JohnB

Interesting that the conversation has almost exclusively considered male children. To be inclusive, one should discuss young girls as well, but that makes the "harm" a lot easier to see, doesn't it? The main reason for raising the marraige age was to reduce the appalling rate of childbirth deaths. I also doubt the use of comparing ancient Greece with modern society. Pederasty as practiced there was simply one facet of an essentially brutal and violent culture surviving among other brutal societies. Cultures must be seen as a whole, and not as romanticised parts. The flip side of the "caring" pederasty was the practice of leaving sick or deformed babies in the woods as food for the animals. As a society we separate children from adults on the grounds that a child cannot (due to lack of life experience) fully understand the consequences of their actions and therefore cannot give a truly informed consent. This is true in many areas, not just sex. It's the reason that we have juvenile courts as well. If a person is to argue that a child has the sexual rights of an adult, then it only follows that they should have the other adult rights as well. Shall we lower the voting age to 8? Shall we abolish all childrens courts and prosecute a 6 year old as we would an adult? The bottom line here is that we as a society are trying to find some sort of happy medium and as such frame our laws on the basis of the average. There are those who can have sex at 10 withoout emotional damage, but there are others who suffer damage at 25. The law is simply an answer that most people can live with. Similarly we have speed limits. Where the limit is 60 kph there are many who could safely drive at 70 kph, but there are some who are dangerous at 40 kph. 60 is what most people can live with. We cannot draft laws for every individual, the best we can do is draft those that the majority will accept and live with. Be it sex or speed limits, it's all the same thing. Marat. I'm sorry for you if the nuns beat you, but big deal. I grew up in the 70s and they did that here too. As to their repressing your sexuality, or whatever you think they did by denying your sexual expression, that's a laugh. The truth was then (and the young guns tell me it's still true) that the gauranteed lays were from the religious schools, the stricter the better. Young "Ladies" from very strict religious schools have never had any problem ditching the nuns and having some fun. In '78 I had a wonderful weekend with three young ladies from a very strict Catholic School at a "well supervised" camp. Recently in West Australia some young "ladies" ditched the nuns long enough to make a lesbian sex film in their dorm which they then sold in quantity to the boys at the other religious school across the road. The laws and rules of society apply to everybody but they were never meant to suit everybody.

Moontanman and Jackson33, I think that you are talking past each other to a degree. Generally the concern about women and gays in the Defence Forces has not been about inappropriate conduct as such. It is more simple acceptance of the fact that a human will attempt to save a loved one who is in danger. How many fathers have drowned trying to save loved ones from floodwaters? If (God forbid) both my wife and I were in a combat situation and she were in extreme danger then bugger the mission objectives, I would try to save her. It is this narural human behaviour that "weakens the unit", not the sex or sexuality of those involved. It weakens the unit because those around me know bloody well that they can't fully count on me if my wife is in danger. I would expect exactly the same actions of a gay trooper towards his/her love. Again, nothing about right or wrong, but simply about what is a basic human response in a crisis. A second simple reponse in our society is that if we see both a man and a woman in danger, a male will attempt to save the woman first, virtually always. Saving the damsel in distress is bred into the male psyche almost from birth. Note that sacrificing the woman for mission objectives goes against this concept which means that troopers might not obey neccessary orders in order to save the woman. So it's not about fears people will be seduced in foxholes. It's about accepting the fact that any human will protect and aid their significant other above all others. There are those who say that this wouldn't be so, but I call Bullsh*t on that. Of course you will try to save your own husband, wife or partner first. So how do you avoid this favouritism on the battlefield? The obvious answer is by not having loved ones in combat with you. It shouldn't take more than 15 seconds thought to realise the rules that you would need to impose to try and prevent the situation occurring. I add that another difficulty is the way that war has changed. Those that came up with the rules (aside from probably being hidebound homophobic) were thinking in terms of long field deployments. Nowadays while deployments can be long, they are comprised of relatively short patrols. Contrast the situation in Iraq with the Desert Campaign of WW II and you'll see what I mean. On a final note I have to take issue with a statement in your first comment Jackson; Civillian Authority must always tell the Military what to do, any other option where the Military are above civillian control is a Military Government, either Junta or Dictatorship. I can't speak for the USA, but down here the Military is subservient to and always answers to, civillian authority. And a Judge and the Courts are the ultimate arbiters of that civillian authority. Cheers.

