Category: Featured

…BUT I KNOW WHAT I LIKE.

I don’t know much about art. I especially don’t ‘get’ abstract art. This has caused me to avoid it and to shy away from the people who love and consume it. Where modern art-lovers gather, you won’t find me.

I know I should try harder. Many friends have tried to help open my eyes. Some say art is not about getting an emotional reaction, the way you do with music or books. It’s about making you think of what the artist is saying about the world.

I think a lot of us are fluent in one art form and ignorant or fearful of other forms.

Read on…

WEAPONS OF SELF-DESTRUCTION.

Last weekend our family went for its annual Thanksgiving Walk, a two-hour hike through Awenda Provincial Park above Georgian Bay. Behind me were my stepson and his 11-year-old daughter. Their conversation twisted and turned through as many subjects as they did navigating the fallen trees and winding forest paths. I was listening idly to their back-and-forth when I heard: “But when can I have a phone?”

I won’t say the skies clouded, but the mood changed at this, the most insistent question of our age. Because asking mom and dad when you can have your first phone has turned into asking them when you can have your first shot of heroin.

Clearly, this was not the first time she’d asked, and I was impressed by her father’s patience as he calmly listed all the reasons an 11-year-old shouldn’t have a mobile phone. “But Mary has one, and she’s 12!”

Read on…

SHORT FAT GENERALS.

Last week Pete Hegseth dressed down America’s generals and admirals saying their weight and height will now be measured twice a year: “Today, at my direction, every member of the joint force, at every rank, is required … [to] meet height and weight requirements twice a year every year.”

The weight part I get: obesity in the military is a big recruiting problem which makes it a national security issue.

But the height part is odd because…you can’t really do much about how tall you are.

WHY AI IS WORSE THAN THE WORST STREET DRUG – AND BETTER THAN THE BEST MIRACLE DRUG.

When you’re too addled to stop drinking booze or snorting cocaine, your brain stays very clear on one thing: the only person you’re killing is yourself – and maybe your family. You can take some comfort that your bottle a day habit isn’t ruining the lives of the young family three doors down or the teller at your bank branch, or the total stranger in the nation next door.

In this regard, consuming too much AI is much worse than grossly abusing addictive substances. Every AI search you make, every AI prompt you create contributes to the Gross Global Misery that’s starting to emerge about AI’s unique seductive ability to charm its way into your brain and control it. What we know now is that AI thrives on big information; the more in, the more out.

Read on…

SLOW TALKERS.

In the days ahead we’ll be seeing more tremulous, slow-talking, slow-moving people in public life. This is inevitable; our world is growing older. It’s also a good thing that we can help that become a normal thing.

Last week, I attended the Weston International Award for Nonfiction at the ROM which was given to Leslie Jamison, the American essayist and memoirist who writes deeply confessional pieces for The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. My interest was professional; I, too, had written a recovery memoir.

Jamison speaks quickly, with manic energy. As with most events like this, the author spoke about her work, then she was interviewed by a high-profile person in the world of writing, then she answered questions.

Read on…

“IT AIN’T WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW…”

“…that gets you into trouble.” As Mark Twain said: “It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

This can mean anything from “My drinking isn’t hurting anyone,” and “The pain in my chest will go away on its own,” to “In Springfield they’re eating the pets of the people who live there,” and “America is run by childless cat ladies.”

But even denial and lies have fallen on hard times in this great age of untruth. Until now, lies needed at least a sideways glance to the reality that they aren’t true. The liar had to care, not so much about the truth of what they said, but about how their opponents felt about the lie.

But last month, even that went out the window.

First, in the U.S. vice-presidential debate, JD Vance chastised the moderator by saying: “The rules were, you weren’t going to fact-check and since you’re fact-checking me, I think it’s important to say what’s actually going on.”

In other words, fact-checking is cheating.

Read on…

Fuller Disclosure.

Years ago I had lunch with the clinical director of a global pharma. Earlier that day, the world learned that his company had been writing academic research articles for publication in medical journals and ‘inviting’ leading researchers to sign their names to them in return for a hefty fee. Of course, the articles promoted molecules that the pharma’s researchers were developing into drugs.

It would be impossible at lunch not to bring up this shocking scandal.

My lunch-mate took the long view, saying that all pharma scandals involve ‘cheating’ because the cost to get something approved was eye watering, and delays can cost billions. What’s more, the revenues to be earned were even vaster. So cheating was more a feature than a bug of the industry.

A result of this and many other pharma scandals is that whenever doctors now speak to a medical or public group, they must disclose what funding they received, what for and from whom, on the subject they’re speaking about. Not just their fees for speaking, but any money for anything to do with their area of expertise. And not just fees, but board and advisory positions on any company involved with their work.

I was reminded of this rule when I read last week about Economist Impact, the events and sponsored content division of The Economist Group. They run 136 events a year, including the World Cancer Conference in Brussels at the end of this month.

But that conference won’t happen because three of Economist Impact’s biggest sponsors are Philip Morris International (PMI), Japan Tobacco International (JTI) and British American Tobacco (BAT).

Economist Impact neglected to tell the dozens of expert speakers and hundreds of delegates that the companies making the cancer conference possible make a product whose normal use gives you cancer. The Economist Magazine (which calls itself a newspaper) quickly said: “Not us” the way you would when your six-fingered cousin is brought up on morals charges.

Read on…

RamsayWrites

Subscribe to my Free Weekly Omnium-Gatherum Blog:

  • Every Saturday the Omnium-Gatherum blog is delivered straight to your InBox
  • Full archive
  • Posting comments and joining the community
  • First to hear about other Ramsay events and activities

Get posts directly to your inbox

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
Name(Required)

Sign Up for Updates!

Get news from Ramsay Inc. in your inbox.

Name(Required)
Email Lists
Email Lists(Required)