Here's a good article on the subject: http://reason.com/archives/2011/12/27/whos-more-anti-science-republicans-or-de

"Freedom of the press" refers to the actual printing press machine, not the profession of journalism. This person's blog is, in effect, a modern form of the printing press. Not sure how a judge could miss that.

Legalize, tax, and regulate the Internet!

Agreed. If you're going to tack a life-long punishment to somebody for a "sex offense" then just send them to prison for life. I thought that once you've paid your debt to society you are no longer in debt, these registries are basically just modern day scarlet letters.

Not going to disagree with you there, but just because our elected officials are acting like toddlers doesn't give us an excuse to follow suit.

Why is it that whenever a non technology article is submitted to slashdot, the comments devolve into childish name-calling and strongman arguments? Why don't we just stop calling each other stupid and offer an intelligent explanation of our position? Why not debate opposing views in a civil manner? Why not try to learn something from the opposing side?

Your strawman is boring.

Cable TV? Is that thing still around?

The "auto insurance" canard. There is a big difference between compelling someone (with force) to purchase a product as a condition of exercising a privilege (driving) and compelling someone to purchase a product as a condition of being alive.

Here's the obligatory wikipedia article on my point. Note the "gyroscopic effects" section: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countersteering

That's not entirely correct. Gyroscopic forces are what keep the bike from falling over at speed. In fact you control the bike by manipulating the front gyroscope (wheel) in relation to the rear through a process known as counter-steering (to turn the bike left you turn the handlebars to the right, causing the bike to lean to the left; the gyroscopic forces of the wheels, crankshaft and mainshaft keep the bike from falling over completely while you're leaning into the turn).

The bike already has at least 4 gyroscopes: 2 wheels, the crankshaft, and the transmission mainshaft. You could make a case for the counter shaft also being a gyroscope but that depends on the type of transmission used. I doubt you'd be able to realistically get a machine that size to stand on it's own thought it would be something I've never seen before. I'm not convinced that this handles poorly. The "stability" of a motorcycle is almost entirely dependent on the trail calculation (relationship between steering axis to front axle). With all that bodywork on the thing I couldn't even guess what the trail would be and I've been building bikes my entire adult life. Generally, if the bike is "squirrelly" at low speeds it would tend to be more stable at high speeds (excessive trail, think a modern chopper) and vice versa.

Bonus points for the reason.com reference.

I have to agree. For some reason success is demonized in our society. If you're not poor like the rest of us then you must be one of the evil "rich" who spends their entire day trying to figure out how to steal money from poor people... Unless you're on TV, then you're okay. Celebrity wealth doesn't count.