What kind of world do you want? (Homework edition)

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

My youngest was a naughty little non-writer the other day, so he's in the dog house for a couple days. Since he was not assigned homework today, we assigned him the following task:

Imagine you are the ruler of a kingdom. Write down all the laws your kingdom would have. You will be judged based on how well your society would get by with your rules.

First draft: NO SMOKING, NO ROBBING

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

Second draft, formatting preserved:

no smoking.
no roBBing.
no murDer.
no paoLLuting.
Yhave to go to schol.
no Littaering.
no puoLLuting
no setting fires.

[LMNO]

Wow. Dull kingdom.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

Wow. Dull kingdom.

Doesn't say shit about drinking, fraud, graffiti, non-lethal poisoning, assault, drugs, nudity, noise ordinances.... You could get pretty Saturday Night with that shit.

[LMNO]

And hey, I get to go back to schol. So, there's that.

[Pergamos]

I am amused that the number one priority is no smoking...

[Kai]

SCIENCE

SCIENCE EVERYWHERE

OPTIMIZE ALL THE THINGS

[Pæs]

I am amused that the number one priority is no smoking...

Is it? Polluting is on there twice, which makes it pretty important.

Also, I think the legislated lack of fire pre-empts any discussions about smoking, unless natural sources of fire are cultivated and used to light cigarettes.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

SCIENCE

SCIENCE EVERYWHERE

OPTIMIZE ALL THE THINGS

This.  We're doing MATERIAL SCIENCE up in this shit, and I am like the crew of Apollo 13.  You need more amps than we have?  ON IT.  You need sea level conditions?  GIMME 10 MINUTES.

For a while, I had a single-crystal sapphire the size of my head as a paperweight.

There is a block of transparent aluminum on my desk.

How could this be anything other than the future?

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

What happened to the sapphire?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I like this thread.

I am also incredibly sleep-deprived so it makes even less sense than it probably really does in real life.

Actually I think I better go to bed now.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Hmmm.


The Edicts of Twid:
Biological and Astrophysical studies are required at all educational levels to eradicate institutionalized stupidity. You can still be stupid about them, but you won't pass.
Freedom of Speech. Section 1: People have the right to call you out on your bullshit. You have the right to argue back, but you can't argue that this right is being infringed. Violation of Section 1 is a paddlin'
You have the right to rock out and talk about how Twid sucks. Please see above.
No killing. That's a lot of paddlin's.
Economists get below minimum wage and have to make up the difference through gratuity.
No raping. That's a lot of paddlin's. On your balls.
Across the board marriage rights for consenting human adults. If you want polyamorous marriages, you got it. Just bear in mind the messiness if you want to divorce your wife but your husband doesn't. Polyamorous marriages are also a paddlin' if that's your bag.

Will have to think of more.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

All churches are now tax-liable. If the Satanists do it willingly, you should too.
Universal health care. Not up for debate. We can make up the burden through taxing churches.
Spending cap on political campaigns. Not that your campaign matters. Kiss the ring, btw.
Speaking of politicians, you are ineligible for office unless one of your children is active duty for the military, and runs the very real risk of being shot by the people you want shot.
Spanish is now the official language, just because.
The King gets free Spanish lessons.
Ernie must always be in the presence of active radios. If the radio is off, that's a paddlin'

[Kai]

SCIENCE

SCIENCE EVERYWHERE

OPTIMIZE ALL THE THINGS

This.  We're doing MATERIAL SCIENCE up in this shit, and I am like the crew of Apollo 13.  You need more amps than we have?  ON IT.  You need sea level conditions?  GIMME 10 MINUTES.

For a while, I had a single-crystal sapphire the size of my head as a paperweight.

There is a block of transparent aluminum on my desk.

How could this be anything other than the future?

We are living in the future. We all have superpowers that people hundreds of years ago would have traded body parts for. I can access in a matter of moments nearly any book in the world, music, films, knowledge of thousands of years, I can control a quadricopter from around the world remotely. Goddsakes, I can go on google maps and find the exact dimensions of /any building in the world/, pictures from pretty much any place you can think of. There are all-terrain robots making their way across the surface of Mars. 2000 years ago, they thought that red rock was a manifestation of a DEITY! Now we're making tracks on it! Voyager has left the solar system, and it's still sending signals. People were standing on the /Moon/.

I can go into the lab, and with a simple process of mixing chemicals and cycling temperature, make /billions/ of copies of a piece of DNA.

Now, you know what? With the newest sequencing tech, /we don't even need to do that anymore/. These nanopore next gen sequencers can take entire chromosome lengths of DNA and read /the whole damn sequence in one go/. In hours, you can have /the entire genome of an organism stored on a flash drive./ And in short time this will all be cheap.

We've got "SCIENCE EVERYWHERE". Now it's time to optimize all the things.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

The King's identity can never be revealed except to the Prime Minister, who must have enough skeletons in his closet to be blackmailed into never revealing who the King is, even upon his or her leaving office. Reason being, the King should remain close to his people, lest he forget. And his people should not feel like they are in the presence of the King. The King is legally barred from owning anything more than a modest house in a working class neighborhood.
The Monarchy is not hereditary. The King is barred from choosing a blood or legal relative as his successor. The successor shall be chosen, both by King and Prime Minister, from a pool of qualified people applying for a related but entirely different job. This choice will lapse every 1 January, and a new successor will be chosen annually.