Background: Powerbalance and the stupid morons it brings to my website

You may have read my earlier two posts on Power balance: the first on Fake powerband scam? Power balance is Snake oil in bracelet form and the second on How to spot a fake power balance bracelet.

Powerbalance "performance"

I have a lot of hits of people utterly convinced the things work, reckon I’m stupid for doubting it.. But for some reason they have arrived via google searches worried they might have a fake one that doesn’t work (yeah, I know: they aren’t very bright..). Queries like:

• how do you tell if a powerband bracelet is fake or not?
• real vs fake power balance
• fake power balance
• power balance bracelet scam

etc

The curse of stupidity: power balance

I was even resorting to offering firstly a $1,000 and then $5,000 bet that Power balance would not do anything beyond a placebo in a proper scientific double blind test. The details were that if I won I would donate the money to charity (so I could in no way personally profit from the venture). Unsurprisingly when it comes time to put their money where their mouth is: they suddenly disappear.

The ACCC spanking

Here’s what the ACCC released:

Power Balance Australia Pty Ltd (Power Balance) claimed that their wristbands and pendants improve balance, strength and flexibility and worked positively with the body’s natural engergy field. It also marketed its products with the slogan “Performance Technology”. These claims made by Power Balance were not supported by any credible scientific evidence and therefore Power Balance has admitted that it has engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct in breach of s 52 of the Trade Practices Act 1974.

So I presume that this information will be known to Power balance head office in the USA (and thus on to other countries). So I think that means that they are actively misleading the rest of the world. Can someone please get a class action lawsuit in the USA on these chumps ASAP.

Wait for the best bits which are the conditions placed upon Power balance:

To address the ACCC’s concerns, Power Balance has undertaken that it will:

• not make any claims about its products that are not supported by a written report from an independent testing body that meets certain standards;
• offer a refund to consumers who feel they have been misled;
• publish corrective advertising to prevent consumers from being misled in the future;
• amend the Australian website to remove any misleading representations;
• remove the words ‘performance technology’ from the brand itself; and
• implement a compliance program.

Time to update the Power balance website
So here’s how their website should have looked:

How I would do the powerbalance page if it had to be truthful.

Instead of this page they always had a “coming soon” type page on the Australian one. If nothing else it’ll cost them to remove their “performance technology” from their product. Good.
I think they should also have to fix all international pages because what do people do if the page is not there: they search on the USA/overseas sites.
Hey, maybe there’s hope for them in RMIT’s double blind scientific tests of holographic power bands.

My report to the ACCC’s SCAMWatch website
Here’s the report I lodged some months ago, I hope it was instrumental in bringing power balance to the ACCC’s attention. I’m glad they paid attention to my comment about the “technology” bit of their slogan.

Confirmation

Top of Form
The ACCC appreciates the time you have taken to report this scam. The ACCC receives many reports of scams. This information greatly assists us to monitor scam trends and take action where appropriate. A record of your report will be kept and if any further information is required, you may be contacted by ACCC staff. If you want advice about how to deal with a scam, please review the information on this website. You may also wish to contact the SCAMwatch Information Line on 1300 795 995.

You submitted the following:
Scamwatch complaint lodged by Mr Nathan Lee

Complainant details
Name:Mr Nathan Lee
*snip snip*chopped out some stuff*snip snip*
How did the scammer contact you?Internet
Details of the scammer (business, company, group or individual)
Name:Powerbalance LLC
Street address:Unit 2, 173 Salmon St.
Suburb / Town:Port Melbourne
State:Vic
Country:Australia
Postcode:3207
Phone number:+61 3 96467249
Email:
URL: http://www.powerbalance.com
ABN:
ACN:
Other names:
What type of scam was it?
Health & medical (including weight-loss, miracle cures)
What problems did you experience?

