Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Baffler]

Edit: it was too broken.

[Arcvasti]

dropping the superflous "u" from color was a good start

As a Canadian, I respectfully disagree. Adding "u"s to semi-random words adds flavour.

[sprinkled chariot]

Look, isp, all I want to do is burn down the swamp and sink it into a bigger swamp. Other people will be appointed to handle the micromanagement, while I oversee ending florida as a physically coherent entity. I win, the world wins, anyone who cared about florida can get the psychiatric help they have long needed as part of the relocation process. Everyone wins! The dictatorship part is just because it'd take the resources of a major power to pull the project off. The interim would indeed be stressful, but think of how much better off the world would be without florida. That's worth the trouble.

What makes you hate Florida so much?

[Shadowlord]

Some kind of spelling reform would also be handy. Noah Webster's changes to the language in the 1800's were a hood start, but they don't go far enough; dropping the superflous "u" from color was a good start, but the should have changed the second "o" to an "e" while he was at it. The new spellings would be purely phonetic and to ensure this would chosen by a panel of poorly educated rednecks who know what sounds the letters make but are both unversed in many of the current spellings and more importantly completely ignorant of (and possibly hostile to) any foreign language, especially Latin, Greek, German, and French. Preferably should not be able to define or pronounce the word "etymology"

Ah yes, spelling reform.

http://www.design.caltech.edu/erik/Misc/Twain_english.html

[Frumple]

What makes you hate Florida so much?

I live there. It has no redeeming features it wouldn't still have several dozen feet below the ocean surface. Everything about it is misery, from the weather, to the culture, to the terrain, to the location, to the wildlife, to the economy. All of it. The only even remotely decent parts about it are either underground, underwater, or both, and they'd still be there (probably in new and interesting configurations!) if you sunk it.

[Shadowlord]

Good news: Climate change is going to do the job for you.

[Frumple]

Yeah, but probably not in my lifetime. At most, I might get to see some of the coastal areas go under. That's not enough. It all has to go.

[Shadowlord]

You never know, someone may invent prolong. We won't be able to afford it, though.

[Helgoland]

You should also consider removing superfluous words that offer too much room for interpretation.

Yeah, exactly! Why do we need 'good' and 'bad' if one is clearly just the inverse of the other? 'Ungood' is perfectly sufficient.

Ah yes, spelling reform.

http://www.design.caltech.edu/erik/Misc/Twain_english.html

Heh, English speakers shouldn't complain: You guys only have weird spelling. Look at what Twain wrote about German. (This was actually linked by the US embassy in Germany.)





Anyway, if we're already on the topic of language, I'd like to highly recommend this essay by Eric Arthur Blair.

[Boatsniper]

Ooooh. This looks like fun.

• First order of business: Remove a zero or two from the military budget. Order all troops to come home. Gradually phase out military presence as a whole.
• Second order of business: Completely gut the education system and rebuild a new one from scratch, one that actually has legitimate scientific study backing its theories.
• Third order of business: Officially declare the KKK and similar supremest groups as domestic terrorist organizations.
• Fourth order of business: Rework copyright laws to protect individuals rather than corporations. DRM and similar consumer restriction practices will lose most of their influence.
• Fifth order of business: More gun control.
• Sixth order of business: Stop the U.S jerking itself off like its some long lost holy land. This kind of nationalistic masturbation is unhealthy.
• Seventh order of business: Further separation of church and state. There's not nearly enough if politicians are flinging Bible quotes at each other; stupid Republicans.
• Eighth order of business: Encourage people to aid homeless individuals.

All I have so far.

[Shadowlord]

Nationalism is helpful with integrating immigrants, in theory, and assuming they can obtain citizenship and so on.

[Helgoland]

• Seventh order of business: Further separation of church and state. There's not nearly enough if politicians are flinging Bible quotes at each other; stupid Republicans.

That's not quite how separation of Church and State works: As a concept it applies to the institutions, not the individual people. What you're getting at is infringing heavily on freedom of speech, (political) expression, and indeed on the idea of the state as a secular, i.e. blind-to-religion, institution.

Not that I don't support reducing the influence of religion on politics in the US, but you're contextualizing it wrong.

[Bohandas]

Fourth order of business: Rework copyright laws to protect individuals rather than corporations. DRM and similar consumer restriction practices will lose most of their influence.

Have intelligence agencies crack DRM methods as practice during peacetime.

[Shadowlord]

Not very useful practice.

[Egan_BW]

Everyone needs an excuse to play pirated videogames at work.