How can Ozempic advertise (so heavily) in Canada?

I, and many others, are absolutely sick of those amateurish Ozempic and Rybelsus advertisements. I'm sure you know the ones, particularly now, during the Olympics, when it's really hard to get away from them for more than a few minutes at a time.

Ozempic, of course, is the ultra-successful semaglutide injection, technically a pretty effective treatment for diabetes (if you can deal with a bunch of side-effects), and Rybelsus is the pill form of the same drug. Both are produced by Novo Nordisk, the highly successful Danish pharmaceutical company. 

Probably more often, though, they are prescribed "off-label" for obesity and weight-loss in general. Again, pretty successful, if you can stomach side-effects, like nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, constipation, abdominal pain, and potentially more serious risks like pancreatitis, gall bladder inflammation, kidney issues, low blood sugar, vaginal dryness, "Ozempic face" (look it up!), and possibly even thyroid tumours.

So, it's not something to be taken lightly. But it is so well known now for its weight loss properties that patients across the world are trying to persuade their doctors to prescribe it for them. And, increasingly, doctors are doing so. And, not content with their successes to date, Novo Nordisk is blanket advertising everywhere, on multiple platforms.

But wait, you say, this is not America! It's illegal to advertise prescription medications in Canada, isn't it? Well, yes, but Novo Nordisk argues that they are not actually advertising a medical treatment for a medical condition. They are allowed to run what are called "reminder ads", where the drug's name is repeated ad nauseam while not actually making any specific medical claims. Thus, the ads just repeat phrases like "I just asked", "Is it right for you?", or "Just ask your doctor".

Of course, given that most people already know what they do, this is a bit disingenuous, perhaps within the letter of the law but definitely not in the spirit. And meanwhile, we are being inundated with their tedious advertising.

Venezuela's election is no great surprise

I spent several years living in  Venezuela back in the '90s, and I have some very mixed memories of it. It's a beautiful country, blessed with vast reserves of natural resources, but a basket case economically and politically, even back then, before Chavez and Maduro. It has only got worse since then.

So, it came as no surprise that the latest "democratic election" in the country was just a travesty, just like the last several elections under Chávez and, after him, Maduro.

First, Maduro conveniently disallowed the main opposition candidate, María Corina Machado. A replacement candidate, Edmundo González, was rapidly sworn in, and a tired, desperate population quickly embraced him. All the pre-election polls showed him streets ahead of Maduro. Exit polls also showed him with a healthy lead, and a landslide win was confidently expected, at least among the less cynical. 

Then, with no evidence and no hard figures, the Maduro government suddenly announced that Maduro had won a new term in official, with a convenient 51% of the vote, compared to 44% for the opposition. The Maduro-owned election organization insisted it was true, despite a complete lack of documentary proof.

Understandably, there was outrage and street protests sprang up in Caracas and other cities, which were predictably put down in violent fashion by the pro-Maduro police. Opposition politicians said that they has obtained sufficient evidence of a landslide win. Pro-Maduro forces stuck to their guns, because their livelihoods depend on it.

What did we really expect? Authoritarians rarely let their power slip away easily. Maduro is a spent force, but having spent decades greasing the palms of the country's civil service and security forces, his administration's death throes could take quite some time, and destabilize a poor abused country still further.

Canada looks bad on the international sports stage with drone allegations

I have to deal with it. The Canadian Women's Soccer team's drone-powered cheating in the Olympics has left a bad taste in pretty much everyone's mouths, especially Canadians'. No-one can believe that it was Canada - Canada! - that was caught in delicto flagrante trying to pull the dirty before an Olympic match against lowly New Zealand (40 places below them in the rankings). 

I can't really believe that spying on practices can be that helpful, especially in a world where many hours of video of actual games are freely available. Be that as it may, the actual guy who operated the drone, one Joseph Lombardi has spent several days in a French jail for his troubles, and has fallen on his sword and tried to take full responsibility for it himself. But it is increasingly clear that this was just part of a systemic program, and not just the "personal decision" of a lone actor.

Whatever else it might be, it's a very bad look for a Canadian team that had high hopes of repeating their Olympic gold medal performance 3 years ago in Tokyo. Indeed, it has thrown even previous performances into doubt, and the more this gets looked into the more it appears that something of this kind may have been going on for a few years, with both the women's and men's teams implicated.

There are allegations starting to surface that Canada's drone spying scheme actually started years ago, under previous coach John Herdman, and continued under Bev Priestman, and that Herdman probably carried the practice over when he went on to coach the national men's team. That said, Canadian soccer icon Christine Sinclair avers that the players were never shown any drone footage during her 23 years with the national team. But did the coaching staff have the benefit of illicit information when planning these matches? 

Now, I'm sure Canada is not the only team where the coaching staff have employed such underhand tactics, whether using drones or other "spies". Revered Chelsea and Côte d'Ivoire international Didier Drogba laughed it off, saying, "It happens a few times ... it doesn't really affect the result of the game", and I have a suspicion it happens more than we think. (Now ex-)coach Bev Priestman, in a horribly embarrassing and incriminating email, says, "all top 10 teams do it". Arguably, Canada just made the mistake of being caught.

