Tuesday, May 24, 2005

Viagra & Sex Offenders

Personally, I don’t think Medicare should pay for Viagra. I’ve said before that it looks like a sop to the pharmaceutical industry to me. There are limits to what Medicare can do; one place to start limiting is “lifestyle” drugs.

But so long as we’re paying for them, Lindsay’s talking sense:

Medicaid covers Viagra for anyone for whom it is medically indicated. You don’t have to undergo a criminal record check to get any other kind of medical treatment. Pickpockets can be treated for carpal tunnel, peeping toms for ADD, and embezzelers for dyslexia--and that’s exactly how it should be.

It’s unnerving to see moral busybodies demanding a closer mesh between health care and the law. Medicaid is not an arm of the parole system. Prescriptions shouldn’t be rationed in the name of social engineering. It sounds as if Health and Human Services might even revoke Viagra coverage for sex offenders who have already served their time. This is unconscionable. It’s not up to HHS to heap extrajudicial punishments on people who’ve already paid their debt to society. 

Some * believe * a sex offender can never pay his “debt to society.” * That aside, I too am unnerved by the mixing of health care and the law, and agree that “the sex offender issue is a total red herring:”

The unsubstantiated implication is that Viagra is facilitating rapes. That might be true, but then again, so might angina medication, antibiotics, or any other medical treatment for a sex offender who would otherwise be out of commission.

Unfortunately, Kevin is also right:

Don’t you just hate this stuff? Lindsay is plainly right on the merits, but once again conservatives have managed to dredge up a bizarre non-issue designed to make anyone with any sense look like a moral pervert. You either vote to ban Viagra for these people or else you’re aiding and abetting child abuse. And there isn’t a local news station in the country that can resist running with this story.

Ban straight marriage

Amanda at Pandagon finds a UK Independent story that reports, “Research will this week say that the more committed and successful a woman is at work, the worse her partner feels” and can think of only one possible solution:

we must ban straight marriage immediately. It’s a lose-lose proposition--it’s making men sick and taking women’s freedom. The argument against opposite-sex marriages is clearly stronger than against same-sex marriages. After all, when it’s two men or two women getting married, it’s sort of hard to figure out which one is obligated to give up their life outside and which one is entitled to domestic service.

Norah & Peanuts

Yet another occasion to call attention to Malcolm Gladwell’s Something Borrowed. Please read that article.

From Xeni at Boing Boing:

Mark Ebner at Hollywood Interrupted asks, “Was a Norah Jones hit ripped from Charlie Brown theme music? You decide… This video file offers a side-by-side comparison of Don’t Know Why and Christmas Time is Here. Do Norah and her hit songwriter owe Vince Guaraldi royalties?”

Malcolm:

...these patterns of influence--cribbing, tweaking, transforming--were at the very heart of the creative process. True, copying could go too far. There were times when one artist was simply replicating the work of another, and to let that pass inhibited true creativity. But it was equally dangerous to be overly vigilant in policing creative expression…

Me the other day:

This era we’re living in--of patenting ideas, trademarking phrases and copyrighting everything--has gone way past protecting a creator’s work. Instead we’re stifling creativity in the interest of corporate commerce.

Everything’s derivative!

Brew on Bush on life

Brew points to the president the other day:

“I made it very clear to the Congress that the use of federal money, taxpayers’ money to promote science which destroys life in order to save life is - I’m against that. And therefore, if the bill does that, I will veto it.’”

And comments:

Apparently our President’s thoughs on the preservation of human life...apply only to that nasty-nasty we liberals call “science,” because he’s made it absolutely clear that he has no problem with destroying lives to “save lives” - especially if those who’s lives he destroys don’t worship his god, or don’t look like him.

I thought it was noteworthy then, but today Brew’s back at it:

The House has voted to pass the stem cell bill, which will ease White House restrictions on embryonic stem cell research. President Bush, who apparently flunked every science class he ever took, has promised to veto any bill which he thinks destroys life - unless of course it involves spending $80 billion to destroy a third world country.

Good point.

Fast-forward Ads

I recently said to a friend that I love online ads. He was aghast.

I worked in interactive advertising in the early days and the things I wanted to do then but couldn’t due to bandwidth and browser limitations are done beautifully now.

So I like advertising, even in some spaces that others don’t. But this is a very bad idea:

MEGA MEDIA SHOP OMD in the next few weeks will begin testing a new type of media buy that will deliver an advertising message even when TV viewers are fast-forwarding through their TV commercials. The agency’s plans for the new “fast-forward commercials” were revealed Monday by David DeSocio, OMD’s U.S. director of strategic marketing, during a keynote address on the second day of the Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau’s local advertising sales conference here. Asserting that DVRs “are not a threat” and may actually enhance the TV advertising experience by serving more relevant advertising to consumers who are more in control of the content they see, DeSocio said the new fast-forward ad tactic nonetheless would enable OMD’s clients to “involve the consumer even when they are in avoidance mode.”

Not just a bad idea, a stupid idea. If the consumer is “in avoidance mode” the consumer is really, really likely to be annoyed.

I’ve yet to be subjected to a fast-forward ad but I can’t see how they could possibly work. When fast-forwarding, the focus is on where to stop fast-forwarding. TiVo patented an enormously popular Automatic Playback Overshoot Correction System to help with that (and Microsoft may be infringing with its Reaction Time Compensation system). The advertiser wants to shift the focus to the ad.

If the ad-impaired viewer overshoots in fast-forward (and then reverses, pulling up another ad--or will they only put ads in forward mode?) the result is guaranteed to be major annoyance. How can that be good for any product?

Yo, adman! THE GOAL IS ATTRACTION. And Attraction works:

The latest tactic for the 100,000-members of the Spread Firefox movement is to make commercials. Funnyfox, three humorous video clips showing web surfers using the browser for the first time, is the slickest contribution to date. Designed to be emailed to friends, the videos—one of which shows a user’s head falling off—have proved so popular extra servers had to be set up to cope with the load.

That for a bunch of ads I didn’t even like! Here’s one I did like: Store Wars.