English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

@snailboat True, I have noticed this.

And yet it can be educational.

Anonymous

It can.

user116848

@snailboat "Jarvis" was a chatbot, you might remember it from last year. We used it for definitions and other fun stuff. Hence the starred messages for "yes" or "no" :-)

user174558

There are so many animals in this room.

Anonymous

@Arrowfar I actually don't! I only remember the limericks.

Anonymous

12:02 AM

I guess the definition thing must be different from the new define: thing.

user116848

@snailboat Oh I see :)

user174558

When will ELL graduate? It's been centuries.

Anonymous

It did already.

user116848

It already graduated.

user174558

Oh, but the design is still beta design.

user116848

12:03 AM

@JasperLoy Here it is 5 am.

Anonymous

Yeah, they split 'graduation' up into multiple steps. ELL probably won't get its own design for quite a while (but who knows?)

Anonymous

The new thing is called 'design-independent graduation'. You can look it up on Meta.SE.

user174558

I suggest all the sites have the same design.

Anonymous

I wouldn't be surprised if they ended up doing that eventually.

user174558

And maybe we can even choose the design, like gmail theme.

Anonymous

12:05 AM

I think they recognize the current system of giving each site its own custom design isn't scaling well.

user174558

So we can have our own settings when we log in, like gmail.

Anonymous

Right now, they've uncoupled most of the graduation things from getting a design. They won't raise reputation requirements on ELL until it gets its own design, though.

MετάEd

@JasperLoy Auggh. I have made many corrections of factual errors in Wikipedia.

user174558

@MετάEd Well done, I am not as noble. I do not even have an account.

Anonymous

I've made most of my corrections anonymously.

Anonymous

12:07 AM

I occasionally make an account, but then I usually forget what I named it :-)

user174558

That's why I delete my accounts once I don't want to use it, to avoid too many online accounts lying around and getting into wrong hands.

Anonymous

Linguistics is a really incoherent field.

Anonymous

Lots of different people use different lots of different names for things, and they refer to different sorts of concepts with those names.

Yeah.

user174558

Are there separate degrees for say English Language and Linguistics in universities?

12:09 AM

And it often uses the same term differently compares to other fields.

Anonymous

When you read a single coherent book on the topic, written or edited by a single author or team of authors, you can get a description that makes sense and uses terms in a consistent fashion.

user174558

In math, one term can have different definitions, and one definition can have different terms too. But they are mostly well known conventions.

Anonymous

But it may be inconsistent with other sources both terminologically and conceptually.

Anonymous

Linguistics is not nearly as mature a field as mathematics.

Yeah.

user174558

12:10 AM

So, what about my question above?

Anonymous

So when you create a crowd-sourced reference like Wikipedia and you try to describe something as incoherent as linguistics, it's really hard to describe everything in a useful and consistent fashion.

And sometimes certain linguists are adamant that theirs is the only proper terminology, despising alternative ones...

user174558

Huddleston wrote a scathing review of Carter and McCarthy's book!

user174558

The former cowrote CGEL and the latter wrote CGE!

user174558

What will CUP say? LOL.

Anonymous

12:13 AM

So even though Wikipedia has professional linguists like Tim Osborne editing it, and even though there are a lot of good sources referenced properly on Wikipedia, and even though there's a lot of correction information there, it's really difficult to come up with good articles on each topic, and it may be next to impossible to do so by crowd sourcing . . .

Oh, well, such is life...

user174558

Most of the time, Wikipedia entry is the first page of something I google for.

Anonymous

So I don't mean to belittle the people involved or the effort they've put in. But I do think learning linguistics from Wikipedia is a bad idea.

user174558

I try not to step on snails after it rains.

Anonymous

Thank you :-)

Anonymous

12:16 AM

Sometimes I return snails to safety when I see them on a walkway.

Anonymous

@JasperLoy I have a new hamster girl!

user174558

Wow!