Like American football teams videoing coach signals and baseball teams stealing signs, it's maybe not exactly rife but "it happens". But Canada? Canada!

The other thing I wondered about was: is drone footage actually specifically banned/proscribed? Well, for one thing, the whole of Paris is a no-fly zone, where drones are subject to a €75,000 fine. So, there's that. 

In terms of the sport itself, and the Olympics, the most pertinent document seems to be the International Olympics Committee's Framework on Fairness, Inclusion and Non-Discrimination. This does not of course spell out anything specific about drone footage or closed practices, but if a team wanted others to watch their players practice, they would not specify the practice to be closed. To disrespect a closed practice request is clearly indefensible. This seems self-evident, and I don't think anyone is trying to argue that this kind of behaviour is anything other than cheating. Would it stand up in a court of law? Who knows? But that is not really the issue here.

UPDATE

Canada appealed the crippling six-point penalty imposed by FIFA for the "offensive behaviour" involved, but the appeal was unsuccessful. They could still qualify for the knockout rounds if they beat Colombia, but it's a tall order.

UPDATE UPDATE

Tall order or no, Canada did indeed beat Colombia and managed to get to the quarter finals despite the 6 point imposed deficit. It was one of the few countries that won all three of their group matches. But, given the circumstances, they are unlikely to get full credit for their achievement (or any past achievements, for that matter).

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE

And the apotheosis, at least for now: Canada lost to Germany on penalties in the quarter finals, in a game in which they outplayed Germany and could have won many times over.

End of a dream perhaps, but maybe the best possible result in some ways. They showed that they deserve to be in the top ranks of international soccer, even without cheating, but they didn't have the embarrassment of actually winning too much, which would only have inflamed bad feeling. In time, this will all blow over (I don't mean be swept under the rug - Canada, and others, will hopefully have learned a valuable lesson, but will not be defined by it).

Trump promises no more voting after this election

Sorry, more American news. But it's hard to look away from this stuff, especially given that "when America sneezes, Canada catches a cold".

At an election rally for Christian types in Florida, Donald Trump made some of his most worrying comments yet. "I don't care how, but you have to get out and vote again. Christians, get out and vote just this time. You won't have to do it any more. Four more years, you know what? It will be fixed. It will be fine. You won't have to vote any more, my beautiful Christians."

So, not content with being a "dictator for a day", this seems to be his most blatant attack yet on democracy. No more voting? No more Constitution?

I think I feel some sniffles coming on already.

More interesting maps than you can shake a stick at

If you read these posts, you might know that I'm a bit of a sucker for a good map. I find that maps are a good succinct visual method of presenting a lot of comparative information. Plus, it appeals to the geek in me.

Anyway, Bored Panda has brought together no less than 112 interesting maps, many, but by no means all, relating to Europe. They run the gamut from more mainstream subjects like population change, life expectancy, and measures of wealth, to more esoteric aspects like the starting month of the school year, percentage of people with fair hair, percentage of teen moms, the price of Spotify Premium, attitudes towards LGBTQ travellers, and the average number of sexual partners, via assessments of things like quality of life, home ownership, achieved human rights, and wine consumption.

And, of course, a few crazy things pop out of all this. For example, did you know that the most common origin of legal immigrants to North Dakota, New Hampshire and Vermont in 2023 was Bhutan? Me neither. That the most common surname in France was Martin? That the average Greek and Polish worker works nearly twice as many hours each year as the average Swede or German? That French and Spanish trains go twice as fast as Dutch and Belgian ones on average, and nearly four times as fast as trains in the Balkan countries? That you can buy alcohol at age 16 in Germany, Switzerland and Austria? That in Finland, holiday gifts are brought by the Christmas Goat?

There's a lot to discover, in addition to more general observations, like the huge differences between western and eastern Europe based on a whole host of different aspects. Happy map-viewing!

Is "Drill, baby, drill!" a good slogan?

I've been trying to find out who thought it a good idea to use the phrase "Drill, baby, drill!" as a political slogan.

Both Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance have used the slogan in recent days to mark their commitment to unrestricted and unfettered domestic oil production, and at one point the Republican National Convention crowd took up the refrain, because that's the kind of puerile simplistic sound bite they like there (remember "Lock her up!"?) Paradoxically, this comes in spite of the much more measured ambitions of the country's top oil producers in recent years.

Setting aside the slang meaning of "drill" to mean sexual intercourse or gang murder, It seems the phrase was first used as recently as 2008 to express the Republicans' blanket and unquestioning support for the oil and gas industry. Sarah Palin made use of it in her Vice Presidential debate in that year, although she didn't actually coin it. After the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, environmentalists parodied it as "Spill, baby, spill!" and "Kill, baby, kill!"

I assume it is based on the 1976 disco hit by The Trammps: "Burn, baby, burn, Disco Inferno", although I have no proof of that. But it seems a bit of an unlikely 21st century meme to take hold. Unless you stop to think that the demographic of today's Republicans skews quite hard toward the disco era.

