tradition is the enemy of progress....
of course our English language is a mess....this is due to it being a mongrel mix hodge-podge mix of several languages, including Saxon, French, German, Latin, and Celtic.
cleaning it up even a little bit would be easy, but I cannot imagine how this would be allowed to happen. English is a living language in that new words are added and words take on new meanings, but how often does the actual spelling of words change?
The word ”Programme” was allowed to lose its redundant last two letters, but even that caused resentful outcry from the pedantic purists for giving into barbaric American ways. I can’t think of other words allowed to change their spelling in my time.
looking back, I find it amazing we shifted from the pounds, shillings and pence to the decimal system, and from the imperial system to the metric system....there must have been a strong financial reason for doing so. If not, why else would a government want to risk introducing the change?
Another inefficient traditional practice is the QWERTY keyboard layout. It is proven to be inefficient for today's modern keyboards, but how on earth would you persuade a universe of people to switch to a better layout?
I hate tradition. I wish there was a genuine “progress” party to vote for, as there are so many ways we could progress the way things are done.
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on a different matter, how do you solve this dilemma?
RACE wants the very best candidates to apply for the Chief Medical Officer and Principal Oncology Scientist jobs.
They are good jobs, on paper, and talented candidates should want to apply.
But what if the chosen candidates quit their current jobs at short notice to accept these positions, knowing that RACE could get taken over in any time, and with a reasonable chance of this happening in a year or two?
And, ironically, what if they each did their jobs speedily and brilliantly? wouldn't they would be speeding up the time they put themselves out of a job?
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