panglott

98 ms·

901.
by panglott 12y ago
Everybody who owns property does so in a specific legal context, including taxation. The long-term value of that property certainly depends on the stability of that context. But taxation policy is something that people talk about all the ti
902.
by panglott 12y ago
This is the point of land-value taxes rather than simple land taxes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax The site-value of unoccupied desert is pretty low, so the land-value taxes on it would be low, which gi
903.
by panglott 12y ago
There is an ancient perception that one's own language is degraded, that the language of older literature is more vital, more robust, richer. You can find this strain of thought in English literature for hundreds of years, in French, a
904.
by panglott 12y ago
It is very routine to require job applicants to go pee in a cup.
905.
by panglott 12y ago
Yep. Since mid-sized cities are so much smaller than a place like New York or Chicago, the inner-ring suburbs may be the same size geographically as a metropolitan downtown. It's the best of both worlds for cycling: similar route dista
906.
by panglott 12y ago
I cycle more than use mass transit. But, having switched jobs a couple times, this is less a big problem than you might imagine. One you decide it's important to you to not waste hours in traffic all the time, it's easier to organ
907.
by panglott 12y ago
Sometimes the idea of getting a second car comes up, but man, the opportunity cost is just so huge.
908.
by panglott 12y ago
Yep, people always talked about how the small town was "a great place for raising kids", except that is was so unimaginably boring that teenagers really had nothing much to do but a bunch of drugs and sex. The outer suburbs are pr
909.
by panglott 12y ago
My sister ('81) and I ('79) both have 1 kid; I'm in a one-car household. Everyone told my sister she'd have to buy a car b/c of the baby, but she never has. We're not big cell-phone people either, I just hate b
910.
by panglott 12y ago
The Justice Department report on the Ferguson PD is ample evidence that, there are plenty of routine traffic stops are racially biased and seriously unjust, even if the person just gets a ticket and is waved on.
911.
by panglott 12y ago
Marriage is a privilege? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia#Decision
912.
by panglott 12y ago
In a mid-sized American city, I prefer to cycle since downtown and the inner-ring suburbs have 15-20 minute bicycle trips. My wife and I split a car. Traffic is not as bad as the worst places: you can drive most places in town within about
913.
by panglott 12y ago
Does knowing about the country you live in really have so little value? Maybe it's not the only valuable thing in the world, but knowing about the culture of the society you live in sure seems like it would be valuable...? Welsh has be
914.
by panglott 12y ago
Welsh is less geographically concentrated, but is more spoken in the west and north. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_language#/media/File:Wel...
915.
by panglott 12y ago
Anything important enough to do well can instead be done badly. Education policy in the West, but until the late 20th century, was oriented towards exterminated the use of minority languages. Consequently, there wasn't much experience
916.
by panglott 12y ago
Quantifying the difference between a language and a dialect is always going to be a problem. English dialects differ, but most English speakers also know well a standard variety of American or Commonwealth stock (which are mutually intellig
917.
by panglott 12y ago
It's just an effort to raise the prestige of Mohawk. Like all the disinformation about how English is just essential to everyone's economic future. The prestige of English is wide but shallow: everyone's just in it for the mo
918.
by panglott 12y ago
Esperanto could work, or even Interlingua but how about Lojban get even a few native speakers before proposing it as THE language of international communication. Even a few fluent speakers? ;)
919.
by panglott 12y ago
All of humanity speaking one language, and having multiple languages, are not actually mutually exclusive. Diglossia and multilingualism are the norm. There's no reason why people can't speak a mother tongue at home and in a local
920.
by panglott 12y ago
No-one is arguing that children from minority communities should be prevented from learning an international language. The only question is whether they should be prevented from learning the language of their heritage. Multilingualism is th
921.
by panglott 12y ago
Every child must expend enormous energy to learn their mother language, but the human mind is not a cup that can hold but one language. Bilingualism and diglossia are the human norm, not monolingualism. Language is a human right, and parent
922.
by panglott 12y ago
As I understand it, there was already a language barrier in Yiddish vs. Judeo-Arabic.
923.
by panglott 12y ago
"experiments that did not pan out"? More than 90% of their community was slaughtered in the Selk’nam Genocide, and the survivors were resettled in a mission camp. This is like saying that Yiddish in Germany in the 20th century was
924.
by panglott 12y ago
What opportunity cost? Diglossia is very, very common worldwide, and many languages have a different functional distribution. In Morocco, kids may speak Berber at home, Arabic on the street, French in school. In other places, you may learn
925.
by panglott 12y ago
Languages don't "die", they are smothered by a society hostile to the community that speaks them. That may be outright genocide (as in the article), or it may be something as simple as forcing children to go to attend school
926.
by panglott 12y ago
Diglossia and bilingualism is very, very common in the world and probably the norm for humans: large monolingual countries are exceptional. Even in monolingual situations, people invent different registers for different formal situations. T
927.
by panglott 12y ago
That nearly all good intros to Python for non-programmers insist on teaching only Python 2.x, because Python 2.x is what's used in lots of advanced programs and production code, is an attitude that I've found very unhelpful as a b
928.
by panglott 12y ago
Ugh ;) Looks like the probable use of this will be to allow news items to propagate based on how much sloppily- or poorly-written, inaccurate, or ambiguous verbiage there is buried down in the bottom. This is always the problem with poorly-
929.
by panglott 12y ago
We seldom see this idea because it's mostly not true. To the extent that it is, it's because some cultures have spent more time thinking about algebra and spaceflight than others, and have more words for them. But words are cheap,
930.
by panglott 12y ago
My, what a collection of old chestnuts. * All his bugs are features: malleability and adaptability are English's strengths. * Most languages proliferate their vocabulary to express all the needed shades of meaning, English uses Norma

More ›