Probiotic

Oflate there has been a flurry of articles and advertisements promoting probiotic products.
Probiotic yoghurt, ice cream....to list a few

Probiotic - primarily refers to products enriched with "friendly" (say useful) bacteria.

A recent article which got me thinking about this entire probiotic bizness :
"probiotic - harmful to the pancreas"
Explantion : usually the bacteria start acting on the food after it has already passed through the pancreas and into the intestine. However if these bacteria are already present in the food then they would act first on the pancreas itself leading to ulceration.

Do we really need probiotic products. Why cant we have simple, clean, fresh food and hope it goes down well with the system.

Nielsen and web tracking

Lately the popular auditing and tracking company ACN tried requesting their Television tracking households to allow them to track their cell phone usage and web usage. As anticipated a large proportion of the households refused. So now they have made it optional.

Although the Television track run by ACN is more popular and more reputed than those run by other (smaller, local companies) consumers would not want "so much nosiness" in their affairs.
Imagine feeling like Truman in the Truman show when he discovers he is "a soap character"

Also lately they had to close down another of their projects - Project Apollo which was tracking Radio listening habits thereby ending their alliance with a company whose forte was Radio tracks.

Scientology

I pulled up this topic for a post on this blog since I consider Scientology a concept which is getting it's fair share of marketing!
Earlier I had read about it only in the context of Tom Cruise and his baby, how his beliefs in scientology are going to determine the manner in which his baby would be delivered. Also John Travolta (the Grease dude), and his family are followers of Scientology.
As I understand Scientology has its principles (somewhere) in Christianity. There are scientology centres across the world. The one in India is in Delhi and apparently has ~40000 followers. Interesting!
Now what is Scientology? a means of understanding "the spirit" (sorry! not the bottled variety:) ; in context to life, universe and everything around. The spirit is referred to as the "Thetan". There are auditors who audit your brain waves and help you to sort out your thoughts, feelings and understand yourself better. The course cost runs to millions of rupees. Whoever said celebrities support affordable causes?!
Mere mortals like you and me are termed "Pre-clear" ( I decode that as someone who has not been audited and is thereby not quite clear about their thoughts etc...).
To become an auditor one needs to spend a few millions (again!) for getting trained. For those interested, there is shortly a centre coming up in Mumbai.
Thanks to brand ambassadors like Cruise and Travolta - scientology is catching up.
To the "pre-clear" - if you can't afford to get yourself audited.....then "don't worry be happy".... :)....things will get clearer (if not today, then SOMEDAY)

Water, water everywhere.....it costs a lot to drink!

I never thought that drinking water can be more expensive than an Evian, San Pellegrino or a Perrier. But I was proved wrong when I read about Byde's brand of mineral water, very rightly called, Bling H2O.
Bling H2O - the name made me wonder if it contained bling - gold and platinum deposits or some such thing. Well, no such luck. It is simply mineral water which follows a very rigorous purification process (source Tennesee waters) and is sold in a swarovski crystals encrusted bottle. It costs close to USD 42 for a 750 ml bottle. Hmm...and when I just about got down to accepting this reality, someone mentioned that there is yet another brand which costs close to USD 450 for a case. It is most rightly called the Charity water as the proceeds from it's sale go to funding drinking water projects in Africa.
And while there are pockets all across the world where not a drop of water is available, where humans, animals and plants perish for want of a drop....there lies a part of the world who picks up one for the Bling effect!
Cest la vie!