In article , northwest_man
wrote:
gardenlover Wrote:
HELP!!! This hot summer weather in California (90F) is killing all the
plants in my backyard. To make it worse, the state is putting a limit
onto our daily water usage. Any suggestion?!?
Okay so I asked my neighbord about ZEBA for you.
Liar.
Here is the website
that you can check it out www.zeba.com. It's a pretty cool product
because it absorbs and holds however much water you use for the plants
while releases them as much as the plants need. You can also mix ZEBA
with fertilizer to provide enough water and nutrient for the plants at
the same time. Good luck!
What you've been busying yourself doing today is called "stealth
spamming," O Lowly Northwest Man. It is generally regarded as the behavior
of criminals if not merely naifs. It certainly isn't done by honest
intelligent people, & it warns people never to trust such a company that
would resort to this high degree of dishonesty to attract marks & rubes.
So it really doesn't matter if the product were any good since it is being
sold by representives who have given every evidence of being criminally
minded, & who therefore couldn't be trusted with credit card numbers or to
make good a transaction that went awry.
But is it a good product? The preliminary evidence isn't so great. I note
that the website for Zeba offers the findings of zero independantly done
field studies that would indicate the product is in any way beneficial, so
Zeba would seem to be a contraction of Zero Basic Trials.
So there's a ****-poor for-shit amateur website with many broken links &
the links that do work never provide actual information but only
additional unsubstantiated sales-pitches. There's nothing whatsoever to
indicate the product has undergone rigorous field trials of any kind at
University horticultural stations or independent labs unaffiliated with
the busines partners. When this information is lacking, the assumption has
to be that it is either untested, or the tests did not provide the kind of
findings a company would want anyone to see.
So, a product promoted by a dishonest person who is a stealth spammer, & a
website with poor functionality making wild claims for starch granuals
without any substantiating independent research. Not too convincing. You
could just as well be claiming it cures baldness, gives men bigger
peckers, cures anus cancer, & can be used as an alternate fuel in a
Volkswagon or a backyard moon-rocket.
Really, since the Zeba representative is now a known liar, WHY would
anyone believe the website is magically telling the truth? Even a company
that didn't commit such outright frauds would be expectedt o provide
tear-sheets of indepfendent research.
If the product did even half what is claimed, that would mean the granuals
turn into an unpleasant gelatinous goo. It sounds horrid. Whether it
improved plant health despite being disgusting guck is something that
would have to be proved by independent field tests, not by heaping up
publicity claims.
Actual independent field trials for polymer hydrogels used as soil
ammendments have shown that they can be harmful to plantlife. The
"superabsorbant" properties claimed by polymer manufacturers are in the
first place turn out to be exaggerated by several factors. And though this
gelatinous muck sometimes has a temporary benefit, they are in the long
run problem-causing.
During biodegradation, polymers reverse their effect, depriving plants of
moisture. These polymers even before this harmful biodegradation have
immediate plastic-like qualities that do in some cases impede soil
aeration & once the flakes or granuals turn into swollen goo cause surface
run-off of rainwater preventing moisture's soil penetration. Sooner or
later biodegradable polymers do exactly the opposite of what the user
hoped this crap would do. If Zeba behaved less harmfully than the extant
products, the company would certainly provide the independent lab results
& field trials that proved it, & would delight most of all in
peer-reviewed scientific publication that showed benefit. Certainly the
company's own claims for this goo are even more suspect than for most
self-serving companies, since we already have evidence of crookedness &
eagerness to lie, in the form of stealth spamming.
When all the praise for this product comes from promotional literature &
press releases to business journals, but none of it from University
horticultural stations, that indicates no actual evidence of value exists.
When the publicity has such an easy time reaching business journals but no
luck at all impressing anyone as agricultural science, that suggests there
is only a business model & & blessed little science. It appears, indeed,
that all the "science" was done by business partners like Dr. William
Sloane, who previously claimed his earlier starch-based muck held TWO
THOUSAND times its weight in water, so he's no newcomer to exaggeration.
It looks like the
PR people felt that a claim no greater than the outside
maximum claimed by all other biodegradable absorbant polymers was better
to run with, so only allege 400 times its weight in water, but doesn't
bother to prove even that reduced exaggeration.
For garden purposes, woodchips, quality compost, or peat do the same job
adequately, plus the woodchips or compost provide safe plant nutrients & a
medium for benificial micro-organisms such as polymers retard.
So I have every expectation of complaints mounting up against this new
product and/or the company that promotes itself by dishonest methods. But
thanks to the revolting stealth spamming, many will be warned off it in
advance.
-paghat the ratgirl
--
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"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to
liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot." -Thomas Jefferson