithful Acowlytes! For your convenience I have now installed threaded comments on The Cow. I’m not sure I entirely like this idea, since I think it probably stops the ‘flow’ of commenting slightly, but since it’s become de rigeur most everywhere else I want to make sure I’m keeping up with the Joneses.

You will also find that your comments are editable as well, so Queen Willy can now go back and correct her own typos instead of asking me to do it.

:-b

Enjoy!

My current fixation with soap bubbles came about as a side-effect of some research I’ve been doing for my new animation project. To be specific, I was looking at how transparency and refraction work, and although I can easily see it in glass, I wanted something more organic and also less refractive. Hence bubbles. The animation, though, is more of a watery affair – mysterious and slightly eerie. Here are some stills. I’m in early stages just yet, but I thought you might like a sneak peak.

I also have some exciting news to tell you about one of my other works, but more of that in a bit.

Enjoy!

Ingredients:

•150ml Glycerine
•100g KY jelly
•1 level tspn sodium bicarbonate (baking soda)
•1½ cups detergent concentrate
•1 cup hot water
•Filtered water to make up 2 litres

Hardware:

•1 x 2 litre plastic bottle
•1 small bucket
•2 x 1 metre lengths of wooden dowel
•5m natural fibre string

Method:

Dissolve the sodium bicarbonate in the hot water. Carefully mix in ½ cup of the detergent, all the glycerine and the KY jelly. Stir until dissolved as much as possible. Pour about 1 litre of cold water into the 2 litre bottle. Slowly pour in the remaining 1 cup of detergent, taking care not to make foam. Very slowly add the warm glycerine/KY/detergent/water mix. Add water to bring to 2 litres.

Gently rotate the bottle until the contents are mixed as much as possible (there will probably still be undissolved NaHCO3 and visible threads of KY & glycerine – don’t worry). Leave the bottle to stand for 2 days.

Meanwhile braid the string into a loop about the size of a basketball and attach to the ends of the dowel like this:

After two days have passed, check the solution and make sure it is completely uniform – there should now be no visible traces of any of the individual ingredients.

Now, go to a park or a beach – somewhere sheltered and not too hot. Pour some of the solution into the small bucket and dip the string into it – make sure you get it nice and saturated. Now do this:

You might even be able to make one like this…

Science! Just because something isn’t imaginary doesn’t mean you can’t believe in it…

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Bubble photos by Violet Towne.

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The Guardian reports that publisher Penguin Australia has been left with egg on its face after it was revealed that a recipe for Tagliatelle with Sardines and Prosciutto from their book The Pasta Bible, called for the inclusion of ‘salt and freshly ground black people’. 7000 copies of the book have been withdrawn.

Penguin’s head of publishing, Robert Sessions, blamed the gaff on a spellcheck program, and said that proofreaders missed it because they were probably more concerned with checking ingredient quantities. ((Rather than the ingredients per se, I guess…)) Sessions called the mistake a typo, but I’m thinking that these kinds of episodes, where spellcheck programs offer whole alternative words to the one that is meant, should have a new name. Wordo? Hmm… a bit clunky… Suggestions?

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*Thanks to Violet Towne for spotting it in The Guardian and to my guest sub-editor King Willy for the fabulous headline.

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