Say My Name, Say My Name

In the U.S., companies can advertise prescription drugs, but there are a lot of requirements, most notably the requirement of reading the list of side effects, however long and embarrassing. They can be kind of gross and scary, but I actually like hearing those lists. It’s refreshing for ads to have to present both sides of the story, and it’s amusing to think how much money was spent to tell you about all the humiliating shortcomings of their pill. But most of all, it reassures me about the structures of society. We often think of government as being a puppet of big business, but if a multi-billion-dollar pharma conglomerate still has to warn you that their product may cause 'anal leakage,' then it’s clear that regulations still have some teeth.

(Fun fact: The U.S. and New Zealand are the only countries that allow the advertising of prescription drugs.)

In contrast, here in Canada, we have pretty severe restrictions on these ads. You can advertise prescription drugs, but you can’t mention what the drug does. And I have to say, these ads are even worse than the fast talker trying to sneak anal leakage past us.

For one thing, if you can’t tell anyone what the drug does, there’s not much else you can do except repeat the name of the drug over and over, in an aggravating and blatant exercise in name recognition. In their defence, the advertisers do try to make a joke of it. And in their offence, even that is really annoying.

It’s the most insultingly cynical that advertising can get. I mean, advertising can, theoretically be a good thing: a business is making the case of how beneficial their product is. That’s how it should be, and — I assume — how it once was, when advertising first crawled out of the primordial goop. But we all know most ads are not really very useful; it’s mostly just psychological tricks, trying to associate the product with a catchy jingle, or sex, or a promise of restoring confidence in your masculinity. We know all this, but we tell ourselves advertising can be a good and useful thing to justify to ourselves that this is all acceptable.

But these prescription ads puncture that pretence, because they’re the purest form of anti-intellectual advertising. You can’t pretend they’re a useful service to the public, because they tell you literally nothing other than the product name. These ads are actually dumber than showing half-naked women in a beer ad; that ad is at least making the (ridiculous) case that the beer will make you attract women. Prescription ads don't even do that. There's no hiding the fact that it's pure repetition aimed straight at lodging the brand in your lizard brain.

And I have no idea how this regulation makes sense. As I said, it’s good to have some limitations on the advertising of prescription medication, but in this case it’s not helping. They’re telling us what is available, but not telling us anything else. Even the American ads warning us about anal leakage are at least giving the public some info. (And don’t worry, by the comic rule of three, I won’t bring that up again.)

It should also be noted that there is another kind of ad allowed in Canada, which is essentially the opposite. In this case you’re allowed to talk about the medical problem, and even tell people that there are one or more solutions available, you just can’t tell anyone what it is. So essentially it sounds like a non-profit public service announcement, except for the note at the end to talk to your doctor about prescription medications, hint-hint, nudge-nudge. For some reason, these kind of ads are mainly used to tell us about toenail fungus cures. Apparently there’s a lot of money in that: It's at the top of the list of things I can't believe are sold so hard, ahead of home-delivered mattresses and reverse mortgages.

Anyway, if you’re like me, you’re hugely curious about what some of these commonly-advertised drugs are for, but you never actually look it up, because that would feel like you’re giving in, and you can’t let these ads win. Well, I figured I’ll take that on so you don’t have to. I looked up the drugs being advertised in name only in Canada right now: Ozempic, Rybelsus, Saxenda and Contrave. The answer is, they're all for weight management and diabetes. There are differences in how they're administered, and what specifically they're used for, but they're all after a similar market. I guess I should have guessed that, since these ads are among the few with actors of a variety of body types, a Sherlockian hint that came dangerously close to giving us real information.

No Hitter

I was surprised to see this article on concussions in hockey. In it, Hall-of-Fame players Eric Lindros and Ken Dryden argue for radical action on concussions, including a seemingly unthinkable ban on hitting. You might expect that from the intellectual goalie Dryden, but it’s a shock coming from Lindros, who made his living as a physical player. But after a career derailed by concussions, he plays non-contact hockey for recreation, and has been surprised that he still enjoys it.

