Download or read book Silicon Snake Oil written by Clifford Stoll and published by Anchor. This book was released on 1996-03-01 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Silicon Snake Oil, Clifford Stoll, the best-selling author of The Cuckoo's Egg and one of the pioneers of the Internet, turns his attention to the much-heralded information highway, revealing that it is not all it's cracked up to be. Yes, the Internet provides access to plenty of services, but useful information is virtually impossible to find and difficult to access. Is being on-line truly useful? "Few aspects of daily life require computers...They're irrelevant to cooking, driving, visiting, negotiating, eating, hiking, dancing, speaking, and gossiping. You don't need a computer to...recite a poem or say a prayer." Computers can't, Stoll claims, provide a richer or better life. A cautionary tale about today's media darling, Silicon Snake Oil has sparked intense debate across the country about the merits--and foibles--of what's been touted as the entranceway to our future.
Download or read book Snake Oil written by Michael P. Senger and published by . This book was released on 2021-10-30 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through propaganda, corruption, and fraud, the Chinese Communist Party under Xi Jinping transformed the snake oil of COVID-19 lockdowns into "science." This is how he did it, and why.
Download or read book Snake Oil written by Reverend Becca Stevens and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2013-03-12 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In the world of snake oils, you have to see the world a little differently. Where others see poverty, you see riches; where others see weeds, you see flowers; where others see sickness, you see openness." Becca Stevens calls herself a "snake oil seller": She takes natural oils, mixes them with a good story, sells them in an open market and believes they help to heal the world. Becca is the founder of Thistle Farms, one of the most successful examples in the US of a social enterprise whose mission is the work force. She is also the founder of its residential program, Magdalene. The women of Magdalene/Thistle Farms have survived prostitution, trafficking and addiction, and the natural body care products they manufacture-balms, soaps, and lotions-aid in their own healing as well as that of the people who buy them. The book weaves together the beginnings of the enterprise with individual stories from Becca's own journey as well as 20 women in the community. In Snake Oil, Becca tells how the women she began helping fifteen years ago have been the biggest source of her own healing from sexual abuse and her father's death as a child. Wise and reflective, Snake Oil offers an empowering narrative as well as a selection of recipes for healing remedies that readers can make themselves.
Download or read book Snake Oil Science written by R. Barker Bausell PhD and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-31 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Millions of people worldwide swear by such therapies as acupuncture, herbal cures, and homeopathic remedies. Indeed, complementary and alternative medicine is embraced by a broad spectrum of society, from ordinary people, to scientists and physicians, to celebrities such as Prince Charles and Oprah Winfrey. In the tradition of Michael Shermers Why People Believe Weird Things and Robert Parks's Voodoo Science, Barker Bausell provides an engaging look at the scientific evidence for complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and at the logical, psychological, and physiological pitfalls that lead otherwise intelligent people--including researchers, physicians, and therapists--to endorse these cures. The books ultimate goal is to reveal not whether these therapies work--as Bausell explains, most do work, although weakly and temporarily--but whether they work for the reasons their proponents believe. Indeed, as Bausell reveals, it is the placebo effect that accounts for most of the positive results. He explores this remarkable phenomenon--the biological and chemical evidence for the placebo effect, how it works in the body, and why research on any therapy that does not factor in the placebo effect will inevitably produce false results. By contrast, as Bausell shows in an impressive survey of research from high-quality scientific journals and systematic reviews, studies employing credible placebo controls do not indicate positive effects for CAM therapies over and above those attributable to random chance. Here is not only an entertaining critique of the strangely zealous world of CAM belief and practice, but it also a first-rate introduction to how to correctly interpret scientific research of any sort. Readers will come away with a solid understanding of good vs. bad research practice and a healthy skepticism of claims about the latest miracle cure, be it St. John's Wort for depression or acupuncture for chronic pain.
Download or read book Snake Oil Hustlers and Hambones written by Ann Anderson and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-09-01 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long before television and radio commercials beckoned to potential buyers, the medicine show provided free entertainment and promised cures for everything from corns to cancer. Combining elements of the circus, theater, vaudeville, and good old-fashioned entrepreneurship, the showmen of the American medicine show sold tonics, ointments, pills, extracts and a host of other "wonder-cures," guaranteed to "cure what ails you." While the cures were seldom miraculous, the medicine show was an important part of American culture and of performance history. Harry Houdini, Buster Keaton, and P.T. Barnum all took a turn upon the medicine show stage. This study of the medicine show phenomenon surveys nineteenth century popular entertainment and provides insight into the ways in which show business, advertising, and medicine manufacture developed in concert. The colorful world of the medicine show, with its Wild West shows, pie-eating contests, clowns, and menageries, is fully explored. Photographs of performers and of the fascinating handbills and posters used to promote the medicine show are included.