Anonymous

Anonymous

Isn't she cute? :-)

user174558

Yes, as cute as you. =)

Anonymous

12:16 AM

She's very friendly.

user116848

@snailboat Cute hamster!

user174558

I wonder if animals in captivity develop sexual attraction away from others of their kind.

user174558

Imagine a human being who grew up in a prison cell...

user174558

@Arrowfar I remember your exam is on 9 and 11, right?

user116848

@snailboat Did you name her?

MετάEd

12:19 AM

@JasperLoy They make it really easy.

Anonymous

@Arrowfar She doesn't have a name yet. What would you call her?

user116848

@JasperLoy Yeah I have slept and now fully awake :-)

Anonymous

She likes cashews and she's very active and friendly.

Anonymous

And she has those distinctive dark spots behind her cheeks.

user116848

@snailboat You'll give her that name? :-) Let me think...

Johan Larsson

12:20 AM

@snailboat the snail or the rat?

user116848

@JohanLarsson The hamster.

Anonymous

Hamsters aren't actually rats.

Anonymous

Although I think in many languages, rats and mice aren't usually distinguished, right? Is that true more generally for other types of rodents, too?

Anonymous

You can tell hamsters apart because they have extremely short tails :-)

Johan Larsson

@Arrowfar thanks, did not find the word.

12:22 AM

@snailboat Really? I've never come across that. Seems strange, they're very different animals.

user116848

@JohanLarsson Hej btw!

Anonymous

@terdon I grew up with all sorts of rodents, so it seems weird to me too. But for example in Japanese rats and mice are both nezumi.

Anonymous

And I've talked to speakers of other languages where they aren't usually distinguished – Persian was one, I think?

@snailboat But isn't there also a specific name for each? Is that something like rodents or vermin?

user174558

My Chinese is so bad I don't even know if they are called different names.

Anonymous

12:24 AM

@terdon There are specific names, but they aren't distinguished in common speech.

Huh. I know they are distinguished in Greek, Spanish, French, Catalan (probably all Romance languages) and English.

@JasperLoy English literature is in the Englsh department. Linguistics is in a totally separate department. Individual languages are in different places, sometimes attached to the linguistics department (because some of the linguistics profs are also foreign language teachers), sometimes in area studies (like Spanish in Latin American Studies department), sometimes in a languages department.

@snailboat Ah OK, so the words exist but that's not what people call them.

user174558

@Mitch I suppose there is a lot of overlap in the course contents then? I did not really explore this before.

English as a foreign language usually isn't taught at all in American universities

Anonymous

12:25 AM

Just like how in Chinese caprids aren't generally distinguished from one another. You can talk about sheep or goats specifically, but people don't. So when you talk about the Year of the Sheep – or is it the Year of the Ram? – in English, things can get confusing :-)

user174558

Woo, caprids is a new word to me.

@JasperLoy no not at all. in an English Literature there is absolutely no instruction on language. You are expected to know the language already very well.

@snailboat Huh. Do they eat both? The taste is very different.

there is no syntax taught in a literature class.

Anonymous

@terdon Um. I have no idea. I assume that at some point in the history of China both have been eaten, just because humans tend to eat lots of different animals.

user174558

12:27 AM

@Mitch Oh, I see. So there is no 'English Language' dept? Hmm.

user116848

@snailboat How about Arry? Little Arry? Your choice though :-)

Anonymous

English majors generally don't know much about grammar.

Anonymous

@Arrowfar Maybe with -ie :-)

@snailboat Both are staple foods in my country which is why I ask. It would be unthinkable for a Greek not to distinguish between goats and sheep when it came to eating them.

user116848

@snailboat Yeah.

12:28 AM

@JasperLoy in an american of ENglish niversity, no. There might be english as a foreign language classes in some sort of adjunct program to a university, but not really as part of a degree program.

Anonymous

In English, we use the same word for both water and hot water. Other languages distinguish them routinely.

There might be a class in say Anglo-Saxon/Old English taught by someone in the English department.

@snailboat Really? Damn! I need to learn me some non IE languages.

Anonymous

There are lots of different places to draw category distinctions in common speech, even if every language is capable of drawing every distinction drawn in any other natural language.

@snailboat Wha? Which languages? What are these words?

Anonymous

12:30 AM

@Mitch I'm drawing a lot of examples from Japanese because it's the language I know best aside from English. In Japanese, mizu is water that isn't hot, and yu is hot water.

Anonymous

Mizu turns into yu when you heat it up.

@snailboat I know. It's just that because I speak 5 languages, I sometimes get full of myself and think I have a broad overview of what languages do. I forget that all of them are closely related. Then I come here and talk to a linguist or three and get some perspective :)

@snailboat I'm sure they are very good wordsmiths and know how to craft a sentence following pretty arcane rules. I'd say they don't know much (as part of their literature sequence) about syntax science, S=NP VP, pied piping, anaphora, etc)

@snailboat How do you mean?

@snailboat neat. what about cold?

12:32 AM

They should have taken a fair number of linguistics courses...

Anonymous

@Cerberus At least in the U.S., majoring in English doesn't usually require studying any grammar.

Not any??

I am puzzled.

Anonymous

@Mitch Cold water is still mizu.

Any language you study here will have lots of linguistics.

Anonymous

Reisui if you want to be specific, but it's still mizu.

user174558

12:34 AM

Are American kids in schools taught elementary grammar? I guess a little.

And you learn grammar in primary school and high school anyway...

Anonymous

@Cerberus So are many people in linguistics departments in the U.S. :-)

Anonymous

@Cerberus Also not true in the U.S.

How unusual!

Anonymous

It used to be true before I was born.

12:34 AM

@Cerberus they may or may not. It's not like philology in Europe. It's just literature here

Anonymous

Of course, this does depend on the particular school you go to.

@snailboat is disappoint

@snailboat what? But that's a different word for cold water!

Sure, if you go to a lower-level high school (we have 3ish levels), you will learn less grammar here.

Anonymous

@Mitch Right, but it's not disjoint like mizu and yu are. It's just a subtype of mizu.

But still some.

12:35 AM

@JasperLoy secondary school, yes, (at a secondary school level)

Anonymous

Plus, it's a much less common word.

Anonymous

Roman Jakobson famously said: "Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey."

user174558

@Mitch So, I suppose in a linguistics course, the language discussed is mostly English, plus sometimes a bit of other languages?

@JasperLoy What languages did you learn in school?

@JasperLoy In an English university, there might be a slight preference for examples in English, but quite a few other languages

mostly the specialty languages of the prof.

12:38 AM

Have you attended an English university?

Or do you mean Anglophone?

me yes

user174558

@Cerberus English and Chinese.

Cool, which one?

@JasperLoy OK so no Malay?

No French?

user174558

@Cerberus Malays study Malay and Chinese study Chinese, but everyone studies English. No French unless you elect to take a third language at the language centre.

I see.

At least those are two very different languages.

user174558

12:40 AM

My Chinese teacher made us write an essay every week, terrible!

Of course we only learn IE languages here.

user174558

I really hate learning Chinese.

user174558

It is very, very hard.

Some schools offer Chinese or Russian, but I don't think it's possible to do any finals in Chinese.

I imagine.

user174558

I think Tamil is hard too. It has over 200 letters in its alphabet.

12:42 AM

augh! simplify!

user174558

When I see Russian, I faint. The Cyrillic script looks terrible.

@JasperLoy That's at a pretty high level then. How many pages?

user174558

@Mitch I can't remember! You should ask how many squares on each page, which I also forgot.

@JasperLoy It's just slightly different from the greek alphabet which is just slightly different from roman

user174558

The writing paper for Chinese consists of squares, not lines.

12:44 AM

@JasperLoy how many squares? Oh, I bet you don't remember.

how many squares along the top edge, and how many down the left?

user174558

The interesting thing I remember about Chinese is ...

