Where Has All the Shampoo Gone?

If I pose the question asked in the title of this post, I'd have to answer that most of mine goes down the drain, and that is meant literally, for it takes place in the shower.

There are three ways to waste when it comes to shampoo. One is by buying expensive brands, which are no more effective at cleaning hair than the cheapo brands. The actual cleaning agents in both cases are the same or nearly so, as there are only a few chemicals that do the trick of rinsing the dirt from your locks, the other ingredients nearly useless additions that just cost you more without contributing any cleaning power. Conditioner is a bit different, and there may be advantages in some more costly brands, depending on your personal hair care needs.

So, what's the second way to waste money on shampoo? Well, first, once you're naked and in the shower with the curtain or door closed, grab the shampoo bottle and squeeze a big overflowing handful into your palm. You're going to plop that onto the top of your hair and once your head is under the shower's head, you're ready to begin flushing your money down the drain pipe.

Wasting shampoo in that manner is a habit I've been unable to break, except when forced to. Perhaps I'm just convinced, once I'm rendered relaxed and comfortable beneath the warm rush of pulsating hot water, that more equals better (and cleaner) and end up using too much, way too much. Like a drunk whose inhibitions have disappeared, in the shower my frugal instincts evaporate, leaving me in profligate mode.

But as I discovered (or rediscovered, as I've experienced it before, only to forget when the next full shampoo bottle was at my disposal), you only really need the tiniest amount of shampoo to clean a whole big head of hair. This revelation only occurs, however, when my current bottle of shampoo is almost empty and I've also failed to buy another to keep in reserve.

So, the other day, I desperately found myself with what certainly appeared to be an empty bottle of hair cleaning solution. I grabbed it and frantically shook it only to receive a few drops, which I looked at with complete contempt as they sat almost invisible in my hand. Resigning myself to a dirty head for the day, I nevertheless vigorously rubbed the inconsequential shampoo residue into my scalp. It worked! My head was soon covered in lather.

Now if only I could buy tiny little bottles of shampoo containing just a few drops each, I'd end the waste and save money. Or would I? Come to think of it, like every other product packaged in smaller units, I'd probably pay twice as much or more for the same amount of shampoo I'd get in a great big bottle.

Anyway, I've now got a fresh, recently purchased bottle sitting in the shower, so I won't have to make do with only a drop or two for at least a few days.


And that third way to waste shampoo? Ask the blonde who ran out. She kept following the instructions: lather, rinse, repeat.

While shopping in a food store, two nuns happened to pass by the beer cooler.

One nun said to the other, "Wouldn't a nice cool beer or two taste wonderful this evening?"

"Indeed, it would Sister," the second nun replied. "It would be very nice to have one, but I wouldn't feel comfortable buying beer as I am certain that it would cause a scene at the check-out counter."

"I can handle that without a problem," the first nun replied as she picked up a six-pack and headed for the check-out.

The cashier had a surprised look on his face when the two nuns arrived with the beer.

"We use beer for washing our hair" the nun said.

Without blinking an eye, the cashier reached under the counter and put a package of pretzel sticks in the bag with the beer.

"The curlers are on me," he said.

On saving shampoo, here's something my dad does that according to this may not be a good idea:

You step into the shower, only to discover that your shampoo bottle is practically empty. Argh! You fill the bottle partway with water, shake it up, and douse your wet hair with the diluted, sudsy shampoo. In seconds, you're lathered up, rinsing off, and ready to face your day.

As you turn off the water, you realize you've still got some shampoo solution left in your bottle. You're tempted to put the bottle back in your shower caddy and save the remainder for your next shampoo. After all, it seems a waste to just dump it, and you haven't got much time to go to the store to get a new bottle.

Resist temptation, brave shampooer. If you dilute your shampoo to eke another day's hair washing out of a bottle, throw the rest away immediately afterward.

