A couple of days ago I sat down for the regular coffee that I enjoy at the local Espresso shop a few times a week. I had just found a seat, sipped on my coffee and had had my internet connection up and running for a minute when I noticed three people at a table a couple of meters away from mine. On one side of the table sat a middle-aged man and a very attractive woman in her thirties, and opposite to them a young man. It looked like a job interview.

A few minutes later I looked up again and the middle-aged man was clearly trying to pursuade the young man of something, and that something had something to to with a bottle. I did get a glimpse of the bottle and the text on the bottle, "Kyani". I opened a new tab in my browser and quickly found what it was - a fairly new multi-layer marketing scam. The middled-aged man and the woman were obviously trying to recruit the young man to this scam.

If it had been a standard job interview I would not have thought about it twice, but my interest grew as I particularly dislike scams. The attractive woman and the middle-aged man were working as a tag-team to pursuade the young man. Clearly she was supposed to be there as a successful distributor who had herself signed up a couple of months ago and were there now to inform the young man that this scam was a fail-safe way to make a lot of money. Or at least that is what I assume, as I could not hear any part of their conversation. The middle-aged man was pointing at a paper on the table quite a lot and held up a Master Card. Who knows what he might have said, "join me and you shall have one of these of your own". I went back to my coffee and internet browsing.

After another couple of minutes the middle-aged man stood up. He shook the young man's hand and they seemed to be in some kind of agreement of the "I will let you think about it and please let me know" kind. The very attractive young woman stood up as well and loudly the man promised to buy her dinner the next time they meet and that that meeting must take place very soon. They hugged and seemed very friendly with each other. Probably to try to convey an air of "we do not know each other that well, but we have been so successful in this business venture that we just love each other". The middle-aged man left.

And now the ugly part; The very attractive woman stayed with the young man. They opened some packets of juice (Kyani) together. She said something to the young man, probably along the line of "it's soo good, but be careful, your body will become used to all these vitamins so you will become addicted - ha-ha". She no doubt played the card of "I was just like you, I signed up, and now I am rich and I feel so good after drinking the juice - but I only distribute it to help people - money is just an extra that comes with helping....", and more of such crap.

But I do give the middle-aged man and the woman credit for tag-teaming the young man. I hope he saw through it all eventually, before he had lost too much money. And I wonder if the woman was really in the tag-team (I bet she was) or if she was herself just a distributor who was only helping out for the "good cause" (not likely).

Now, Kyani. What is it?

I will not repeat any of the "Wild Alaskan Blueberry" crap that you can find so much more of if you search the internet for these products. There is one thread on the VoF forum (swedish). I guess the benefit of Kyani is that the product has a high ORAC value (antioxidant value). This Flashback forum thread (swedish) compares ORAC values for different natural products and spices, and one serving of Kyani has an ORAC value of approximately 35000, compared to 1/3 tea-spoon of cinnamon that has an ORAC value of 61000. A pack of cinnamon costs next to nothing. Skeptoid ran an episode on Superjuices where the conclusion was that it was better (and a lot cheaper) to buy an apple instead of a superjuice.

But, it's not really about the superjuice Kyani. It never was and it never will be about any of the products. It is about a multi-level marketing scam. Please read and consider the Ten Big Lies of Multi-Level Marketing.

I have tried to figure out how to add a newline in the regexp replace function in Emacs. Back-slash 'n' does not work. Double-back-slash does not work either. Nor hitting return. But then I figured it out, just punch,

C-q C-j

GeoCities shuts down today.

I once had a home page on GeoCitites. I think in the late 1990s. I got Internet access from home around 1995 so my first homepage should have appeared a year or two thereafter. My homepage had the standard multi-colored bullets in lists. The gray "stony" background (I know you remember it). Maybe some blinking text, although I never was a fan of blink. I think my old home page is stored on a floppy somewhere - if I find it I will put it online again. Just for old time's sake.

This event has been noticed around the Internet today. The best I have seen so far is xkcd. I love it! That is actually what the Internet used to look like. FOR REAL!! (Cory Doctorow wrote about the xkcd tribute on BoingBoing.net)

GeoCities went online in 1994. Offline October 26th, 2009. So long and thanks for everything.. I miss the good old days a bit.

The Internet was different then.

(modified, removed the irritating blink tag I had added...).

In recent news, but hardly new... About 5 minutes after the announcement every blog on the net had commented on the new laureate. And looking back on all those comments I think it is clear, which it also was 2 minutes after the announcement (i.e. before anyone had commented) - we look like fools! Fools, I tell you!

Was it an article in the NYT or a blog on HuffPost that put it so well...?

This is awkward, very awkward...

Why? Well, this year's laureates in physics were awarded for breakthroughs made in the 1960s. The chemistry laureates made their discoveries in the 1990s. This year's medicin prize is given for accomplishments done in the 1980s.

And this year's prize in peace is awarded for work done ... em, for expectations ... ?

for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples (source)

Please!! Give awards for accomplishments, not for what may be. That is clear in Alfred Nobel's will. Europe gets blamed for this stupidity. Scandinavia too. And Sweden. And yet...

... and that for champions of peace by a committee of five persons to be elected by the Norwegian Storting. (source)

I like Obama. I hope he will do great. And if he deserves the Nobel peace prize he would receive it in due time... But to award someone a prize for something they have yet to achieve, is just awkward.

Nobelprize.org

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