I bet you see my strategy, I'm going to multiply

user174558

The full stop is a circle, not a dot, LOL.

weird

user174558

You draw a tiny circle.

Anonymous

12:46 AM

句号

句号（。）是用于陈述句末尾的标点，西式半角句号「.」（英式英語：Full-stop；美式英語：Period）也称作「句點」。 == 用法 == 陳述句末尾的停頓，用句號。語氣舒緩的祈使句末尾，也用句號。用在直述式文意已完足的句子。在有些时候，句号也可以用在语气舒缓的反问句的末尾。句号表示一句话的结束，新一句话的开始，提示读者该句的表达意思已结束。在朗读时，读到句号处应作出适当的停顿（通常为1-2秒）一是给朗读者适当的休息，二是提示听者一句话结束了。句點「.」亦有時可在中文使用：在中国大陆，中西文同时大量混排时，为避免“。”和“.”穿插使用时的不便，可统一采用“．”（全角句点）。在科技文獻及數理書籍中，為避免句號被排版人員誤會作“0”或者“o”相混淆，也可采用“．”來替代。书面语中使用「.」并不都是句号，常见的有小数点：3.1415926 下脚点，表示年份的省略：2006.8.1 下脚点，表示序號：1. 2. 3.…… == 形狀 == 中文、日文的句號一般佔一個漢字的位置，不出现在一行之首。在中国大陆和日本，句号一般占一个字的位置，居左偏下，直行文稿时句号放在字下偏右；在台湾，句号上下居中，直行文稿时左右居中。 == 濫用 == 在“虽然……但是……”“尽管……但是……”两种句式中，“但是”之前不能用句号。如在单句中多用句号，会使单句成为几个...

@snailboat that's pretty obvious

Anonymous

Japanese has the 。 too! :-) Except they call it 句点 instead of 句号

Why is pi mentioned in there?

bbl

Anonymous

It's an example of using a . rather than a 。

Anonymous

。 is used to end sentences, but . is used as a decimal mark

user174558

12:50 AM

Wow, @snailboat can read Chinese!

user174558

I can now read that passage with great difficulty. I have not written any Chinese since high school.

user174558

I am going to eat something.

user174558

1:06 AM

I am back.

1:20 AM

@Mitch They are First Order battalion/regiment/squad names.

@snailboat flags for spam

Well hello @tchrist.

Hi.

Am falling over sleepy.

Up since 2am due to the banshees who dwell in the chinooks.

Ah. Well. I am off to play for 30 minutes, then sleep, I hope. Maybe you should do the same.

Good night!

Good night.

user174558

1:44 AM

@KitZ.Fox See you in your dreams!

SmokeDetector

2:14 AM

[ SmokeDetector ] Offensive body detected: What is a good example of a 'subcontext'? by V0ight on english.stackexchange.com

@Kit ^^^^^

SmokeDetector

2:29 AM

[ SmokeDetector ] Offensive body detected: What is a good example of a 'subcontext'? by V0ight on english.stackexchange.com

@KitZ.Fox What? In what universe, fictional or not? Which episode? Which scene?

Nick Alexeev

6:31 AM

Folks, is there a single word for sacrifice something to the god(s) by burning it ?

Gigili

6:57 AM

@Mitch Surprisingly wise!

Veo

Ƿes hāl! Is there a word close to the meaning of 'forgetting something important and then remembering it when it's too late' or simply 'remembering something when it's too late'?

9:55 AM

@snailboat yes, they're more interested in troop formations and such

although, officers have generally gone to good schools

Q: Word for someone with common sense?

10:31 AM

Hey @MattE.Эллен...

I’m pretty sure this isn't a question that's on-topic in its current guess-me-a-word state, but I don't want to get myself accused of superpower abuse:

0

Whats a word for someone with common sense other than 'sensible'?

single-word-requests

0

Q: A word for someone who is emotionally mature?

