Pitch. Perfect.

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Every time I hear about another social network I “need” to check out, I roll my eyes a little. Granted, by writing here I maintain a pretty rich online presence, and things like Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, etc., are first and foremost about allowing people too untechnical to create a real blog some level of access in this still-new medium, so to a first approximation I probably should just welcome all these new tools. But who has the time?

The truly eye-rolly thing is that there are some folks who somehow insist they’re participating meaningfully in so many of these networks as to defy belief. Really? You maintain a blog, a Twitter feed, a Facebook wall, a Tumblr, and post 10 shots a day to Instagram? How, exactly? (And if the answer is “I put the same content on all of them,” well, what’s the point?)

So let’s just say that this little parody hits me exactly right, and if you share my view on these things, it may please you as well.

Via Brent Simmons. Even better is the beneficiary of the joke, btw.

(For my part, I do Twitter and Heathen almost exclusively. I’m on Facebook, but only minimally, and mostly at this point to easily communicate with family.)

What “Fair and Balanced” Actually Means

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This is kind of huge. Basically, NPR is walking away from the whole bullshit “teach the controversy” style of reporting that refuses to make any judgements about arguments. You know what I mean: stories that end with the intellectual equivalent of “while sources at the Vatican insist scripture shows the Earth is the center of the universe”.

A journalist’s job isn’t to report what’s being said. It’s entirely possible one side really IS demonstrably full of shit; in fact, in American politics, it’s quite often the case, and quite often the Republicans doing the lying. And the only reason they get away with it is because news orgs are afraid to call them on their shit for fear of being branded “liberal” by Fox and its fellow-travelers.

Even NPR has been taken in by this false equivalency doctrine in the past; no more:

In all our stories, especially matters of controversy, we strive to consider the strongest arguments we can find on all sides, seeking to deliver both nuance and clarity. Our goal is not to please those whom we report on or to produce stories that create the appearance of balance, but to seek the truth.

and

At all times, we report for our readers and listeners, not our sources. So our primary consideration when presenting the news is that we are fair to the truth. If our sources try to mislead us or put a false spin on the information they give us, we tell our audience. If the balance of evidence in a matter of controversy weighs heavily on one side, we acknowledge it in our reports. We strive to give our audience confidence that all sides have been considered and represented fairly.

I’m glad they’re returning to journalism. Or, as certain numbskull NYTimes editors called it, “vigilanteism for facts.”

Someone seriously needs to remind LEO who they work for

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Via MeFi, “I’d Like To File A Complaint.” Police departments routinely use intimidation and threatening tactics to avoid providing legally required information, such as how to file a complaint.

I’ve said it before, and I will say it again, because it remains true: the only way to reign in this kind of jackassery is additional civilian oversight — with actual teeth — and the real possibility of criminal and civil liability for individual police officers found to be using their powers in inappropriate ways. The fact that they’re almost completely insulated from any repercussions creates an untenable situation where abuse is the rule.

(What amazes me is that the video linked is from American Family Radio. I guess a stopped clock really is right once and a while.)

This will never happen, but it’s a great idea

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Nicholas Carr suggests that publishers include ebook downloads with regular books, in the way record labels do with vinyl and MP3, or the way you get music by default if you buy a CD.

I think record labels only do it because they sort of have to — a CD can be ripped and shared quickly, and while they tried to sell us formats that were locked down, nobody ever bought SACD or DVD-A in real volumes. They’re still stuck with CD, which means format shifting is a dead letter for the RIAA.

Book publishers may think this means they can keep trying to bill us twice for physical and electronic copies, since there’s no reasonable way to “rip” a novel onto your Kindle. But it’s still the right thing to do, for lots of reasons. The biggest one is that it’ll shore up their existing distribution channels (brick & mortar stores) at the expense of Amazon, and it’s in nobody’s best interest for any one company to control American publishing.

Sure would be nice. I pay a premium for a vinyl + CD-or-download-code package vs. what it would cost in the iTunes store, or what a CD alone would cost, because I prefer the form factor and tactile experience of vinyl. I’d pay a mild premium for books with Kindle editions included, too.

Update: Rich, White, Out of Touch People Still Rich, White, Out of Touch

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MeFi points us to this post at Jezebel, about some rich alumna’s letter to the Smith College newspaper complaining about all the poor, nonwhite, lesbian students that are there now.