* Misleading or deceptive information about the product/service/business
* Overpriced or sub-standard goods
* Too good to be true

Money
Did you pay / transfer / lose money to the scammer? false

Briefly describe the scam (including any information not covered by the questions above):

Claims which have been tested on national TV and found to be false. Product is a placebo, sold for an exorbitant price. Calling a rubber band and sticker “technology” is crazy. Makes claims like “optimizing the body’s natural energy flow”,improve “core strength” and have no basis for these claims.
Bottom of Form

One holoscam down.. An awful lot still to go.

Update: Oh, but if you want a hologram bracelet infused with truthishness rather than scamishness: try the placebo bands from the skeptic bros. Unlike all these other garbage products: this one is actually honest and goes to charity if there are any profits left over from the $2 sale price!

Update: Here’s the Ad from powerbalance:

Power balance admits they are a scam.

James Randi at TAM (doing a bit of magic)

1800s: Charles Darwin

1800s as Charles Darwin?

1400-1500s: Leonardo Da Vinci

Further back in time: Leonardo Da Vinci?

(someone at TAM pointed out this similarity)

Any other points in history where Skeptics/Men with magical powers have appeared?

I think the evidence is pretty clear and no real skeptic could doubt it. So that just leaves the question of:

How does Randi roll?

Time sled?

Time sled?

Tardis?

Tardis?

Phone booth?

Bill and Ted style phonebooth?

Delorian?

Delorian?

Or time train?

Time train?

One of the google queries that found my site was “How to spot a fake power balance“. I mean it’s an important issue right? These things are bloody expensive at $59.95 a pop and who knows what sort of impact a misaligned energy holographic sticker thingy might have on those pesky meridian lines or “natural energy”!

So when do I know I’m being scammed by a power balance bracelet?
Let’s for the sake of this define “getting scammed” or “ripped off” as “paying good money for something that doesn’t have any special ability and is just a piece of plastic with a sticker on it”.

So for the people considering buying one and worried about getting scammed: relax. I have a very easy guide as to when you’ve been ripped off.

1. If you buy it direct from power balance: you’re getting ripped off.

2. If you buy one from an authorised dealer or distributor: you’re getting scammed.

3. If you buy a fake one you will also be getting scammed, albeit slightly less. The difference is entirely down to a single metric to determine how much you’re getting scammed. If you pay $59.95 then you’ve been scammed 59.95 units on the power balance scam-o-meter (also known as Australian dollars or AUD). If you have some shifty looking guy (well.. a shifty looking guy who isn’t officially affiliated with the power balance company) sell you one for $29.95 you’ve been scammed out of twenty-nine bucks and ninety-five cents BUT that means when you stand next to the person who bought a “real” one: you’re actually $30 less scammed than that guy. So in essence you’ve got the same placebo for half the price.

Half price placebo is better than full price placebo.

So out of the possible options presented so far: your least scammy way of purchasing one is from the seedy non-genuine powerband guy offering you cheaper ones. The authentic power balance bracelet at full price is the biggest scam.

Avoiding power band scam!

Power balance bands: You can spot a fake one easily. They're all fake.

The only way you don’t get scammed is if you got it free (perhaps discarded by someone reading my earlier blog or other people exposing the hoax of power balance bracelets). I suppose you could steal one, but really: it’s illegal and there’s one thing stupider than buying one in the first place and that’s going to jail for one. But it would actually cost the original scammers (or their minion local scammers) some money, perhaps less than a dollar a unit. Go into a bargain/discount store full of kiddy’s toys and plastic crap and find the cheapest plastic wrist band and that’s probably what you’ve cost them. So not worth going to jail for. Perhaps the “fake” product will drive them out of business and they’ll have to get real jobs.

So, instead of the placebo peddlers of powerbalance products: trust honest Nathan’s snake oil detection services to steer you clear of scams: if you buy a power balance band, real or fake: you’re getting SCAMMED sweetheart.. Instead (or if by some miracle I’ve stopped you wasting $60), might I suggest a donation to one of these fine, secular, charity organisations:

• The Fred Hollows foundation (donate here) – restoring sight to the poor throughout the world
• Oxfam Australia (donate here) – a number of great charitable works around the world
• Australian Red Cross (donate here) – neutral humanitarian aid with an extensive history of helping.

