earleh@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Earle R. Horton) (09/04/89)
I just received by U.S. Mail an advertisement for the "Ott Computer Safety Light." This is a device, designed by the "internationally recognized photobiologist" (photobiologist?), John Ott, for the purpose of providing "important energy to help us overcome the negative effects of radiation leaked from other sources." For a mere $195, plus $18 shipping, I could be the proud owner of one of these Ott Computer Safety Lights, and protect myself from the bad radiation coming from my Macintosh. I wish I had a scanner here, or enough free time to type in the entire contents of this ridiculous package, which includes a personal letter from the head of the distributing company (Hell, the signature is even Xeroxed!), testimonials, and a photograph of something which appears so cheaply made that KMart would refuse to handle it. Well, maybe just a few lines, my comments indented. "The Ott Computer Safety Light gives computer users the right kind of light as an overall energy boost." The caffeine solution I use now works just fine. "Unlike other lighting fixtures, the Ott Computer Safety Light comes with its own switch and power cord." "It is protected by three U.S. and two international patents." "All living things are photobiotic-they need light to live and thrive." Tell that to my athlete's foot fungus. "When exposed to Ott Computer Safety Light, in minutes, the blood clumps actually dissolve." Vzntvar gur vzcyvpngvbaf sbe gur srzvavar ultvrar vaqhfgel. Naq lbh qrfreir guvf sbe ebg13-vat guvf cntr! "Pennsylvania's Department of Agriculture showed that chicken coops with Ott Lights produce eggs with 25% less cholesterol. The study further found that the hens were calmer, fought less, produced more eggs, and lived twice as long as their counterparts raised under conventional ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ flourescent lights." Buy this light, live for an average of 140 years. "Dr. John Ott has written several noted books and scientific papers..." Funny the Dartmouth College Library Online Catalog doesn't list Dr. Ott's books. "Dr. Ott has also received... ...an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Loyola University." Big fat hairy deal. I don't intend to criticize Loyola University or its policy of granting degrees here, but would you open your mouth to someone who had an honorary Doctor of Dental Surgery degree? I thought not. "This offer has been submitted solely for the benefit of selected, highly qualified users of Macintosh computers in the home." Which one of you rat-fink magazine circulation departments sold these bozos my name? When I find out, I'm canceling my subscription. "You won't be able to find it in any store." Of course not, stores have product quality standards. The whole thing reminded me of a television portrayal of a nineteenth century medicine show, complete with elixir of life made from snake oil and water dipped from Ponce de Leon's lost fountain of youth. I did the same thing with this package that I do with all unsolicited mail that insults my intelligence and comes with a Business Reply Mail envelope. I stuffed all the advertising materials, along with my insulting reply, into the envelope and popped it into the nearest mailbox. I sincerely thank Mr. Twomey, my ninth grade English teacher, for teaching me this trick. Earle R. Horton
klash@bmerh488.uucp (Karl Klashinsky) (09/05/89)
In article <15388@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> earleh@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Earle R. Horton) writes: > [a bunch of stuff about some miracle light] > > [...] I >did the same thing with this package that I do with all unsolicited >mail that insults my intelligence and comes with a Business Reply Mail >envelope. I stuffed all the advertising materials, along with my >insulting reply, into the envelope and popped it into the nearest >mailbox. I sincerely thank Mr. Twomey, my ninth grade English >teacher, for teaching me this trick. > >Earle R. Horton Apparently, these companies that use 'Business Reply Mail' pay for the return mail by WEIGHT of mail returned. So the best way to get truly even (and to get your name taken off of a mailing list) is to tape the 'Business Reply Mail' envelope to the back of a brick. Now if everyone took the time to do this, maybe junk mail would end once and for all. -- Karl Klashinsky Bell-Northern Research, Ltd. UUCP: ..!utgpu!bnr-vpa!bnr-fos!hobbes!klash Ottawa, Ont, Canada
sukenick@ccnysci.UUCP (SYG) (09/05/89)