No, really. I’m not making this up. The letter closes with this:

I can tell you that the days of white, wealthy, upper-class students from prep schools in cashmere coats and pearls who marry Amherst men are over. This is unfortunate because it is this demographic that puts their name on buildings, donates great art and subsidizes scholarships.

Seriously.

Anyway, madcap hilarity ensues, predictably, but the single absolute best part is this comment at Jezebel itself that all by itself manages to redeem blog comments as a concept across the board:

Dear Place I Spent My Youth,

Things are not as good as they were when I was young, because my youth was the Best Time Ever.

I would like the world to reward me for my circumstances, despite the fact that I had nothing to do with them. They are still mine and I demand validation for them. Life is a game I won it, can’t you see that? Everyone loves me, or is intimidated by me, which means that everything is the way it should be.

The fact that you have shown approval to people who do not look like me, act like me, and are clearly not Life Winners like me hurts my feelings. Make them go away and restore my sense of superiority.

If you carry on including people based on their ability to thrive in an academic environment instead of their upper-class status, I will no longer be able to lord my credentials over other people. This will not stand.

Keep putting the cunt in country club,
Selfish Racist Homophobic Narcissist

That, gentle heathen, is a burn.

Monday Morning Geekery

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JWZ point us to Carlos Bueno’s article How Bots Seized Control Of My Pricing Strategy, which is an interesting bit of weird Gibsonian emergent behavior:

Before I talk about my own troubles, let me tell you about another book, “Computer Game Bot Turing Test”. It’s one of over 100,000 “books” “written” by a Markov chain running over random Wikipedia articles, bundled up and sold online for a ridiculous price. The publisher, Betascript, is notorious for this kind of thing.

It gets better. There are whole species of other bots that infest the Amazon Marketplace, pretending to have used copies of books, fighting epic price wars no one ever sees. So with “Turing Test” we have a delightful futuristic absurdity: a computer program, pretending to be human, hawking a book about computers pretending to be human, while other computer programs pretend to have used copies of it. A book that was never actually written, much less printed and read.

Go read the whole thing.

If you blog from a Mac, you need MarsEdit

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Astute Heathen (is there any other kind?) may have noticed a drastic uptick in output since the mid-January migration to the new platform, and there is a very, very simple reason for that: MarsEdit.

ME is a dedicated blogging client I run on my Mac. It does all the talking to the blog software for me, and frees me from having to type text into a web browser. It’s awesome.

I first starting using it long ago, but a couple years back there was some sort of shift in the underpinnings of Heathen that made kept it from working. (You can actually track roughly when this happened by looking at the post counts by month over in the archive section; the last month with as many posts as February 2012 was December 2007; there was a problem in early January of 2008.) We were always “just about” to fix it, until “just about” became years, and the fix became “migrate to something else because Movable Type is as dead as disco.”

But then a thing happened, and I ended up needing to bump my Mac up to Lion (about which I’m not particularly pleased), and post-Lion my copy of MarsEdit — which was a few versions behind — developed and annoying but minor tic. I wrote to support, basically expecting to be told to upgrade to the latest for full Lion compatibility, and that’s when I got surprised.

See, they did suggest that I just download the newest to see if that would solve the problem, but when it did they insisted on comping my upgrade. “We don’t know what the problem was, but you shouldn’t have had to upgrade to fix it. Here’s a key with our complements.”

Granted, we’re only talking about $15 here, but it’s still surprising. That’s some customer service right there, I tell you. Serious kudos to RedSweater Software for making a cool product, and standing behind it in a way big companies have long since forgotten how to do.

Something Else Awesome About Hay Merchant

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The current “beer board” is not what Kevin Floyd wanted to begin with:

Although it may seem like no expense was spared, there is one focal point of the bar that didn’t make the budget. The chalkboard beer list, which takes constant updating as Floyd switches out the 80-odd taps, was envisioned originally as an old-fashioned split-flat board like the ones found displaying train schedules in old European stations. Unfortunately, only two companies in the world still make the analog boards, and they’re located in Japan and Italy.

Citing a move toward the digital model, they quoted the board Floyd envisioned at $150,000. He politely declined.