Sorry if that last bit was a bit preachy, but fuck me: $60 for a bullshit plastic bracelet? I mean take a look at what that means to the above charities and what they can do with it versus your typical evil scumbag placebo scam artist rolling around in piles of $100 bills having cocaine snorting contests with $10,000 a night hookers.

At $60 a pop, I'd say they could just about afford it.

Update: this also applies to iRenew bracelets. Check out how similar the claims are (and the dodgy tests). Thanks to Frank Montez for pointing them out.

From their website:

The iRenew Bracelet does this by helping to balance your body’s subtle BioField.

and a bunch of claims about strength etc. Also even more placebo-ey than powerbalance:

Keep in mind the positive biological effects a balanced biofeld has for your plants and animals as well! The most efficient way to benefit your plants and animals with the technology is to use an iRenew Energy Balance System product to charge their water prior to dissemination. You can also place an Energy Balance System hologram on your pet’s water and food bowls or on the pots in which your plants reside.

Wow! Really? I guess next time I disseminate my plants, I’d better dose up the water on good quality plastic placebo.
Although I can say that the iRenew is slightly less of a scam than the power balance. Going back to my metric on the “fake” bracelets being cheaper and thus less of a scam. These are apparently USD$19.95, so a lot better *cough*value*cough* than power balance.
I’d still like to see them outperform a rubber band or bit of string though for placebo value goodness.

UPDATE: See newer post about Power balance admitting they were deceptive. No longer able to make any of the claims in Australia. So before you start going on at me: power balance themselves say these things do nothing.

Power balance bands: Not endorsed by Harry Potter as yet, but bound to be eventually.

This “article” (I use the term loosely because it uses zero journalistic investigation skills): “Fake power band scam” bleats about the loss of a $59.95 scam by the power band people and a cheaper sale by someone else.

Performance technology company Power Balance Australia has issued a warning to potential customers that a man has been selling counterfeit versions of their performance power bands at the Moruya markets.
..
Power Balance Australia NSW manager Ryan Brustolin says the fake bands are made in China and are of no more than ornamental value, despite being virtually identical to the real thing. They are usually bought on Ebay.

“They are very, very similar but they have no technology in them so they are worth nothing,” he said.

Is he talking about his own products or the fake ones? I’m confused.

The idea that you can magically change your metabolism via strapping on what is essentially a “live strong” band with a hologram sticker is insane. I go exercise to try and increase my endurance, strength etc and even then it takes actual effort. This snake oil company is selling a placebo bracelet.

Power Balance: finest placebo wares for the bargain price of $59.95

The signs of a snake oil product

So let’s look at their claims (from their website):

What is Power Balance?

Power Balance is Performance Technology designed to work with your body’s natural energy field. Founded by athletes, Power Balance is a favorite among elite athletes for whom balance, strength and flexibility are important.

How Does the Hologram Work?

Power Balance is based on the idea of optimizing the body’s natural energy flow, similar to concepts behind many Eastern philosophies. The hologram in Power Balance is designed to resonate with and respond to the natural energy field of the body

Wow, I think I shall have to refer to any sticker now as “technology”. It’s not sticky tape: it’s a reel of technology! Those aren’t post-it notes, they’re yellow paper note technology! The makers of this shouldn’t be told to stick their product up their arses, they should instead technologify an orifice with the product.

How exactly does a bit of plastic “resonate and respond” in this most premium of snake oil bracelets? Do they mean “if you look at the holographic sticker from different angles it appears to be 3D”? Seriously? Does it have a drop of snake oil encased in the plastic somewhere?

