8. Calling BS on natural soap

I already knew about the controversy in cosmetics. The business is rife with shady self-regulation, known neurotoxins and cancerous chemicals in thousands of products, and the petroleum products that ruin our environment. I am currently seeking alternatives for a wide variety of cleaners and soaps in my home. But this particular brand I found was completely baffling. I happened to find a “natural” product that has all the confusing logic and razzle dazzle marketing of a big brand soap and even more wild claims to boot.

It began when I was looking around the internet and stumbled on “10 ways to naturally thicken hair”. I read it for laughs really, because I seriously doubt standing in a horse stance would make my hair nicer. This dubious article led me to this link: http://www.handmadesoapuk.org/the-taoist-handmade-soap-uk/

Within seconds of going onto the page I was confused. It’s made out of… earth? Are you seriously telling me your soap is made out of dirt? The only logical thing I could think of is that the earth is used as an abrasive to exfoliate skin. But still- no matter how many fancy labels you tack on at the beginning, “Rare Virgin Earth” means dirt. Besides, if it was so rare and pure, why would I bother washing it down the drain? Quick, package this pile of dirt we have laying around, someone will pay huge bucks for it! Oh wait, that’s what they’re doing with this soap. £30 plus shipping is a great margin of profit when one of your touted ingredients is free.

The second thing that really bothered me was the rest of the ‘ingredient list’. It reads, and I quote: 40 Blend of Daoist Herbs including Daoist Salt. What the Christ nuggets is a daoist herb? Is it blessed by a daoist or prepared a certain way, like kosher salt? It really reminds me of the “natural flavors” that companies use as a catch all for all the unpleasant stuff they pump into our food to make it taste right. Believe me, I like herbs.  But 1) I want to know what is in my soap, so cough up the real list of ingredients 2) you have to define the term Daoist if you actually want to make that a selling point, and 3) to my knowledge herbs smell nice, but they don’t exactly clean well. 

There is a huge list of benefits from this soap as well, which makes me nervous. Any time I see the word “detox” it’s like a little red flag for new age bull shit. It also “reaches all layers of the skin” Hmm, I’m not sure that’s how soap is supposed to work. It’s for getting rid of grime on the outer layer of my hands and I don’t want it anywhere else, thanks. One of the most ridiculous claims is that it’s so safe it’s edible. I don’t doubt them, but it just boggles my mind that it’s one of their selling points for a bar of soap. I can’t say anything for the other benefits such as curing acne, getting rid of eczema, and stopping hair loss. I honestly don’t know how those conditions are cured. But for some reason, I’m suspicious that this bar of expensive dirt and plants might not be a panacea for all of your skin woes.

The thing that gets my chaps in a twist is that this is the exact same scam the big chemical companies are playing. They tell us “we’re all natural, we swear! And just look at all these wonderful benefits! We’re much healthier than our competitors! Why do you want to know what’s in it? Just shut up and use it.” Call me a skeptic, but virgin earth and daoist salt is just as shady as petroleum based “herbal essence” because neither product is fully explained to us. Yet we get near magical results from these mystery sauces. As a scientist and a skeptic, I call shenanigans.

I refuse to be fooled by any industry, big chemical or all natural. A good rule of thumb: if you don’t know what’s in your product, don’t smear it on your face. Until soaps like these come clean, I certainly won’t be using them.

7. How I have drama free friendships

I was walking through campus today when I heard the juicy sound of gossip whipping through the air. “I mean, after what he did to her? Of course she isn’t going to care about his problems. He seemed really mad when she just blew him off, so I just told him…” I peered over my shoulder as I saw three freshman girls walk away from me, two paying rapt attention to the one in the middle.

Ah, to be young. I’m glad I don’t have to deal with that type of drama anymore. I thought to myself. I frowned at this weird thought. Actually, throughout my high school and undergrad experiences, I’ve never had to deal with drama. Other people mentioned it, but it always had passed me by. Well, there was one time in anime club where the presidency was disputed. But that was one power struggle in about an 8-year period that was relatively gossip free.

As I got in out of the drizzling rain, I wondered to myself how I had dodged the drama bullet. I had a mini-epiphany when I realized that it was because of how I made friends. It wasn’t that I had a lack of friends. My friends just didn’t know each other.

I have a strange habit of getting to know people in completely different social groups. My one or two psychology friends don’t hang out with my one writing friend, who is completely separate from my anime friends, who don’t know my D&D group. In fact in my anime club I have two groups of friends I hang out with- the freshmen and the seniors. We are literally all in the same room, but I go to the back to socialize with my young girl friends and to the front to talk to my older guy friends. I wonder why I haven’t herded them together yet so I can sit and talk in peace instead of bouncing around the room.