What Yelp Is, and Who Yelp Are

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Local Heathen idol @GunsAndTacos has a great article in the Free Press about what a raging, awful, useless, extortionate clusterfuck Yelp is. Highly recommended. Representative quote:

Revolting, slanderous reviews of local businesses are the lifeblood of the Yelp platform. The sales model would be defunct without them. It’s really a clever model, because trolls don’t cost anything, and they’re a sustainable resource.

(Astute Heathen will notice Mr Tacos is also the proprietor of the previously-mentioend One Block Off Washington, his Q-Beam illuminated Tumblr starring and endless array of club-going douchebros. He’s a national treasure, goddammit.)

Every day, I wonder what crazy shit Santorum will say next

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Rick Santorum is opposed to early childhood education programs. It is, he says, the parents’ job to do this:

Of course, the government wants their hands on your children as fast as they can. That is why I opposed all these early starts and pre-early starts, and early-early starts. They want your children from the womb so they can indoctrinate your children as to what they want them to be. I am against that.

Please, please, please GOP: nominate this boob.

Politifact Is Dead

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They’re now pronouncing Lawrence O’Donnell’s statement that “critics of the GI Bill called it welfare” as “mostly false” despite in their own summary quoting several sources who referred to it as “relief,” “the dole”, and the equivalent of handouts.

Seriously? Maddow has more; go watch her takedown.

I mean, most intelligent folks wrote Politifact off months ago, when they declared Democrats’ claims that the GOP wanted to end Medicare a “pants on fire” lie of the year for 2011 — this despite the fact that this is precisely what the GOP set out to do. Politifact’s defense was that the GOP plan would still include something called Medicare, but given that their alternative had essentially nothing else in common with the Medicare of 2011 it’s hard to find this a strong argument for anything other than “Politifact has become a hack organization.”

Or, worse, someone is pressuring them to find “lies” from Democrats to balance the tons of bullshit generated by the GOP.

Dept. of Law Enforcement Overreach, Again

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The Feds, in cases like JotForm’s and others where the use “destroy site first, justify (or not) later” tactics with no judicial oversight, appear almost eager to drive online businesses away from the US.

Trying to fix it later doesn’t solve the problem if you’ve bollocksed up an entire business after the fact. Frankly, the only thing I can think of that would curtail such LEO antics is personal liability at some level. Cops don’t care if departments get sued, because it rarely hurts them personally.

If they want to stop piracy, they have to realize they’re part of the problem

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Hollywood would really like to have all sorts of extra tools, like SOPA and PIPA, to go with their colonization of the Justice department in the desperate pursuit of eradicating illegal content online.

For a whole host of reasons, that’s just not going to happen. People HAVE to be able to decrypt movies and music in order to watch them, and once they’re decrypted people will make copies. They’ll make backups, because media — either CD/DVD or hard drives — fails. They’ll transcode movies to watch on their phones and tablets. They’ll do these things because they should be able to do them, even though the MPAA would prefer it if you needed to re-buy your movies over and over in order to enjoy them on your TV, on your computer, and on your portable device.

Hollywood’s biggest problem isn’t piracy. Hollywood’s biggest problem is their own inability to treat their customers with anything other than contempt. Endless attempts to cash in at any point — like Sony’s move to jerk The Bodyguard off streaming services this week, because people will want to watch Whitney and maybe they can be convinced to BUY A BLU RAY instead — make it abundantly clear what they think of us, but one more excellent example is the ongoing usage of “release windows.”

The term describes the process of allowing properties to be available in certain ways only at certain times — maybe a movie is on Netflix for a while, but they’ll pull it off and flood the zone with BluRays if there’s a sequel coming, for example. And with television properties, the windowing rarely makes any sense at all.

Case in point, and the whole reason I’m writing this post, is what happened when the author of the Oatmeal tried to watch Game of Thrones. It’s very, very similar to what happened when Mrs Heathen and I tried to catch up on Battlestar Galactica before the final season was available. It beggars belief, really, that they make it this hard to give them money.

