h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Re: eyeshadow making eyelashes longer.
Theres a cheaper way, get yourself put on Xatalan or Travatan (Glaucoma meds). All my female friends hate me because my eyelashes are SO long. I actually have to cut them at least once a month, if they get too long they get really painful.

Oh, and my current annoying advert is for Stella Artois 4. Its not all the stupid teleportation crap that happens between truck & sports car. Its that he asks for a Stella Artois Four then says please IN FRENCH.

Why? The bar guy understood Stella Artois Four in English. Either ask him all in French (for a Stella Artois Quatre) or ask him all in English.

Is that not just some franglais type thing - to distinguish themselves from Becks Vier?

There is lots of 'english' used in shops signs and brands over in germany and france, just as these is lots of 'French' used in brand names and signs over here.

I think that's a fantastic ad by the way just as all stella ads are.

And I've just reminded myself that stella is in fact Belgian.
Maybe they're doing it to annoy the French. Appears to be working on some Brits too

but why french

stella is belgian beer

and stella four is only the re breanded pettermann artois that wasn't selling due to being stella lite now it has the stella name its flying off the shelves

drink snobs!!!!!

Maybe they thought 'pettermann' sounded too Flemish and so had a go with French

[ Belgish isn't too widely spoken]

What is it with British beers being advertised with ye-olde language? Don't get me wrong, I like traditional beers, but even if there isn't a place for a cutting-edge, innovative drink (but I don't know why there isn't) , couldn't we at least have plain language to describe them?

There can't be anything more stupid than 'skinny water', low calorie water!

Image! Marketing!

The people who sell companies the idea that their products need 'image' and 'marketing' have a vested interest in such things.

The worst thing is, they are often right.
Even super 'natural' organic food tends to be sold in recycled-paper-looking packaging (it doessn't have to look that way, it just 'looks' better for the product) rather than using old MacDo bags

Ooops !

My last post is in response to Quotes

I like the way there's always 'seven' of something, like 'seven signs of ageing'. What a co-incidence that important things always come in sevens.
Except for when they come in threes.

I was at a conference in Glasgow recently where I had to listen for an hour to a guy from a cosmetic company actually describing what the seven signs of aging were and how they are held up by the authorities on 'proving' that their product actually does hold up these processes.

So they really *are* defined and they really *do* have to show that they can slow up these processes.

They actually weren't that unreasonable either. I can't remember them all but they were things like 'blotchiness', 'wrinkles', 'elasticity' etc. applied to the skin.

The seven signs (of course the word 'the' in there might be debatable - amongst other things ).

Having said that their tests for showing their product was helpful in reducing these signs were far (as he admitted) from the cutting edge of exact science. He was fairly candid about this though - it was quite an entertaining and illuminating lecture in fact, although I think he was slightly embarrassed to be presenting at the flagship conference of the UK's chemistry society.

Seven wonders of the world ? 7 being the age of reason?
Mental triggers.

The only thing that comes to mind for 3 is a threesome

Must say I hadn't noticed the 7 and 3 stuff that much

Oops caught in two minds in that last post - ignore the middle half sentence

Hi Orcus,

i seem to remember a thing about anti-wrinkle cream. It 'really did' improve things. However, the improvement could only be seen under a microscope; in RL conditions, it was imperceptible.

>>Either ask him all in French (for a Stella Artois Quatre) or ask him all in English.<<

Alternatively, ask for a proper beer.

A relevant xkcd strip today: http://xkcd.com/641/

Not so bald eagle, the tests they showed us were not those you have read about and were not independent.

What they had done was take a group of fair skinned volunteers to the island of Mauritius (tough one to get volunteers for I imagine ) and kept them there for six months. Mauritius was chosen because it has the highest UV index on earth apparently.
They then got them to use cream on their faces with an extract taken from an organism living in deep sea thermal vents (as if that were somehow important). But they only used it on one side of their faces and not the other. Their 'evidence' was photographic and was based on before and after photos from each side of the face over the six month period. They did use placebos and double blinds too.
The photos weren't particularly convincing from my memory and even if you believed them it was not very significant either.

Thing with face creams etc is that the effect HAS to be perceptable otherwise it's pointless. Telling people it's *really* working even when you cant see or feel a difference wont work. Show them a difference, no matter how temporary, and you can charge £20 for a small pot or tube.

Also, if you check the small print on some channels, the results on the ads usually are perceived as having a visible effect by 82% of 57 women or some such

does it say whether a damn good magnifying glass is needed for it to be visible?