Why? According to a chemist friend of mine, once you've diluted shampoo, you've rendered the preservatives in it too weak to do their job. Your watered-down shampoo is chock full of nitrogenous compounds and carbohydrates that bacteria and fungi will find oh so tasty. So if you let this solution sit for a day (or more) and then dump it on your hair, you'll also be dumping on a nice homemade culture of various nasties that may find your scalp to be equally delicious. You could find yourself getting a case of dermatitis or an infection.

The above advice on diluted shampoo is from here, where you'll also find some other interesting shampoo facts.

RiP! A Remix Manifesto

via George Donnelly

Music Monday: Tiny Parham Washboard Wiggles

Tiny Parham and His Musicians-Washboard Wiggles-July 22,1929.

The Real Global Warming Disaster

The Climate Change Bill laid down that, by 2050, the British people must cut their emissions of carbon dioxide by well over 80 per cent. Short of some unimaginable technological revolution, such a target could not possibly be achieved without shutting down almost the whole of our industrialised economy, changing our way of life out of recognition.-Christopher Booker




Framework Convention On Climate Change - 181 Page PDF



Christopher Booker:

By any measure, the supposed menace of global warming – and the political response to it – has become one of the overwhelmingly urgent issues of our time. If one accepts the thesis that the planet faces a threat unprecedented in history, the implications are mind-boggling. But equally mind-boggling now are the implications of the price we are being asked to pay by our politicians to meet that threat. More than ever, it is a matter of the highest priority that we should know whether or not the assumptions on which the politicians base their proposals are founded on properly sound science.

This is why I have been regularly reporting on the issue in my column in The Sunday Telegraph, and this week I publish a book called The Real Global Warming Disaster: Is the Obsession with "Climate Change" Turning Out to Be the Most Costly Scientific Blunder in History?.

The real climate change catastrophe


Lord Christopher Monckton Speaking in St. Paul (entire speech):

Paul Craig Roberts on the US plutocracy

Since SE and I are in the process of finishing off whatever remains of our conservative readers, this recent article by Paul Craig Roberts was just too good to pass up. ;)

Evidence that the US is a failed state is piling up faster than I can record it.
One conclusive hallmark of a failed state is that the crooks are inside the government, using government to protect and to advance their private interests.
Another conclusive hallmark is rising income inequality as the insiders manipulate economic policy for their enrichment at the expense of everyone else.

Income inequality in the US is now the most extreme of all countries. The 2008 OECD report, "Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries," [PDF]concludes that the US is the country with the highest inequality and poverty rate across the OECD and that since 2000 nowhere has there been such a stark rise in income inequality as in the US...

...The stark increase in US income inequality in the 21st century coincides with the offshoring of US jobs, which enriched executives with "performance bonuses" while impoverishing the middle class, and with the rapid rise of unregulated OTC derivatives, which enriched Wall Street and the financial sector at the expense of everyone else.

Millions of Americans have lost their homes and half of their retirement savings while being loaded up with government debt to bail out the banksters who created the derivative crisis.

Read the rest here.

But for now...on to the next batch of victims! College graduates.

As jobs become increasingly scarce, more and more college graduates are working for free, at internships, which is great for employers but something of a handicap for a young man or woman who has to pay for food or a place to live.

“The whole idea of apprenticeships is coming back into vogue, as it was 100 years ago,” said John Noble, director of the Office of Career Counseling at Williams College. “Certain industries, such as the media, TV, radio and so on, have always exploited recent graduates, giving them a chance to get into a very competitive field in exchange for making them work for no — or low — pay. But now this is spreading to many other industries.”

Bah, humbug. When will these spoiled brats learn to stop complaining? Aren't they aware that they're supposed to "pull themselves up by their own bootstraps?" (Cue story about some 19th century douche bag who was born poor but became a millionaire.)

Stop complaining about your terrible circumstances. The rich needed your money to buy new cruise ships for each of their islands. Stop being greedy and pay for their bail-outs.

PZ Myers: Fear, Greed and the Growth of African Churches

The nine-year-old boy lay on a bloodstained hospital sheet crawling with ants, staring blindly at the wall.

His family pastor had accused him of being a witch, and his father then tried to force acid down his throat as an exorcism. It spilled as he struggled, burning away his face and eyes. The emaciated boy barely had strength left to whisper the name of the church that had denounced him — Mount Zion Lighthouse.

