The Daily Sabbatical

Last spring, I was eating dinner in a semi-fancy restaurant that incongruously had flat screen TVs playing news in the corner. (This is very Dallas, by the way.) My taste for food faded as I saw a commercial for Japanese Foot Pads which reportedly sucked various toxins from your feet while sleeping. It was both gross and grossly implausible. Here’s the ad:

Recently, All Things Considered on NPR (or, as my wife affectionately calls it, “the nipper”) had a feature that pretty conclusively unveiled the sham. Listen here as Sarah Varney blackens her soles for science. I still see these things in stores. More evidence that people are idiots.