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#20

By convention, the symbol ":-)" is a "smiley face" (or "smiley" for short) which is used rampantly on email, newsgroups, online chat rooms, and web pages to denote that the preceeding statement was meant to be humorous. I think it's high time we started thinking about the severe environmental ramifications of this practice. To use the smiley symbol, a ")" is required. It's part of a matched set of characters, the other being the "(". As technophiles are no doubt aware, these things are manufactured in pairs, as they were intended to be used. But when you use a smiley symbol, you only use the ")" which means the "(" has to be thrown away. Somewhere, there's a huge stockpile of unused "("s that are going to end up in a landfill unless we act more responsibly. I say we pass a law requiring all smileys to be upside down for a few years, then enforce strict alternation thereafter. Don't even get me started on the use of the ">" symbol to denote quoted text.