That brings up Thing I Don’t Get About Hockey, #973: much of the hockey that actually gets played is non-contact. Women’s hockey doesn’t have body checking, children at an early age don’t either. And a lot of the recreational leagues don’t. And yet, whenever anyone discusses violence in hockey, experts talk about the physical nature of the game as being integral. Take it away and it’s not the same sport anymore. So by implication, women, children, and part-time players are playing some other sport. Those ads we keep seeing during commercial breaks pleading with parents to let their kids play hockey, are in fact, encouraging them to play some weird de-fanged facsimile of the sport. It’s a hypocrisy where the sport’s gatekeepers want us to keep the sport violent, but also want to maintain the idea that the sport is a wholesome part of Canadian society.

To be clear, I don’t for a second believe that removing the physical contact from the game is going to happen any time soon, but having respected players talk seriously about it is going to shift what is acceptable in discussion. The sport’s going to need major changes to make the sport safe, but so far, they haven’t been willing to make changes that will change how the sport is played, unlike the NFL. But if respected folks are going around talking about a massive overhaul, then those play-changing alterations will seem more palatable.

I’m also glad that Dryden brings up another point that I wish someone would acknowledge: just how much the game has changed over the years. He notes that if you look back at games from the 50’s - 60’s, there’s actually less hitting than now. That’s something I’ve noticed whenever the CBC shows old games late at night. Even as late as the 1980’s, you can see a distinct reduction in the physicality of the game. Specifically, there seems to be a different philosophy, with players often passing up the opportunity to hit another player. Today, in the same position, anyone would hit an opposing player at any opportunity; there’s no question of tactics or choosing when to hit, you just hit anyone you can any time you can, that’s how it’s done.

But Dryden points out that it’s not hard to understand why there was less hitting: in the original-six era, shifts were much longer than they are now. Players didn’t have the energy to hit everything that moved, and even if they did, no one had the energy to get up the speed to hit particularly hard.

Oh, and this leads to Thing I Don’t Get About Hockey, #1,562: Hockey is an extremely traditional sport, yet no one seems to care that it keeps changing. I always thought that the fundamental difference between hockey and baseball is embodied by the implements of the sports: the bat and the stick. Both baseball bats and hockey sticks are traditionally made of wood. But as soon as someone considered making the bats out of something else, they immediately banned the concept and assured everyone that bats would be forever made out of wood. In hockey, they started making the sticks out of carbon fibre, and no one said a word. The players quietly made the revolutionary change without much pushback from the sport’s traditionalists who howl at any rule change. Now wood sticks are as rare as players with perfect teeth.

Similarly, if you ask anyone, they’ll say they never want the game to change, even though it’s now totally different from what it once was. Hopefully, more people will recognize how much and how frequently the sport changes on its own, and realize that we can improve it when necessary.

Big Hands, I Know You're The One

For non-obvious reasons, baseball has seen an epidemic of blister problems for its pitchers. Having not spent much of my life throwing baseballs around, I could never wrap my head around the idea that you could throw them enough to cause blisters, but it's been an occupational hazard through the history of the sport. But this year, it's suddenly worse, and affecting pitchers who hadn't previously had such problems. You may not realize it if you're just following one team, but it's been widespread.

Why would this be? Is not clear, but people are putting it together with the other thing we've seen an explosion of this year: home runs. The increase in home runs is sudden and widespread, so a drug-based explanation seems unlikely. So if the players aren't juiced, the assumption is that the balls are. Officially, there has been no change to the design and manufacture of balls, but that would explain both phenomena.

Well, I hope someone figures out what is going on and fixes it. Partly, that is of course because the Blue Jays are particularly hurt by blisters, with young ace Aaron Sanchez just placed on the Disabled List for an incredible fourth time this season, all for blisters. But even worse than nuking my team's pitching rotation, I don't think I can take another description of blisters.

I'm used to hearing commentators and journalists giving dry, medical descriptions of injuries, using vague, bland terms. But now I'm hearing talk about skin and blood. Yes, I realize that most sports injuries are far more painful than a blister. But most viewers have never torn a ligament, so we can listen all day to talk of anterior this and medial-collateral that. But get into nails and pus and we're squirming.

