WiRE Blog

Archive for March, 2011

Diets and Detox – and Some Strange Ideas…

Tuesday, March 29th, 2011

By WiRE member Anna Mason, a Health & Fitness Coach from Distance Dieters

You may be intrigued to learn about some of the faddier diets on the planet. Here at Distance Dieters we in no way endorse the strange ideas you are about to read.

The Pregnant Pee Regime

Dieters drink or inject themselves with a pregnant woman’s urine, believing that hCG, the hormone it contains, will help them burn more fat and less muscle. There are claims of 1lb weight loss a day, but that’s when combined with a 500-calorie-a-day diet. Ummmm, not so yummy!

Charcoal Diet

Available at health-food stores, activated charcoal powder is sprinkled on food or dissolved in water and taken three times a day to ‘deactivate’ toxins. Pioneered by the ancient Egyptians, it now has a celebrity fan base, including Sarah Harding of Girls Aloud.

Mind Over Matter

Recent research suggests that if you imagine eating large amounts of your favourite food, you will actually eat less of it. A passing thought isn’t enough: participants in the study had to visualise chewing and swallowing 30 M&M’s in vivid detail to reduce the number of sweets they ate later.

Glacial Shell Therapy

This is the latest in cryotherapy (the vogue for cold treatments such as snow rooms). Your legs and stomach are massaged with one heated and one chilled shell. The combination is meant to ‘aid the breakdown of fat’.

Junior Detox

There seems to be a detox solution for every parental anxiety. Techno-junkie kids? On the Ambassadors of the Environment programme at the Ritz-Carlton, Grand Cayman, they will go Xbox cold turkey and learn to be at one with nature.
Some fat fearing American ‘moms’ are apparently diluting baby food to keep the little ones skinny!

The Hibernation Diet

An easy option, on the link between good sleep and weight loss. It’s creator, Mike McInnes, advocates two spoonfuls of honey before bed to aid sleep and fuel the liver. Unsurprisingly results also depend on a calorie-controlled diet and regular exercise.
There’s also a hard-core honey fast. You consume nothing but honey dissolved in water or tea for three days.

Bentonite Clay Capsules

Some detox clinics advise clients to take clay capsules during juice fasts. The clay is said to generate an electric charge that attracts toxins, impurities and heavy metals, locks them in and removes them from the body.

The Value of Freedom

Wednesday, March 9th, 2011

From the Opensure Blog – WiRE Member Heather Dontenville

What a cheesy title, and not quite what I’d originally had in mind. The cliches about freedom abound, but my question is really this one, posed in a slightly different context by Carl Hopkins in this Business Matters article: If it’s free, does it have value? Discuss.

Oh okay then, since you asked. The concept of the value of free aka open source software comes up frequently in various guises, most commonly in our experience as ‘why should we pay someone for something we can get for free?’, ‘if it’s free how can there be a successful (ie reliable) business model?’ and that old chestnut of focussing on the free-of-charge aspect of open source software, rather than the freedom to do what you like with the code.

Well, taking the first question first, any reputable company providing open source software and business services should never charge for software that’s absolutely free to get your hands on, run and do what you like with (that being the point of open source). However, just because you believe in open source, or even if you couldn’t care less but want the benefits, you don’t necessarily have the ability, inclination or time to play about with it, so then you’re paying a company to handle all that for you, leaving you free to do what you do best, whether that’s running a leisure resort, doing companies’ accounts or jetting all over the world conducting market research, to name just three of of our clients’ lines of work. You’re paying for someone else’s time, infrastructure and expertise, which keeps your business services flowing smoothly. You’d do just the same with a company providing you with proprietary software-run services, but you’d probably have all sorts of jolly extra license costs on top. Just because they can.

The second old saw: the open source business model. There’s lots of complicated stuff about that here, if you’re that way inclined. There are several different ways to build a successful business on open source software. Some open source software isn’t free to acquire, but the source code is freely available to amend and reissue; some open source software houses make money from selling training and support; then there’s dual-licensing, and also freemium-style open source software. These varieties bring us to the final point:

The point of open source software, in some cases referred to as free software, is that anyone is free to acquire the source code of the program, make all manner of changes to it, and release it as a new version. This is the freedom referred to in the name, and is far more important and significant than the fact that there’s no charge – which, as we’ve seen, isn’t always the case anyway. We realise this is completely lost on people who’d have a Hitchcockian moment of Birds-like horror at the prospect of playing with code, but take our word for it that this is a Very Good Thing.

So, value in something that’s free? I’d say so. If you disagree please leave a comment and let battle ensue.