Here's some more handy links about this research:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/re...
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_...

Unfortunately, Latin was not one of the languages they investigated in this research, but I do find it very interesting how Latin, which is one of Spanish's parent languages, is far, far more efficient (in dI/dS terms) than Spanish is, and in fact is probably more efficient and complex than any of its derivatives.

Everything I've ever seen in both English and Spanish looked about 1.5-2 times longer in the Spanish version.

Don't take my word for it; some linguistic researchers actually looked into this, which you can read about here.

Here's an excerpt:

but I'm guessing a lot of it is from open source fanboys that love to hate Microsoft and have never taken time to use the recent (last 3-5 years) iterations of it's products.

All you have to do is try out Windows 8/Metro to renew any hatred for MS products that may have subsided.

You probably can't find a better place to have a farm.

Sure, if you don't mind mosquitos the size of horses.

Vic Mignogna actually has very intentionally made his Kirk rendition as close to Shatner's as he could, down to the way Kirk walks.

Enterprise was actually surprisingly good, with a few exceptions; I only watched it a few months ago, since I had turned my nose up at it when it was new. It did start out a big rough and had a little too much gratuitous sexuality at first, but when it settled down it was pretty good. The main problems with Enterprise are: 1) the opening theme music. It's absolutely horrible. I don't know WTF they were thinking with that whiny emo crap. But there's an exception here: the two mirror-universe episodes in Season 4 had excellent music and intro scenes of humans blasting everything and conquering. And 2) the whole Xindi attack plot arc in Season 3 was too much. It was an obvious parallel to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and just didn't go over that well.

I also didn't bother with the second Abrams movie; the first one was too much of a disappointment.

He have jaywalking laws in the US because car drivers are considered more important than pedestrians.

Now, on to the fight: America is explicitly NOT a democracy.

Yes, it is. You even say so yourself:

America is a democratic Republic.

"Democracy" in modern parlance == "democratic republic". When the word "democracy" is used in regular conversation, NO ONE is talking about Athenian-style direct democracy, unless they explicitly say so. It's only pedants like you who even think of this.

It was formed that way EXPLICITLY to prevent mob rule.

Democratic republics exist for several reasons. One is because no one citizen can possibly be competent at voting on every single issue that faces a large and populous nation, nor can every citizen be expected to invest that much time into the governing process. So we "outsource" most of the work of governing to politicians called "representatives", and elect them to represent us and do our bidding. The rules you talk about do exist to make sure there's a longer feedback loop, so people's short-term reactionary tendencies don't make a mess of things, and so that there's a rule of law: people have to follow laws, until the laws are changed.

The Constitution and Bill of rights spell out what America is supposed to be. If there is a true need for the Republic to change the rules it is built upon, then there are mechanisms in place to do that... but THEY HAVE NOT BEEN USED.

Yes, they have. The Constitution has been amended dozens of times since it was written, and countless Supreme Court cases have further changed laws. And if you have some kind of problem with a court effectively legislating and deciding law, then you have a problem with English Common Law, which this country was explicitly founded upon.

Why? We can argue about that forever. Regardless, the basic rules from which all other rules rest upon, have not been changed. That means a police state is incompatible with American law; both in the letter and spirit of the law.

Completely incorrect. If case law and legislation (at all levels of government) have resulted in a police state, then a police state is indeed compatible with American law, by very definition.

It's sad how poorly educated in basic Civics most Americans are these days.

Don't be stupid. Anyone who's an American Citizen is by definition an American, whether you like it or not, and whether you agree with them (and their idiotic ideas) or not. They certainly are "welcome" in America, they're Citizens and they were born here. Whether something is against the "spirit" of the founding laws is open to debate, and quite frankly, totally irrelevant since, as a representative democracy, this country (and any other with the same form of government) is supposed to reflect the will of the citizenry. If the citizens are a bunch of fools who vote for police-state laws, then that's what they're supposed to have. You're obviously the one here who opposes democracy and wishes to have an authoritarian government, because any government which does not reflect the will of the voters can only be authoritarian.

The several times I used Uber, it was great too. They picked me up in luxury cars (Mercedes, BMWs) and had much nicer cars than the towncar services I tried. They used GPS and took me by the most direct route, while the towncar service took weird back roads that took a lot longer. The towncars were also older and in poor shape, whereas the Uber cars were rather new and clean.

Exactly. A decent bicycle is faster (Segways top out at 12mph), much cheaper, not hard to fix, and if I need to go up some stairs or over other terrain, it's not hard to just pick it up and carry it. How much do Segways weigh?

You're not too bright, are you? Congress has ultimate authority over NASA, and over everything in the entire government. They control funding for everything, and write laws to that effect.

If your boss at your company tells you to do something wasteful and unethical, then you either do it or find a new job.

It is terribly inconsistent, true, however it's also extremely adaptable, which is why it has a much larger vocabulary than any other language. Basically, English is the Borg of languages.

Spanish is crappy because it has a ridiculously low information density compared to just about every other language. It's horribly verbose and has too many syllables to say the simplest things.

Mexico and other Latin American countries are not exactly highly industrialized. If you want to get something made, you either go to Germany or Japan (if it's really high-dollar and needs extreme precision) or you go to China (if it's cheaper and you need huge volumes). Latin America is where you go if you just need some agricultural produce.

So basically, if you want to talk to educated people who actually make things work in the world, don't waste your time learning Spanish.