This was bound to happen. The guy wants to keep his show, right? I certainly want him to keep his show.

And now for something completely different. Apropos of nothing at all, I was thinking the other day about how pretending to be senile and apologizing for it is a timeless legal strategy. It can also work well in family conflicts. I've known a few crazy-like-a-fox elderly geniuses who do a great senility impression. In a real emergency, they might even try drooling a little.

Is our society now particularly corrupt, or has it always been this way?

I think you're failing to look on the bright side. This little exchange represents a lot of progress.

If you want a good idea of what powerful rulers used to do to people who said things they didn't like, google "Giordano Bruno". Or, for an international perspective, ask a 60-year-old Russian, or a 40-year-old Cambodian, or a contemporary Tibetan.

Note, though, that I'm not saying our society couldn't use a lot of improvement on the corruption front.

So our society isn't less corrupt than it used to be. It's just that the overlords have realized that they can be a little subtler and not have to hack/burn/behead/hang/shoot people to subjugate and control them.

Yes, there's progress, but I think we can still complain.

Unfortunately, in human society, the source of corruption is humans.

I've always said those things should be outlawed!

Since everything we do now is ad-sponsored, it's expected that advertisers have more than their fair share of influence.

Yep. It's a mistake to refer to ad-sponsored content as free. There are a lot of costs, some more subtle than others.

Yes.

It's always been corrupt but lately it seems like corruption has the upper hand.

Corruption has always had the upper hand...

Dark Helmet: "So, Lone Star, now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb."

That is one hell of a long (10 minute speech) brain fart there.

And my how eager to help all those corporations were, why they sound sad that the segment won't air!

Good news everyone, all the bad publicity has jogged Adam's memory and he now remembers things correctly.

Adam does seem like the kind of person that would make things up to make a story more interesting. Maybe he didn't realize it would end up on YouTube?

Too bad nobody interviewed Tory, the primary source, before the shit hit the fan.

Except the article was intimating that the primary source was Grant, and not Tory.

I'm sure there are embellishments and inaccuracies in Adams speech.

But the point is that he got the gist of story 100% wrong, not just wrong but exactly opposite of what happened. The corporations were trying to help them, not stop them. No one can be that confused.

In addition to that, we all know that in general (yes I am generalizing) security through obscurity and legal threats tends to be the norm.

That's my point exactly - his story was so wrong that he couldn't even get who told him the story right. Doesn't that set off some BS filters?

So he pretends to back off, we pretend to believe him, lawyers pretend to be satisfied. RFIDs are still a can of worms.

Everything is back to normal then?