Law Enforcement LOVES Entrapment

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That’s inflammatory, but it’s also true. Going out and cultivating your own lone-wolf terrorist, given him the (apparent) means and opportunity to do something nefarious, and then arresting him is probably way safer than tracking down actually dangerous people, but you get the same amount of headlines and good press, so it keeps happening. It’s also partly our own fault for being taken in by such headlines, and for demanding such simple scorekeeping. “Hey,” we collectively say, “they’re catching terrorists left and right! That’s awesome!” Except most people never bother to ask themselves “gee, were those folks really terrorists, or were they confused dupes badgered into an ill-conceived plot by Feds who wanted a bust?”

It’s not just in terrorism where cops play this game. Manufacturing crimes to arrest people for is part and parcel of the drug war, too. For example, an undercover sting in Florida recently bagged a teenager for dealing weed only after the girl he was trying to date — a 25-year-old undercover cop — begged and pleaded for him to get her some pot. Nice. I’m sure we’re all much safer now that such a menacing character will have is life ruined.

You have no real appreciation for iOS’ success

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So here’s a quick stat: Apple sold more iPod Touches, iPhones, and iPads in 2011 alone than they did Macintoshes in TWENTY EIGHT YEARS. This is the new platform of record. It is the new default, for good or ill.

No, Android is not going to supplant this juggernaut. I hope they can remain a viable competitor, but the crown is Apple’s to lose.

Also, you know what name isn’t even part of this discussion? Microsoft.

Topical.

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John Mulaney on Girl Scout Cookies kills me:

There’s something that’s always bothered me about Girl Scout Cookies. Why can’t you just buy them in a supermarket? Why are they only available once a year, through some weird organization? It’d be like if they only sold Coca-Cola in July, and you could only buy it from the Knights of Columbus.

Hey Chief Heathen: Talk To Me About Backups

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I’ve just had a pair of calls from a very, very frantic friend. In a hustle to get to the airport this afternoon, he managed to (a) not close his SUV’s tailgate; (b) only close it remotely once he got 50 yards down his street; and therefore (c) not notice his laptop bag had fallen out until he got to the airport. Upon return to his street, of course, an hour or more had passed and the bag was nowhere to be found. And his only backup drive was in the bag, too. And, to add insult to injury, he had no password on the computer, which contained lots of personal financial information in unencrypted files.

So he called me. He had no online or secondary backups. He hadn’t signed up for a stolen-laptop service. Did I know of any other way he could track or try to recover the computer? Sadly, no, I don’t. I gave him some pointers on identity theft prevention and protection, but that was about all I could do. His computer — with all his tax information, his business files, his contacts, his pictures, his digital life, was simply gone.

Now, if you don’t have an ugly bolus of nausea in the pit of your stomach right now, well, you’re made of stouter stuff than I am.

I’ve spoken before at some length about the supreme importance of backups, and how critical it is to have more than one kind, in more than one place. My friend had made a few seemingly small errors here that compounded into a seriously catastrophic situation. Read along now, and figure out where YOU would be if it were your laptop box and not his.

Device Security
First, security. Your laptop needs a password, for sure. Try to make it a good one. You don’t want just any nefarious goon to be able to sniff around on your laptop. You wouldn’t leave your home unlocked; you shouldn’t leave your data unlocked, either.

Data Security
Security extends beyond this, though. For truly sensitive information, like bank account access information, or passwords to credit card accounts, you should use some kind of encrypted storage. I like 1Password, which takes this idea to the next level. In addition to storing my passwords and account numbers in an encrypted file that locks after a few minutes of idleness, it includes the ability to create secure password AND a browser plug-in that makes remembering those secure passwords unnecessary. Just click the toolbar button, and 1Password notices I’m at Chase and fills in the right info. (Obviously, if the db hasn’t been used in a while, it’ll demand my passphrase — but it’s easier to remember one long, secure password than a whole bunch of them.) Cost: $49.99 for Mac or Windows license; $14.99 for companion iPhone/iPad app. Browser plug-ins are free.

Computer Recovery
There is also now a whole class of tools designed to make recovering a stolen laptop easier. The most famous is the Prey Project, discussed in some depth by Lifehacker here. Basically, you install it, and at an interval you choose it silently checks in with the Prey servers to see if the computer has been marked “stolen.” If that’s the case, it busily starts sending in all sorts of information about the theif’s activity — up to and including webcam pics. Prey is also free for up to 3 devices, which is kind of insane, but it’s well-reviewed and well-liked, and there are many examples of lost laptops being recovered using it, or using tools like it. I do not yet use any such tools, but I’m actively considering it. Cost: basic Prey is free for up to three devices; they have more elaborate plans and services, however.