It’s so strange I’ve never recognized this pattern before. But I guess it explains why it was always such a pain to throw parties with my friends in undergrad. So many conflicting schedules meant no one could ever come. I’m becoming more and more aware of it as I go through this semester. It’s like every other weekend I’m suddenly up to my eyeballs with invites. I have to divvy out half days to each handful of friends so I don’t lose touch with any of them. This weekend has been particularly stressful, figuring out time for work friends, parents, anime friends, and my significant other. As a certified introvert it’s a bit overwhelming at times, but I certainly don’t want to give up any of my relationships because of it.

But, the benefit of having a multitude of disparate friends is you only ever hear one side of the story. If a friend came to me complaining about this other person in her program, I can assure them I don’t know who they’re talking about. My friend will have someone to talk to consequence free. No torn loyalties or secrets to keep. I will listen sympathetically to any snarky comments or rant that they happen to have in store. As an added bonus, due to my horrible memory with names, I’ll probably forget who my friend was talking about soon after they leave.

So the bottom line: is my extra time and effort worth dodging possible drama? Is one large group of friends who know each other a better system than several single friends? I have no idea. I just know there’s nothing quite like being philosophical about the intrinsic worth of friendship patterns with a cup of peppermint tea and a deadline for an essay looming over your head.

6. Sewing a ball

I have one hobby I love to do in my spare time (which I am severely lacking in right now thanks to midterms.) I sew, and I like to think I’m pretty good at it. It’s very soothing to me. I turn on some music and pin, stitch, and iron until I have a new costume or toy. That is, it’s soothing until I sew the right side of a piece of fabric to the wrong side of another piece. Then I start cursing and may or may not break out the vodka.

I am not a rank beginner, or at least I know more than the average Joe on the street. But I still have lots to learn. Recently I decided I want to branch out into making plush toys. And of course I don’t want to make a teddy bear or bunny. I’m planning on making a pokemon plushie. Not one of the pink, cutesy ones either. I want my own gastly toy to proudly display on my shelf.

 I couldn’t find a pattern for gastly, but a quick search led me to one of the cutest versions I’ve seen so far: http://smileandlead.deviantart.com/art/Gastly-Twin-Plush-299879266 . ~SmileAndLead apparently does pokemon commissions, and it shows. The quality of her work is stunning! If I didn’t want to try this project on my own I would definitely be buying one of her little gastlys. 

So I’ve looked around and made some design choices based on what I’ve seen. For example I don’t want the miasma around gastly to be stuffed or to be made out of sheer, light fabric. Now all I need to do is figure out how to actually make the darn thing. I’ve never sewn a 3d shape before, so some crafty googling is necessary. My first find was a very useful EHow article using long, oval shapes to make a circle. To make a pattern, draw a cross with the long piece for the width of the ball. In the middle of that line, draw the cross piece one sixth of the total width. Then draw in the curves so it looks like a football. Cut out six of these pieces in your fabric, sew together, and voila, perfect sphere.

However, I was a little worried. This beach ball approach made the sphere, but it seemed a little blocky to me. My gastly would either have a line running down its face or seams that might interfere with his huge eyes. I continued to look when I came across this wonderful blog: http://whileshenaps.typepad.com/whileshenaps/. This website is chock full of useful toy designs! If my first toy is a success and I want to continue with similar projects, I’ll definitely come back for inspiration! But the thing I got from this website was how to make a baseball type sphere. If you look at a baseball or tennis ball, you can see it has to lobes connected by a little thin part. She suggests basically that- make two double lobed pieces and sew them together. Leave a bit open, turn inside out like any other project, and stuff. It seems like a smoother sphere than the beach ball design. And while she leaves a neck hole in her project, I can easily make mine one solid piece. 

But the real drawback is if I do the baseball design, I’m going to have to do something to get the purple cloud around his head. Probably cut him in half down the middle so I can sandwich some purple fabric in the middle. I’m thinking of maybe just covering his back with a loose swath of purple fabric to make his cloud look nice and flow-y. I’m sure once I sit down with a piece of paper and sketch this all out it will come together. I mean, I only have three other gigantic sewing projects to work on, my school work and keeping up with my friends. So all in all gastly will probably be done in… two years? Poor gastly.

5. Telling the difference between real gold and diamonds and fake

My jaunt into learning about gem cutting the other day led me to another question I had been wondering about for a while- how does one tell the difference between real jewelry and costume jewelry. Whether the gold is actually pure or just plated, whether the gems are real or manmade, that kind of stuff. 

Well I found two methods of telling if something is real gold that appealed to me. One is looking to see if the purity of the gold is printed on the piece of jewelry. 10K, or ten karats, is the lowest quality of gold. Anything less is considered fake. It seems like an arbitrary cut off to me, but I guess anything less means that it’s just gold plated and no longer an alloy. But I like this method. Simple, legitimate, and I’m so gullible that I’ll believe it even if it’s a fake stamp. Hey, if I think it’s gold, I don’t care what anyone else says!