A month later, he died.

...here we have a desperately poor region where the people need help...and instead, they get parasites who make promises of prosperity and blame failure on witches. Religion is the obstacle here, it doesn't help.

Fear and greed fuel the growth of African churches

Employees, The Joke's On You

I was at a bookstore and saw, sitting on the magazine rack, what at first appeared to be a strange notice to that very store's employees. Was it a warning for the bookstore's workers to avoid browsing the magazines on their breaks? A notice to keep their filthy worker's hands off the periodicals unless they were handling them as part of the job? No.

Upon closer examination I found that it was just a joke, for sale for $2.99; a "fake" sign reading as follows:

Employee Notice

Due to increased competition, cost escalation and our keen desire to stay in business, management has deemed necessary a change to your terms of employment.

It will now be compulsory to do something called work in between lunch breaks, coffee breaks, tea breaks, smoking breaks and bathroom breaks etc...

Management intends to call this the WORK BREAK!


Yeah, employees are all just a bunch of lazy good for nothing slackers. How dare they take breaks! Go to the bathroom? Hold it in and ruin your kidneys, you low-life wage-slave! Coffee, smokes, tea? Don't make me laugh, those are all just excuses to get out of doing your job.

This is the not so subtle corporate propaganda that permeates everything in this rotten society. That ordinary workers are not willing to work and in fact don't really work unless their game-playing, ladder-climbing, hierarchy defending, scumbag bosses are constantly whipping them into shape, threatening them with termination if they don't kill themselves for a few measly dollars.

The poor souls that actually are forced to sell their labor in order not to starve to death or end up sleeping in their cars are the problem, not the fat cats pulling down millions a year in compensation. Real wages for workers have stayed stagnate or declined in the last 30 years, while during the same period CEO pay has increased by at least TEN times. But it's ordinary Joe that needs to tow the line. Yeah, sure.

Progressive Nation: The Growing Rift Between Libertarians and Republicans

Although a tem­po­rary truce between Lib­er­tar­i­ans and Repub­li­cans has been in effect for the Tea Par­ties, divi­sions over legal­iz­ing mar­i­juana, domes­tic espi­onage, abor­tion, tor­ture, gay mar­riage, the sep­a­ra­tion of church/state, immi­gra­tion, and de-militarization are start­ing to take a toll. The schism between Lib­er­tar­i­ans and Repub­li­cans is widening.

Read the whole thing here. Good to see there are at least *some* progressives who understand that libertarianism and conservatism are not the same thing (at all).

Sunday Food: Make Mayo-Hem

Back in May I posted a video on how to make your own mayo. Today, to celebrate the return of our Sunday Food feature, we proudly welcome mayonnaise to Skeptical Eye again!

One day, thinking my sandwiches need more excitment than mere mayo could give them, I decided to look into to the wild, untamed taste of Miracle Whip and discovered I'm not a big fan. I hadn't had it in quite a while and the jar of the stuff (I really don't know what it is, so "stuff" is a good description) I purchased a few months back still sits in my fridge with only a few spoonfuls missing.



Here's a interesting fact about mayo itself and food safety: [Mayonnaise] has quite a low pH, so is inhospitable for bacteria. Mayonnaise is rarely the culprit in food-borne illness cases: it's much more likely to be the potatoes or pasta in the picnic salads causing problems!

I found the above mayo fact at this recipe for Making Mayonnaise.

For those concerned about the risk in using raw eggs in anything, there are pasteurized in-the-shell eggs, available in some locations (though I don't think I've ever seen them at any market I shop at).

The anarchy/minarchy debate

The anarchy/minarchy debate is now into its fifth decade...While the criticism in what follows is rigorous, I sincerely hope that it will not be construed as antagonistic. Anarchists and minarchists share an overarching goal, individual liberty. Disputes about how to achieve it should not be allowed to mask how much we have in common or how much we might achieve by working side by side.

The Facts Of Reality: Logic And History In Objectivist Debates About Government