Sorry mate, but our Kevin would never say any of that, he was too busy showing us all how well he spoke Chinese. Besides, he isn't PM anymore, his party dumped him. A quick note on our political system. We don't vote for the Prime Minister. The PM is simply the leader of the party with the most seats in the Lower House. The party in power then was the Labor Party and Kevin Rudd was the leader, so he was PM. The party decided they were sick of him as leader and voted him out, to be replaced by Julia Gillard, so Julia became our PM. So we have a female Prime Minister. (I would have been happier if her brain cell count exceeded the single digits, but there you go.) One of the odd things about the system is that the PM is a sort of "First among equals" position and so the PM also has to win the election for his/her seat. So it is quite possible for a gov to be returned to power at an election but for the PM to lose his seat, then since he is no longer PM (or in Parliment at all) the party has to choose a new leader who will become the PM. This is also true for our "Ministers of", the same as your "Secretarys of", they are serving politicians who have to defend their seat at election time. So if they are an incompetent Minister and everybody knows it, they will probably get the arse. The flaw in the system is that the truly spectacular incompetents are given "safe" seats by the party where it would take a huge swing to unseat them. Between its start in July 2009 and its axing in Feb 2010, the "Home Insulation" scheme Peter Garrett managed caused 4 deaths and nearly 100 houses to burn down and cost $2.4 billion. We will also have to remove the insulation from some 50,000 homes and a further 150,000 homes will have to be checked for fire hazard. To manage all that damage in a mere 7 months is a form of stellar incompetence that even you Americans would find hard to match. However he was returned to Parliment at the last election, surviving an 8.93% swing against him at the polls. That is a "safe" seat. What you quoted looks very like an email that's been running around. It's a bit of a mix because some parts are right and others are sooooo wrong. As a nation, we were founded by Christians, however we practice total separation of Church and State. (We copied that from the US) There are no crosses in our political offices, halls or schools, except obviously church halls and religious schools. (Although we do open Parliment each day with a recitation of the "Lords Prayer", atheists and other religions are not required to participate.) The picture that is in all political offices, schools and most local halls is that of Her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth II, who is our Queen. As Australia is a Constitutional Monarchy, this is only right and proper. However, it is right in that the attitude is: "You chose to come here, if you decide you don't like it, then feel free to leave." We feel no compulsion to change to suit anybody except ourselves. There is something that muddies the waters a lot though and is often jumped on by the political extremes. There is misplaced anger and I'll bet the same is happening in the US too. There is a trend to not celebrate so openly Christmas and Easter and other religious holidays because it "might offend" the immigrants. This push is coming from the "Left" side of the political spectrum. The reaction however is not against the left, but people start to resent the immigrants for being "too thin skinned". The silly part is that if you actually ask any leader of an immigrant community, their answer is always the same "Do what you want, we don't care". The next time one of these things blows up, look at who is doing the talking. I'll bet dollars to donuts that you won't see any immigrant, muslim, jew, bhuddist or calathumpian doing the complaining. It will be a white, anglo saxon complaining "on their behalf". Think back, have you ever seen an immigrant talking about this issue? Have you ever heard a muslim being upset about Christmas or Easter? It's about using minorities for political and ideological ends. Cheers.

