NEW YORK Dow Jones)–Salesman Kevin Trudeau has made a career out of proving his detractors wrong
As a youth, Trudeau was written off by teachers who said he had a memory problem As a teenager, Trudeau tried to sell vitamins to his peers – only to be laughed at And as a young man, Trudeau was ridiculed by
relatives and neighbors in his blue-collar hometown for dreaming of the good life. Each time, though, Trudeau got the last laugh.
The 33-year-old Massachusetts native became one of the nation’s premier
experts on memory improvement and ranks as the top salesman for vitamin
company Nutrition For Life International inc.( NFLI). He owns a red
Ferarri, travels first class and is a multi-millionaire.
“Talk is cheap,” Trudeau says “Success is the sweetest revenge ”
Despite his current success, Trudeau has made serious mistakes in the
past He was convicted of larceny and credit-card fraud and served two
years in federal prison in the early 1990s. And now he is under fire for
allegedly running a pyramid scheme that authorities say could net him
millions while leaving the people he recruits in the lurch. Officials in
two states have ordered him to stop recruiting Nutrition For Life
distributors at $1,035 each.
Trudeau denies any wrongdoing in the latest charges. Indeed, even as
regulators attempt to clamp down on his activities, the salesman is
gearing up for a series of high-profile speeches and other promotional
efforts aimed at selling Nutrition For Life products nationwide. He’s
even been on the internet proclaiming his innocence.
So, what drives Trudeau? How did this man, adopted by a welder and his
wife, rise from modest beginnings in Lynn, Mass ? And are Trudeau’s most
recent troubles the result of what authorities say is fraud on his
behalf? Or is he being judged because of past mistakes as he claims?
An analysis of public records and interviews suggest that despite
Trudeau’s current woes, few obstacles could deter the lifelong salesman
who is intimately familiar with overcoming challenges.
Bom Feb 6, 1963, Trudeau was adopted at three weeks of age As a youth,
Trudeau had both conventional and highly unusual jobs and vocations.
Like most kids, he shoveled snow and served a newspaper route But unlike
most youngsters, he ran a successful mail-order business and also worked
as a semi-professional magician.
Trudeau excelled in his grade-school studies but floundered in high
school “I went from top to bottom,” he said After teachers told him he
had a memory problem, Trudeau read every book he could on memory and
began what would become a lifelong fascination with learning
memory-improvement techniques.
Kevin Trudeau Dow interview
Vaccine clears Alzheimers plaques
Vaccine clears Alzheimers plaques and restores memory to the elders (guardian.co.uk Dec 21), and may work in mad cow disease too. It forms antibodies against beta amyloid
Only in two Alzhemier mice models though. These mice had gene knockouts in the metabolism of B-amyloid; this sort of mutation consists of only about 0.01% of all patients with Alzhemier’s. Also, the method in which the two studies showed memory improvement was with the Morris water maze, which may not be the best way to measure episodic memory (see study in the same issue of Nature).
Always beware in equating an animal model with a human patient. Nonetheless, it is very promising, as it showed that the body can be immunised against its own protein, and can even clear established plaques. Even if these don’t prevent Alzhemier’s patients, it might slow down the progression of the disease.
USOC rejects chess
It has been claimed that amphetimines will “improve performance on a variety of mental tasks” and that this, in turn, could provide a performance boost to a chess player, since chess is a mental activity.
I wish you had stated specifically which mental tasks are improved, how this improvement was measured, and how this in turn translates into an enhancement in chess playing ability?
For example, is it being claimed that one’s memory is enhanced in some fashion? How is this memory improvement measured? Is it measured by a test such as the famous Pillsbury test wherein the subject was shown 20 multisyllabic words, given a certain amount of time to study them, and then asked to repeat them after a lapse of some more time? How is this related to the kinds of memory tasks facing a chessplayer during the play of an actual chess game?
Is it claimed that amphetimines will improve a person’s calculational ability so that he would be less prone to miscalculating a tactical sequence during a chess game? Is the calculational problem facing the chessplayer the same as that demanded by a person mentally calculating mathematical equations (the typical manner in which such things are measured)? Or is the chessplayer’s problem more one of visuallization rather than mathematical calculation?
How would this alleged improvement in calculational ability assist the chessplayer in the more fundamental task of preparing the combination, or of finding the candidate moves in the combinational or tactical sequence, or in assessing the final, stem positions?
But let’s get to the heart of the issue. The problem is that certain people, for reasons related to what they perceive as the benefits which would accrue to chess, are attempting to propagate the fiction that chess is a sport.
I shall deal with these alleged “benefits” (most of which do not and will not exist, and some of which are in fact, not benefits at all) in a response to Eric Johnson’s paper on drug-testing. For now I would like to point out that this is not the first time an activity previously thought not to be a sport has suddenly, for ulterior motives, attempted to pass itself off as a sport.
Years back, before the passage of Title IX, nobody, but NOBODY, EVER thought that cheerleading was a sport. Then, with the passage of Title IX, came financial incentives and penalties related to the level of expenditures on girls’ sports by schools. As if by magic, while we weren’t looking, or, as I suspect, while some of us were looking, cheerleading suddenly became transformed into a “sport”. Competitions,
hitherto almost nonexistent, were invented with judging and scoring, to give credence to the fiction.
The attempt to fob off cheerleading as a sport was aided by school administrators who were quick to realize the implications for Title IX requirements. Later, the ESPN television broadcast network would pick up the cudgels as well, realizing that it would give them an opportunity to flesh out their schedule with a fleshy skin show under the guise of sports.
Alas, neither of these factors appear to be available for chess. At least, I am not aware that ESPN is chomping at the bit waiting to add a chess program to its schedule and only held back by the fact that the USOC has not yet given its seal of approval to chess as a sport (though that was not even necessary in the case of cheerleading).
As with cheerleading before it, the idea that chess is a sport did not really gain currency in this country (U.S.) until some people began to think that there might be some benefit attached to the idea. However, the USOC has rejected chess as a sport (thus removing one of the prime supposed benefits – participation in the Olympics). As well, the drug testing advocates have utterly failed to demonstrate any performance enhancement effects for chess. Still, like a drug addict, they will find it hard to put aside the drug issue now that they have picked it up. Thus, in the future, we may expect that the argument for
drug testing will center on social issues, rather than competitive issues. That is, they will argue for the necessity of drug testing out of considerations for the image of the game or as a way to send a message to youth. I will deal with these non-competitive arguments in my responses to Eric Johnson’s paper on drug-testing (where I will also, as I mentioned above, discuss the supposed benefits of Olympic participation).
