Your first sentence made me spit water on my monitor laughing. Pray tell, WHO are these "intelligent" and "well-informed" people? the politicians have proven that they know squat about the internet while boasting their knowledge of it. The corporations seem intent on crippling a thing that has massively increased their profits.

I would have to agree with him on some things, though I personally find that these things were glaringly obvious.

Taking notes during class is not a good study habit because you are focusing on writing what is being said/done/written instead of on the lesson.
Consistent learning environments can also be bad for study because the brain tends to try and relate knowledge with other knowledge, be that information similar to what you are trying to learn, or what you see, smell, etc. By changing study locations even by a small amount the amount your brain reduces the amount it relies on information pertaining to the senses.

This article made me break my vow of lurking!

As long as the website tells the truth in its privacy policy, https://ixquick.com/ will be more secure than Google.

there is also DuckDuckGo

Wow, what is this, the third time the U.S. military has changed their story on this? is there any more obvious way of saying "we are trying to cover something up"?

I feel angry at them, however a whole lot less angry than at the U.S. government because there is a chance the New Zealand government had a reason to do this. However, a good portion of that is bias against the U.S. due to recent actions like threatening to block trade from countries that don't do as they say, and war against a country that has "weapons of mass destruction" when the U.S. not only has the most WMDs in the world, but is also the only one has not had the responsibility to not use them on anyone. I can see any world leader that has the U.S. breathing down their necks for something would comply for fear of becoming the next U.S. "big threat".