I can't think of a word to describe someone who is emotionally mature

single-word-requests

See how those are just guessing games? They don't provide what we like to see in these crossword-puzzle questions.

Moreover, they are the same person!

I feel like their second question listed above got closed and they reäsked it in the first one I posted.

I guess I could leave a comment.

I'd just dupehammer it but that isn't going to help them understand why.

@tchrist that's cool. I saw it just before you chatted. It's closed.

I hadn't looked deeper. I guess they need to learn about thesauruses

Have you noticed that they seem to have had a sex-change? :)

User name Tom became user name Tomi.

:D

perhaps they thought we'd be more lenient to a female

It's a different numeric id, but same gravatar huh? And same modus operandi.

I had thought it just a user name change, but no.

oh. interesting. looks like I might need to tell them about merging, then

10:41 AM

Ah well, no accounting for interfolks.

I think so, yeah. You might want to look more closely if you take my meaning.

thanks for the tip :)

Sure thing.

Will the real Republican please Stand up

12:08 PM

►

2:05 PM

Crazy world out there, huh?

All day

At least nobody's talking about Rob Ford anymore, eh?

Who?

;-)

Is he finally gone forever?

And his brother, too?

And why are you talking about him, then?

I hear Trump's latest antics haven't exactly trumped the others in the polls...

"Look, it's just like internment camps. Come on! Those were fun! FDR did it! You like him!"

2:18 PM

@Cerberus No, and no. But like Sauron at the end of the 2nd Age, they're greatly reduced in potency for now.

@KitZ.Fox I was shocked when I read that.

...and we know what happened with Sauron later.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yeah. Me too. Gloves off, basically. At least a few prominent Republicans came out against his statements.

@Cerberus Fecit potentiam.

Does Ford happen to live in the CN Tower, also known as Fatty-Dur?

@tchrist Fecit.

Eheu, Elvae non Latine loquebantur.

@Cerberus are you kidding? he loves "downtown" and the "downtown leftist elites" as much as Trump loves Muslims.

2:24 PM

And the Tower is located downtown?

@KitZ.Fox I couldn't believe that he actually knows some history and STILL talks that way about Muslims.

@Cerberus yes

I don't know the city at all.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 He probably understands very little about history.

But at least I was glad such things were taboo even across the pond.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Right. It's unbelievable. My mind is literally boggled.

@Cerberus Yes, but he can't claim ignorance! He knows about one of the darkest chapters in American History and he holds it up as an EXAMPLE to be FOLLOWED.

Next he'll be praising slavery.

"It's good for the economy!"

Oh, the camps where they held the Japanese, he actually mentioned those?

2:26 PM

He might as well have suggested we give them blankets infected with smallpox because hey, that worked before.

I was thinking of ther German camps.

@Cerberus yes!

Funny.

I know a kid who went to a Chinese Camp this past summer.

Well, it was clear from the beginning that he would never win the elections.

2:27 PM

@tchrist Did they make her Chinese?

So how do we feel about such extreme statements?

@tchrist That kid is a communist spy now, prolly

@KitZ.Fox Well, she already was. Adoptee. To local parents. She's in an intensive Chinese program.

They are bad, because they subtly shift the climate more into the direction of accepting absurdities?

@Cerberus heh, "subtly"?

You would be surprised just how many Americans are supporting him for saying these things.

2:29 PM

Or they are good, because the centre will recognise the wolf and wake up?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 More than would have done so in the past?

I mean: has he created more extremism, or has he merely shown what was already there, as far are social trends are concerned?

I think both.

Some people would have felt uncomfortable with the idea until he finally said it and legitimized it.

Distillation

But some people were fine to think and act that way as long as no one actually pointed it out.

Hmm.

Fascism is not necessarily always 100% bad.

But if its proponents aren't intelligent people who have it under firm control, it's always bad.

And the cost of fascism is probably never worth it.