Download or read book Spiritual Snake Oil written by S.C. Hitchcock and published by See Sharp Press. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Spiritual Snake Oil" shows that the same fallacies that plague religious apologetics also infect virtually all "new age" and "spiritual" writing. Author Chris Edwards does this by dissecting the arguments and assertions of the most prominent "new age" icons and "spiritual" writers. They include Robert Pirsig ("Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"), James Redfield ("The Celestine Prophecy"), Deepak Chopra ("Life After Death"), Dinesh D'Souza ("Life After Death"), Francis Collins's ("The Language of God"), Rhonda Byrne ("The Secret"), and even Michael Crichton (a surprising defender of New Age thinking). As Edwards shows, the same fallacies, the same errors in argument, show up time after time in the writings of these--and virtually all other--"new age" and "spiritual" writers. In addition to explaining these fallacies in the chapters devoted to the individual authors, Edwards devotes a final chapter, "A Compendium of Fallacies," to outlining the tricks and deceptive practices common to illogical arguments.
Download or read book Snake Oil written by Jim Rose and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The gyp, hoodwink, shuck, sandbag: An art form that has been passed down through generations of hustlers, con men, and freaks. Selling snake oil is the ultimate con, and readers will find within these pages everything from classic deceptions to the most recent of ruses. From fooling your friends to dangerous stage stunts, Jim Rose, snake oil salesman extraordinaire, provides new angles to old tricks. Those who dare to explore these pages will find themselves enticed by this special brand of snake oil. Step right up: it's all here. There's nothing it won't cure!
Download or read book Sanctified Snake Oil written by Susan K. Sarnoff and published by Praeger. This book was released on 2001-03-30 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Government supported junk social science-or sanctified snake oil as Sarnoff terms it-exists in all policy arenas along the entire political spectrum, as policy advocates seek to justify the continuation of ineffective programs and to block alternative solutions. This form of junk science is particularly dangerous and wasteful in terms of tax dollars because professional confirmation, media investigation and government support lend it an unwarranted imprimatur of validity. Sarnoff argues that it confuses the public and convinces them to support programs as ends in themselves, rather than determining whether or not such efforts actually achieve purported goals. Ineffectiveness, incompetence, lack of technology, ideology masquerading as policy, and even outright fraud serve to perpetuate the general confusion. This situation is exacerbated by the proliferation of media attention, much of it unmonitored for accuracy or bias. Sanctified snake oil, Sarnoff contends, spawns industries that drain public resources and attention from real, serious cases and distort public perceptions of the magnitude of the issues involved. This study sheds new light on this muddle and offers recommendations which will make it more difficult for junk science to represent itself as legitimate social policy.
Download or read book Snake Oil Salesman of the Week written by Brian Halsey and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-03-14 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Andy James is an artist, a fighter, and a big time a-hole from the small town of Tuckerton, New Jersey. While in pursuit of artistic greatness, James comes across a shapeshifting (Jersey) Devil during a chance encounter in the isolated Pine Barrens. Confident to a fault, Andy James believes he can get the best of the Devil, but unfortunately loses his soul in the process. Suffering from a carnivorous rage that is a product of the Devil's sourcery, James goes on a mission to find his evil nemesis. The grueling hunt leaves Andy beaten and taunted by the supernatural and human beings that surround him. With time running out, Andy's fortune begins to turn when he discovers a loophole in his soulless existence. Armed with sacred knowledge and endless bravado, Andy James returns to the wilderness for a showdown against the most ancient evil known to mankind.
Download or read book Snake Oil And Other Preoccupations written by John Diamond and published by Random House. This book was released on 2009-05-04 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the time of his death from cancer on 1 March 2001, journalist and broadcaster John Diamond had completed six chapters of what was to be "an uncomplimentary look at the world of complementary medicine". These chapters, based on his own experience and on researched fact, which were emailed each week to his editors at Random House, are both personal and poignant, hard hitting and controversial, tackling the issues raised by alternative medicine with total candour and his usual wit. The second half of this book features some of the best of Diamond's writing, including a selection of emails to colleagues and friends, articles from "The Times" and the "Jewish Chronicle" and other publications, together with excerpts from his final notebook. For seven years he wrote an immensely popular weekly column in "The Times" which, following his diagnosis with cancer, was given over to following the progress of the disease. As well as gaining him a Columnist of the Year award, it resulted in an avalanche of mail from thousands of his readers.
Download or read book Literacy as Snake Oil written by Joanne Larson and published by New Literacies and Digital Epistemologies. This book was released on 2007 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This revised edition of Literacy as Snake Oil further investigates and critiques the commodification of literacy and education. Since the publication of the first edition, schools in the U.S. have been targeted even more as a market for private companies seeking to profit from the surveillance of NCLB (No Child Left Behind). Three chapters have been added: one that deals with the reproduction of racialized spaces during a textbook adoption, an analysis of America's Choice by a classroom teacher, and an analysis of the U.K.'s literacy strategy. This book will inspire teachers to remember their political commitments to resist oppression and unethical practice and find ways to subvert teacher- (and student-) proof packages.
Download or read book Snake Oil written by Marcus Galloway and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Professor Henry Whiteoak is a liar and a swindler heading to Montana. Corey Maynard is a thief who has worked with Whiteoak and backs him in business adventures of crooked card games and deadly shootouts in Montana. Bounty hunters are looking to cash in on the reward"--
Download or read book The Truth About Lies written by Aja Raden and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do you believe what you believe? You’ve been lied to. Probably a lot. We’re always stunned when we realize we’ve been deceived. We can’t believe we were fooled: What was I thinking? How could I have believed that? We always wonder why we believed the lie. But have you ever wondered why you believe the truth? People tell you the truth all the time, and you believe them; and if, at some later point, you’re confronted with evidence that the story you believed was indeed true, you never wonder why you believed it in the first place. In this incisive and insightful taxonomy of lies and liars, New York Times bestselling author Aja Raden makes the surprising claim that maybe you should. Buttressed by history, psychology, and science, The Truth About Lies is both an eye-opening primer on con-artistry—from pyramid schemes to shell games, forgery to hoaxes—and also a telescopic view of society through the mechanics of belief: why we lie, why we believe, and how, if at all, the acts differ. Through wild tales of cons and marks, Raden examines not only how lies actually work, but also why they work, from the evolutionary function of deception to what it reveals about our own. In her previous book, Stoned, Raden asked, “What makes a thing valuable?” In The Truth About Lies, she asks “What makes a thing real?” With cutting wit and a deft touch, Raden untangles the relationship of truth to lie, belief to faith, and deception to propaganda. The Truth About Lies will change everything you thought you knew about what you know, and whether you ever really know it.
Download or read book High Tech Heretic written by Clifford Stoll and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2000-09-12 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The cry for and against computers in the classroom is a topic of concern to parents, educators, and communities everywhere. Now, from a Silicon Valley hero and bestselling technology writer comes a pointed critique of the hype surrounding computers and their real benefits, especially in education. In High-Tech Heretic, Clifford Stoll questions the relentless drumbeat for "computer literacy" by educators and the computer industry, particularly since most people just use computers for word processing and games--and computers become outmoded or obsolete much sooner than new textbooks or a good teacher. As one who loves computers as much as he disdains the inflated promises made on their behalf, Stoll offers a commonsense look at how we can make a technological world better suited for people, instead of making people better suited to using machines.
Download or read book The Snake Oil Wars Or Scheherazade Ginsberg Strikes Again written by Parke Godwin and published by Doubleday Books. This book was released on 1989 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Science fiction/fantasy.
Download or read book The Life and Adventures of the American Cow Boy written by Clark Stanley and published by . This book was released on 2017-06-22 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Life and Adventures of the American Cow-Boy - Life in the far West is an unchanged, high-quality reprint of the original edition of 1897. Hansebooks is editor of the literature on different topic areas such as research and science, travel and expeditions, cooking and nutrition, medicine, and other genres. As a publisher we focus on the preservation of historical literature. Many works of historical writers and scientists are available today as antiques only. Hansebooks newly publishes these books and contributes to the preservation of literature which has become rare and historical knowledge for the future.
Download or read book Snake Oil written by Richard Heinberg and published by CLAIRVIEW BOOKS. This book was released on 2014-03-24 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rapid spread of ‘fracking’ (hydraulic fracturing) has temporarily boosted natural gas and oil production, particularly in the USA, but it has also sparked a massive environmental backlash in local communities. The fossil fuel industry is promoting fracking as the biggest energy development of the century, with seductive promises of energy independence and benefits to local economies. Snake Oil casts a critical eye on the oil-industry hype that has hijacked the discussion over energy security. This is the first book to look at fracking from both economic and environmental perspectives, informed by the most thorough analysis of shale gas and oil drilling data ever undertaken. Is fracking the miracle cure-all to our energy ills, or a costly distraction from the necessary work of reducing our fossil fuel dependence?