The other method I like is SCIENCE, using either nitric acid, or a mix of nitric and hydrochloric acid to test your gold. If you scrape the jewelry across an unglazed ceramic plate it should leave a little smear of the base metal behind. Just drip the acid on the smear, and if it disappears the gold has been dissolved by the acid. Imagine doing this in a lab coat with some goggles and large gloves. Not only will you feel like a mad scientist… well you’ll actually need that kind of protection dealing with strong acid like that. Other methods involve magnets, eating your jewelry, and math, so I liked them less than two tests I mentioned.

I was surprised to find out that diamonds have paperwork. Much like the stamped gold, you can go to a gem appraiser (seriously, they need a cooler name than that!) and get your diamond certified as real. For some reason I think of pedigree dog owners showing off their forms at dog shows. Then I think about tiny diamonds on leashes, and I’m writing this late at night ok, don’t judge me.

Unlike gold, they have a fascinating amount of cool tricks to see if a diamond is real (without using spit). It doesn’t show up on x-rays, and it fluoresces blue under a black light. If the diamond is loose, put it table side down on a piece of paper with words or a picture on it. You can’t see through a real diamond, and a man made one will show distorted letters or smudges of ink. When you breathe on a real diamond, condensation doesn’t form because it disperses heat too quickly (ok, only a little spit involved). Finally, because science makes everything easier, you can shell out for a gauge that will instantly tell you if a diamond is real or not. 

When I was younger, I certainly did love the shiny baubles I got when I went to flea markets and antique stores. It didn’t bother me any that the two dollar necklace I got was nickel and rhinestone rather than gold and gems. And you know what? After all the browsing I did, I found it still really doesn’t matter to me. The only possible scenario where I would be upset if someone gave me a fake ring and told me it was a real gold and diamond. Even then I would just wonder why they felt the need to lie rather than just give me a pretty gift.

 And really, if someone does give me a diamond as a present? They have seriously misjudged me. That could have been a filet Mignon dinner, a night at the theater, or a couple of new Wii games and movies! I think this stuff is useful to know in case I ever do want to find some nice things at an antique store. But honestly, wearing glass and having a good time is much more my style.

4. Songza (and screw Pandora)

I am extremely confused by Pandora.

I try to wrap my mind about how Pandora works. You put in an artist or genre and it generates a playlist based on this choice. I guess this would be good for if you want music, but don’t want to spend a couple minutes picking out what you want to hear. I get it; sometimes just background noise is nice. But what kills me is that there’s no way to listen to a particular song. You really want to hear “let it be” by the Beatles? Well f*** you, Pandora has other plans. Let’s listen to some Monkeys, Beach boys, and about ten other Beatles songs before we get to that one. Not to mention the stupid skip system. It only gives you so many before you’re forced to listen to “who let the dogs out” because you kind of didn’t like the few songs before it. Oh, and the audio ads that disrupt your groove session to sell you auto insurance.

See, I understand how this website works. I’m just confused why so many people use it! In the land where everything is customizable, the country where you can “have it your way” and venerate “the power of choice", I cannot believe people would want such a confounding service. Pandora gives you very little interaction with your listening experience and it has the gall to yank away privileges at arbitrary times. Yet people still plug into Pandora and relinquish their musical choice. Maybe it bugs me because I’ve known several people dissatisfied with Pandora and yet they still use it because it’s the site they’re most comfortable with.

Because just by one Google search, I have found music sites that are infinitely better than Pandora. Seriously, “music site”, and you get at least four hits that list the best free websites for music online. Grooveshark is what I use whenever I want my music fix. You can search for your own favorite songs, and they have a huge selection of music. Whether you want old (yes) or new (not so much) or international music (at least Jpop), they have a good selection of it. You can create separate playlists for when you want to pump up and dance or calm down. And don’t want to think about your music selection? Grooveshark has the same feature as Pandora. Just plug in some songs you like and it will make selections for you based on what’s in your cue. Unlimited skips, and the only ads are visual ones on the margins of the screen.  I admit there are some downsides. It’s a little disorganized, has some dead links so the song you selected doesn’t play, and has a mediocre search system. But at least it HAS a search system! Grooveshark is, in my humble opinion, WAY better than Pandora.

The thing I learned about today is what my friend showed me on her phone. Songza is a website that creates playlists for you based on your activity or your mood. I think this is absolutely brilliant! If I want to dance, I hit the dance playlist and select from three different types of playlists that are popular right now. I like it because this makes sure I get the same type of song. Even if I type in oldies rock on one of my automatic playlist sites, I might get some slow ballad in between my Aha and Billy Joel. I would definitely prefer using a function like this rather than a genre playlist. It just seems more convenient and personable to me. Not only that, but going through the playlists I’m finding genres I haven’t hear of yet, like folk metal. I just learned about it today (obviously) so I’ll have to play around with it a bit more before I decide whether I like it more than Grooveshark.

So, if you want to listen to some tunes online, Pandora is definitely not the best site to go to. I really suggest that people go try out some different ones rather than just relying on the one they know the best. I’m going to continue pumping my Mika playlist on Grooveshark and maybe find some nice oldies or acoustic guitar songs on Songza.