The power band product has a number of characteristics of your standard snake oil product line:

• Vague claims like “natural energy field” and “optimising the body’s natural energy flow”.
• Expensive for what it appears to be: a rubber strap with a sticker
• Links to “eastern philosophies” to explain how the magic sticker (also found on genuine DVDs from China)
• Endorsements from laypeople, sportsmen/women but no actual scientific studies or verified results

So let me translate what “natural energy” means in a product such as this: it means “all in your head”. They’ve leapt up a level in quackery by claiming this piece of plastic with a sticker (erm.. sorry “technology”) is the reincarnation of a philosophy or some such garbage.
But hey, there are a lot of stupid people out there making these snake oil peddlers very rich. If you see anyone wearing one of these: I suggest you offer to sell them a nice block of land in the middle of Sydney Harbour.

Let’s try some science with some blind tests

Did some digging and found that Richard Saunders did a follow up on Today Tonight to show what a load of shit these things are:

Says everything really. Well, except that shining example of fine journalism Today Tonight didn’t run with the headline “Shocking power balance scam EXPOSED!”.

And a ratbags.com link on the matter of Power Balance Bracelets.

UPDATE: See the follow up post on how to spot a fake power balance bracelet.

UPDATE: See newer post about Power balance admitting they were deceptive. No longer able to make any of the claims in Australia. So before you start going on at me: power balance themselves say these things do nothing.

This is the article here: Neurological Rescue Mission: Communicating with Those Trapped within Their Brains. The bit that confirms it was not the coma man writing:

The tests determined that he doesn’t have enough strength and muscle control in his right arm to operate the keyboard. In her effort to help the patient express himself, it would seem that the speech therapist had unwittingly assumed control. This kind of self-deception happens all the time when this method — known as “facilitated communication” — is used.

So if, like me, you think it looks like the therapist was pointing the way: you’d have been spot on.

Rom Houben "uses" his touchscreen via the zealous assistance of his speech therapist Linda Wouters (AP Photo/Yves Logghe)

Now onto what I had queued up:

Is it just me that thinks this “miracle coma man speaks” is probably not the words of the guy in the wheelchair?

See ninemsn’s video showing how the “communication” happens.

Notice some funny things?

How about the eyes closed (asleep?) but still able to supposedly type. Now I can type with my eyes closed, but I’ve been a touch typer for probably about 25 years now thanks to those early touch typing games back on the old mac plus and microbees. I (and anyone else) wouldn’t be able to do so with a touch screen however because I make use of the “home” marks on the J and F keys.

Or how about the speed at which the typing takes place. Hardly the sort of strained movements I’d expect from a person with that sort of crippling disability.

In short I think this is a well meaning/wishful thinking, but actually fraudulent and horrible scam.

Ouija board might replace the computer screen in this case.

The hand holding “communication facilitator” is the wheelchair version of a water diviner or ouija board. They’re taking someone’s hopes/memories of someone and imposing their own over the top. This guy might be trapped in there, but he sure doesn’t look like the words coming out are his.

Now admittedly it could be just a set-up for the cameras which happened because an over enthusiastic camera crew arrived when the poor guy was asleep and demanded some footage. So I’ll take that as a possibility given the guy looks asleep.

So I hope this story gets as much play as the original event (I’m betting it won’t) because just like the “climate emails” misquotes damage the overwhelming science and never quite get cleared up.

Now people have a sound-bite lodged in their brains that people can be misdiagnosed in a coma for 23 years and once given one of these “facilitators” can instantly communicate freely.

All it does is give false hope, misinformation or mean families hold on in vain against the advice of their doctors.

If you thought bottled water was a scam, listen to this.

Homoeopathy (homeopathy for the yanks?) is based around the idea that water has a memory. Although it seems the memory only works immediately after preparing a homoeopathic preparation (the past 4 billion odd years of floating through everything from oceans to dinosaur bladders to beer kegs is forgotten).

Homoeopathy has a memory right?

