By: Ish Theilheimer, Publisher, Straight Goods
Internet drugs. Did you know that you can buy prescription drugs on the Net? I didn't until Lanny Boutin from Gibbons, Alberta told us about it. No one knows how many Canadians are bypassing the system to buy drugs. But Straight Goods certainly DOES NOT recommend it. As Lanny points out, we have pharmaceutical rules for a reason. "Lifestyle drugs" are the big sellers. But when you buy from some offshore operator on the Web, you don't know if you're getting Viagra, Arm and Hammer, or what! Most Canadians will probably have the sense to do the right thing and see their doctors if they need help, but health authorities are bracing themselves for an onslaught of this stuff.
Prison call centre drives 100% of pollsters crazy. And it's going to drive a lot of ordinary Canadians crazy too, says Pat Daley of Athlone, Ontario. Shhhh. Here's the deal: Ontario takes a contract for prisoners to do phone bank survey work. Sounds real smart and contemporary, training convicts for the modern workforce and helping deprive lots of university students and moonlighting moms of a way to make a few bucks by taking their jobs. But it isn't so smart if the cons take note of personal information they collect "on the job" and use if for other kinds of "jobs" later on the outside. More common sense like this we don't need.
Free music on the Web! Last week we launched the M 3 P campaign to Make Mighty Megacorps Pay for Web music sources like Napster. It elicited a good deal of mail, both positive and negative. One reader wrote back calling our position "lame-brained." As I responded to one critic, people worried in the 70s that FM stereo and cassette recording would kill the record industry. Sure, I still have some tapes I made back then. But given my druthers, most people, including me, would rather buy off the shelf. Unauthorized recordings helped acquaint me with music from artists whose work I later bought. I don't make a lot of tapes off the radio now, and I sure don't know many people with the time to download tunes from Napster either.
After years of lobbying, tape companies finally started paying into a royalty pool because they acknowledge their product is often used to record copyright material. We think computer and Internet companies should do the same. Naptser's no hero but free Web music will live without it. The bigs should pay, is our view! They're the only ones that really profit.
Grade 10 Literacy is in the news this week in Ontario. The news says 29% of Grade 10s couldn't pass a literacy test. We found it curious that the government that cuts education funding and closes schools is now leaking meaningless test results that appear to indicate schools aren't doing their jobs. Parents of Grade 3s and Grade 6s report that they themselves are stumped by some of the questions they see on the province's tests. We predict the province's students will miraculously improve in test scores just before the next election.
Michigan's green revolution. The proposal to ship Toronto's garbage to Adams Mine in northern Ontario got a boost this week when a Michigan politician introduced legislation that would keep Toronto's garbage out of the state because Toronto isn't separating bottles and cans from its garbage. Reporters reported this news with relish, but too few note that Michigan's new green zeal might, just might, be related to calls made from the office of Mike Harris to his good friend Governor John Engler of Michigan. Straight Goods reporter Charlie Angus reported this news last week - and there's plenty of smoking gun here - but it appears the Adams Mine PR machine is in overdrive and the Toronto media have chosen to overlook the serendipitous timing for Harris of all this.
So buyer beware. There's a lot of snake oil out there, and some of it can bite. Some just bites.
The Straight Goods Report is a new weekly column being distributed to newspapers, web 'zines and portals, and radio stations all over Canada. You need not ask permission to reproduce it in your print or web publication, but please include our URL and let us know where you are posting it.
- Ish Theilheimer
- Killaloe, Ontario
- March 12, 2001
- ish@straightgoods.com
[ Front Page ]
