Have you seen the new sunscreen arms race?

It used to be that buying sunscreen was a boring affair, an annual visit to that particular store aisle on your way to the first summer barbecue. But now, there's an arms race in sunscreen reminiscent of the blade-count battle in men's disposable razors (a race that the Onion eerily predicted).  SPF 30?  It's for chumps.  How about Neutrogena's SPF 100+?

Of course, it's all marketing shill:

The difference in UVB protection between an SPF 100 and SPF 50 is marginal. Far from offering double the blockage, SPF 100 blocks 99 percent of UVB rays, while SPF 50 blocks 98 percent. (SPF 30, that old-timer, holds its own, deflecting 96.7 percent).

The silliness of athletic "recovery" products

Despite the sleek runner in the TV ad and the bold claims on the crinkly package, special "recovery" food for athletes often takes advantage of unfounded science to make itself a market. It truth, regular old food (fruit, bread, juice) is more than enough to provide the nutrition the working body needs.

I like my pre-ultimate frisbee PBJ and my special "carb-loaded" beverage (read: beer) for afters.

Marketing American food

There's nothing like a good caustic look at what Americans eat, and this essay is no exception:

Remember how it used to be so difficult to transport yogurt? When yogurt only came in 50-pound reinforced steel containers that had to be moved using federally regulated yogurt transportation vehicles? Well, they've fixed that. Now you can get yogurt in an easy-to-transport package with a dumb pun for a name: Go-Gurt!

The article also delves into the inanity of the "100 Calorie Snack Pack," and other new ways to market old food:

This is because extensive scientific evidence shows that round numbers lead to weight loss. Eating an entire box of Cheese Nips is unquestionably unhealthy, unless it's really easy to do math afterward. This is why people in countries that use the metric system -- which is to say pretty much any country except the United States -- are much slimmer.

I was particularly entertained by this article's cynical assessment of food marketing given these recent findings: food - any food - wrapped in a McDonald's wrapper tastes better to kids.

The study had youngsters [ages 3-5] sample identical McDonald's foods in name-brand and unmarked wrappers. The unmarked foods always lost the taste test...

Even [store bought] carrots, milk and apple juice tasted better to the kids when they were wrapped in the familiar packaging of the Golden Arches.

But does it produce 1.21 gigawatts?

Scientists at Purdue have developed a mobile electricity generator that can run on biomass and garbage. Thanks to generous funding from the U.S. military, this portable generator is also "tactical." Using a digester and a gasifier, the system creates a crude biofuel that can power a diesel generator. Mr. Fusion is here!