Anyhow, the water is shown/exposed/whispered something nasty that would cause the symptoms or make them worse (so for cancer you’d stir it with a cigarette? For stiffness you pour it over a playboy magazine.. makes sense right?), then diluted to the point of a drop of water in the pacific ocean or something similar. So basically turned back into plain old water. It remembers what the bad stuff was and somehow magically does the opposite and makes you well.

I propose homoeopathic cures are paid for with homoeopathic solutions of money. Take money, show it to water, dilute til no more money left. Could even be delivered via bladder.

It’s touted as a cure for everything. I was going to list out what it is claimed, but like all good snake oil it fixes everything (and given it is water: also cleans your dishes!).

If homoeopathy worked: drinking water would simultaneously kill and heal you for any number of ailments. A swim would mean no one ever died from skin cancer cos I’m sure somewhere in the ocean some time ago there was cancerous material diluted away.

What is the 10:23 campaign then?

For those not in the know, the 10:23 (or ten to the power of 23) is a campaign against the afore mentioned quack remedies on shelves next to real medicine.

10:23 Campaign.

The 10:23 (or 10²³) refers to the time of day the campaign was to take place and a nod to Avogadro’s constant (a chemistry figure that you learn about in highschool chemistry and then forget sometime between now and then.. but basically dealing with concentrations/atoms etc).

Letter to Boots about the above

Boots is a chemist/pharmacy chain in the UK. It (like other chemists) seems to be pushing homoeopathy as a viable treatment for a range of ills. My letter to boots about homoeopathic “remedies” in response to the underwhelming death-rate (e.g. zero) of the 10:23 campaign.

To Boots customer support,

It has been well established that homoeopathy has no active ingredient, described by various medical groups as “quack treatment” or “snake-oil” and consistently fails to differentiate itself from placebo in any scientific tests performed. Additionally people may take these treatments instead of actual medicine/vaccines which means treatable conditions end up going untreated. Of particular worry is the notion that people can cure anything from headache to cancer or replace vaccinations with this snake-oil “treatment”.

So in light of that: why is Boots stocking such ridiculous products?

If they are to be sold they should be labelled as sugar pills (and sold in the same location) as the sweets and chocolate bars.

Please could you also explain or comment on:

• What medical benefit you think this provides beyond placebo?
• Will you be pulling them off the shelves after the rather convincing 10:23 homoeopathy “overdose” which resulted in no noticeable impact on hundreds of people worldwide?

and

• Will you clearly label these products as having no medical affect whatsoever other than as a placebo so that customers are not lulled into believing they are purchasing a real medical treatment?

Regards,
Nathan Lee

Take that with some magic memory water Boots..

Will post up the reply (if I get one).
Does it really matter?

If you’re thinking “what’s the harm” perhaps check out some of the examples given by Simon Singh in “What’s the harm” including:

• Homoeopathy practitioners advising parents against vaccines (many diseases are returning thanks to this and other vaccine crackpot theories about vaccines)
• Might replace conventional (i.e. “useful”/”real”) treatment e.g. malaria prevention

In addition millions of dollars are spent on these sugar pills and overpriced water.

People can, have and will continue to die from these things because they are fed a load of rubbish instead of real medical advice.

There is, I think, a moral duty (that Boots and other chemists would do well to consider) to inform people of what is real (backed by real results) medicine vs some made up shit.

That’s why it matters.

The report, prepared by the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute, finds the cost increase to coal electricity generation if fully-fledged clean coal technology is installed will be up to 78 per cent.

78 percent! Assuming of course they can actually do it at all. To me it still smells like good old snake oil:

Premium quality clean coal snake oil. Guaranteed to prolong the inevitable.

So all that bleating about “nuclear is expensive” or “solar is expensive” is garbage. The alternatives are only expensive because their manufacturing waste needs to be dealt with rather than just puffed up the chimney into the atmosphere (well, unless it is pollution in China I guess.. Then it all probably ends up in the air, land or river regardless). It’s assuming there are the magic clean coal breakthroughs that allow the long term storage of carbon dioxide such that it won’t just float back up (I wonder if the cost of developing a brand new technology factors into this figure?).

