Make a Difference
In other words, criminals feel free. No one here can stop you. And exactly why the Orlando shooter decided not to attack families at Disney World, his original target, and went for the much softer option of a gun-free gay nightclub. The guards at Disney World were scary.
“Dried moringa leaves are a storehouse of concentrated nutrition, so even a small daily dose can help correct imbalances in the body, add concentrated nutrition to your diet and help you reach the recommended daily dietary targets of fruits and vegetables.”
This claim was made by an Indian company; Organic India Private Limited. In 2015 the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) upheld a complaint against the company for this advertisement, finding its claims were unsubtantiated.
If it were just a matter of comfortably-off people buying supplements that don’t contain anything useful, and wouldn’t help most people even they did (the only time a dietary supplement is helpful is if you are deficient in some particular nutrient, in which case you should seek advice from a medical doctor), then it wouldn’t matter too much. People will always find silly things to spend money on, and it is no one’s business but their own.
That does not excuse the sellers of these products, who generally know that what they are selling is useless. Even if they do not have the skills to analyse the claims made by the parent company, the methods employed should be a dead giveaway. For example, in the case of one multi-level marketing Moringa company, agents are given scripts which they are told to claim as their own stories, to share with potential clients and on social media. They generally go like this:
I was feeling x (fat, ugly, tired, sleepless, lacking energy, etc). Nothing else worked, so I decided to try y (the moringa product). I was sceptical, but after two weeks, the difference was amazing. I was z (slimmer, more energetic, sleeping better, dating Brad Pitt, etc, etc). The next time I went to the doctor, he/she was amazed. I told him/her about y, and showed him/her the list of nutrients it contains. He/she was so impressed he/she asked where he/she could get some for him/her self.
Any company that suggests it is appropriate to tell invented histories, ie lies, to family, friends, and customers, is not a company whose claims you should be taking at face value. That is bad enough.
But when extravagant claims are made for weight loss, or for cures for cancer or diabetes or other acute or chronic illnesses, then selling such products crosses a line from being merely unethical to being illegal. Or even where not illegal, monstrous. It is wrong to take advantage of people who are poor, who are ill, who are desperate.
You would hope people would be well aware by now that every few years some new miracle supplement, superfood, or therapy appears, promising weight loss, new youth, and social success. Bai-lin Tea, Cal-Ban, Herbalife, are all earlier examples. But sadly not.
Moringa is just the latest in a long line of supplement scams.
Don’t fall for these scams. Don’t buy these products.
I am getting a little tired of seeing people repost Jeremy Buckingham’s moronic video about Cubbie Station and the Murray/Darling basin.
It’s always the end of the world with these loons. Everything is going wrong, everything’s a disaster, the world is going to end. Unless you vote for us, give us lots of money, and return to the stone age.
Buckingham, by the way, is the same tax-teat-tippling twit who told us that thousands of year old naturally occurring swamp gas was proof of the horrors of fracking.
Buckingham claims Cubbie Station diverts the water from the Balonne/Culgoa catchment before it can reach the Darling and flow downwards into the Murray. They are stealing water from the environment and from other Australian farmers!!!
They are not. In fact, Cubbie Station is an almost perfect example of sustainable water use in arid areas which are also prone to flooding – like much of the Australian outback. It is the kind of development the pudding-headed pixies in the Australian Greens would be supporting whole-heartedly and encouraging others to use as a model, if they actually cared about Australian workers or the environment. They don’t.
I have lived on the Balonne River, which is what the Condamine is called as it starts to move down toward the Darling. And I have lived at Murray Bridge. That doesn’t make me an expert. But it does mean I have some idea of issues at both the upper and lower reaches of the Murray-Darling. And I have visited Cubbie Station.
Cubbie Station is a miracle of engineering, common-sense and foresight. It has massive water storage capacity: just over 500 megalitres. And it has large and efficient recycling systems.