Backups
My previous backup scheme, detailed in this space before, is unchanged. The driving principle is “measure your backups in spindles and time zones.”

Spindles are the “axles” inside hard drives. To measure by spindle is to count the ones involved in keeping your data safe. More spindles means more copies on more drives, which protects you from single points of physical failure.

Measuring by time zone means to keep physical separation between your data copies — keep some local, within easy reach, but keep some far away in the event of a local cataclysm. (And for God’s sake don’t put your only backup in your laptop bag.)

To recap:

  • Apple’s Time Machine runs all day every day. This is powerful, because of instead of just “big dumb copies” it keeps up with file versions. I used to just make a copy of my hard drive periodically, but that’s not enough, because if a region of your drive starts to go it’ll destroy files well before the problem is obvious. By dutifully copying my drive to my backup drive every week, I just spread the corruption to the backup drive, too, and in so doing lost a whole bunch of data — including about a year’s worth of pictures. Time Machine protects you from a drive or computer failure, but it also protects you from more subtle failures like the one I experienced. Best of all: it’s a set-it-and-forget-it kind of thing. As long as the backup drive is accessible, Time Machine will work with no intervention from you. (I still don’t know a good Windows option here.) Cost: Free with Macs.

  • I keep all my active files in Dropbox, which sucks copies into my folder there more or less instantly. Dropbox is really meant for synchronization between multiple computers (say, your work PC and your home PC), but the basic mechanics of the tool mean it’s a great extra backup step, too. Fun fact: about 18 months ago, my laptop went dark all of a sudden, in the middle of the day. No power, no nothing. I made an Apple Store appointment and then just powered on my backup computer, and the file I was working on was already there, thanks to Dropbox. Can’t beat that. Cost: Free for up to 2GB; I pay $9.99 a month for 50GB.

  • Periodically — before any major change to my laptop, or before any long trip — I make a perfect clone of my laptop’s hard drive using SuperDuper. Despite the trouble I mentioned before, keeping a clone around of your hard drive is a good idea — especially if you travel. Imagine how much less freaked out my friend would have been if, inside on his desk, a perfect copy of his data was safe and sound? In the ideal case, you keep TWO such copies and rotate them between two different locations. For example, during Hurricane Ike, one of my cloned drives was in Erin’s office on the 43rd floor of a building downtown and presumably therefore flood-safe. Cost: $27.95.

  • The final step for me is Crashplan, but competitors Mozy and Carbonite are also well regarded. (And Mozy is probably better for less-sophisticated users.) These are online, so-called “cloud” backup tools. You configure the client to protect certain folders or groups of folders, and the data is slowly and securely uploaded to the service. Once the initial backup is complete, only changes go up the wire. This type of tool is of HUGE value for three reasons: First, it happens automatically. Second, by definition the backups these tools perform are offsite, far away — your house could burn down, and you’d still have whatever data you stored there. Third, because these tools store file histories, you get protection from the “creeping corruption” problem that stung me years ago. I keep about 140GB of data backed up with CrashPlan, including over 100GB worth of photos. (While I just waited for the first backup to be done (it took a couple months), most of these services will allow you to seed your backup by sending in a portable hard drive.) Cost: Varies by service, and usually paid by the gigabyte. MozyHome is $4.99 for up to 50GB, e.g.

This Sounds Complicated!
It’s really not. If you know me well enough to have my phone number, you also know that I’ll help you with this. Don’t put it off. Do it today, or at least this weekend. Your data is important.

Epilogue
Now, I do have a little bit of extra news. I mentioned before that my friend had called twice. I got the disaster rundown in the first call, but an hour or two later he called back. It seems his neighbor had seen what happened, and collected the bag for him. Bullet dodged, of course, but you can be sure my pal is busily acquainting himself with the tools and services listed in this post. I think I’ll send him a link to it, just in case. For reference.

As for you, dear Heathen public, don’t count on having such a kind neighbor or such extraordinary luck. Protect yourself.

Dept. of Blog Tweaks

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Astute Heathen will notice that the header graphics are no longer stock images, and in fact are now Official Heathenographs. My photos have no titles normally, but here are fifteen provisional titles to go with the pictures.