Anyway. When he suggested building a wall along the Mexican Border, I laughed. When he suggested banning all Muslims I laughed, nervously. But when he said "Come on, FDR did something similar with the Japanese, and FDR is a hero", I was shocked, because that proves he's doing this on purpose.

At first he was like a Republican Jar-Jar. Now he's a Republican Jar-Jar in the universe where Jar-Jar is secretly the top Sith lord orchestrating the fall of the Galaxy.

How do you mean on purpose?

Why were his earlier comments not on purpose?

2:49 PM

earlier it seemed like he was just saying random things without really thinking it through

@Mitch Star Wars, most recent. Negastrike is one of the First Order stormtrooper battalions.

"people are suspicious of foreigners, let me say something bad about them"

Right. Like a shock jock.

yeah.

The suggestion to build a wall, I mean ... that's symbolic, right? He doesn't really mean it literally. Except now I wonder.

2:51 PM

No, I think he meant it literally

I should have made it more apparent that I was describing my own thought process.

But it was just one of those things he'd clearly figure out was useless and impractical and he'd just abandon it, right?

Right. Like that.

My feeling, initially, was that he didn't mean anything he said.

Except of course, he can afford to see it through all on his own. But then, who would he hire to work at his hotels? Hmm. Conundrum.

2:53 PM

But is it clearly impractical?

Has anybody gone over the figures?

@Cerberus Yes.

Other countries can and do build long walls...

@Cerberus Yes, right when he said it.

And how much would it cost?

@Cerberus Do those walls actually stop illegal immigration though?

It's generally understood that long walls like that do not actually prevent people from crossing. Even the Great Wall of China never stopped China from being conquered.

2:54 PM

That is 2,000 miles of border. Our borders are longer than many countries.

And I'm pretty sure that they sell rock-climbing spikes and things in Mexico.

Also shovels.

I mean, a wall could be built. But it wouldn't have positive effects on American life, the economy, the environment, etc.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I'm not sure, but I think it will help a lot. Look at Israel, for example.

Not really sure what the point of a wall is.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 OK but that's a different question.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I believe the Chinese wall actually worked quite well against small raids.

@Cerberus Yeah Israel is a great success story at stopping military and terrorist action. They've had amazing success. Palestine is an idylic paradise now where nothing bad happens and both sides are now at peace.

@Cerberus Actually it's the only question.

2:56 PM

And I believe the great Mongol invasion took place through the gates of the wall.

@Cerberus If so, then the wall didn't accomplish anything, did it?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Umm it actually did reduce terrorism a lot there.

I suppose there is something to be said for stopping the Mexican army from invading us.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I think it accomplished quite a lot, if it prevented smaller Mongol raids for centuries.

They might want Texas back. I think that would be OK though. They could have it.

2:58 PM

Of course any well organised group can breach a wall, if the other side has no monitors present and does nothing to stop them.

@Cerberus I'm not convinced it's the best strategy. But even if it is, that's a relatively tiny wall.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 With sewers running underneath it.

Not to mention that Cubans still friggin swim to Florida, why wouldn't Mexicans just sneak in literally anywhere else.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 All I'm saying is that walls aren't merely symbolic dream castles,

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 If it stops some people, it has some effect.

I would argue that it stops the wrong people.

3:02 PM

Of course it is impossible to prevent all movement across a border.

@Cerberus "some" effect is not the point though. You need to measure the cost/benefit.

Of course.

It stops the people who don't have the means to get across, which means it increases coyotes.

nuking all of mexico would also stop illegal mexicans from coming into the US.

I'm not saying I am in favour of walls.

One more thing to consider is that many "walls" around the world are actually more like fences.

Fences stop most immigrants, I believe.

If that's what you're after.

3:04 PM

Yeah so my point when I said it was "clearly impractical" was not that it would have exactly zero effect on preventing Mexicans from crossing. Surely it will stop at least ONE Mexican. My point was that it was a stupid thing to do when you stop to consider all the costs, all the benefits, and compare the real effects to the goals of the project.