It's inspiration is probably from a study done that correlated (?) depression with amount/type/goochee^4 of light. >"Unlike other lighting fixtures, the Ott Computer Safety Light comes with >its own switch and power cord." Wow, what features, I'll take two! :-) >"Dr. John Ott has written several noted books and scientific papers..." >Funny the Dartmouth College Library Online Catalog doesn't list Dr. Ott's books Perfectly true. Hey, it didn't say whether the guy *>published<* , just that he wrote several books and papers. His friend must have noted them "yes, indeed, he wrote some books and papers". My 4 year old niece wrote several papers and books, also! (eh, make that wrote ON several books :-), and the papers had a pretty design) >"This offer has been submitted solely for the benefit of selected, highly >qualified users of Macintosh computers in the home." You are also a prefered customer who qualifies for no payment until Jan.1 (and in .1 point type, "interest rate only 25% ") > Which one of you rat-fink magazine circulation departments sold these > bozos my name? When I find out, I'm canceling my subscription. hey, face it, now you're on everyone's sucker list :-) :-) :-) :-) >envelope. I stuffed all the advertising materials, along with my >insulting reply, into the envelope and popped it into the nearest mailbox. You forgot the brick and I hope that you took your name sticker off first:-) :-)
chaffee@reed.UUCP (Alex Chaffee) (09/06/89)
In article <181@bmers58.UUCP> klash@hobbes.UUCP (Karl Klashinsky) writes: >Apparently, these companies that use 'Business Reply Mail' pay for >the return mail by WEIGHT of mail returned. So the best way to >get truly even (and to get your name taken off of a mailing list) >is to tape the 'Business Reply Mail' envelope to the back of a >brick. As suggested in Abbie Hoffman's "Steal This Book"... Unfortunately, as far as I know, they (that is, "They") got wise to this technique and now put some sort of cap on maximum weight per unit or something... So envelope-stuffing seems to be the best solution. >Now if everyone took the time to do this, maybe junk mail would >end once and for all. Come on! Without junk mail, we would lose yet another source of entertaining net-clog... :-) -- Alex Chaffee chaffee@reed.bitnet ____________________
callen@inmet (09/06/89)
>Apparently, these companies that use 'Business Reply Mail' pay for >the return mail by WEIGHT of mail returned. So the best way to >get truly even (and to get your name taken off of a mailing list) >is to tape the 'Business Reply Mail' envelope to the back of a >brick. No no no, it doesn't work. A friend who works for the post office tells me that they just throw away all Business Reply Bricks. However, you *can* stick a heavy piece of sheet metal in the envelope. But if you REALLY want to be taken off mailing lists, write to: Direct Mail/Marketing Association 6 East 43rd Street New York, NY 10017 They will send you a form that will, in fact, get your name removed from some (but not all) mailing lists. -- Jerry Callen ...!uunet!inmet!callen Sorry, I know this has absolutely nothing to do with Macs...
kenr@uhura.cc.rochester.edu (Ken Rich) (09/09/89)
Hi- ( a long rambling story to counter a long rambling story ) Everybody here at the University of Rochester who knows me and my Ott Computer Safety Light thinks I'm crazy-loony-fullabulloney. Actually what I have is the 'Enegy Light' if I remember right. Anyway the story is: I was doing a lot of running multiple VMS sessions using a vt220 and a Mac with macIP and every night I'd go home feeling like absolute fried sh*t and my eyes were growing floaters and felt worse than the rest of me and i was getting alarmed. For some reason I thought the tubes and the fluorescent lighting were responsible, plus having moved into 8 hours a day of looking at fuzzy marks on tubes, instead of just 2 to 4. I realized at some point that on days i only used the vt220 i only felt like 1/2 fried m*nure and started to wonder. Then I ran into some Ott literature, though I'd read about it before. He was very concerned about the effects of oscillating magnetic fields on red-blooded sorts ( note that athlete's foot contains neither of the great multiporphyrins or whatever they are, known locally as hemoglobin and chlorophyll ) and i started to think maybe he has something there. Then my office mate started using two terminals every day while monitoring some mvs-ish item and I started feeling like fried sh*t runover by a Mack Truck every night. I'd go home and do absolutely nothing: No Energy, burning eyes, constricted brain. I started feeling like i could count how many CRTs were on in a given room just by how lousy i felt. One day I had my stuff off and was discussing a project with a coworker and started feeling like at least 4 or 5 of the 6 tubes in the room were on. I was too involved in interesting stuff to be too bothered that only 2 were on. When the discussion ended and the botherment came on strong, I realized that during the meeting i'd oonched back until my head was a good 12 inches from the screen of a running ibm 3178c. I knew in my gut then that it was more than eyestrain. So I got a light. At first i didn't feel like it helped me much because it didn't do much for eyestrain directly. Also the walletstrain bothered