Yes, but drivers licenses, automobiles, and roadways are all things that the Federal government has has a hand in homogenizing across the States. Federal highway funding has long been used in the carrot/stick relationship to coerce States into conformity. I'm not saying that's always a bad thing - I do appreciate that all the roads in the US are basically marked the same. Similarly, the IRS has been used to "motivate" behavior where mandates are not allowed. "If you buy a house, you may deduct your mortgage interest from your gross income." Honestly, I would prefer that "married filing jointly" and "married filing separately" would result in the same tax burden, as my married status and filing method should not affect my tax burden. Yes, things get complicated when dependants are involved. Would be easier to just tax everyone, kids included, as individuals. Period. But you can't use the carrot/stick method with that ...

ObamaCare is going to add fuel to the fire. Federal regulations on top of an already over-complicated state-level bureaucracy is a recipe for disaster. I can imagine a situation where same-gender couples co-habit for enough time for the Fed to declare them common-law "married" for ObamaCare purposes, but the State they reside in doesn't recognize the common-law-union, so the locally administered healthcare regulations conflict. That ought to be extremely not-fun.

In my personal fantasy-land, government would be orthogonal and internally-consistent.

Ultimately this is a consistency issue. As noted, driving from one state to another could result in you becoming un-married (if only it was that simple ...) Civil unions are generally a state-level function, and the rules for marriage in California differ greatly from those in Virginia (ex. community property vs. dower law.) All would be well and good should you never cross the state border, but when you do, does the adjacent state recognize your civil union? Married in one state, but living in another - which estate rules apply? Further, the Fed has stuck it's fingers into the pie, and chooses to recognize the civil union through the IRS. That *should* create a situation where consistency flows top-down, but as there is no Federal courthouse from which you may seek a marriage license (at least, none that I'm aware of,) the process must flow up-then-down.

I expect the Fed wants to push a "Consistency in Marriage Act" onto the states, where "any two people age 16 or older may join in a civil union." I just don't think they have the authority to do so. The Fed *could* just treat people as individuals, and leave the civil-union business to the States. However, that would erode their power base, which makes me think it's unlikely they would even consider doing so. My gut says they will do something emotional, pandering to the married masses, and make things much worse overall.

"but surely you can imagine the scorn of the peers a girl deciding to become an auto mechanic would encounter..."

Yes, I'm quite certain they would argue against the "scorn of their peers" point. As for the rest of your comment ... wtf?

Jessi, Bogi and Cristy would beg to differ.

They set the bar. Read Miranda carefully - anything you say or do may be used against you in a court of law. That's a one-way street biased against us. Should the cops observe something that would exonerate you, they are *not* obligated to present it in court, or do anything that would benefit you.

Also - copyright terminates when the author(s) die. None of this life-plus-eleventy-thousand-years crap. When you kick, your works revert into the public domain ... we *all* benefit from that.

Go to a rail yard and watch how they handle the cars. I can't imagine that *any* aircraft component would survive such abuse.

The idea-guys also gloss over the support infrastructure required to keep the meatbags comfy and, more importantly, alive. Does each pod have an APU and fuel such that it can supply electricity, power, environmental control, etc? How about toilets? Did we neglect those?

Air and rail are not tremendously compatible modes of transportation.

They're billing this as a shared resource. You're still going to need someone to change the t-shirt.

The two Spyderco knives they have taken from me would beg to differ.

In the 1960s, NASA investigated a personal orbital-reentry system called MOOSE, should an astronaut need to bail-out of an orbital station. As with just about anything in space, you gotta deal with the kinetic energy somehow.

While the recording and movie industries are clearly pro-blocking, Google believes the issue can be dealt with by starving pirate sites of advertising revenue, something that should be handled by the advertisers themselves. All they have to do is provide a list of sites where ads shouldn’t appear.

“It’s not Google’s job to go around the web to declare whether sites are legal or illegal, but if Coca-Cola comes to us and says here’s a list of 500 dynamic sites and we don’t want you to place ads on those, that’s a slightly different thing. It’s almost a marketing thing for the brand,” [Mr. Bertram, UK policy manager of Google] said.

Mr. Bertram needs to go review the definitions for "proxy" and "redirect".

How the hell is Google (or anyone else) going to keep up with millions-a-week infringement notices?

“[Google] know very well what sites are illegal, because we send them notices, a million a week, yet coming on to search, very often those sites appear at the top of search results,” he said.

Further, if I were a small indie artist, and I wrote all my own music/songs/stories/whatever, will Google et al pay attention to me as well as the big media cartels? I doubt an infringement notice sent from a gmail account will carry much weight. How would Google distinguish real takedown requests from the joe jobs? It's not like we have a giant library with congressional oversight to act as a central repository ....

The tag line "The potential for guns made from commodity parts found at the local hardware store" just isn't sensational enough to move copy. Folks have been hand-crafting zip guns for the better part of a century now, if not longer. Hell, half a century ago you could order a firearm (long or short) through the Sears catalog and have it delivered to your doorstep via the Postal Service. No oversight. No license. No FFL. Wasn't the end of the world until the ignorant, myopic, ratings-chasing, fear-mongering drama queens made it so.

I know many people who will be thrilled with self-driving cars, as "driving" is a frustrating-but-necessary expenditure of effort required to get them from A to B (which is all they give a damn about anyway.) What makes you think there aren't similar people who would embrace a self-aiming firearm? "Honestly, I don't want to learn to be a marksman. I just want to blow the crap out of my ex-husband's pickup truck."

Would have been an interesting case to sit-in on. I can imagine that the dialogue went something like this:

Lawyer: Your honor, the court needs to understand that the motion picture industry employs hundreds of people in the process of making a feature length film.
Judge: Uh huh.
Lawyer: When these dirty internet pirates steal the movie, they are stealing the food from the children of these good people.
Judge: So you suffer losses?
Lawyer: Yes! Almost incalculable losses. That's why we seek the statutory penalty of $150,000 per individual.
Judge: [types on computer] I see that the film in question is available on Amazon for nine bucks.
Lawyer: Uhm, yes, I believe that is the correct amount.
Judge: So an individual who purchases this item through Amazon and watches it generates $9 in revenue, minus Amazon's overhead?
Lawyer: Uhhhh ... yes.
Judge: So your client receives up to $9 for the legitimate viewing, but somehow suffers $150,000 in damages because the method of viewing changed?
Lawyer: Your honor, it's complicated.
Judge: Enlighten me. Where does this $150,000 delta come into play?
Lawyer: Uhm ... pain and suffering.
Judge: Pain and suffering?
Lawyer: Yes ... mine. OH GOD, YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IT'S LIKE WORKING FOR THESE PEOPLE!