Those very expensive platinum particles
SHARING Feedback’s puzzlement over La Prairie face cream and its claim to contain “magnetically charged particles of platinum” (23 June), Ash Choudry wrote to the company owning up to “struggling a little to understand how the particles can have a magnetic charge”. He further confessed that “I don’t understand what the ‘electrical balance’ of the skin is. Can you point me towards some kind of online medical resource that explains this?”
The response from Jaime Maser at La Prairie opened: “Our scientists have worked tirelessly to perfect a powerful and effective anti-aging cream that combined incorporate [sic] new ingredients, delivery systems, technologies and packaging components into one fabulous cream; the pricing reflects all that is incorporated into Cellular Cream Platinum Rare.” That price, by the way, is £656 for 50 millilitres.
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Maser went on: “Regarding any queries on clinical studies or claims, La Prairie’s policy is to not release specifics. However, in independent published research in the field, including studies by Prof. Y. Miyamoto/University of Tokyo, have demonstrated how Platinum is known to help electrical balance within the skin.”
Yusei Miyamoto has showing that platinum nanoparticles have antioxidant activity in the worm Caenorhabditis elegans. It seems a bit of a stretch, then, to rope him into something to do with the “electrical balance” of human skin.
Ash’s blog about his dialogue with La Prairie is at .
A third incorrect attempt to enter his pass code led to Simon Bowden’s 14-year-old son getting the message: “Ipod is disabled. Try again in 22,272,530 minutes
Magnetic monopoles for treating knees
LA PRAIRIE’S claims of particles with “magnetic charge”, mentioned above, imply the existence of lone magnetic poles. Simon Brown responded to our bemusement over this by expressing surprise “that cosmologists find that lone magnetic poles are not to be found at large in the universe”.
He suggests “they need look no further than 650 Davis Street, San Francisco”. That is the address of the Sharper Image Corporation, purveyor of a “Magnetic Therapy knee wrap” which contains “eight unipole therapeutic magnets of 1000 gauss each”. We observe, however, that these monopoles are “currently unavailable” . Cosmologists should check back to see when and whether their theories need to be rewritten.
READERS periodically send us photos of food shops in Germany and, especially, German-speaking Switzerland, showing a kind of pie in the window labelled “Cholera Pie”. We were quite surprised by this, and had to conclude that the word “cholera” means something different in German from its meaning in English.
Not so. 91av European correspondent Debora MacKenzie got to hear of our surprise and provided an explanation: “The Cholera is a Swiss cheese and veg pie said to date from the 19th-century cholera epidemics, when people did not dare go out to buy fresh food. So, the story goes, they packed potatoes, leeks, cheese, onions, apples, bacon – whatever – into a crust and baked it.
“The similarity of the recipe to a lot of other dishes in the region makes me strongly suspect the pie did not originate during or because of cholera, but this name for a whatever-you’ve-got leftovers dish might well have been a popular joke. A lame one, as staying in was no protection – people were probably getting cholera from the well water they washed down the pie with.”
Has your date of birth changed?
SECTION 2 of the driving licence application form D1, sent to Jim Moore by the UK Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, asks: “If any of your details have changed since your last licence was issued please give the previous details below.”
An example the form gives of the kind of detail that might have changed is: “Country you were born in”. Jim feels that to be consistent, the next print run of the D1 form should also ask respondents to state any changes there have been to their date of birth.
THE email that arrived in his inbox disconcerted Adrian Smith. Was it a spam message? Was it an unsavoury “business” proposition? Was it an appeal from a lonely heart?
With a subject line like “Search for Men”, it could have been any of these – until Adrian opened it and found that the heading was truncated. In full, it read: “Search for Mentor under Indo-US Research Professorship Program”.
A TEENY-WEENY bit of exaggeration, perhaps? Tony Harker notes that UK rail company First Great Western is putting up posters advertising the return of the refurbished Class 180 trains to its services. These proclaim: “There is no limit to the number of folding cycles the train can carry.”
“The Tardis now standing at platform 3…” Tony comments.
FINALLY, imagine the surprise of David Purdy on receiving a special offer of the Family Tree Maker program at less than half price. How could he resist the chance to “find out whether any of your descendants were on the Titanic”?