Dying can change your life

If anyone flew with bmi last month, you might have seen an article in their inflight magazine entitled, “Does Colour Affect Your Wellbeing?” It’s a promotion for this curious product called Auric Colours developed by a company called Sentient-Light (a foreboding name from the outset). It’s all about these – well – dyes I guess, made from the usual valued rocks, metals and minerals like gold and pearl and amethyst, etc. What these dyes do is stimulate your energy centres somehow.

Why would we want to stimulate our energy centres? Usual reasons associated with Newage (pronounced to rhyme with sewage): good health, wellbeing, blah, blah, blah. Personally, I prefer Feng Shui. At least they’re promising you money from their expensive musical chairs.
Anyway, the article is good for a laugh. Here are some of the highlights.

The influence of colour on our wellbeing has long been recognised –with evidence
dating back thousands of years to the ancient cultures of Egypt, China and
India.

Not untrue. Aesthetics is very important in affecting our state of mind, and colour is a major part of that. Why do you think Microsoft devote so much effort to eye candy to their operating systems? Make it pretty and the punters will come. I personally love the Olive Green style on XP. It makes me much happier to work than with the default blue scheme.

Modern science has now proven that everything has an energy or electromagnetic
field.

Okay now the bullshit starts flying. Firstly, energy and electromagnetic field are two entirely different things. Where you find an electromagnetic field, which is a force field, you will find an energy field, but energy fields will also be present due to other forces like gravity. They are wrong when implying that an energy field is synonymous with a force field.

Secondly, everything does not have an electromagnetic field in any meaningful sense of the word. Yes, the charged particles that make up matter at the subatomic level have magnetic fields, but on the macroscopic scale, a plank of wood, for example, will be electromagnetically dead.

This is what really sucks about newagers. They latch onto a scientific concept, abuse the terminology, such as misunderstanding the distinction between force field and energy field, and then claim that science backs up their snake oil.

Colour is central to this energy and affects us on all levels – and forms what
is known as our own personal aura.

Newage clap trap. Colour is our brains’ interpretation of wavelengths of visible light. The electromagnetic field generated by a desk lamp has no colour. The light produced by the desk lamp will have a certain spectrum to it, which we will see as colour, but to apply that colour to the magnetic field in the wire is nonsense.

A personal colour consultant can help you discover which colours will benefit
your overall health and vitality.

I’ll do that now for free. Green and yellow and blue will leave you alright. Brown will lead to dire consequences. What’s my reasoning? Green and yellow is the colour of Earth, which is at zero volts. Blue is the colour of neutral, also at zero volts. Blue on the other hand is the colour of live, which is at 230Vac. Touch that wire and you’re fried!

Auric Colours (developed by Sentient-Light) are a unique range of aromatic
pigments that can be used to tap into the power of colour by stimulating our
energy centres through the fundamental senses of sight and smell.

Colourful and nice smelling? Okay, that sounds quite neat. You don’t need to dress it up in pseudoscientific rubbish about energy centres. This shit about it a load of crap and you know it. It sounds like you’re going to paint an electrical substation. Just say you have some nice smelling dyes.

The articles carries on for a while with reference to the particular manifestations of their products, mostly cosmetics, but there’s also a picture of a pendant, which is a vile of their dye, but looks like those anti-theft devices you sometimes see in clothes stores. They quote much from a representative named Sonal. She says,

My intuitive sensitivity enables me to tune in and usually I have a flash.
I’ll think, ‘If this person used green, their communication would be more
natural and dynamic.’

Like a tee-totaller trying to understand alcoholism, I’m at a loss to explain how anyone could take this guff seriously. Communication skills are something which a lot of people do require and receive training to get them up to a better standard. This profession is a particularly soft “science”, and so your mileage may vary from quite useful to utter bullshit. However, if your couch suggests that being made up like an Orion slave girl is a useful exercise, presume the worst.

In the interest of fairness, this is their website. They even have a shot of the Voyager magazine article.

http://www.auric-colours.com/

It's actually happening!

OK, so I haven't been paying attention lately, but while I wasn't looking, the energy companies have actually got serious about new nuclear build in the UK.

RWE and E.On this year have set up their joint venture. They've already secured land 6 weeks ago in Anglesey for Wylfa C and in Gloucestershire for Oldbury B. They want to get the plants operating by 2020. Shame it has to take so long, but then 6 GWe is a fair chunk of electricity and the EPR (currently the favourite, but the AP-1000 could be the winner), is a sizeable specimen of criticality.

In addition it looks like RWE has got options to purchase land in West Cumbria near to Sellafield at places called Kirksanton and Braystones.

Meanwhile, EdF, which took over British Energy last year (shame but inevitable lets be honest), has its eyes on Hinkley Point and has got the backing of electrical distributor, Centrica, to press ahead.

This isn't just talk now. Wheels are actually in motion. Proper plans are being laid down. The ambitions are pretty big. I'm sure these first taste of Generation III+ will prove reliable and safe. If it can prove economic to boot in a way that the current technology in Britain didn't, then it will be the first in a wave of nuclearification.