Sex, Porn and Marketing

It has been said that had it not been for the porn industry we would still be groping around trying to figure out how to make money on the internet. I have also read that it was the porn industry that made VCRs viable, suddenly a person could purchase the movies through the mail and watch them at home rather than risk being seen going into a blue movie house. Further back, the reason that Barbie dolls have impossible proportions is because the mold was originally used to make a sex doll; Mattel did not believe in the toy enough to give it the funding it deserved - what would a woman know about what little girls want to play with??

Now we have an extremely realisitic robot that is used to teach health care professionals how to assist a mother in giving birth. There is little doubt that the genitalia on this robot is also derived from the porn industry, where they manufacture battery operated vaginas and sex dolls that are intended to respond like the real thing. And actually when you think about it it is only natural that this would occur, no sex, no babys.

I suppose what I am finding interesting is that our most primal desires and needs are driving technological innovation. For all our brilliance we still force our greatness to submit to our bodies animal instincts and desires. That really is the driving philosophy behind marketing, "how can I make my product appeal to people's basest desires"?

Currently I am marketing a product from ThermoFlow, wearable pain relief. This is a reasonably high-tech product, it contains ceramic fibers that hold far-infrared light, or heat, in the tissues, which increases blood flow and eases pain. It has a Health Canada number and has been found effective in a double blind study. However what I am doing is selling a product that appeals to people's base desire to be relieved of pain.

We all know sex sells and that is the real question, how do we made a product sexy in order to sell it. In fact that may be one of the issues I need to address, how do I make pain relief sexy? Danni Ashe has shown us how to make the internet sexy, before that pornographic movies made VCRs sexy and it has been stated that the front bumper on a 1953 Cadillac was intended to be 38DD sexy.

So how do I make ThermoFlow sexy so that I can make some money?

Islam and Water

Please visit the link that pressing on the title to this post will take you to.

A few years ago a heard a preacher state that he believes the next global war will be fought over water. I am now concerned. The combination of Islamic, the world's fastest growing religion, fanaticism and water accessibility concerns scare me. In fact I just thought of something I dare not mention on the web or I could get myself under the surveillance of the CIA, the RCMP, Massod and Interpol. This is scary. If Islamic terrorists decide to begin bombing for water...

Those of you who know me, feel free to approach me and I will tell you what my thought was and it will scare you too, once you understand the significance of the target.

Natural light 'to reinvent bulbs'

I honest want to have something constructive to say, but I keep finding wonderful articles that I want to share, but am at a loss as to how I want to comment on them except to say that I really apprciate the innovation.

A light source that could put the traditional light bulb in the shade has been invented by US scientists.

The organic light-emitting diode (OLED) emits a brilliant white light when attached to an electricity supply.

The material, described in the journal Nature, can be printed in wafer thin sheets that could transform walls, ceilings or even furniture into lights.

The OLEDs do not heat up like today's light bulbs and so are far more energy efficient and should last longer.

They also produce a light that is more akin to natural daylight than traditional bulbs.

"We're hoping that this will lead to significantly longer device lifetimes in addition to higher efficiency," said Professor Mark Thompson of the University of Southern California, one of the authors of the paper.

Old fashioned

Traditional light bulbs were invented more than 130 years ago. Since then the basic principle of creating light remains the same, although the design has been tweaked.

An electric current passing through a tungsten wire causes it to heat up and glow white hot.

Today, more than 20% of electricity used in US buildings is eaten up by lights and nearly half that amount is used by traditional, incandescent light bulbs.

It has been a long-term goal of scientists to come up with something that would reduce this mammoth energy demand.

The new work exploits the properties of carbon-based polymers to produce the white light. These are already found in some mobile phone displays and MP3 players.


Until now, they have been unable to generate sufficient light to illuminate a room.

To create the new material, the scientists build up ultra-thin layers of plastics coated with green, red and blue dyes.

When an electric current passes through them, they combine to produce white light.

Previous attempts to make OLEDs like this have largely failed to make an impact because traditional phosphorescent blue dyes are very short lived.

The new polymer uses a fluorescent blue material instead which lasts much longer and uses less energy.

The researchers believe that eventually this material could be 100% efficient, meaning it could be capable of converting all of the electricity to light, without the heat loss associated with traditional bulbs.

The new material can also be printed onto glass or plastic and so in theory could create large areas of lighting, relatively cheaply.

Before this becomes a reality, the scientists need to work out a way to seal the OLEDs from moisture which can contaminate the sensitive material, causing it to no longer work.

If that barrier can be overcome, the new polymer could eventually become the material of choice for stylish, environmentally friendly lighting.

The research team incorporated members from Princeton University, the University of Southern California and the University of Michigan.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/4906188.stm

Drug firms 'inventing diseases'

Pharmaceutical firms are inventing diseases to sell more drugs, researchers have warned.

Disease-mongering promotes non-existent diseases and exaggerates mild problems to boost profits, the Public Library of Science Medicine reported.

Researchers at Newcastle University in Australia said firms were putting healthy people at risk by medicalising conditions such as menopause.

But the pharmaceutical industry denied it invented diseases.


DISEASE-MONGERING
Restless legs - Prevalence of rare condition exaggerated
Irritable bowel syndrome - Promoted as a serious illness needing therapy, when usually a mild problem
Menopause - Too often medicalised as a disorder when really a normal part of life

Report authors David Henry and Ray Moynihan criticised attempts to convince the public in the US that 43% of women live with sexual dysfunction.

They also said that risk factors like high cholesterol and osteoporosis were being presented as diseases - and rare conditions such as restless leg condition and mild problems of irritable bowel syndrome were exaggerated.

The report said: "Disease-mongering is the selling of sickness that widens the boundaries of illness and grows the markets for those who sell and deliver treatments.

Campaigns

"It is exemplified mostly explicitly by many pharmaceutical industry-funded disease awareness campaigns - more often designed to sell drugs than to illuminate or to inform or educate about the prevention of illness or the maintenance of health."

The researchers called on doctors, patients and support groups to be aware of the marketing tactics of the pharmaceutical industry and for more research into the way in which conditions are presented.

They added: "The motives of health professionals and health advocacy groups may well be the welfare of patients, rather than any direct self-interested financial benefit, but we believe that too often marketers are able to crudely manipulate those motivations.

"Disentangling the different motivations of the different actors in disease-mongering will be a key step towards a better understanding of this phenomenon."

But Richard Ley, of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, said the research was centred on the US where the drugs industry had much more freedom to promote their products to the public.

"The way you can advertise is much more restricted in the UK so it is wrong to extrapolate it.

"Also, it is not right to say the industry invents diseases, we don't. It is up to doctors to decide what treatment to give people, we can't tell them."

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/health/4898488.stm