So I guess we all owe hockey an apology. Many have ridiculed how hockey teams try to protect their players from exploitation by reporting injuries as vaguely as possible. Usually you get no more that "upper body injury" or "lower body injury." Now, I guess that's no so bad. I'd hate to imagine detailed reports of hockey injuries.

Also, medical science needs to get to work on better treatments for blisters. It's kind of weird that elbow problems can be fixed by now-routine Tommy John Surgery. Perhaps they can develop a procedure that makes you blister-proof. Just think, years from know you'll hear about pitchers needing Aaron Sanchez Surgery.

I May Need Glastonbury

The big music festivals have posters that list all the bands playing, and they usually follow the same form:

The biggest acts are at the top, and they get the biggest print.  As you go down, the performers are harder to recognize, and their names are harder to read.  It occurred to me that this format is not unlike another famous poster:

Both posters seem harmless enough to young people. But for older people, they cause some trouble the further down the poster you go.  The eye chart reminds you that your sight isn't what it once was, and the festival poster reminds you that you aren't as cool as you once were.

But the good news is that for many people, their eyesight and coolness deteriorate at the same rate. you haven't heard of the musicians named at the bottom of the lineup, but that's okay, because you can't read that far down anyway. Who's playing Coachella this year? Radiohead, Lady Gaga, Kendrick Lamar... um, some other people, I'm sure I'm familiar with as well.

There Ain't No Cure For The Summertime Flu

I seem to be coming down with a cold. That's right, in July. Normally I get two colds a year: at the start of winter and the end of winter. So I'll just hope I'm getting the first one out of the way early.

This seasonally-inappropriate illness shouldn't be a surprise; scientists maintain that low temperatures don't affect the human body's ability to fight viruses. They're unsure why we get more colds in winter, but suggest it's because we spend more time indoors, and thus closer to other people. If that's true, then I suggest that we could be susceptable to summer colds in times like this when we have long periods of heat and humidity. That probably forces people indoors just as much as winter does.

Personally, I've always been skeptical of that idea that colds are communicated by people being indoors more in the winter. In the modern world, the amount of time we spend inside doesn't really change that much with the weather. Probably a better explanation would be schooling. That's one of the few places where we do bring together people from all over society in one place. It's always seemed to me that the colds start going around when school starts, not when the cold weather starts.

Well we're still a month away from the start of school, so what could currently bring together people from all over society to pass germs around? It's got to be Pokemon Go. It's clearly a plot to bring disease to geeks in the western world. I thought it was suspicious that a Japanese franchise game gets released in the U.S. weeks before Japan. It wasn't to improve the Japanese servers, it was to develop an antidote.

Gutting It Out

I'm sick, and having trouble coming up with ideas to write about, but I'll try my best.

When did "gut" become a scientific term?  I can understand people using a term like "gut bacteria" trying to make the topic seem more accessible.  But now even scientific types are using it. 

I remember a kid in about grade two using the word "gut" to describe the stomach, and the teacher tried in vain to make him say something more sophisticated.  And now authorities are telling me to be concerned with my gut health.

On the other hand, the dancing bacteria on the American Express ad gets to go by its scientific name, Campylobacter jejuni.  And according to the Wikipedia article, it doesn't even look like the cartoon, grass skirt or not.  I was kind of disappointed in the article; often Wikipedia articles will have a section with a title like, "in popular culture," where they will list all the times the subject has been mentioned in books, TV, etc.  For instance, the entry on Albuquerque, New Mexico, solemnly tells you about Bugs Bunny's frequent references to it. So I was hoping that the otherwise esoteric entry on c. jejuni would have such a note about the ad, but no.

Things The Teenage Me Wouldn't Have Believed About The Future, #12

Lots of people refuse to get their kids vaccinated, largely on the advice of a former Playmate of the Year.

Bearing Up

I'm sick right now, so I don't have much to say.  Instead, I'll leave you with this thought:

• Many flavours of Halls cough drops contain eucalyptus oil.
• Koalas' diet consists mostly of eucalyptus leaves.
• Therefore, koalas taste like Halls.