The Government will spend $2.4 billion over nine years developing two to four commercial scale carbon capture projects.

It’s money spent on what will have to be dead technology. I mean it’d be great to have some magic process for capturing the CO₂ but I’d have to think the energy/resources that go into that will be so high as to be a waste of time in the long term.

I think we can do almost anything if we exert enough money, manpower and energy (hell, that’s why I want widespread renewable energy to have oodles of energy to do crazy stuff like desalination to overcome drought and remove pressure on rivers.. if you have the electricity for “free” then you can do that sort of thing AND repair the environment). But at some point you start making so little energy that it isn’t worth doing or you compromise on your original goal. I suspect coal companies will settle on a massive compromise. Like a small dick Hummer driver recycling a softdrink can and proudly proclaiming they are green, the coal industry will settle on locking away some small fraction of emissions or in such a way as to be non permanent. Perhaps it will be enough to deflect opponents sufficiently to milk another few decades.

Money spent on solar or wind generation is money on a real technology that works now and has many large scale installations worldwide. Carbon sequestration technology today (as far as I can tell) has no real viable option to long term lock away the gas. The closest we have to “capture” is pumping it into oil wells (to help squeeze more oil out). That notion of using it to help get out more carbon dioxide producing fossil fuels seems to me to not really be helping reduce overall emissions (e.g. “oh look, the coal’s emissions are buried to help us get hard to get oil which is then burnt in cars”).

The Glowing Green Green
I’d say if we’re going to have money spent on currently theoretical but likely looking: go the new generation IV reactors I reckon. We know that nuclear power generation works, because it powers big chunks of the population around the world. It’d power even more if not for the scaremongering.

Generation IV Nuclear reactor timeline. If we only get over demonising nuclear!

The advantage of some of these designs are that they can run off what we currently call waste, unlocking some of the large amount of remaining energy thus making use of the current stockpiles of waste from aging nuclear facilities.

But let’s get back to renewables.

Ideal “best” approach

The ideal best solution overall would be a combination:

1. using less energy to begin with
2. re-using things rather than endless/mindless consumption
3. solar
4. wind
5. geothermal/tidal/hydro/whatever other clean energy sources there are available for the locality

I think massive amounts could be attained via the first 4 of those things which require no new technology (next gen nuclear or magical as-yet-no-working-scale carbon dioxide capturing).

The first is definitely achievable as an article today “Pull the plug, it’s socket science” says:

ALL over the world, electrical appliances are blinking away on standby – and burning so much energy they need 60 coal-fired electricity stations a year to power them, analysis by the International Energy Agency has found.

And they go on to say that “efficiency is the fastest way to cut greenhouse gas emissions” and discuss the role of legislation (since market forces aren’t usually enough):

Dr Jollands believes legal standards on energy efficiency are important where the market is failing to deliver reform and cited the example of set-top boxes for pay television, which are usually switched on all day, every day.

In most homes and offices, set-top boxes are supplied by a company that has no incentive to make them energy efficient because the electricity bills are paid by the consumer. An analysis by the energy agency found that in the United States about 150 million switched-on set-top boxes burned the equivalent of six supertankers of oil a year.

Dr Jollands said there was a cultural aversion to regulation in some parts of the world, but if the market was not working, regulations could be effective without imposing additional costs.

I agree we need legislation to push this stuff forward. History has shown that left to their own devices things do not progress past the “what ever is cheapest”. You have to put a cost or penalty on polluting in order to get things cleaner.

Consumption is not success

The second thing (reusing and cutting back on consumption) would require a major shift in how we view a successful economy. This is probably a topic that requires its own blog, the idea of banishing consumption driven measures. But basically I think that consumption should NOT be the primary measure of success as it is currently because it largely consists of rewarding inefficiency and celebrating unnecessary buying of items. Consider the reuse of something in a consumption based economic model: bad! Bad because no new products are consumed, thus no new jobs making stuff, delivering stuff, stocking shelves, retailing etc.

