Thursday, May 28, 2015

"The Code of Federal Regulations: The Ultimate Longread"

"Regulations have piled up and piled up to the point where no individual can make sense of them all."

The average adult reads prose text at a rate of 250 to 300 words per minute. If you read the Code of Federal Regulations at 300 words per minute on a full-time basis, it would take you nearly three years to get through just the version of the CFR published in 2012. That’s about 58 times longer than it would take to read through the five volumes currently published in George R. R. Martin’s fantasy saga, A Song of Ice and Fire. Or 220 times longer than it would take to read through The Lord of the Rings from the original R. R. of fantasy—J. R. R. Tolkien.

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2 comments:

Christy said...

Reading regs and proposed regs from the EPA, NRC, and DOE were a big part of my job for far too long.

Methadras said...

This is what the mountains of bureaucracy have dumped upon the heads of us all. This is why government costs so much, is so damned big, so offensive, and so intrusive. I can assure you that there isn't a single law, statute or regulation in the CFR's that is consistent and contradictory. This is what this country will use against you. I'm sure breathing is against the law in there along with sleeping, talking, walking, eating, and drinking.

Read this book, Three Felonies a Day and welcome to your world of a screw job: http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/1594035229