Fans Of Denial

An odd thing happened in one of the NFL playoff games today.  The San Francisco 49'ers managed to sack Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton.  The 49'ers were then flagged for Roughing The Passer.  The commentators expressed surprise, since it had looked like a fairly ordinary sack.  But on seeing the play again from a different angle, the reason for the flag became obvious: the defender had hit Newton helmet-to-helmet, which is a no-no in the modern NFL.

What was odd was that I seemed to be the only person who noticed that.  The commentators continued to rant about how that was a terrible call.  Wondering if I had missed something, I checked the tweets on the game.  But they were just the same generic comments about how that was the Worst Call Ever.

Obviously, the crackdown on head-shots is not popular with everyone, so I don't expect it to be a popular call.  But no one was saying, "I hate that rule." rather, they seemed oblivious to the rule.  And no one seemed to remember that this has been illegal for several years now.  I was starting to wonder if I was the one suffering the head injuries.

The incident brings up an issue I've been meaning to mention for a while:  The accusations that the NFL has not been doing enough to protect players from head injuries.  Particularly, the accusations have come from the recent book, League of Denial, which claims the league has been ignoring the science on concussions for years now.  I don't know much about the evidence that the NFL has covered up the sport's dangers in the past, so I can't really comment on that. 

But many people extend the criticism to the present, and claim that the league is continuing to drag it's heels on the issue.  That, I do have to disagree with.  I see incidents like the one above as evidence that the NFL is willing to anger its fan base in the course of fixing the sport.  It relates back to what I was saying earlier this week about how all sports have fans that want to push the sport towards more violence and physicality. It's hard for a league to turn its back on such a large constituency, and it's tempting to compromise with them, or roll-back changes when the complaints start.  I'm impressed that the NFL has remained steadfast through the howls of protest.

Ack! Knee!

I've heard older people make this complaint before, and now I have to admit I'm experiencing it too. It's the overlap between young-people health problems and old-people health problems.  One would think that there would be some interval in between when your body finally works properly and you can focus your worry on finding jobs and relationships.

But no, it doesn't work that way.  My knee has started hurting. I don't participate in any sports, so unless my St. Louis Rams fandom has caused Sam Bradford sympathy pain, I can only blame it on the suddenly cold and wet weather.  It doesn't get any older than joint pain and weather-predicting pain.

And yet, at the same time I'm experiencing that, I have acne. It still happens from time to time.  Most recently it became notable because of the location: on my nose, approximately one drinking glass width above my lips.  But finally I can say, at least it will distract people from my limp.

Who Knew This Blog Would Last Longer Than The U.S. Government?

So the U.S. Government non-essential services are closed starting today as the Republican-controlled house refuses to pass a spending bill unless the Democrats cancel or delay Obamacare.  Meanwhile, Obamaca...I'm sorry, the "Affordable Care Act" started coming into effect today.

But speaking of the act's names, I've noticed something today: several times on Twitter and on Blogs, I've seen people call it, "ACA" (that's the initials, see.)  What's weird about that is that I don't think I've heard anyone call it ACA in the years since it was first announced.  People who are against it call it Obamacare because they think an association with Obama soils anything it touches.  People who flippantly or neutrally refer to it, also call it Obamacare because it sounds sort of silly and non-technical.  Politicians in favour of it call it by its full name, the Affordable Care Act, because they want to give it the branding they've chosen for it.

But what kind of person would call it by it's initials?  A person who is in favour of it, but not actually a politician trying to sell it.  What I'm getting at is, American liberals haven't exactly gone out of their way to support this thing.  It seems like it's only today that they're talking about it happily, and without disappointment at missing out on Canadian-style single-payer.

That makes me wonder if the Democrats really should go to the wall for the ACA.  Sure, the U.S. may be split down the middle politically, but it certainly seems like conservatives don't want it more than liberals want it.  Maybe now that it's under threat, liberals will summon some enthusiasm for the Affordable ObamaCare Act.

Aiming Low

One day you’re walking down a city street, when you notice the camera from the local TV station is pointed your way.  You take it as a compliment - they’ve picked you out as TV-worthy - but then you notice that the camera is too low.  You start to warn the camera man, excuse me, I think you need to adjust the tripod, I don't think you're going to get my head in the shot. Then you realize with a shock: they’re filming you for a story on obesity!  You're going to be one of the headless overweight people they show while telling viewers about the latest stats on poor nutrition!  You berate yourself, why did you let the gym membership lapse, why did you have to wear your distinctive Blue Oyster Cult T-shirt that all your friends will recognize?