me some. But...during the 2 weeks following getting the light I finished renovating our front entryway which i had barely started working on over the previous 3 months. I came home and did stuff. My wife commented that i was suddenly much easier to live with. So my only evidence against it being just placebo effect is that the results I got were not the results I was expecting. But they were great results anyway. As for the eye strain, since to receive the greatest benefit from an Ott light the UV tube should shine unobstructedly into the pupil, I arranged the terminal so i could work without wearing my glasses at least part of the time. Mine are glass and are opaque to UV as are most plastic ones as well. That and using an old pair of my wife's old weak glasses have cured most of the eyestrain problems...I'm nearsighted, though. I'll agree Ott's language is not too scientific sounding to those of us close to the hard sciences and academia, etc. But is that a reason to flame the poor guy? Even now i can't run the Mac and the vt both all day. I had wondered why I seem to be so much more sensitive to this stuff than everyone else around here. A couple people have mentioned they always feel cruddy at the end of the day something like I described, but only one person tried the light. He said it helped but they didn't think it was worth the money. Then one day giving blood, i found out that the droplet of blood in the blue liquid test was a test for iron content, and they commented that mine was very high in iron, what did I do, eat nails? I do eat carefully, having been anemic when i was a kid. Ott theorizes that the iron in hemoglobin gets magnetized by terminals's oscillating magnetic fields. So the lesson is: stay anemic, guys and gals, and the terminals won't bother you so much. Maybe. Pretty sad. I wont go into low vs. high energy UV, skin cancer, cataracts, thinning ozone. My eye doctor is very impressed with the health of my corneas. i AM interested in trying one of those Xray filters too. Feel free to come snort some rays...@ UCC, Towne House 134, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY Ken Rich kenr@uhura.cc.rochester.edu ///////////////////////////////////\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\///////////////////////////////
d88-jwa@nada.kth.se (Jon W{tte) (09/10/89)
In article <2979@ur-cc.UUCP> kenr@uhura.cc.rochester.edu (Ken Rich) writes: >eye strain, since to receive the greatest benefit from an Ott >light the UV tube should shine unobstructedly into the pupil, You ARE aware that recent research indicates that it's the UV from CRTs that hurt the eyes the most (can cause blindness, and a disease that I son't know the english name of where the lens in your eyes opaquifies (sp?)) and that black-on-white screens are the WORST and amber screens (such as your VT 220 ?) have almost no UV light ? I really think you should reconsider having UV light "directly into your pupil". Why do you think they make you wear those black goggles when you use a solarium ? (at least the recommend them here... Don't know about the rest of the world) Oh, by the way, organic iron (such as in hemoglobin) has no magnetic properties. It only has in pure form, and certain alloys. h+@nada.kth.se -- Moooo.
pratt@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Jonathan Pratt) (09/12/89)
In article <1589@draken.nada.kth.se> h+@nada.kth.se (Jon W{tte) writes: > >You ARE aware that recent research indicates that it's the UV from CRTs >that hurt the eyes the most (can cause blindness, and a disease that I I was under the impression that most glass is opaque to UV. Is there any reason the glass used in CRTs wouldn't have this property? Jonathan /* Jonathan Pratt Internet: pratt@boulder.colorado.edu * * Campus Box 525 uucp: ..!{ncar|nbires}!boulder!pratt * * University of Colorado * * Boulder, CO 80309 Phone: (303) 492-4293 */
earleh@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Earle R. Horton) (09/12/89)
In article <11557@boulder.Colorado.EDU> pratt@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Jonathan Pratt) writes: >In article <1589@draken.nada.kth.se> h+@nada.kth.se (Jon W{tte) writes: >> >>You ARE aware that recent research indicates that it's the UV from CRTs >>that hurt the eyes the most (can cause blindness, and a disease that I > >I was under the impression that most glass is opaque to UV. Is there any >reason the glass used in CRTs wouldn't have this property? No, but the situation is more complicated than that. It is true that glass has an absorption band in the ultraviolet, and that therefore glass will stop most ultraviolet light. There are many types of glass, however, and each type has its characteristic resonant frequency and bandwidth for absorption. What this means is that for each given glass type, some UV will get through, and the frequencies passed will depend on the types and amounts of impurities in the glass. There is really no such thing as perfectly opaque. Furthermore, since the absorption band is in the UV, it follows that if you make the frequency high enough, light will start to get through again. As a rule of thumb, the higher the frequency, the more damage to living tissue. There are tables of optical properties of glass, but without consulting these I am confident that for some combinations of glass type and CRT electronics there is some leakage of UV and some risk. If you want to be sure, then look up the actual research papers. My eyes hurt like heck now, but I am quite sure that it is just my contacts drying out. Earle R. Horton