Will this do? You might also be interested in the various cases here that cover the last 10 years or so. NC sprays E. Coli infected sewage around people homes and then calls for scrubbers on stacks 200 miles away on the grounds of "Health"? It's spelt H-Y-P-O-C-R-I-T-E-S. The bottom line is that if you look at the crud infested skyline of any city, the crap that the citizens are breathing in every minute of every day and ask yourself "What is causing this and how can we fix it?". Your answer won't be about stopping smokers or putting scrubbers on smokestacks 200 miles away will it? I'm only picking on NC here because they chose to make an issue of it. I believe that every gov in the Western world has dropped the ball on this. Every Federal and State gov, including my own. The emmission standards for 2030 should have been brought in by 1990. We limit smokers for "Health" reasons, NC wants the scrubbers for "Health" reasons, but these measures won't make a dent in the amount of general crud in the air that is making people sick. Diesel exhaust contains more and more carcinogenic chemicals than cigarette smoke, if you really want to do something for "Health" reasons, then tackle the big ones, don't just fiddle fart around the edges to make bugger all difference. That's my home city on a bad morning. (Although there's probably a fair bit of natural fog in there) If our gov was really out to improve the air quality and health of the citizens, would they; a/ Ban smoking completely? b/ Put scrubbers on the powerplants 200 miles away? c/ Do something about the bloody cars and trucks? What they will actually do is; d/ Make a big noise about reducing "passive" smoking while creating a maligned underclass for everybody to hate (which stops people from realising just how much they dispise politicians) and make a big noise about putting scrubbers on the smokestacks 200 miles away to give people "clean air". Meanwhile the city still chokes on it's own muck. *Sorry for the rant, but it's something that bugs the sh*t out of me. The passive smoking campaign was done in such a way that many now believe that the only reason non smokers get lung cancer is because of smokers. This means that time and effort is wasted bashing smokers rather than actually pressuring to clean up the muck in the air that is causing respiratory diseases. iNow, which honey did you get? Capilano is our basic shop brand and a sort of generic mix. Or did you get one of the more specialty honeys? I get some from a family that lives in the rainforest about 1/2 an hours drive away, just wonderful.

I think that the first question is "Why isn't there a "Give Way" or "Stop" sign on the top-left fork?" That would solve the problem. I can't speak for others but we use a number of different paints down here. Yellow is only for "No Parking". Road dividers are always a semi-gloss white, which can still be hard to see in the rain. We also use a sort of white plastic paint which has crystals in it that make it highly reflective. First used for zebra crossings and stop and give way intersections, it's use is spreading to lane dividers as well now. Being a rather gluggy paint we also apply it with lumps about every 2 feet as a road edge marker. (Drifting onto it is quite noisy and wakes the driver up if he/she has started to drift off. Very effective.) But to the OP, there should be a "Stop" or "Give Way" sign on every intersection not controlled by lights. We do it down here, even in the middle of nowhere, I see no reason Britain can't do the same.

Mate, I've pondered long on this but there is one song that really sums us up. Most Aussies I know would have this as our National anthem in a second. It's who we are and where we came from. As to where we are going, our Coat of Arms shows that. The Kangaroo and Emu weren't chosen just because they are native to Australia, they were chosen because they have an unusual feature. Neither can walk backwards. Our actual National anthem is this one. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iGNhgMd6uM&feature=related The second verse always gets me. "Beneath our radiant Southern Cross, We'll toil with hearts and hands, To make this Commonwealth of ours, Renowned of all the lands. For those who've come across the seas, We've boundless plains to share, With courage let us all combine, To Advance Australia Fair" I look up every night and see the Southern Cross high in the heavens watching over our land and the promise we make to the future and the world every time we sing this Anthem. Yes, I'm a very proud Aussie. I'm proud of my nation and what it stands for, working together to build a better future for all. We may not show it the way Americans do, but our patriotism and love of freedom and our nation run very deep. We judge both men and nations not by what they say, but what they do. Above all, we try not to take ourselves too seriously. Cheers.

