Especially when such basic facts as the timing of the Cambrian explosion are so wrong. It was 542M years ago, according to wikipedia, or 4B years after the earth formed. This summary implies the Cambrian explosion was 3B years sooner, unless by "tens of millions" they actually mean 3000 million.

He's complaining that the money he spent to defeat the influence of money in politics didn't have any influence.

The proper lesson is that his basic thesis is wrong, that money doesn't always win elections. Meg Whitman was another example (if you have to ask who she? and what election? then you prove my point -- google "meg whitman election").

But being a statist fuck, that won't be the lesson he sees. Lessig's done a lot of nice work otherwise, but he's off the rails on this.

So it's ok for non-profit schools to push useless degrees and bad courses. Got it.

What galls me the most is the panty-wetting over a government-granted monopoly trying to maintain its government granted monopoly when that very same government tries to compete using taxpayer dollars as a subsidy.

The outrage should be against government involvement period. If governments didn't grant local monopolies, there would be real competition among the real companies, and no perceived need for the government competition which is only competitive because it has the taxpayer subsidy.

How can anyone pay lip service to free markets by regulating them?

The problem is that government regulates them as monopolies. They create the problem in the first lace by creating the monopoly, then offer to fix the problem by adding regulation. If it were a truly free market, without government sponsored monopolies, regulation wouldn't be nessary.

Look up the history of AT&T, how they were acting like a bully, but when the lawsuits began to have an effect and counter their actions, they begged the government to regulate them as a monopoly. If the government had just said no, they would have been brought to heel within a few years; the market would have worked.

It never ceases to amaze me how often I am amazed at people who cannot grasp this simple concept, that government specialized in correcting problems it created. Even that great social experiment, US alcohol prohibition from 1920-1933, was not ended by repealing the prohibition, but by changing outright prohibition to regulation.

The right to privacy is unimplementable. It basically requires hiding the truth on a massive individualized scale, and cannot be done.

If one were to attempt hiding one or a few particular truths, it might be successful for a short while, but it would be like the Soviets airbrushing former leaders out of pictures. The truth will resurface sooner or later.

And as soon as you mandate the right to be forgotten, every punk and his dog will want to protect their privacy too -- why should it be reserved only for the rich and powerful? Not only will the resultant holes in truth became ever more blatant, but the only way to hide the truth is manpower intensive, just like airbrushing people out of all those pictures. You can't automate it -- not only would it miss indirect references and intentional subterfuge, it will erase false positives and raise the ire of its false victims.

I am watching this EU court ruling with a metric boatload of popcorn. Most legislation is pretty clueless when it comes to unintended consequences, btu this one is spectacularly so.

Dang, I was going to say the same thing.

Close to the same argument I use with people who rail against dams. What about beavers? If humans throw logs and rocks and mud across a stream just like beavers, is that unnatural or natural, good or bad, politically correct or not? What if they make it out of boards instead of cut down trees? What is it's teh exact same size, but concrete? How about half the size in concrete?

I repeat, legal oppression only exists because of government. If you cannot see that simple truth, you are wilfully blind.

Primogeniture and entailment were government laws which enforced class distinctions and warfare -- withotu government creation and enforcement of classes, there would be no class oppression and warfare.

Government laws prevented women from owning property, voting, or having much freedom at all, and made marriage rape legal.

Slavery and segregation were the direct result of government laws. Society was integrating on its own until government stopped it and reversed course.

It's very simple: government creates laws to justify its oppression. You claim to get your history from the People's History. It's not much of a history if that single lesson doesn't come through loud and clear.

People care about people. Governments do not. Any one who thinks the government is his friend is either a crony or a fool, possibly both. Governments' mission is to compel or prohibit; their core competence is coercion in the name of the status quo.

Before government made black self-defense illegal and enforced bigotry with government guns, blacks at least had a chance. Society was at least slowly intergrating even in the face of government sanctioned lynching, before government stepped in officially and made it illegal, backed by government guns and jails. The US Post office and military were more integrated than most people realize, until Woodrow Wilson came along and enforced segregation. That Louisian railroad was just one of many companies who integrated in pursuit of the amlighty dollar, until governments came along and stopped them with government guns and jail.

Progressives are an ignorant whiny lot, like all statists. All power to the government! The people, not so much.

BULLSHIT. Slavery and Jim Crow were both the RESULT of government laws. Neither can exist in the absence of government. Jim Crow in particular owes its existence to a Louiana law requiring a railroad to segregate its railroad cars against its own wishes, said law being approved by the US Supreme Court.

You need to learn a lot of history before opening your yap next time.

What a blissful world you live in!

Corporate taxes are bullshit in the first place. They are passed on in their product prices. If your response to that is that businesses are evil for doing so, then you are doubly a fool -- if an expense like taxes makes no difference in product prices, then why do other expenses matter? Expense is expense, money is fungible, and if you can't see that, you are far too ignorant to survive.

And that theoretical speed is with minimal fuel, no weapons, no armor, no maneuverability, no military radios. In short,

Then there's that crap about being a jet fighter.

which is only half the horsepower available in real fighter airplanes 5 years later which could only manage 450 mph.

This is one of the more idiotic articles to come down the pike in quite a while.

"Hard to follow" is itself hard to follow. The shades and colors and hard lines made it difficult for German stereo rangefinders to lock on, it made it difficult for submarines to determine the shape and length which were necessary for proper range, speed, and angle estimates, and in general it made target identification slower and more uncertain.

It wasn't zebra striping either. It was bizarre blocky shapes, always with straight edges, and there was a lot of color. The reason so many people think it black and white is because color film was very expensive and rare, and newspapers didn't print color pictures.

... if government just stepped out of the picture altogether. Yes, I hate bloatware. Why do you hate it so much, though, that you think you need to get government fo back up your hatred with the threat of jail and corporate death?

Government exists only to compel or prohibit, ultimately at the point of a gun. Its core competency is corrupt cronyism. To want that on your side is to admit your desires can not be achieved by moral persuasion or logical argument.