  1. “And over there, Japan”
  2. “Overused Photo Cliche #261”
  3. “That’s not blurry; that’s just Wurstfest!”
  4. “Vern, alight with Red Wings”
  5. “Still Life With Excessive Stereotypical Southernism”
  6. “Future Home of Grand Parkway #1”
  7. “Before”
  8. “After”
  9. “Nobody Liked Jim Lehrer Anyway”
  10. “Master Wong Is Unconcerned With Eminent Domain”
  11. “Porcupine Racetrack“
  12. “When Australians Get High”
  13. “Master Wong’s Cohort Gaze With Horror At Encroaching Bulldozers”
  14. “No, Really, We’re Working”
  15. “It Only Looks Idyllic. It’s Actually Albany.”

Since the banner’s on a random rotation, you may have to visit a few times to sort out which is which. Actual humans pictured include the AccountingCatSnorter, Mrs Heathen, FirstNiece, some strangers, Leopardboy, certain Kohn’s bartenders, and Jim Lehrer. Enjoy.

Why Our Voting System Is Broken

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In the US, we’re so accustomed to our “one man, one vote” election system that we’ve by and large forgotten that alternatives exist that can produce materially fairer outcomes.

C. G. P. Grey discusses the main problems with First Past The Post in this excellent video, which explains briefly why such systems — even if they start with multiple parties — inevitably devolve into a two-party duopoly that poorly represents most citizens. Go watch. It’s worth 6 minutes of your time, I assure you.

If you enjoyed it, continue for more over at his blog, where concepts like Alternative Vote (also known as “Instant Runoff Voting“) and Gerrymandering are explored in similar style.

Via MeFi.

Smart thinking on Sudafed and Meth

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There’s a move afoot to make Sudafed prescription again, in an effort to keep would-be Walter Whites out of business. This sucks for lots of reasons, but at least this writer is thinking clearly about the implications costwise:

What really bothers me is the way that Humphreys [the author of a post to which she is responding] — and others who show up in the comments–regard the rather extraordinary cost of making PSE prescription-only as too trivial to mention.

Let’s return to those 15 million cold sufferers. Assume that on average, they want one box a year. That’s going to require a visit to the doctor. At an average copay of $20, their costs alone would be $300 million a year, but of course, the health care system is also paying a substantial amount for the doctor’s visit. The average reimbursement from private insurance is $130; for Medicare, it’s about $60. Medicaid pays less, but that’s why people on Medicaid have such a hard time finding a doctor. So average those two together, and add the copays, and you’ve got at least $1.5 billion in direct costs to obtain a simple decongestant. But that doesn’t include the hassle and possibly lost wages for the doctor’s visits. Nor the possible secondary effects of putting more demands on an already none-too-plentiful supply of primary care physicians.

Of course, those wouldn’t be the real costs, because lots of people wouldn’t be able to take the time for a doctor’s visit. So they’d just be more miserable while their colds last. What’s the cost of that–in suffering, in lost productivity?

Perhaps it would be simpler to just raise the price of a box of Sudafed to $100. Surely that would make meth labs unprofitable–and save us the annoyance of a doctor’s visit.

They can still buy cold medicine, protest the advocates for a prescription-only policy. But as far as I can tell, there’s really no evidence that the current substitute, phenylephrine, does a damn thing to ease congestion; apparently, a lot of it gets chewed up in your liver pretty quickly, and because the FDA only allows a low dose to start with, the resulting pills don’t seem to be any better than placebo. For people who are prone to sinus or ear infections, that’s no joke; one of the main ways you prevent them is by taking a decongestant as soon as you feel the first ticklings of a cold–not four days later, when your GP can finally see you.

I added the emphasis, since that’s also my own experience with the non-sudafed sudafed.

Here’s the real point:

But no policy question is ever as simple as “How can we stop X”, unless “X” is an imminent Nazi invasion. We also have to ask “at what cost?” and “by what right?”

Exactly. There is no doubt that meth is a scourge. But the societal costs of drastically increasing the effective price of Sudafed are bad, too. Are we sure that’s a good idea? And let’s also be clear about something: some anti-meth crusaders are actively talking about prohibition. Seriously. Fuck that.

(Via Schneier.)