Essentially it relies on the rain-bearing storms which occur every ten years or so. Cubbie acts as a flood mitigation system. It catches water from those ten year floods which would otherwise cause damage downstream and then be lost to evaporation. Because it takes flood water which would otherwise be lost, Cubbie is able to take just over one quarter of one percent of the Murray’s total flow, but without affecting at all the useful environmental flow, or the amount of water available to recreational or agricultural users. In addition, Cubbie filters and recycles constantly to maximise water use and minimise loss. When water can no longer be recycled, it is sequestered so that not a drop of fertiliser or pesticide flows into river catchment.
As I said, it is exactly the kind of carefully planned, carefully managed system which greenies should be having parties to celebrate if they cared about Australian land, industry, workers or environment.
Did I mention that Cubbie is managed by an Australian company with an Australian workforce, has revitalised the town of Dirranbandi, is the town’s major employer, and generates about $100 million in export revenue every year?
Rules for apostrophes!
There are only a few, and they are simple.
Rule 1. If the word is simply a plural, it does not need an apostrophe. Ever. For example, the plural of CD is CDs, not CD’s. The plural of DVD is DVDs, not DVD’s. The plural of seafood is seafoods, not seafood’s. The plural of tomato is tomatoes, not tomato’s.
That is the first rule. No apostrophes for plurals!
Apostrophes are used to tell the reader one of two things; ownership (sometimes called possession) and contraction. Let’s look at ownership first. This is rule two.
Rule 2. If a dog has a bone, then it is the dog’s bone. If a boy has a football, it is the boy’s football. If a girl has ten tractors, they are the girl’s tractors.
But what if there is more than one girl? Then they would be the girls’ tractors (with the apostrophe after the ‘s’). If there was more than one boy, it would be the boys’ football.
When more than one person owns something, the apostrophe comes after the ‘s’ at the end of the word. The ‘s’ in those words is just the normal plural (more than one) ‘s’. The apostrophe comes after the ‘s’ to show there is more than one owner.
So that is rule number two, and it is also easy. If you read “The boy’s toy,” that tells you there is one boy who owns one toy. If you read “The boy’s toys,” there is one boy who owns lots of toys. If you read “The boys’ toys,” (with the apostrophe after the ‘s’ in boys) there are lots of boys who own lots of toys.
English is a wonderfully precise language. Apostrophes are one of the tools that help us to express what we mean with a clarity that is often not possible in other languages.
Rule 3. Apostrophes show where missing letters should be. Sometimes we put two words together to make one word, and then take some letters out to make the new word shorter. An apostrophe shows where the missing letter or letters used to be. For example, can not becomes can’t. I am becomes I’m. Do not becomes don’t. I would becomes I’d.
This is also a very straightforward rule. If you put two words together to make one word, and take a letter or letters out to make the new word shorter, you use an apostrophe to show where the missing letters were.
There are a few contractions that don’t make a lot of sense. For example, “Will not” becomes “Won’t.” You just have to learn these as you come across them. But there aren’t very many, so they are nothing to worry about.
There is only one other thing to remember, and that is distinguishing between its and it’s. We can call this rule four.
Rule 4. “It’s” (with an apostrophe) always means “It is.” Always. If you are tempted to write “it’s,” ask yourself “Do I mean ‘It is’?”
I’ll say that again. “It’s” always means “It is.”
“Its” (without an apostrophe) is a possessive pronoun, like his, yours, mine. It shows ownership. When you talk about an “it” owning something, for example, “The dog ate its bone,” you do not need an apostrophe. If you did put an apostrophe in that sentence “The dog ate it’s bone,” you would be saying “The dog ate it is bone,” which doesn’t make any sense. “It’s” always means “It is.” Always.
So that is easy too. “Its” (without an apostrophe) means that “it” owns whatever comes after; “Its bone,” “Its blanket.”
“It’s” (with an apostrophe) means “It is.”
So there you are. Six hundred words, and you know everything you will ever need to know about apostrophes!
© 2024 Qohel