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"there is nothing inherently special in "culture" which is distinct from it's component elements"

I disagree, there are expressions that correspond to modes of thought that get legitimacy/relevance from their connection to the history and identity of your people. The expressions "blood, sweat and tears" or "keep calm and carry on" does not and can not mean the same thing in mandarin, if you never use them in english anymore you will have lost a connection to that particular historic/cultural experience.

http://karolbednarczyk.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/keep_c...

And the people who don't speak it well are those you don't have to speak to anyway (professionally). In europe english is becoming the language of higher education, academia, all kinds of "niche" writing/communities (hackers, libertarians etc.) and business. The common language of high IQ, high openness to experience and ambitious people.

I'd much rather just not be monolingual. When I think and write (notes, plans etc.) I use norwegian and english together. Both languages have useful features that makes thinking well easier; english has an enormous amount of words norwegian has those beautiful compound words like skadefryd (schadenfreude in german). There is no need for europeans to give up on their languages because learning english for professional and educational is easy.

did he use the method of loci? it's very popular in memory competitions but doesn't seem popular for language acquisition

I think he's funny. And his point is less about the need for sacrifice (in general) and more about the need for future time orientation.

I'm norwegian and this pretty much sums up my experience. I have never studied english grammar and didn't really start reading a lot of it until I was around 16. From then on I mostly read english. I haven't really tested my english formally apart from getting As and Bs in High School but I think it's good, my reading comprehension is great. I dont think any intellectually curious (and young?) person needs anything more than an electronic dictionary and an access to the internet to learn it. The question is; can I do the same with chinese and spanish at 20?

"So has the removal of prohibition removed problems due to trading in illegal substances? Answer, by your own admission, is no :)"

"For your scenario to take affect all drugs have to be legalized."

"I feel the problem would not go away"

You seem to assume that the amount of illegal "effort" to supply illegal substances (with the violence that follows from those activities) has and will remain constant trough prohibition/legalization of some of the most common drugs (alcohol and cannabis). This contradicts basic economic theory. If there is a bigger demand (for illegal substances) there will be a bigger supply (of illegally distributed illegal substances) if an increase in this supply requires organized criminal effort (involving, among other things, violence) prohibition will lead to more crime. (It could also decrease other forms of crime but thats not the matter here.)

"Essentially what you are arguing is the idea of shifting poisonous assets (crime) elsewhere to allow positive gains in certain areas (cannabis industry/use)." I'm not arguing for anything, I'm trying to get the point above across. There are cost and benefits to prohibition of any substance. One of the most widely recognized costs (this is literally the first time I have hard it questioned) is that it causes organized crime.

Prohibition of a substance people wants leads to illegal distribution. Illegal distributors can not use private property protection normally used by those who distribute legal goods. So bootleggers, crack dealers etc. kill each other to enforce contracts, take markets and steal each others stuff. This is why prohibition causes crime. You will have a very hard time finding any informed participant in the debate over legalization contesting this fact.

Do you know of any corruption free economic system? If corruption is ever present (to varying degrees) is it still a fundamental flaw?

You seem to be under the impression that they give a shit about the results. I think it's just a publicity stunt. (They do, of course, care about getting votes but there are more effective methods for finding out what voters want them to say.)

You need to learn some basic economics. (First question: Cocaine, heroin, opium, alcohol and marihuana used to be legal in the UK (and most other places), there was nothing like todays gang violence. Why? Second question: Why did crime increase during prohibition?)

http://www.albany.edu/~wm731882/organized_crime1_final.html

that's very interesting, I mostly find seo garbage trough google, any links to more on this?

http://indonesianlanguage.net/learn-bahasa-indonesia

This is hearsay from some linguists studying and some native speakers of the mentioned languages. Looking at the comment again I realize that it's not really up to the rigorous hacker news standards.

I'm not sure about the most part as the "?" implies, but there is more fluff in english than in chinese, scandinavian languages and hebrew. This goes for daily speech of the I need to ask someone for the butter kind.(what's up with the downvote?)

This is difficult to understand.

The notion of two existing languages as differing in age is problematic. They are ever changing. How do you compare the age of contemporary french to that of contemporary chinese? If you look at the list you see that it is always (except for the chinese) different language families meeting.

Me too, it's five in the morning here and I'm afraid I woke up my roommates when I (repeatedly) laughed out loud.

The point that english employs more polite words and phrases than many (most?) other languages is still valid tough.

Collective action protects those who do use their free speech. If all western newspapers printed the original cartoons threatening all of them would be impossible. If one guy gets killed for making a movie and a hundred directors makes similar films it is now safe to make those movies again. There is no single person to focus the anger on.

A hundred years ago those positive symbols of gay lust would have merited a beating by riot police. A prison sentence was a very real fear for otherwise "respectable" but (somewhat) openly gay men. That stopped when people refused to back down for the riot police. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_riots

It was rambling..

you said:

"The attackers in Sweden are not deliberately trying to cause fear - thy are just trying to hurt a guy."

What I was trying to say was: of course they were creating fear, they must have know that they were, wich is why I find the statement "they did not want to create fear" puzzling.

The reason it's called an analogy is that it's not exactly the same thing. Afro americans are not swedish muslims, they are both more violent than the majorities in their respective countries and thus scary to old white guys tough. But, yeah, demonstrations are great to show contempt for racial violence and other problems, heard of these? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selma_to_Montgomery_marches.

Not trying to create fear? I think they knew that they were causing fear and that they got a kick out of it. I feel pretty certain you're white and not that tough.. Imagine yourself in a room with lots of black guys talking about ending AA or something like that and they attack you while people in the background sing kill whitey. Thats how the professor felt. This whole Islam vs Liberalism thing is not terribly important to me (I'm only proczastinating tonight) but had I considered speaking up about something that would piss muslims off that would have been the kind of thing I was afraid of. The dutch filmaker was killed by people like that. The swede needed police protection to show a youtube video with anti islamic art. In Oslo Ali is the most common name, a fifth of the population is muslim and there is a fusion of gang violence and muslim identity politics. Being hated by the muslim population would be very uncomfortable. It would be like being a high profile KKK member living in a black neighborhood.

So people like those who attacked the professor in sweden are all coordinating to get the media all riled up and scare the shit out of me and thus making me ripe for manipulation by evil politicians? I think not. My strategy is easy. Repeat the pattern of (almost complete) secularization of jews and christians in europe. Treat violence against people who offend religious sensibilities like you treat violence against jews or africans; punish those who do it and make all association or expressions of sympathy with the perpetrators unacceptable.

How will this "compromise" look? What do they give us for their continued moderation?

Could it really be that liberalism, after a 200 (should we count the enlightenment too?) year winning streak (at least), might have found it's kryptonite. The movement that made it safe, legal and even reputable to piss all over christian morals. That made national socialists -- once a formidable force in european politics -- a powerless group with whom any association carries social stigma whose violent elements were easily destroyed. And now, faced with a different enemy, liberals seems to have lost their nerve.

This has to be the 1080-backflip-while-juggling off cognitive dissonance avoidance. Explain the goal of these extremists.

They are not virtually powerless. They effectively use intimidation to coerce people to not offend them.

From MODERN christianity. Did it get that way trough compromise? Will we get a MODERN islam trough compromise?

Luddite^2

I agree. The latter part was ok though.