Laughing Kamala? Sounds like a compliment to me

Donald Trump, who is known for the childish, politically incorrect nicknames he gives to his rivals, seems to be scraping the barrel. After Sleepy Joe Biden, Lyin' Ted Cruz, Sloppy Chris Christie, Little Marco Rubio, Crazy Nancy Pelosi, etc, he was under some pressure to come up with something hard-hitting for his new rival, Kamala Harris.

His solution? Laughing Kamala. Wait, what? He explains: "I call her Laughing Kamala. Have you seen her laughing? She is crazy. You can tell a lot by a laugh. She is nuts." Er, OK. That seems to be the best he can do.

I don't know about the laughing, but Ms. Harris does always seem to have a broad grin on her face when meeting the public. She seems like a genuinely nice, happy person, and that in itself would almost be enough for me to vote for her. Compared to the dour, cynical, angry, grey old men she faces, she is a breath of fresh air. Luckily, she's also whip-smart and strong, but don't write off the positive vibes of a smile.

Bidenomics has actually been remarkably successful

Joe Biden will serve out the remaining months of his four-year administration. Just because he decided not to stand for a second term, and just because he is rubbish at debating, does not mean he is incapable of continuing the job he has been doing, pretty successfully for the past three-and-a-half years, whatever Donald Trump et al might tell you.

And therein lies the main point of contention in this upcoming election. The Republicans are claiming that his presidency has been a failure. Hell, Trump say it has been the worst presidency EVER, despite a consensus among non-partisan historians that, actually, Trump's presidency was the worst. Indeed, history tells us that Democratic presidencies in general handily out-perform Republican ones in economic terms.

The fact of the matter is that Biden has presided over a very successful American economy. So, much so that the label "Bidenomics" has been applied to his policies (it started off as a pejorative description by Republican critics, before being reclaimed by proud Democrats). This is the first such label since "Reaganomics" back in the 1980s, and it is indeed almost as revolutionary.

Republicans still speak of Reaganomics in hushed respectful tones, and Reagan is usually still revered as the greatest Republican leader of the country, even though the modern neo-con Republican party has very little in common with Reagan's Republicanism, which dates from a gentler, kinder era. 

Reaganomics was based on the concept (largely discredited these days) that prosperity trickles down from the top. Thus, we should put our trust in the "invisible hand" of the market to fairly and efficiently distribute resources, and the state should interfere as little as possible with the private sector's running of the economy. It was a theoretical philosophy marked by the real life policies of tax cuts, wage suppression, and deregulation. Trillions of dollars moved from the poorest 99% to the top 1% as a direct result.

Bidenomics, on the other hand, is based on three main tenets: public investment, empowering workers, and promoting competition. It realizes that prosperity and a strong economy grow from the bottom up and the middle out, not from the top down. "When the middle class does well, everybody does well", as Biden often says.

Thus, public investment can actually attract more private sector investment, rather than "crowding it out" as Reagan believed, and that has turned out to be true, as evidenced by the achievements of the Inflation Reduction Act in green energy and cleantech and the CHIPS and Science Act in computer technology. 

Biden has actively strengthened labour unions, rather than trying to break them as Reagan did, and has largely cleared the logjam of stagnant labour wages of the last forty years, resulting in higher employment and happier workers. 

And, on competition, Biden has aggressively enforced anti-trust laws, rather than just looking the other way as a few mega-companies divide up the spoils of whole industries, so that the "efficiencies" of big business do not also come with unacceptable amounts of economic and societal risk.

So, it turns out that higher wages do not actually kill jobs, deregulation does not automatically boost competition and innovation, and there is no evidence to support the claim that cutting top tax rates stimulates economic growth (the Time article links to other articles on these matters).

And, as the article also concludes (as do articles in The Guardian and other thoughtful outlets), "Bidenomics is working", even if Biden fails to get credit for it from polls and voters. Most Americans do not seem to be able to see past the fact that things cost more and their mortgage rate is high. But inflation, and the resulting increase in interest rates, is a worldwide problem resulting from the pandemic, war in Ukraine, etc, over which Biden had little or no control. Even so, inflation has now been largely tamed (note, that DOESN'T mean that prices will actually fall - economists are not magicians!) and interests rates are expected to start falling soon as a result.

In the meantime, economic growth in the USA has accelerated (at a time when many economists were predicting a recession), consumer spending is solid, employment is high, real wages have improved, wage inequality has reduced, child poverty rates have fallen, crime rates are down, manufacturing industry has seen a renaissance, major stock indexes are constantly breaking records, etc, etc. 

Nevertheless, Americans are stubbornly downbeat about the economy under Biden. Bearing in mind that the good times they remember under Trump (pre-pandemic, anyway) were largely generated by riding the coattails of an extended economic recovery under Barack Obama, and that Biden was tasked with dealing with significant challenges after the pandemic and four years of Trump, they should be a lot more appreciative of life under a Democrat government than they actually are. 

History will probably judge Joe Biden more favourably than the average guy on the American street. Maybe Kamal Harris will do a better PR job on the economy under the Democrats than Biden did, and a better job of countering the lies, inaccuracies and half-truths Trump & Co has been spreading. Let's hope so, for all our sakes.