You know how the hypesters like to hype something up and make you think it’s a really really big deal that’s really really easy to do? Like meth. It’s supposed to be really damn simple to make methamphetamine — hell, you can feed a simple search query into Google and get back a whole whack of results, some of which are even kinda plausible. (The one that mentions the Isomer Fairy is my favorite, and no doubt there are people out there who are wholly unaware of the chirality issue with desoxyephedrine.) It’s so simple, the press gushes, except for the part where you have to do 48 hours of refluxing and know how to use a sep funnel properly and how to handle hydroiotic acid, and.. well, okay, maybe the meth gangs are pretty sophisticated.

Regardless, according to the hypesters, you can cook up a batch of meth in your basement, blow the whole neighborhood to hell, get the local kids hooked on the stuff, and then convert them all to Satanism, or something, in some small amount of easy, trivial steps. It’s so easy the bikers have figured it out. Uh-huh. Somehow, I guarantee you that if you or I tried to do it, we’d end up with the wrong isomer of the wrong compound and synthesize something that makes your hair fall out and calls the cops for you.

Crime, it seems, not only makes you stupid, but has stupidity as a prerequisite, too. Or, alternatively, maybe making meth isn’t as easy as it seems, and it’s not as big a problem as people seem to think it is. It’s not like they have a reason to make you afraid of meth or anything, do they?

So it goes with piracy. You know how people downloading TV offa the Innernet is going to be the downfall of the modern television network? And how you’re supposed to be able to turn on your machine and suck back all the TV you want, without those annoying commercials? How come this doesn’t actually work on any Internet I’ve ever used? I’m in the process of downloading some episodes of Six Feet Under, the damn BT session’s been running for two friggin’ days, and we’re still only 43% done. I totally don’t get it. 700 MB, and I’m downloading it about as fast as I would have over a 14.4k dialup link. This is so not the piracy haven I’ve been lead to believe exists on the network at large.

Yeah, we’re really gonna wreck your business model at frickin’ 483 B/sec. Yes, four hundred and eighty three bytes per second. What decade is this, again?