It is hard to articulate what I mean without sounding like an "either or" situation. I sort of find it strange to be mandating scrubbers on smoke stacks 200 miles away while diesel rigs belch clouds of black smoke at every gear change. The distant smoke stacks have an effect, yes, but the semis are closer and much more immediate to the populations health. That's what I mean by misdirection. It's like when a river flows through a number of States (or Shires in our case.) Each authority is far most vocal about water quality where the river comes in than they are about water quality when it leaves. If NC had pure and pristine air, then they can complain all they want because that makes sense. But complaining about smokestacks 200 miles away while your cities are full of black smoke belching trucks strikes me as a bit silly. I find most govs would use this type of thing to show that they are "doing something" (by making someone else do something) while at the same time hiding the fact that they are doing very little themselves. Smoke and mirrors. Does that make it a bit clearer?

iNow, I don't actually disagree with you, but I think you missed my point. It's not what was done, but how and why it was done. Look around and see how the campaign was used to create a class of "untouchables". Segregated as to where they are allowed to go. It wasn't about cleaning up the air, it was about who to blame. (Granted that laws differ from place to place and my home State might be a bit more draconian than most.) A lot of the things I have no problem with. As a smoker (who is trying to quit) I hated people smoking in restaurants and other enclosed eateries. On more than one occasion I've asked smokers whether they would rather smoke outside or eat the ciggie they're smoking while I'm dining. But does it really make sense to ban smoking in sidewalk cafes where you are 3 feet from pollution belching trucks? Really? Sydney isn't a heavily polluted city, yet air tests show that while driving in peak hour there the pollution levels inside a car are some 9 times the legal limit for a building. So which is doing the most damage? The 2-3 hours a day that people spend in a highly polluted environment while commuting or the smoker that sits near them for 5 minutes when they have a cup of coffee? It's about getting bang for your buck. As an analogy, some Australian States have annual vehicle checks to keep the clunkers off the roads, my State doesn't. Figures tell us that vehicle defects are responsible for less than 1% of traffic accidents so we don't bother. Drink drivers are responsible for 40% of accidents so we spend the money getting them off the roads instead. Get the clunkers off the roads and reduce the carnage by 1%, or get the drunks off the road and reduce it by 40%, it's not a hard choice. I view the way the passive smoking campaign was done as a distraction. Having seen a few, I know that those nice, pink, healthy lungs that we saw in TV ads didn't belong to people who lived in a city. All people who live in cities have lungs full of crap smokers or no, the only real difference is that smokers lungs have more crap in them. But that's not how it is depicted, is it? The entire message was that non smokers would have pink, healthy lungs if it wasn't for the nasty smokers around them. According to Cancer Research UKthe most common lung cancer in non smokers is adenocarcinoma. This is now the most common lung cancer in the US and its rate is rising. Since the rise in that form of cancer in smokers is linked to low tar ciggies and that smokers therefore drag more deeply on the cigarette, what would cause the rate to rise in non smokers? (Remember also that general smoking rates have declined.) If I was a betting man, I'd bet quite heavily that the rise in adenocarcinoma in non smokers is due to the rise in the number of people exercising. Jogging, walking and generally getting a good cardio workout makes you breathe more heavily and so they are drawing the general crap deeper into their lungs while they work out. I'm not saying that it has to be a case of "either or", but if we're serious about cutting cancers and general illness in our societies, let's go for the big ones first. Remove the most dangerous things first. Cleaning the air in our cities so that the most dangerous thing is passive smoking would be wonderful, because the air would be clean again. A final thing to chew on. I saw some interesting figures some years ago that showed the incidence of lung cancer in both smokers and non smokers was inversely proportional to income. Why this should be so is obvious and it clearly points to where we should be taking action compared to where we are taking action. Again, I'm not saying "either or", but I think that the emphasis has been misplaced. Agreed. I'm willing to bet though that NC will use this to show that they're "doing something" and use it as a distraction to prevent people noticing that they're not actually doing something about their own backyard. With most forms of polluting, I find way too much "Blane Game" and smoke and mirrors rather than real progress. I know there has been progress, pollution is down from the 70s, but we should have done better and I'm disappointed.