At least I’m assuming that’s how it happens.  Or maybe they just take stock footage of people walking around, edit together all the overweight people, and crop it so you can't see the heads.  But I’d like to think that they have to go out and intentionally film from the neck down.  That means that occasionally someone must notice the camera, get angry and attack them, leading to bizarre, neck-down fight footage.  I’m off to find it on YouTube.

That's Great It Starts With An Earthquake

Like most people, tonight I'm busy building a shrine to the Mayan god Q'uq'umatz.  So here's an end-of-the-world essay I published on Facebook three years ago:

I'm a pessimist, so I'm not really shocked by all the problems of the world. And yet there's something not-quite-right about what's going on now. I finally decided that it's not that the world's going down the toilet that's worrying me, it's just that I didn't think it would play out anything like this.

Swine Flu

Disease is really not how I pictured civilization ending. A disease generated amongst livestock as part of intensive farming techniques? That's just not homo sapiens style. Nuclear war, ill-advised genetic manipulation, maybe even pissing off a powerful alien species — that's the sort of thing I was expecting. Placing the products of wisdom in the hands of the foolish or emotional: that's the humanity I know. But dying of disease was more fitting for the Martians in War of the Worlds — not us. On the other hand, we're about to face millions of deaths and we're more concerned that calling it "swine flu" will hurt pig farmers; that is an appropriately silly touch.

But it still doesn't seem right. As a committed cynic, I always pictured that — however we manage to screw ourselves — I'd be able to bitterly turn to the person next to me and say, "told you so." As it stands, a Muslim or Jew will say that to me.

Pigs: okay, maybe they deserve it. Did you know that after primates, marine mammals, and elephants, pigs are the next most intelligent animals? So the fact that we eat them in such numbers violates even our usual flimsy division between pets and food. And sure, we forced them to live unnaturally in their own filth, then made them the paragon of uncleanliness because they live in their own filth, so there's plenty of poetic justice here. But I still would have bet on killer bees or tsetse flies.

The Environment

As a child looking into the future, it always seemed like the only way we'd avoid environmental disaster would be to gain a new awareness of our place in the world and our responsibility for the ecosystem and our effect on it. That awareness seems to be an all-or-nothing proposition: you either notice and do something, or ignore it and go on as you always have. So I figured we would either achieve a hippyish love of the earth, or run the planet into the ground. As it happens though, we've found ourselves in a kind of in-between-state of awareness of the problem and paralysis of action.

What kind of a state is that? We're a race that's usually caught in either desperate action or defiant ignorance. Easter Island is often held up as a microcosm of our environmental predicament: they died out after destroying all the forests on the island. They didn't just destroy some of the forest, stop and say, "oops," then fade away in a slow decay. No, they died like humans are supposed to — stubbornly cutting down every last tree. But look at what we're doing now: we kind of realize we have to change, but we're hemming and hawing trying to come up with a plan to change. It's so...Canadian!

2012

If you haven't yet heard, the story here is that the Mayans had a calendar that that ends in 2012, which has led everyone with a new-age bone in their body to be convinced that the world will end in 2012. Specifically, a few days before Christmas — man those Mayans were jerks; I'm glad they disappeared. That of course brings up the next obvious point: the Mayans don't generally have a good record when it comes to seeing disaster coming.

Is this the best we can do for an omen of doom? No explanation of why the world would end. No cryptic description of how it will happen, no signs we can argue over. Just a date. There's nothing to this end-of-the-world prediction except the end itself. It's the Final Destination of apocalypses.

Back in university, I tried to convince people that the world would end on September 29, 1997, but at least I had misinterpreted bible verses to back it up. Even Y2K had a story behind it, albeit a silly and poorly understood one. This is just the Mayan calendar stopping without explanation.

