She's been gone for many months, and the last possum visitor we had was a shy youngster who didn't hang around for long. But today, the mother possum, easily recognized by the notch in one ear, was back. Whether or not there is another baby in the pouch is not yet established.
The barrage of advertisements targets older men. “Have you noticed a recent deterioration of your ability to play sports?” “Do you have a decrease in sex drive?” “Do you have a lack of energy?”Can anyone explain to me why Americans are so silly as to even allow such direct advertising of prescription drugs directly to the public? Surely drug companies still make adequate monies from their products which are genuinely needed in those countries which do not permit such open advertising.
If so, the ads warn, you should “talk to your doctor about whether you have low testosterone” — “Low T,” as they put it.
In the view of many physicians, that is in large part an invented condition. Last year, drug makers in the United States spent $3.47 billion on advertising directly to consumers, according to FiercePharma.com. And while ever-present ads like those from AbbVie Pharmaceuticals have buoyed sales of testosterone gels, that may be bad for patients as well as the United States’ $2.7 trillion annual health care bill, experts say.
Sales of prescription testosterone gels that are absorbed through the skin generated over $2 billion in American sales last year, a number that is expected to more than double by 2017. Abbott Laboratories — which owned AbbVie until Jan. 1 — spent $80 million advertising its version, AndroGel, last year.
CLIVE Palmer is demanding Tony Abbott repeal the carbon tax retrospectively and refund billions in revenue in exchange for his party's crucial Senate support in a move that would enable the businessman to escape a $6.2 million disputed charge for emissions.
The Palmer United Party has formed an alliance with the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party's Ricky Muir, giving the bloc four of the six crossbench votes needed to pass legislation in the Senate without Labor or Greens support from July, subject to a recount in Western Australian.
PUP's official policy is to scrap Labor's carbon pricing regime but the party wants the repeal backdated to start of the carbon tax on July 1, 2012, so companies and households can be refunded.
The Coalition's election promise to scrap the tax is not retrospective, and Mr Palmer's push would force the government to refund the $3.6 billion raised last financial year and $6.5bn in receipts forecast this year.
"In relation to the carbon tax, we've said that we want it abolished from the day it was introduced because if it's a bad tax, it's always been a bad tax," Mr Palmer told the Ten Network.
The historian Niall Ferguson has decided for some reason to drag your humble blogger into his feud with Paul Krugman:
For too long, Paul Krugman has exploited his authority as an award-winning economist and his power as a New York Times columnist to heap opprobrium on anyone who ventures to disagree with him. Along the way, he has acquired a claque of like-minded bloggers who play a sinister game of tag with him, endorsing his attacks and adding vitriol of their own. I would like to name and shame in this context Dean Baker, Josh Barro, Brad DeLong, Matthew O'Brien, Noah Smith, Matthew Yglesias and Justin Wolfers. Krugman and his acolytes evidently relish the viciousness of their attacks, priding themselves on the crassness of their language.In my case I'm genuinely unaware of a situation in which I employed crass language to amplify a Paul Krugman attack on Ferguson, though I certainly have had occasion to disagree with Ferguson when he misstates Mitt Romney's educational credentials or blames Barack Obama for rapid Chinese economic growth or says J.M. Keynes was a bad economist because he was gay. Ferguson might want to consider a meta-rational approach in which he wonders if the range of people who disagree with him about such matters doesn't possibly reflect Ferguson's own wrongness rather than the vast reach of the Krugman conspiracy.
The head of the OECD has challenged world leaders to put a price on carbon, arguing that fossil fuel emissions must become more expensive if they're to be phased out over the second half of the century.
In a clarion call to industrialised nations, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has warned that climate change poses a very real risk that doesn't come with a ''bailout option'' like financial crises.
Outlining a new climate agenda from the Paris-based economic club, OECD secretary-general Angel Gurria said there was ''strong consensus'' that carbon pricing - either through a tax or emissions trading scheme (ETS) - should be at the cornerstone of all global efforts to tackle climate change....
The Climate Institute's John Connor said the OECD report was significant given the heads of two other major economic bodies - the IMF and World Bank - had called for similar action just one day earlier.
Behind the scenes his chief of staff Peta Credlin has unfettered licence to roar at the most senior of his colleagues, an entitlement that they resent greatly and which could backfire spectacularly at some point down the track when he, or she who must be obeyed, becomes vulnerable.Trouble brewing, by the sounds...
People elected to office don't take kindly to being tongue-lashed by unelected staff. Abbott has already been told by at least one senior cabinet minister he will not tolerate it.
While Abbott's decision to tone down is so far working well publicly, it has not won universal applause. Four times in the past few days, four keen observers and participants I spoke to in preparation for this column, one Labor and three Liberal, referred to the rigid staff selection orchestrated by the chief of staff, media restrictions imposed by central command, the seemingly languid responses, and then all mentioned one former leader: Ted Baillieu in Victoria.
None of them meant it as a compliment. Even though no one seriously believes Abbott is another Baillieu, these early markers have sent ripples through the executive corridors and those who watch them closely.
I’ve never been a girly girl; quite possibly having three brothers played a role in that. My teachers constantly complained that I was too quiet, not social enough, did not speak up often enough, did not play with the other kids and was generally awkward around people. I spent a lot of time with books. I never had problems at school, unless you count that I was about as unsporty as you can be. As a teenager I was very into science fiction. And since I wanted to tell the science from the fiction, I piled up popular science books alongside this. You can extrapolate from here.
I studied math and physics primarily because I don’t understand people. People are complicated. They don’t make sense to me and I don’t know what to do with them. Which is probably why I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about whether or not my male colleagues behave appropriately. They don’t make sense either way. And the women, they make even less sense. Take in contrast a problem like black hole information loss or the recent firewall controversy. Clean, neat, intriguing. So much easier.
Yes, there’ve been some guys who’ve tried to pick me up on conferences but for what I understand of human mating rituals it’s the natural thing to happen among adults and I just say no thanks (the yes-thanks days are over, sorry). Indeed, there’ve been sexist jokes and I try to stay away from people who make them because such jokes come from brains preoccupied with differences between the male and female anatomy rather than the actual subject matter of the discussion. There have been the elderly guys who called me “little girl” and others who pat my shoulders. And yes, that’s probably the reason why I’m sometimes acting more aggressive than I actually am and why my voice drops by an octave when I’m trying to be heard by my male colleagues.
But by and large the men I work with are decent and nice guys and I get along with them just fine.
A 44-year-old Belgian in distress after a failed sex change was euthanised this week after doctors agreed to the mercy-killing on psychological grounds, national media said Tuesday.What is even more surprising is the number of "psychological grounds" cases, and how they have been increasing:
Nathan Verhelst died Monday in a Brussels hospital surrounded by friends after requesting assistance to die in a case that has been highly publicised in Belgium, which became only the second country in the world after the Netherlands to legalise euthanasia in 2002.
"He died in all serenity," said doctor Wim Distlemans, who told the daily Het Laatste Nieuws that he won permission to be euthanised because "we could clearly say he was in unbearable psychological distress."
While there were only six cases of euthanasia recorded on psychological grounds in 2004, there were 33 in 2011 and 52 last year.I'm not sure why they don't go full on Futurama suicide booth and be done with:
