Unfortunately our "central authorities" nowadays are the biggest counterfeiters of all...

They were not just communists, but communist sympathizers of a major hostile foreign power to whom they were transferring valuable secrets, such as nuclear technology, in the middle of the Cold War. I don't think "so what?" quite covers the possibility of treason by State Department employees.

Have you forgotten about air bags? They are there precisely so that you don't have to remember to use your seat belt...

Your remarks are absurd. I bet you never once objected to anyone carrying their camera-equipped cellphone or other device to those places. I doubt if you will start actually bullying wearers of Google Glasses either.

Have you ever seen the Memoto (http://memoto.com/)? It's rather like what you're saying. Unlike Google Glasses, the Memoto is unobtrusive (you can clip it on your shirt) and always taking pictures (every 30 seconds it takes a snap). Given that such devices will be available in the near future, I think people will soon get over their worries. On the one hand, you're always on film, like in the movie "Freeze Frame". But on the other hand your pictures are going to be drowned in a sea of similar pictures and so are not likely to get noticed much, unless something important happens, of course. Just don't commit any crimes...

Actually, Google doesn't appear completely different to me. Like Aaron Schwartz, they have a manifesto - in their case they want to "index the word's information and make it available", which is actually rather similar to Aaron's motivation for free knowledge that got him in trouble with the prosecutor. And like Aaron Schwartz, they occasionally overstep in their zeal to make information public. Just look at all their legal trouble with book scanning, newspaper snippets, etc. So the comparison is not totally invalid.

"In such condition there is...continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, British, and short." (Thomas Hobbes, author of Leviathan, and one of our nasty brutish ancestors)

I wonder why they don't just use the camera to make the light stay yellow longer when someone is still in the intersection. That would reduce collisions from both directions. That is a better use of the technology than arbitrarily handing out fines.

Bitcoin is not as deflationary as you seem to think. It is a member of a class of virtual currencies, and each member of the class can be endlessly duplicated, creating as many new virtual currencies as you like. Since there is no limit to the currencies that anyone can create (Bitcoin 2.0, 3.0, ...) none of them can rise in value without limit (deflation). Bitcoin is not a precious metal like gold. Gold is physically unable to be duplicated. It is the idea behind bitcoin that can be endlessly duplicated.

Which "me" are you referring to, original me or copy me? And what if they disagree? Both are mature competent adults, so whose opinion holds sway?

Your post reminded me of an article (http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/censusandstatistics/a/commutetimes.htm). The average American spends 100 hours commuting and only 80 hours on vacation per year. Thus, avoiding the commute essentially doubles their vacation time. A great benefit at a small cost.

On the other hand, the US also spends twice as much on our education system and gets worse results. Maybe this country is suffering from an excess of money and a shortage of brains... it is possible that they could convert to some other healthcare system as you suggest without actually saving money or getting better results.

Your post was very insightful and it made me think of this. Imagine an "Internet government" consisting of a voluntary international association that does some of the major functions of government: retirement insurance (aka Social Security), medical insurance (Medicare/Medicaid), and various other minor services, such as passport identification. You could voluntarily sign up for such a government and agree to accept its laws. In return, you could move freely within international boundaries and be freed from signing up for your local government's similar services, ie you wouldn't have to pay social security tax. Such a government, freed from geographical constraints, could be well-designed and modern, offering better guarantees of fiscal prudence and sound currency than any national government does. And membership would be strictly voluntary, unlike current national identities, so it would be in that sense "libertarian". Well, what a brainstorm!

So 32% of the authors chose wrongly? And your response is to take their other choices away, because they don't know what they are doing?

If you could travel in time, would you rather visit an episode from the remote past of dinosaurs, or some episode from religious history? Which episode, and why?