Now the fact is that I'm something of an expert on the Mayan Long Count Calendar. Of course, I'm using the modern definition of “expert,” meaning that I didn't only read the Wikipedia entry, I read a couple of other web pages too. It turns out that the Mayan calendar doesn't really end in 2012 — that's just the date when this creation exceeds the age of previous, imperfect creations. Even the Mayans themselves didn't believe that would mean the end of the world. That's a pretty flimsy justification even for a Hollywood blockbuster, never mind for people actually getting worried.

Truth and Reason

I don't want to get too wrapped up in the American health care debate. Let's just agree that there are a lot of good arguments for each side. But, well, that's kind of the problem: no one is actually using those arguments, they're just yelling at each other. As if that's not enough, most of what they're yelling isn't even true. Again, this isn't how I imagined it.

I guess 1984 and Brave New World ushered us towards a view of a future that was dystopian, but was at least an organized dystopia. The citizenry would be held in check by a system of lies, but at least they were well-written lies told by professionals. I never expected that disinformation would be coming in the form of a chain e-mail from Aunt Jean who hasn't read a newspaper in thirty years. At least it fits the human pattern: smart people develop something (here, the Internet) then it gets mishandled by everyone else.

Add to that another problem: for a while now, there's been an over-analysis of politicians' everyday decisions. Everything from the President's choice of beer to his jeans has been criticized. So it's now official, we're living in 1984 in reverse, with the Proles spying on and lying to Big Brother.

Finance

Whenever unusual things happen in the financial world, I like to try to understand it by going back to basic principles and looking at the big picture. Economics is really just a system for allocating resources. So I try putting aside the common terms and abstract ideas, and explaining it like I'm trying to explain it to someone from another planet. For instance, when the price of oil goes up, it's just the system telling us that more people are using a fixed resource, so we're going to have to try to be more frugal with it.

In the case of the housing collapse, it all comes down to the system mistakenly devoting far too much of our resources to building houses in the US. In a way, that's not surprising: as an apartment dweller, I've noticed that people always go a little crazy when they buy a house. Well apparently our whole society went a little bit crazy. The last thing I need is another reason to hate suburbia, but now I can see that it's not only destroyed our environment and our culture, but our economy too.

One of the strangest parts of the financial crisis is that it originated in the US, but they aren't even the hardest hit. Who has been hurt worse? Eastern Europe and India. It hardly seems fair that Americans go nuts trying to buy houses, and the people who suffer the most can't afford houses. I guess the British were hurt too, but if you've ever watched the British house-buying programs on HGTV, then you have to agree there's some kind of real estate karma there. But then there's Iceland; their economy was devastated and their currency devalued. They ended up so poor they couldn't even afford to keep their McDonald's outlets open. That's like being officially demoted out of the First World.

The one group that might benefit are the Chinese. Their economy hicupped when the Americans stopped buying, but now they're moving again, with the Americans recovered enough that they can afford the cheap crap the Chinese make, even if they're still too nervous to buy the expensive stuff Americans or the Japanese make. And now the Chinese — just when it seemed their world domination couldn't get any more inevitable — will end up as America's largest creditor.

And as an aside, let me say this: The Chinese make terrible global villains. No crazy ideology they insist on spreading, no vendetta against anyone, not even a wacky leader. Just people who want to be middle class, and a government that has no aspiration beyond staying in power. Again, so Canadian.

Perhaps more than anything, I hate how this financial crisis has turned everyone's ideologies around. Harper is running up a deficit, the Chinese government is actually acting socialist, the Americans are nationalizing companies. I don't even know who to root for anymore.

Cared Spitless

I've noticed that a lot of prescription medications list dry mouth as a side effect.  Apparently it wasn't my imagination: they now have a prescription drug to handle dry mouth.  A lot of people would be suspicious about this: Big Pharma gives you a drug that gives you dry mouth, but don't worry, they have another drug that fixes that.

To me, the bigger question is: isn't it kind of a coincidence that fixing so many of your problems involves reduced saliva?  I remember George Carlin joking that saliva causes stomach cancer, but apparently it causes everything else as well.  Or maybe it's the part of the brain that handles salivation that causes all our problems.  That makes sense, since it has a pretty simple job, as Pavlov showed.