alanschu

Cherry has never been a fan of Crosby, so it's not surprising he doesn't stick up for him. (To be honest, I don't even know what incident we're talking about, but if it involves Crosby, there's a good chance Cherry will be against whatever it was Crosby did).

So? The fact of the matter is that there are communities of predominantly Spanish speaking people in the US now (at least according to you). You have commented yourself on how there's more Spanish newspapers in Miami than English newspapers. Mandating that all government interaction be done in English, and only in English, will piss people off. Including legal immigrants that live in those areas. You'll anger ESL residents, as well as leftist Liberals, in addition to Libertarians (to be honest I'm surprised to be having this discussion with you, a card carrying member of the Libertarian Party). Given I am considering Graduate School, I'm trying to get into the habit of commenting [sic] if I'm quoting a spelling mistake, since it's something I'll need to do in my thesis.

Couldn't you apply this same logic to governments? Especially seeing as one could argue it's already too late. If you have people in an area all speaking Spanish, complete with Spanish television and more Spanish newspapers than English newspapers, the all English government centre is what's going to look out of place, and it's what's going to make local residents unhappy. You mention Quebec and its issues. Imagine if we suddenly told them that all of their government interactions had to be done in English.

By making it unnecassary to learn the language here we are already encouraging them to do so. Like I said, if you made it impossible to get by in this country without leaning the language, those who want to come here will learn it. I wasn't asking about whether or not it's encouraged to do so through illegal aliens. You say you'll always welcome legal immigrants. Wouldn't this still subject the United States to the dissolution of your culture and language? It wouldn't necessarily be as fast, but one of your big concerns about the illegal immigrant situation is preservation of culture. This does not go away with legal immigration. Even if you make them learn the language. Put a few thousand Mexicans in the same part of town, even if they knew English coming in, and there's no guarantee that they aren't going to start speaking more Mexican.

Wouldn't you still run the risk of legal immigrants imposing their culture and language on your country?

I'm not. It was just an observation. The economics of it are still in order though. There is such diminishing returns on increased sales that staffing more people is not economically viable. 1. I'm not sure. Unskilled labour is called unskilled labour for a reason. Is stacking shelves in a grocery store done better and more efficiently by better paid and better trained people? 2. I am very open to the idea of machines taking on tasks. I know some people are scared of them because they can replace jobs, but I'm of the mind that if they replace a menial job, it will create a new job. I guess a concern is whether or not you still have the same pool of unskilled labour. It's a straight forward job stacking shelves. Repairing and maintaining the robot that stacks them is a bit less trivial. I wonder what would happen in the world if tomorrow every menial task was automated. No more gas jockey, no more stockboy, no more cashiers. I can understand that life can be cruel, and if you're not motivated and unable to adapt to this change, the world is going to leave you behind. However, the loss of jobs will adversely affect government coffers. Even if the State does not have any welfare support programs, they'll still suffer from less tax income. 3. Is it better to not have people doing garbage collection and taking it out of town to the local landfill? I understand that, especially in the example of fast food that I used earlier, it's not really a great loss if some businesses are no longer able to operate. But some stuff has to be done. Unfortunately, we're not at the stage where automatic garbage removal is economically viable. In Edmonton, the cost of Snow Removal for the city has shot up, because people that typically performed those jobs made so much more money in the energy sector. The only way to make it enticing was to throw more money at the people, which has a negative effect on public coffers. You could put this responsibility purely into the hands of business and home owners, but then you get into the Tragedy of the Commons. You'll only get people taking care of the small part of road in front of themselves, and that's only if they feel it's necessary. The guy with the 4x4 SUV is less affected (and has less vested interest in clearing his part of the road) than the guy driving the Honda 3-Door Civic. Since I mentioned cashiers, an interesting aside is that with the labour shortage, many large stores such as Walmart have gone to automated cashiers, where people ring in their own purchases. A neat idea and not one I am against. It may result in increased shoplifting, but it's probably easier to swallow if you're not paying for the labour of the cashier.

How quaint. Ah, I shouldn't have said that. That what happens when I'm working all night on a Friday, I get grouchy. The first one that jumps to mind is the Western Roman Empire. At it's zenith no matter where you went in the Roman Empire, the language of business was latin, and every citizen identified themselves as roman. At the end, in the west the provinces spoke their own languages and idetified themselves by their ethnicity. They did not think of themselves as roman citizens and did not owe any fealty to that institution. That is one of the biggest reasons for it's ultimate fall. So even the Gauls, Britons and Numidians identified themselves as Roman? At the same time, in both referendums the people of Quebec voted to stay in Canada. I'm not really convinced that Quebecers really want to separate, but rather they see threats of separation as being an effective way of getting what they want from the Federal Government.

I think one issue though, is that many people don't want to do those jobs. Alberta is suffering from a "labour shortage," which also has the unfortunate side effect that people would rather hold out for an opening for a $20/hr job, than take the $12/hr job working at 7-11. It's gotten pretty crazy, that places like 7-11 are offering a $700 bonus simply for taking the job. Most of our fast food restaurants only have their drive through window open now.

I'm a human.

How quaint. Such a road would be undoubtedly easier to take if you could get the ball rolling. Give an example.

I didn't mind him. I do agree that he made a good He-Man I think he went and did The Punisher and disappeared

You could argue that a strong economy is highly correlated to the health of a society.

I missed out on playing Fallout Tactics. A friend and I were really psyched up to play it because we heard there was multiplayer, but it unfortunately wasn't coop.

And we were doing so well in not doing Eddo's homework for him

It isn't. One of the failings about religions in the eyes of the scientific community is that they aren't falsifiable, which is a principle foundation of empiricism.

Non Stop is pretty hard. Fantastic series though.

Why would it be successful?

Thank you for that.

I enjoyed Blood Diamond.

I enjoyed Batman Begins the most out of the recent trend of superhero movies.

Nope

We all got the link and are quite capable of reading it. There's no need to post the whole quotation from it.

We have a pool running...I've got my money on a vasectomy ( just teasing Lady. You know I'm a jerk, this is just for those few that don't know. :D ) Since I've chosen to spam this thread I should probably offer something related to the topic at hand... Been having a buddy record Miami Vice for me ( yes, I am an old turd! ). Planning to purchase X-Men III ( hoping the optional endings are better than the one in the theatre ). Going to 'repurchase' "the Punisher" since the frigging puppy just chewed the S**t out of the copy I had. Dammit! I liked that B-grade movie! Is this the good Punisher with Thomas Jane? Or the "other" one with Ivan Drago? EDIT: This is more to Oerwinde.

They aren't banned. They're just as useful as any other anecdote.

Don't worry, you'll get some new friends