We already have aircraft that can go 80MPH and take almost no fuel: they're called zeppelins. If people wanted something faster than a bus, train or car that costs less than an airplane, we'd be on earth2, where the Hindenburg never happened and people have much more convenient options available. Alas, c'est la vie, there's no interest in flying cheaply and efficiently across country, state or even town.

>It's quite valid in terms of history up until the last few decades.

No, marriage has always been a civil utility, sometimes administered by the church.

It doesn't make sense to claim that civil marriage is a recent concept when cultures older than Christianity itself had civil marriage millennia ago.

Even the USA we've always been able to go down and get a civil marriage license signed without church involvement, and that's how it should remain.

Yeah, you've veered off into forcing "freedoms" onto people who do not want them!

I like my government-administered marriage just the way it is, and I'll try to fight you shoving your "personal-liberty" on me every step of the way. Don't want a government recognized marriage contract? Don't get one! But don't try to take it away from everyone else!

If you think marriage is a religious ceremony, then you have a very poor grasp of human history.

Every culture has marriage ceremonies, because every culture benefits when 2 people come together and raise their children as a family. Some southern African countries allowed lesbian marriage, some south American countries allowed male homosexual marriage, some south Asian cultures allowed atheist marriage... The only thing all marriages have in common is the bonding of 2 or more people for the sake of bonding their families. Sometimes this is done to provide offspring, sometimes to make peace between warring tribes, and sometimes simply out of love.

As to your further implication that adopted children are inferior to your own genetic seed, that's pretty much rejected by everyone and you won't find it useful in pushing through any laws. Adoption by homosexuals is hardly something today's foster children fear, rather for many it is their best hope.

Government agencies like NASA cannot charge for distribution of materials they create - all government documents are public domain.
Public Schools are government agencies.
If student and teacher works belong to the schools, they are public domain works.

Turn it off during lunch, recess, and while doing math, reading books, or practicing hand-writing?
If your kid is allowed to use a laptop for more than 4 out of 6.5 hours at school, you might want to consider sending her to a real school.

Indeed, can you spot the misquote that your created inside your head? "All day" is completely different wording than, "school day," with a different meaning.

Yeah, safe to say, I'm not friends with those people.
Facebook is a great tool for networking with my friends and family, but why would I want to network with thousands of strangers who just hassle me with stories from "some guy they know"? I already have a /. account.

I'm assuming that taxes will have the same effect on rich people the always have: very little. Your assumption that returning to the tax rates of the previous century will break something (when dropping those taxes did nothing at all) is the one that requires further proof.

And yes, the republicans have filibustered most attempts at defining our spending over the last 4 years, but there's an act of congress that addresses spending and has budget in the name:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_Control_Act_of_2011

I personally don't care for Obama much, but partisan hacks like yourself are exactly the reason this country is in trouble in the first place. You spend your time worshiping Bush rather than addressing real issues, which forces me to defend Obama rather than deal with his very real flaws. Attack him for something bad (drone strikes, wiretapping...) and we've can try to make progress. But continue to attack him for the mess Bush left and you're just wasting everyone's time.

But since all gas stations price it at 3.999 or 4.009, it no longer matters.

Microsoft sold me a zero-maintenance tablet, and then broke it, and you want me to fix it myself? This is why people still buy from Apple.

I'm not friends with anyone on facebook I don't know and like in real face-to-face situations.
If your experience is different, that's your choice.

I have no idea what point you are attempting to push for here, unless this is pedantry for its own sake.

1. I said debt, but I did not say national debt, and I also referred to it as spending in the same sentence. All spending is debt, until you offset it with revenue. If you fail to offset it, it will become deficit spending which contributes to the national debt, but that's really off-topic since we're talking about spending without regard to government revenue, only in comparison to household income.

2. I addressed the financial solvency of the federal government:
  A. We could immediately raise taxes to a 40% average (and let's argue whether we should get there by raising Romney's taxes to 45%, or by raising mine to 65%...)
    B. We could cut all military spending, which accounts for half our budget.
Implicit in this is the idea that we could actually use some mix of the two, where we raise taxes to repair the roads we've let rot over the last decade, and simultaneously draw-down military spending until we only outspend 4 or 5 of the next-most-powerful militaries, rather than the top 20 as we do now.

3. Your claim that the government is insolvent is belied by reality, where our government can still sell bonds at a lower interest rate than anyone else in existence. Why do they have a better credit rating than you can ever hope to achieve, if they understand math so much worse than you? We are deficit spending currently, but that was also the case the last time we had a Bush run up the bills, and Clinton turned that around. There is every indication that Obama is turning this around, even with Boehner doing his very best to prevent a recovery. Assuming that we can keep the pressure on to get millionaire tax rates matched to my tax rate, we should be able to increase revenue and decrease spending until we are again paying down the national debt rather than building it up.

Sorry for ruining the moment! I didn't get the reference because none of the most important words are the same, so I think we can classify it as "obscure."
Perhaps next time you can help a nerd out by citing Doc brown or something. That's probably the least quotable line in the whole trilogy to start with, because who even said, "heavy" beside McFly? I barely got the humor when I was watching the movie, let alone out of context.

And there are people who have propose shrinking matter as a valid hypothesis to replace expanding space, so there's no way to tell within a thread who thinks its funny, and who really believes in it. The math simply does not bear out when you look at how many forces are effected by particle size, unless you assume there is a constant (but changing over time) force linking weak nuclear force, strong nuclear force etc., but somehow not not gravity.

Yes, and as I said, it's an invalid comparison because they switched types of averages halfway through.
Government spending is 54K per household, while mean household income is 127K. Government spending per household is 40% of household income, not 105%.

Indeed, and what valid point about fairness or desirability do you draw from the fact that median income (the middle class, if you will) is so very, very far below mean income?