Radio Diatribe

Bill C-15, currently just past the first reading in the parliament, proposes, among other things, moving all amphetamines, even the types approved for treatment of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), from Schedule III to Schedule I.

This would put drugs containing any type of amphetamine, such as the widely used Adderall, in the same category as heroin, phencyclidine (PCP), and methamphetamine.

Moving all amphetamines to Schedule I technically does not make it impossible for ADHD patients to obtain Adderall, but it would make it practically impossible for doctors to prescribe it for prolonged use outside hospital settings. It also serves no purpose in containing recreational use of methamphetamine, a very addictive subtype of amphetamine, as it is already separately classified under Schedule I. To have this kind of grave error, even in the first draft of the bill, is a complete embarassment for the Canadian government. Had it sought consultations from medical experts, the error would have been pointed out immediately. It’s another proof that the current government’s drug policy is driven by social conservative paranoia, not scientific facts.

Correction: In its original version, this post made the mistake of confusing Schedule I set by United States Drug Enforcement Administration and Schedule I set by Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA) of Canada. While the term “Schedule I” is used to classify drugs considered most dangerous in both countries, Canada does not completely prohibit use of Schedule I for valid medical reasons.

Volkswagen’s regular shares are trading at over €850, down a bit from the intra-day high of €1005.

At €1005, market capitalization of Volkswagen comes out to over €296 billion (about $368 billion), toppling Exxon Mobil’s $343 billion valuation.

The sudden jump in the share price from €205 on Friday last week to €1005 today has largely to do with Porsche disclosing it has acquired options to bring its effective stake in Volkswagen up to 74.1%, decreasing available float to approximately 6%.

Hedge funds, which have shorted more than 12% of Volkswagen shares, faced potentially unlimited liabilities, and started buying up shares to cover their positions at pretty much any cost.

To put it more plainly, no one thinks Volkswagen’s worth that much money – it’s just that hedge funds got royally screwed by Porsche in complex derivative trading, and it’s now buy or die for them.

Update: Financial Times has posted an article specifically about this ridiculousness.

I was just listening to The Best Show With Tom Scharpling from September 16th on iTunes, and at the 1h59m58s mark, someone claiming to be “Michael” from Waterloo, a football player in his second year originally of Hamilton, calls in. (You can try narrowing it down to one person, if you like.)

So, there is exactly one person who is cool enough to know who Tom Scharpling is at UW, and that person is a football player from Hamilton?

What the fuck is this?

Blu-ray version of There Will Be Blood, which goes on sale today in North America, is sold out, and it’s only 3 a.m. on the east coast.

Is it the killer title Blu-ray camp has been looking for, or did Paramount screw up manufacturing and couldn’t deliver enough discs on the release date?

Remember The New Republic? The (formerly) left-of-centre, Washington, D.C.-based magazine that used to be the most relevant forum for American liberal ideas in early to mid-90′s until it got totally fucked over by that motherfucker Stephen Glass in 1998? The magazine whose hiring Bareback Andy as its editor (pre-Stephen Glass debacle, of course) shot him to his current level of fame? The magazine whose current irrational support of any action that would end up fucking over Muslims in the Middle East (read “Zionist agenda”) that continues to rapidly erode the little relevance it has left after pretty much everyone stopped reading it in 1998?

Well, The New Republic is about to become even less relevant (as if that was even possible) thanks to its new owner: CanWest Global Communications Corporation. Can-fucking-West. If you didn’t know already, the Asper family, which controls CanWest, are fucking bat-shit crazy conservative Zionists. And, they like to use their media holdings to present their insane perception of the world as “reality.” Just watch Global National on the day something happens in Israel if you are not convinced.

Obviously, it is in the Aspers’ personal interests to prop up a dying Zionist rag, especially the one based out of Washington, D.C. But, this exercise in throwing shovels of cash into a bottomless well, an arrangement strikingly resemblant to the one between the Moonies and The Washington Times/UPI, is definitely not in the interest of the parties who actually own CanWest, which are not the Aspers¹. And, guess what? If you’re Canadian, every time you watch Family Guy (which is syndicated on GlobalTV), The New Republic is going to get a penny.

1. The Asper family has a majority of votes in CanWest Global despite having a minority stake in the company thanks to the company’s multi-class share system. Most of the shares owned by the Aspers belong to the class that grants multiple votes to each share while shares issued to non-Aspers have one vote each or none at all. To be fair, it’s not just CanWest that has this multi-class system. Rogers, Shaw, CHUM (before it was acquired by CTVglobemedia), and The New York Times Co. have (or, in case of CHUM, had) multi-class system, granting founding families with minority interests in the companies the majority of votes. It should however be noted that the families that control Rogers, Shaw, and NYT are not insane.

Ty Pennington is seen here shilling for Adderall XR, an amphetamine-based ADHD treatment from the British pharmaceutical giant Shire PLC.

Here, Ty Pennington is pushing Aspirin from Bayer Consumer Care, a unit of Bayer AG.

It appears Ty Pennington, the carpenter who has gained a C-list celebrity status recently through appearances on home improvement-themed reality shows and the male prostitute-inspired attires he dons regularly, has been quite busy recently hawking pharmaceuticals. This is quite understandable really since 1) fronting the interests of pharmaceutical giants is the most time-effective way to cash in on his quickly evaporating semi-celebrity status, and 2) people who watch his show are probably dumb enough to buy medications just because the television tells them to.

Nonetheless, I find it rather morbid that T.P. is pushing Adderall XR, a drug that can cause adverse heart events, including sudden death, while also promoting Aspirin as a “wonder drug” for heart disease risk reduction.

Discussed in this post:

• “Hostile Acts” by Tad Friend. Published on newyorker.com and presumably also in print.

I was so fucking impressed with this article after I read it for the first time. Who other than a critic for a magazine as sharp as The New Yorker could observe that what Sarah Silverman really does through her offensive jokes is holding a mirror against the audience (metaphorically) and mocking their latent bigoted beliefs (also metaphorically)?

However, at another glance, the article proved to be rather disappointing. Take the last two sentences from the third paragraph counting up from the bottom:

His arrival reveals the fractures in the group—Sarah despises him, and Steve and Brian don’t even bother to be polite—and we realize that all of them are fundamentally loners who grew up in front of the TV. They enjoy bantering, as people on TV do, but they aren’t up for shouldering one another’s burdens.

The article blames the characters’ antisocial predisposition on “gr[owing] up in front of the TV” and being “loners.” This notion is not supported by the rest of the article, nor is it supported by the content of the show (as I watched it). In addition, to my knowledge, there is no scientific proof that this link exists. So in other words, what the fuck?

Facebook returns exactly two people when a favourite author search is performed for Umberto Eco. Two people. Two.

Self-medication: well, I am up for it since it kinda sounds like their version of future health is going to make it easier to get me some of that sweet, sweet black market benzos.

Douglas Coupland, every wannabe “hipster” girl’s favourite writer, is on the new BlackBerry Pearl ads. Puke.