Even the Chinese have trouble learning to write Chinese. It is more severe than the flaws of most languages - especially in an age of typing. But I'm pretty sure they teach pinyin to all the kids in China (except perhaps HK and Macau) so pinyin might take over as a written language. I believe it is already heavily used as an input tool for computers (they type the pinyin and a list of characters that match show up - then they select the character).

Esperanto and Lobjan haven't caught on nor are they likely too. It is hard enough to learn a new language - learning one that no one uses doesn't interest many people.

Whether or not it is in the criminal law, it is by definition illegal to violate the Constitution because the Constitution is the law of the land. You're right though that no punishment is specified. Perhaps their should be.

I guess it depends on your definition of cruel and unusual. America has mostly discarded physical punishments such as whippings, but given a choice between a whipping and three years in jail where I'm likely to receive beatings just as bad or worse than the whipping anyway - the whipping would seem less cruel and unusual.

And what about long sentences that effectively remove the prime of your life? You go to jail when you're twenty and come out when your 40 (especially bad for a women who may be deprived of the opportunity to ever have children). 200 or even 400 lashes delivered 10 at a time on a monthly basis (or whatever the back can tolerate) would again seem far less cruel and unusual.

Yes, next time your friendly Republican wants to cut government budgets, remember how freedom and lack of government oppression is what brought those great scientist to America, and that such freedom and limited government should be encouraged.

Would it have mattered? Certain cultures seem to rise above whereever and whenever they get the chance. Japan was held back by their government's ban on foreign contacts until the 1860s, and then they modernized so quickly that by 1905 they were able to defeat a modern Western Navy and by the 1930s they were a colonial power. Then after WWII they rebounded again.
Germany was wealthy before the war and rebounded well afterward.
China was wealthy until they decided to limit foreign contacts. Communism held them back for a while too. Then when they let capitalism have a shot they became wealthy quite suddenly. Chinese in Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia have long been wealthier than their neighbors. Hong Kong did very well under the British.
Taiwan, with cultural influences from both China and Japan, has done very well.
Northern European countries are wealthier than southern European countries. Is it the wealther? Natural resources?

America helped them rebuild quickly to provide a bulwark against Communism, but even without that help (assuming it wasn't needed to prevent a Communist takeover that would have set them back centuries) the Germans and Japanese would likely have rebuilt and become wealthy again fairly rapidly.

We had a progressive in the White House (Wilson). Progressives tend to view the Constitution as an impediment to their agenda.

Yep

So NOBODY had a problem with it and it sailed through Congress, became a law, and American Moslems started being rounded up and herded into camps or deported? I guess I haven't been paying enough attention to the news because I missed all that. Funny I haven't noticed anyone being missing from my office.

Not Chinese as it is currently written. It is too hard to learn. It is to hard to type. Chinese written with pinyin may work, but I'm not sure if the number of homophones will make that difficult.

Chinese as spoken might work. The grammar is simple. I can't say much about the precision and ambiguity since I don't know the language that well.

Currently Chinese scientists learn and use English. The transition would likely occur if the Chinese government decided to make it happen by sponsoring conventions, journals, and such.

Yep

Where in the American Constitution does it say we have to accept anyone and everyone, and that we shouldn't expect those we do accept to adapt to our culture and political system?

True, he should have used other countries like Japan, Norway, Mexico, Australia, etc. that also are less welcoming to border jumpers/trespassers.

You're right. It's not just the Germans. The largest French-speaking country uses French units. The largest Chinese-speaking country uses French units. The largest Spanish speaking countries all use French units. Japan uses French units.
Only America uses practical units. No wonder we're so technologically advanced and our language has become a standard.

Not just Engineers. Everyone should convert away from those French units and return to using the rational measurement system America uses.

" And that's assuming that the English translation is actually 100% faithful to the original meaning, which I doubt."

From what I've been told, copies of the Bible are pretty darn accurate. One of the values of the Dead Sea Scrolls was demonstrating that the words hadn't changed significantly over the centuries.

As for the translation, the tough part on this particular subject is likely that the language didn't provide for distinctions between "Earth" and "other planets' since no other planets were known to exist by the people who spoke the language that was first used for writing down Genesis. All they knew was that there were points of light in the sky. A planet was just a point that wandered as opposed to one that remained still.

I won't address whether or not they are headed for Heaven, but simply note that you can't have a coherent discussion about a religious grouping of peoples if you're not going to group them based on their religious beliefs.

Imagine you're doing a study of mice and you take measurements to find that 0.00001% of them are over 200 pounds! When someone asks you how you were deciding whether each specimen was a mouse you say "we'll in many cases we just asked, and some frat guys in Mickey Mouse ears assured us they were mice, so we included them in our measurements even though they don't fit the 'traditional' views of what a mouse is or should be."