It seems the imagination of the folk who work for TV corporations is limited to the same basic formula. Reality shows are big business. If you want to earn the maximum revenue from selling ad space on TV, have a group of regular people running round the world doing silly things in a search for one million dollars or follow a group of families as they compete against each other to see who can lose the most weight. In these shows, the biggest losers are the winners. These are the people who, for some reason, catch the imagination of the public. They become fan favorites and find their public lives transformed with fans approaching them as they walk down Main Street. Actually, for weight loss, this can be a big plus because fans can embarrass people into keeping to a diet. Imagine how a participant in a weight loss show would feel if everyone pointed them out as they bought another donut. This would be a sure-fire way of motivating them to eat only healthy food.
Anyway, ABC has announced a new version of the same-old tired show. It’s to be called the Extreme Weight Loss Show. Note the [...]
When I was growing up, my parents and other adults took up the challenge of trying to educate me in the ways of sex. It was dangerous work, but someone had to do it. One of the first pieces of advice that stuck concerned the activity of masturbation. Although no-one would give me a demonstration of what this thing was, I was led to understand that too much of it and I would go blind. Naturally, being of a stubborn disposition, I decided to keep the activity going, hoping I was only risking one eye. This is a classic use of fear and guilt to encourage people to modify their behavior. It came alongside a similar warning that watching too much television was also bad for my eyesight. Apparently, the cathode ray tube gave off radiation that would rot the lenses and turn my retinas to jelly. Or was it that my retinas were a kind of jelly and, as with a microwave, they would be cooked and stop admitting light. The details are hazy but the message was clear. The combination of television and sex were bad for the eyesight.
Coming forward to the new century and the [...]
The marketers are out in force these days. They want to convince everyone that there is a pill to cure all ills. Oral medications are convenient for the patient. Just swallow and wait for results. They are profitable for the doctors because it takes only a minute to write out a prescription and wheel in the next patient. If you have to talk to the patients, this is fewer patients per day and less profit. It’s great for the pharmaceutical industry. Just press the “go” button on the machines in the factory to make the pills and watch the money roll into the bank account. But, as a country, do we really want everyone to be dependent on pills? Surely there must be a better way of delivering treatment to those who need it. Well, in the question lies the answer. The most effective treatments deal with the patient as a human being with a problem instead of a piece of meat to be pacified and sent away with a pill. This is not to say that pills cannot and do not provide effective relief. The drugs used to treat anxiety are safe and effective. But all the major [...]