straka@cbnewsc.ATT.COM (richard.j.straka) (09/12/89)
In article <15525@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU| earleh@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Earle R. Horton) writes: |In article <11557@boulder.Colorado.EDU| pratt@boulder.Colorado.EDU | (Jonathan Pratt) writes: ||In article <1589@draken.nada.kth.se| h+@nada.kth.se (Jon W{tte) writes: ||| |||You ARE aware that recent research indicates that it's the UV from CRTs |||that hurt the eyes the most (can cause blindness, and a disease that I || ||I was under the impression that most glass is opaque to UV. Is there any ||reason the glass used in CRTs wouldn't have this property? | |No, but the situation is more complicated than that. It is true that |glass has an absorption band in the ultraviolet, and that therefore BTW, most ALL plastics are pretty much opaque to UV, at least the shorter UV wavelenghts. I'm not sure where the cutoff it, but it's FAR away from where the ~250nM mercury line is. Back in an earlier life, when I did semiconductor processing, I found that a layer of polyimide about 1 micron thick was essentially opaque to that 250nM short-wave UV light, enough that EPROMS could not be erased through it. -- Rich Straka att!ihlpf!straka MSDOS: All the wonderfully arcane syntax of UNIX(R), but without the power.
d88-jwa@nada.kth.se (Jon W{tte) (09/12/89)
In article <1589@draken.nada.kth.se> h+@nada.kth.se (Jon W{tte) writes: >You ARE aware that recent research indicates that it's the UV from CRTs >that hurt the eyes the most (can cause blindness, and a disease that I In article <11557@boulder.Colorado.EDU> pratt@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Jonathan Pratt) writes: >I was under the impression that most glass is opaque to UV. Is there any >reason the glass used in CRTs wouldn't have this property? Not opaque, but it reduces UV, especially UVB and UVC (which we don't see much of down here below the ozone layer... :-) UVA goes through though (think of solariums...) so a pair of Ray Bans in front of the mac isn't that wasted. And it looks cool :-) h+@nada.kth.se -- A penny saved is ridiculous.
pasek@ncrcce.StPaul.NCR.COM (Michael A. Pasek) (09/13/89)
In article <1624@draken.nada.kth.se> d88-jwa@nada.kth.se (Jon W{tte) writes: >In article <1589@draken.nada.kth.se> h+@nada.kth.se (Jon W{tte) writes: >>[deleted] >In article <11557@boulder.Colorado.EDU> pratt@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Jonathan Pratt) writes: [remainder deleted] Come on, folks....this thread does not belong in this newsgroup. It's crowded enough already. SO CUT IT OUT!!!! M. A. Pasek
carl@aoa.UUCP (Carl Witthoft) (09/15/89)
In article <11557@boulder.Colorado.EDU> pratt@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Jonathan Pratt) writes: >In article <1589@draken.nada.kth.se> h+@nada.kth.se (Jon W{tte) writes: >I was under the impression that most glass is opaque to UV. Is there any >reason the glass used in CRTs wouldn't have this property? Well, to cross the bounds of newsgroups :=), COnsumer Reports did a pretty detailed article on UV and glass and plastic last spring. Granted it was w.r.t. sunglasses, but go check it out anyway. x x -- Alix' Dad ( Carl Witthoft @ Adaptive Optics Associates) {harvard,ima}!bbn!aoa!carl 54 CambridgePark Drive, Cambridge,MA 02140 617-864-0201 "disclaimer? I'm not a doctor, but I do have a Master's Degree in Science!"
d88-jwa@phaesula.nada.kth.se (Jon W{tte) (09/16/89)
In article <931@aoa.UUCP> carl@aoa (Carl Witthoft) writes: >In article <11557@boulder.Colorado.EDU> pratt@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Jonathan Pratt) writes: >>In article <1589@draken.nada.kth.se> h+@nada.kth.se (Jon W{tte) writes: >>I was under the impression that most glass is opaque to UV. Is there any >>reason the glass used in CRTs wouldn't have this property? The quote should not be attributed me, but to Jonathan Pratt. Also, have anyone discovered any difference in the color of environmental light and it's impact on glare in the screen ? I should think that a blue light would cause less glare than a yellow light, sine the screen is blue-ish. Am I right or wrong ? THIS is where you can really DO something about eyestrain; the surrounding environment. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they AREN'T after you.