Tags: Music

STILL WAITING FOR THE CAVALRY TO COME.

The idea that there is no cavalry first hit me in 2005 when I saw the news reports fromHurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

Tens of thousands of people took shelter in the Superdome, and waited…and waited…for help to come. It never did. What came was looting and violence and other trappings ofLord of the Flies. How could this happen? This was America, for heaven’s sake.

It turns out I was right about the country, and wrong about the direction it was headed.

But this social collapse is also happening in Britain where not only is the National Health Service breaking down, but so is garbage pickup and public transit and immigration, and the police. Of course it’s worse in the US where being a white, Christian male can be the only defence against the predations of its government.

Read on…

OZEMPIC FOR ALL.

The word “Ozempic” first entered the language in 2018 when it was approved as a diabetes inhibitor. That same year, in what has to be the world’s biggest ‘off-label’ transference since the heart-disease drug Viagra became a multi-billion-dollar erectile dysfunction drug, Novo Nordisk started selling Ozempic as a weight-loss drug for very obese people.

Then in 2023, Ozempic and its fellow “GLP-1” drugs were shown to prevent strokes and heart attacks.

The next year, it made a claim to reduce kidney disease.

This year, it showed promising results in reducing the effects of Parkinson’s, as well as alcoholism and addiction, and to reduce obesity-related cancers as well.

My physician wife often says that the more unrelated diseases a drug claims to cure, the more it looks like snake oil. In the case of Ozempic, she’d be happy to be wrong. It really does look to be a universal solvent, curing most everything it touches. True, it’s so new that there hasn’t been time to understand its long-term effects. Maybe it will be the next thalidomide whose crippling effects revealed themselves not in its patients, but in their children.

Read on…

TRUE PATRIOT LUST.

The opportunity for one of the most patriotism-shy nations on earth to gorge on that very thing begins the week of May 12. That’s when we learn which of Mark Carney’s Liberal MPs will be sworn in to what Cabinet posts.

The split second the Cabinet is announced, dozens of organizations who have been preparing their “Elbows Up” wish lists for federal funding will push “send” and shoot their proposals into the offices of the Ministers of Canadian Culture, of Sport, Innovation, Indigenous Relations, Foreign Affairs and more.

Read on…

Quiet, please, there’s a lady on stage.

I’ve always liked Celine Dion’s songs more than I’ve liked Celine Dion.

I’m not sure what it was: too slick, too produced, too perfect.

Then she started cancelling shows claiming she had a rare and mysterious disease. Since 2020 she’s been silent. No new songs, no new shows. Nothing. But…

Not.

Any.

More.

Her performance last Friday at the opening of the Paris Olympic Games, where she belted out Hymne à l’amour, was stunning in its own right.

But when you think how terribly sick she’s been, and still is, those four minutes singing in the rain became a global event.

It used to be that people asked: “Where were you when..?” and they would follow with some tragedy or assassination. The only good-news-version I’ve heard is: “Where were you when the astronauts landed on the moon?” But it’s not far-fetched, even when Ms. Dion’s 15-seconds of fame have already stretched to 40 years, for us to ask: “Where were you when Celine Dion sang in Paris?”

Read on…

Does our fate lie in our fakes?

If you had a fantasy friend when you were a kid, or led an active fantasy life when you grew up, you’re in for a treat – for the rest of your days and nights. Because AI, still a baby learning to walk, can envelop you in a giant hug of unreality. You can live there blissfully mindless that the real world is spinning apart because the world you’ve created looks and sounds and feels exactly how you want it to. Take this deep fake call, the first of many to come in this year’s US elections. Indeed, The Guardian reported that more than 100 paid ads impersonating British PM Rishi Sunak appeared on social media platforms last month alone.

Clearly, regulators must rush to spot and sanction AI fakes, and they are.

But we also need to learn more about AI in a way we didn’t when social media stuck its needle in our arms. We can’t leave our fate to governments like we did when Big Tech raced so far ahead that governments were enfeebled to stop it, and still are.

Read on…

Play your Trump Card

Donald Trump didn’t just win in Iowa. He won Huge!

But recall that two weeks before the Iowa caucuses in 2016, then-candidate Trump said at Dortd University in Sioux City:  “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?…It’s, like, incredible.”

Incredible, but true, and Trump isn’t the only one anticipating his inauguration one year from today on January 20, 2025.

Credit card companies are as well, particularly American Express.

Read on…

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