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

They could do with making more than one advert with him though (I'm sure they probably will)

There are 2, so far...

or make them sufficiently different for me to notice then.

Maybe include a new joke. If they can think of one.

Apparently it's working though

http://www.nma.co.uk/Articles/42205/Meerkat+ads+drive+400+rise+in+visitors+for+comparison.html

Am I the only one being driven mad by the 118 etc. advert?
I don't see why I should suffer alone....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Z4BlpFk0lU

I also like the meerkat adverts, one of the better ideas I´ve seen recently.

Oh lordy...


http://www.comparethemeerkat.com/

Inevitable really I suppose.

I know, he's on twitter and facebook, that's going a little too far I think

Well I don't do twitter or Facebook so I've escaped that. But I love his website.

We went a few evenings without seeing him - got quite worried, actually.

OK not advertising stupidity, but when one ad shows technology, sure as eggs is eggs they'll all be doing it soon. Currently it's the pulling at a picture, and then it looks like some fabric being moved to reveal something else.

The one that winds me up are the ads for some form of chemical air freshener. Bad enough to have talking rabbits and elephants all sighing happily that their living room smells fit for human habitation.... and the silly bint who ensures her seeing eye all singing all dancing squirty air freshener activates as soon as the man of the house hurls his rucksack into the arm chair (hang it up!!!)

but the one that really irks me is when the little lad firmly tells his mother he's going to take a dump at his friend Paul's house



Haven't these people heard of opening windows?

Oh no... Letting bad natural smells in means you're a bad house-keeper and you should be ashamed.

Muller Lite Fromage Frais, with 'only 7 ingredients'. And no E numbers.

long rant warning

I have two problems with this claim:
1. just what do they mean by 'ingredient'?
2. since when was a low ingredient count a good thing?

On point 1, I found the ingredient list is: fromage frais, water, sugar, raspberry puree, corn flour, natural flavourings, carrot juice concentrate.

7 indeed, but I don't remember seeing any of those on the periodic table. They are all themselves composed of many other things. 'Natural flavourings' (whatever the hell that means) could contain thousands of things.

I conclude that the word 'ingredient' only applies at the point of manufacture of the yoghurt itself, with the 'ingredients' being manufactured from many other ingredients in a chemical plant elsewhere, for example inside a cow.

On point 2. By their logic, eating things with even fewer ingredients should be even better for you. Like salt (1 ingredient - salt), poo (1 - poo), lager (2 - water, hops), or whiskey (2 - water, grain). Would red wine be good for you as it's made from only water and grapes, or bad for you as it contains hundreds of chemical compounds?

There are no E numbers, but only because their ingredient list is already so vague that any individual specific chemicals are lost in the noise. But it's not strictly true anyway, as I immediately identified E949 (hydrogen), E948 (oxygen), E160a (carotenes) and (E140 chlorophyll) as being present in quantity.

This is the worst kind of of mindless new-age muddled thinking. It's like claiming that an Airbus 320 is made of only three parts - the body, the wings and the engines.

I don´t suppose you know the E number of aspartame?

E951

Thanks, I´ll go home and see if my juice has any in it.

Had a bag of Maynards Wine Gums today. On the front it said something along the lines of "Made from naturals colours" ... Basically they seemed to be using the word colours in place of colourings. Is their statement possible from a science perspective? I thought all colours would be natural as it's reflection of light ...

if you look at bags of sweets in the uk these days the list of ingredients has all the old names that the E numbers were invented to replace, just to fool joe public that the sweets no longer contain the harmfull e-numbers,

The volvic advert involving the '1.5 litres of volvic a day' challenge makes me want to simultaneously puke and smash the face in of both the actor in it and those who thought up the advert.

Is that the reaction they were after do you think?

Not quite my reaction to the volvic ad, but I think it's rubbish. I'd like to find out how many people actually do the challenge and how many decide to try it with 1.5 litres of tap water (or cheaper bottled water).

Especially since scientific studies have show that drinking that much water a day, compared to not drinking it, makes little or no difference to a person's well-being or metabolism - just makes you pee more!