Hungary, possibly Europe's most xenophobic country, has erected walls between it and the countries outside the EU in no time.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 OK fair enough.

He wants to build a wall to reduce crime, to stimulate the economy by eliminating illegal workers who "steal jobs". Except that stats show that illegal immigrants are less criminal than everyone else, and they boost the economy by taking jobs nobody wants at rates of pay nobody else can survive on.

> In Israel, the separation barrier is seen as a success, in spite of the enormous costs. The military and political classes are happy to remind the public that since the barrier was erected, infiltration into Israel by suicide bombers has fallen to almost zero.

spiegel.de/international/world/…

Der Spiegel is a good source.

> Fortifications cut through 760 kilometers of the Holy Land. The Israelis see it as a way to keep out suicide bombers while the Palestinians see it as a land-grab effort. Israel also ignored the cease-fire line during construction of barrier, exacerbating the Mideast conflict.

But what are the long term effects of turning Palestine into a Muslim internment camp?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Namely, working for Mr. Trump.

3:07 PM

@KitZ.Fox yeah, the irony was so strong there.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Probably bad.

760km is not quite tiny, for a country the size of Israel.

Also, the US Mexican border is four times that length.

More than, actually. It's about 3200 km.

@Cerberus One war with a neighbouring Muslim nation, angry at the shabby treatment of their brothers, could wipe out all the savings in lives-lost-to-suicide-bombers, etc. But people are bad at taking the long view.

> 3,145 km

So it should be easy for America to build that wall.

Being a far larger country than Israel, with far more resources.

Even the existing fence is only about a tenth of that.

3:09 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Quite possibly. Not to mention the injustice.

Building the fence is only part of the cost.

Although there would be less injustice in the case of the American border.

I'd like to take a moment to mention that there are much more effective, cheaper means of monitoring long stretches of border.

We use those on the US Canada side.

@Cerberus "easy"... it'd be one of the largest engineering projects ever. It would require immense quantities of concrete and other materials.

Motion-detectors, heat sensors, cameras.

We have like, six border guards that watch the whole of the Maine-Canada border.

3:12 PM

@KitZ.Fox And there are those things on the Mexican border, but they cost so much that even the DHS is like "this is costing too much, let's hold off on putting more in place"

And four Coast Guard.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 They can't possibly cost more than a fence.

@KitZ.Fox It's a lot of complicated electronics and computers and it's prone to the same kinds of cost overruns and malfunctions that every large IT project has.

OK. Fair enough.

Also that stuff works less well in the desert than in the lab.

But even building a fence, you'd need some way to monitor the remote areas.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Seems to work in blizzard conditions.

But maybe I don't sneak across the border as much as I used to.

3:15 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yes, but still easier than for Israel, probably.

I don't know. What's construction wages like in Israel?

Speaking of the irony of having cheap labor to build the wall in the first place.

Since that means probably illegal immigrants.

Wall have been constructed in recent history in many places in the world.

It's not that hard.

It was even feasible 1000 years ago.

Across mountainous terrain.

That is hardly an insurmountable problem.

1000 years ago walls that long were so difficult to build that hardly anybody did. The GWoC took a LONG time to complete and requires constant maintenance.

Nobody is saying the US can't build a wall. We're saying it'd be really really dumb, in part because of the enormous financial expense.

The US could also build giant pyramids as tombs for the dead presidents, but, you know. $$$.

Sure.

What are the cost estimates for the American wall?

@Cerberus cnbc.com/2015/10/09/…

3:41 PM

@KitZ.Fox well cheese and rice, how do you expect us to know that, it's as obscure as next week.

@KitZ.Fox New Mexico is already named appropriately. I recommend that first

My consulting fees for invasion plans are on discount this week. The usual contract (also a sliver of profits)

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 That's crazy talk. Domes. You need to build domes.