Proclivities wrote: 
look where it got Weird Al

Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World by Barbara Ehrenreich | Book review

(...) As Ehrenreich goes on to explain, exhortations to think positively – to see the glass as half-full even when it lies shattered on the floor – are not restricted to the pink-ribbon culture of breast cancer. She roots America's susceptibility to the philosophy of positive thinking in the country's Calvinist past and demonstrates how, in its early days, a puritanical "demand for perpetual effort and self-examination to the point of self-loathing" terrified small children and reduced "formerly healthy adults to a condition of morbid withdrawal, usually marked by physical maladies as well as inner terror".

It was only in the early 19th century that the clouds of Calvinist gloom began to break and a new movement began to grow that would take as fervent a hold as the old one had. It was the joining of two thinkers, Phineas Parkhurst Quimby and Mary Baker Eddy, in the 1860s that brought about the formalisation of a post-Calvinist world-view, known as the New Thought Movement. A new type of God was envisaged who was no longer hostile and indifferent, but an all-powerful spirit whom humans had merely to access to take control of the physical world.

Middle-class women found this new style of thinking, which came to be known as the "laws of attraction", particularly beneficial. They had spent their days shut out from any role other than reclining on a chaise longue, denied any opportunity to strive in the world, but the New Thought approach and its "talking therapy" developed by Quimby opened up exciting new possibilities. Mary Baker Eddy, a beneficiary of the cure, went on to found Christian Science. (...)

If The Secret Really Worked...

As a Man Thinketh, Affirmative Thinking, Religious Science, Cause and Effect, Law of Attraction.

"The Secret" was just the name this age gave to an ancient understanding of mankind. Sounds so Simple, but NOT EASY. Happy thoughts must counter the negative messages in the subconscious and the subconscious isn't a fool, it knows when its being lied to. It took YEARS to put all that programming and messaging there. Enormous amounts of deep spiritual practice, discipline and meditation can eventually change one's thinking, perspective and what one is attracting, but it takes time and dedication. Acting as though its the latest instant pudding panacea for Self improvement however is another duped audience for another brand of Snake Oil. Sorry, no fast lane for inner peace and happiness.

And boy do I wish I was wrong..

 Manbird wrote: 

Nelson Fleming and Yubiwaza

Nelson "Mitch" Fleming and his wife Yoshie Imanami would have preferred the Yubiwaza ads never have appeared. After studying Sosuishi-Ryu jiu-jitsu in Japan, Mr. Fleming and Ms. Inamani returned to America to open a school in New Jersey. Convinced by a publisher to write a book on Yubiwaza (jiu jitsu finger techniques) what Mr. Fleming thought would be a 100 page book turned into a 14 page pamphlet, sold through the proposterous ads below. Fleming had no input on the ads, incidentally. He enjoyed a long career as a martial arts instructor until he passed away in 1987. Ms. Fleming, as her son indicated to me in an e-mail, is "still alive, still very tiny."

 Umberdog wrote: 

 Prodigal_SOB wrote: 
Perhaps giving people the bird had more shock value in the past.

 Manbird wrote: 
But is it scalable?  If I weigh 220 lbs. can I paralyze a 473-LB. attacker with just one finger and will it cost me $2.34? 

 Manbird wrote: 
I could have used this when I was young enough to be concerned.  I wonder if it's still available?