Consume! Consume!

Should goods cost a bit more to be made robust, repairable and reusable? Hell no: that’s going to damage consumption down the track!

But back to clean coal: it’s no surprise the cost estimates are high because they’re just subsidised by society at large copping the pollution. Naturally when they start adhering to environmental standards they, like every other industry subject to environmental controls, will start to cost more. We already force other types of polluters to wear the costs of filtering, processing or otherwise dealing with waste: coal should have to do the same.

The room was slightly packed for Dick's talk..

Debunking divining

Dick first up gave a very engaging talk about some of his experiences back around the 1980s with a competition he and James Randi held to test the claims of water diviners. The prize: 40 grand, the challenge: a ploughed up field with series of pipes that diviners demonstrate their craft. Contestants agreed on the conditions of the test as fair and that they wouldn’t have any complaints later. Results: no better than chance and the only thing flowing was a stream of excuses.

The interesting part of the night was that at the end it was revealed that in the audience were two family members of one of the original divining test participants. A son and a granddaughter I believe. Funny how times change.

But he stressed that the people weren’t lying when they said they believed they had powers (or bits of wire with powers), but it is just a case of self delusion – which we humans (“except for me of course”) are pretty damned good at.

You can’t trust your own eyes

One of the themes he explored was the notion that “you can’t trust your own eyes”. His personal example was the search for the Kookaburra (a plane sent out to track down another missing plane piloted by Charles Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm) which he swore he saw as he flew over a patch of outback. With a closer look it had vanished. That was ok, because a few years later he found it quite a distance away thus proving that you can’t automatically trust your eyes (or else the ghosts moved the plane in the meantime I suppose).

This is one of the things I have brought up when discussing guns with pro-gun types. They’re convinced they’ll be perfectly able to tell the difference between the dark shapes creeping through their living room at night and not shoot someone they don’t mean to. My take is that our brains have evolved to automatically assume the worst (e.g. a predator/enemy) as a survival trait. It stands to reason that natural selection would favour those who run or fight an ambiguous potential threat rather than quietly waiting to see whether it eats you.

The legend of Dick Smith

Anyhow, it was good getting to hear Dick speak, he’s been one of those larger than life characters throughout my life. As we’d term in Australia “a bit of a legend”.

Like a slightly less flamboyant, Australian, beardless version of Richard Branson. My parents talked about him when I was a kid. He was talked about in cub scouts (as one of the successful scouting figures) in between learning reef knots and sleeping bag rolling. In school the story of Dick Smith Electronics growing from nothing was almost required reading in business studies (a great rags to riches story and some sound advice on properly marking the prices on all stock).

The guy has circled the world in a helicopter, staged stunts involving towing an iceberg into Sydney harbour, flown around doing nature documentaries (Australian Geographic) and owned the electronics store that had the biggest Australian flag on it my young eyes had ever seen.

Seems to have a good amount of patriotism (the proper kind, not what Americans have done to the meaning of the word “patriot”) in his attempts to boost up the “made in Australia” stuff.

‘Til next time

The skeptic bunch seemed friendly enough, although without the discussion section to the night it wasn’t as social as I’d expect normal nights to be.

We did have some reading material: one of those holistic alternative medicine magazines. Though looking at some of the ads I wonder if I’m in the wrong industry, there was a guy doing “clearing services” whereby you pay him to come and remove negative energy of a property. How fantastic: zero costs, just rock up and wave your arms and talk about room auras and leave in a cloud of money. Completely unethical and bullshit, but hey: the types to hire these people are going to spend it on other equally pointless stuff (homoeopathy etc).

I grabbed Richard Saunders to demo his spoon bending abilities, he comes well equipped with a handful of spoons in his pocket (although he may be a dinner guest that requires counting the silverware after he leaves).

Anyhow, that was my Thursday night.. I’ll be sure to try and make the next one.