Why is it that the people who are concerned about “Big Pharma” seem to to accept that all those aisles and aisles of supplements that are marketed as panaceas for nearly every physical ailment (including age and death), and that cost significant amounts of money are put out there for the good of the consumer instead of to line somebody’s pocket with cold, hard, cash?
a recent GAO report estimated that the supplement industry has grown to a $23.7 billion industry in 2007. Moreover, so lax is the regulation of supplements that it took a very extreme and egregious act, namely the marketing of an industrial chelator as an “antioxidant” supplement for the treatment of autism, before the FDA finally acted. Link
While I’m not prepared to get into any kind of discussion about the utility or efficacy of any one particular supplement, the fact is that supplements are a huge business . . . and wherever there is a market there are people eager to make a buck without caring one iota if they are helping or hurting people. That goes for your big pharmaceutical companies as well as your suppliers of melatonin, st. johns wort, ginkgo biloba, etc.
Skepticism should always be used when examining the claims and the money trail of corporations, whether they are wrapped up in the logos of Big Pharma or Big Supplement. And since the supplement industry gets to operate with little to no regulation, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that there needs to be some extra skepticism sauce poured on their claims of ever-lasting youth and vitality.
Lost at the speed of NetFlix is like a Nyquil dream and you stay up late nights wondering if that hatch and that hydrogen bomb are really from the same show.
h/t to BoingBoing for the link to this fabulous script for a Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me episode coming to us from the zombie apocalypse:
PETER: Steve, you’re going to start us off with “Who’s Carl This Time?” Carl will recreate for you three voices from the week’s news. Your job is to identify them. If you get two out of three right, you win our prize, Carl’s voice on your answering machine. Of course, since civilization is disintegrating around us, we’ll probably be relying on smoke signals for the next generation or two. Here’s your first quote.
CARL: “I am tired of these m-f’ing zombies in my m-f’ing White House!”
PETER: That was a slightly edited version of a quote from which world leader, in response to the zombie threat?
STEVE: Brains?
PETER: No, I’m sorry, it was Vice-President Joe Biden, who went, and we quote the vice-president again, “all Samuel L. Jackson on their asses.” President Obama, meanwhile, defended the West Wing with a functioning lightsaber that the Pentagon had apparently built for him in secret.
One of the definitions of folly is “an often extravagant picturesque building erected to suit a fanciful taste.” It is in this sense, metaphorically, that I refer to Lewis Pugh’s swim across the North Pole. Not, as one might imagine, clad in some spage-age material to shield him from the -1.7 celsius water but in a fraking speedo, cap, goggles, and core body temperature sensor.
Imagine, swimming through water colder than ice for one kilometer, for over 18 minutes.
You can’t. I can’t. On some deep and fundamental level, the act is one of folly. But a folly that is beyond merely fanciful. The point that Mr. Pugh wanted to make was simple: it should be impossible to make the swim when and where he did because that entire area should have been solid ice. But it was not. Vast areas of open water at the North Pole indicating some of the most troubling effects of climate change. Mr. Pugh made this impossible swim—impossible on so many levels—to raise awareness of climate change.
In so doing he also demonstrated just how capable the human body and mind and spirit can be; just how beautiful and courageous we can become if we believe in ourselves and work with others to achieve what might appear to be folly. There is a glut in this world of cheap, misguided, and short-sighted folly, mostly focused in those who make political and economic decisions at the highest levels of government and corporations (is there a difference?). There is, as Lewis Pugh shows us, another kind of folly. One that takes your breath away and reveals the best of what it means to be human.
BBC has a fun page that contains a number of documents and photos reflecting the creation of Doctor Who. The following is from a report about the viewer response to the pilot:
‘Tonight’s new serial seemed to be a cross between Wells’ Time Machine and a space-age Old Curiosity Shop, with a touch of Mack Sennett comedy. It was in the grand style of the old pre-talkie films to see a dear old Police Box being hurtled through space and landing on Mars or somewhere. I almost expected to see a batch of Keystone Cops emerge on to the Martian landscape. Anyway, it was all good, clean fun and I look forward to meeting the nice Doctor’s planetary friends next Saturday, whether it be in the ninth or ninety-ninth century A.D.’wrote a retired Naval Officer speaking, it would seem, for a good many viewers in the sample who regarded this as an enjoyable piece of escapism, not to be taken too seriously, of course, but none the less entertaining and, at times, quite thrilling . . .
If you are a Doctor Who fan, new or old, I recommend checking the site out and seeing some of the elements that went into the show’s origin nearly fifty years ago.
Wow. Nearly fifty years ago: November 23, 1963. You just know that 2013 is going to be a huge year for Doctor Who in celebration of that achievement (despite the show being off the air for fifteen of those years). I loved growing up with this show and I love that it’s back and can’t wait to see where the story goes from here.
