@AndyD273 And don't forget D.C. which is its own thing but behaves like a territory in many ways.
@dot_Sp0T If you're writing a form to take a state code, you need to program 52 of them. DC is the 51st and everyone gets Kentucky wrong so accept it both ways.
@Secret I had a fragment of a dream worth keeping for story ideas. I'm going to pass it along to a comedy playwright tomorrow.
Which reminds me: http://pegasustheatre.org/ This is funny.
@dot_Sp0T I always get pineapple upside down cake, since it's now the only time I ever have it.
When I make cake from scratch, I go with butter cakes, whether white, yellow, or chocolate. Once I made a spherical cake and decorated it as a bowling ball.
@JDługosz How does anyone get Kentucky wrong? What do they confuse it with? Also, wouldn't it be just better to have a pre-populated dropdown with all the options so that you don't have to worry about non standard choices?
@AndyD273 KY instead of KT. Dropdowns are more modern, but still suffer from the “missed something” problem, or becoming out of date. Now-a-days, address forms ask for country first, then taylor the rest of the form. And a web app can be updated immediatly when something changes somewhere in the world; an installed app user might be frustrated at not being able to enter something.
@JDługosz Do you mean KT instead of KY? As a person who deals with databases a lot, I have to say that letting users type their own answers for a state is a huge pain. Sometimes you get MI, sometimes you get MICH, sometimes you get Michigan, and all variations of capitalization, and I'd rather push out an update on the slight chance that Guam ever decides to become a state than than go through that anarchy again. It took way to long to clean up and standardize the last time.
If it's just a web form that arrives as an email then it's a completely different story.
@ajnatorixzersolar It's just more trouble than it's worth for as rare as those kinds of changes happen. Especially since our customers are USA or Canada, and so I really don't have to worry all that much about new states/territories just appearing and disappearing all over the place without warning.
Quick message. The Wordlbuilding collaborative story room is re-open so if people could start contributing to that again or if anyone wants to join who wasn't involved before then please feel free to go to https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/70113/story-go-round Rules an some background in the story so far is available at: https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5678/story-go-round-background-info
London, England Geneva, Switzerland Paris, France Washington, D.C., USA Sydney, Australia Moscow, Russia St. Petersburg, Russia Abu Dhabi, UAE Jerusalem, Israel San Francisco, USA
Sorry I hit the enter key before I finished typing out the list. My bad.
New York isn't a political city but it is a city that suggests the USA is in charge. San Francisco doesn't have the same connotations of the USA trying to control things, at least it wouldn't to the people I know.
Jerusalem is just too risky. I mean look at the controversy over moving an embassy there. Putting an international organisation there means you have to recognise it as Israeli or Palestinian which is not a good idea.
@SCPilot Capitals are rarely chosen this way. Sometimes, it's the largest city. Sometimes, it's some small rando spot where leadership happened to be when they needed to do something and setup shop. They didn't have to move anywhere else so they stayed. Office space was acquired and the aparatus of government accreted around the new spot.
I also thought that NYC would be a good choice what with the UN Building being there, but now that you mention it, it could suggest that the USA is in charge. I never saw it representing as the USA trying to control things.
And you're right about Jerusalem. Forgot about that. I've been trying to tune out the news lately that I forgot about that.
@Green I see.
@Bellerophon that's true. So that leaves out Moscow and St. Petersburg. Washington, D.C. would be out too.
The Immovable Ladder (Hebrew: סולם הסטטוס קוו, lit. "The status quo ladder") ([1]Arabic: السُّلَّم الثَّابِت, lit. "The stationary ladder") is a wooden ladder located above the facade, under the window of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City of Jerusalem. Made of cedar wood, possibly from Lebanon, it was first mentioned in 1757 and has remained in that location since the 18th century, aside from being temporarily moved on two occasions. The ladder is referred to as "immovable" due to an understanding that no cleric of the six ecumenical Christian orders may move, rearrange, or alter...
You build the big fancy buildings after power is consolidated, not before. Before, everyone is too busy actually working to plan out the finest and greatest layout for the new HQ building.
@Shalvenay And that kind of operational capability is a matter of money and political will. If the powers that be declare it to be Saint John, the world will move to make that so.
@Green yeah, there are some technological limits as well -- we aren't quite to the point where 0-0 (0 ceiling, 0 vis) Part 121 ops are possible (can't taxi in 0-0 conditions!)
Eastern Canada is just bad weather most of the time anyway, so's most of the northern atlantic. Did stop the Allies from operating out of Keflavic Iceland or Thorshaven Faroe Islands.
What about LA? It’s big, well talked about and seen as a to-go place. Also, what about the Liverpool? Now that I think about it using the capital of a nation might not be a good idea, so Paris and London would be out. Although why did you pick Paris and Sydney @Bellerophon? just curious here.
Sydney was because I can't think of any country of the top of my head who particularly dislike Australia. That said it is quite a way from a lot of countries.
Hm....I had originally had the idea where the capital of Earth would be voted on, but that idea was tossed out due to the fact that everyone would want to vote for their city. The requirement was it couldn't be the capital of a nation, but I removed that out since I thought having Paris as the capital of Earth would be neat. But still, I'm right back where I started with the immediate problem.
@SCPilot This is back to the planned vs emergent. If you plan it, then the powers will angle to have the new capital to establish their national prestige as much as possible. Maybe aliens nuked the capitals, so you have to setup shop in Novosibirsk, Russia.
Since the story takes place in the early 22nd century, I think having a permanent capital city would be good. I almost picked Detroit or Chicago, but then I remembered that Detroit had gone bankrupt and Chicago has such a high crime rate. :(
If you look at historic big things then countries rarely vote for themselves. They usually vote for whoever bribed them the most or to stop someone else getting it.
Well, still, if you look at it, weather conditions also make it hard to launch spaceships. If you look at where a lot of the launch centers are, they're near the Equator since that's the best place to launch rockets, as....Okay, I forgot why it's better to launch rockets near the equator, but it has to do something with the planet's rotation.
@SCPilot These two things don't usually get seperated in modern nation-state because the state is supposed to be the one with the monopoly on violence. You'll want as little lag as possible between those that order the shooting and those that do the shooting.
Hold up....I just thought of something: since the UN Building is located in NYC, wouldn't it make more sense to put the political capital of Earth there? Just wondering that's all. Don't get me wrong, I understand what y'all said earlier that I would want to avoid cities like New York.
Successor to the UN actually, although many people think that the UN sort of failed in certain areas, but succeeded in others. The first one was the United Terran Nations after Earth began colonizing the Sol System (almost called our solar system the Helios System but still debating on that one). And later the UTF after the first extrasolar colony was set up.
But after awhile, I started looking at where other scifi stories had their capital of Earth.
Just to give me some ideas.
Oh and the story involves a Martian rebellion. Apparently, shoving environmental protection laws down the throats of Martian miners is not a very good idea.
@SCPilot Another option is to not put the capital on Earth at all. The gravity well is kind of a pain to get in and out of. Put in on the moon or something.
Hm.......I see. I do remember in the old Exosquad cartoon, the capital of the Earth System was located on a space station.
Oh a funny story about my setting: after a colony on Pluto was set up, the Pluties (still working on what to call a colonist of Pluto) demanded that Pluto be given back its planet status or else! Pluto was originally a penal colony and well, you don't want the criminals to start making trouble do you?