Rigney, you do realise that America is directly responsible for the situation Australia now finds herself in, don't you? We are quite proud of our political morons down here and generally view them as the equal of any other nations political gutter trash on a per capita basis. Being a smaller nation we are often "fighting outside our weight" as they say and have to make do with lunacies that befit our smaller size. For example when asked about how she allocated some $340 million dollars in funds, one of our Ministers replied that in her office there was a "great big whiteboard". With such high levels of governmental record keeping we thought that we were doing well. However even we, purveyors of the politically absurd that we are, have to simply sit back and marvel as America sets new and amazing standards for the rest of us to aspire to. Having a Senator fearing that Guam would "tip over and capsize" was generally accepted as going to be hard to beat. When the South Carolina Democratic Primaries came around and we saw the inspired win by an outsider (Outsider? Hell, he and his Dad were the only ones that even knew he was in the race) we knew that if we were going to top the "Yanks" ordinary political incompetence wasn't going to cut the mustard. We considered knifing our Prime Minister in the back, dumping her and having a quick reshuffle, but the Labor Party had already done that to Kevin Rudd and it was thought that repeating oneself would be rather "poor form". So in the best traditions of Australian Parlimentary ineptitude we decided to have an election. This idea was widely acclaimed by the populace and when polled 45% said "Yes, let's have an election.........What do they taste like?" Having come to this decision we assembled three teams of highly trained (and paid) people to come up with election campaigns for the major parties. After much thought, late nights drinking and quite a few tears these teams came up with campaigns so unique and effective (in their own way) that even now learned papers are being written about them. Granted, they are for Medical Journals dealing with the treatment of Insomnia, but that's not the point. Do not deny these men and women their skill, as election campaigns are finely tuned and balanced down here. Voting is compulsory in Australia and so these dedicated and skilled teams have to walk the fine line between putting the population to sleep on all issues and yet still having them awake enough to actually go out and vote. So, having turned the population into extras from "Night of the Living Dead 5" and managing to have not a single issue raise its head during the campaign and thereby polarise any of the populace whatsoever we went to the polls. By spending some millions of dollars and wasting everybodys time (those of us still awake anyway) we managed to demonstrate quite clearly that Australia is made of the same proportions of people as everywhere else: 45% left of centre, 45% right of centre and 10% radicals and independents. I admit that there was some short lived confusion when it was announced that the we had a "hung" Parliment. Wild jubilation at the thought was mixed with a sense of sadness at not being able to actually tie the nooses yourself, and a further sadness when it was explained that that wasn't what a "hung" Parliment meant anyway. However, ginen the size of Australia and the very short time in which to organise a screwup of national proportions, I don't think we did too bad. By handing control of the government of our nation to a small group who between them managed to poll 148,424 votes in a nation of 13,131,412 voters effectively means our gov was decided by 1.1% of the voting population thereby giving new and unintended meaning to the word "Democracy". While perhaps not up to the grand standards of political incompetence that larger nations are used to, we feel that this is a sterling effort given the short time and limited budget involved. Dan, a few things. Firstly the Australian Greens don't do anything but play on peoples fears. Their irrational belief in catastrophic climate change is as good an example as any. I've been around politics for over 30 years and their constant (and I do mean constant) "End of the World" rhetoric is now boring beyond belief. The next time they say that there won't be some sort of ecological disaster will be a first. (I'm also old enough to remember the Greens marching with the Socialists in support of Pol Pot, which should tell you quite a bit about their views on population control.) Secondly, I'm glad they brought gay marraige to the table, but I noticed that they didn't actually campaign too loudly on it, did they. Their seat in the Lower House wasn't even won on First Preferences but went to the wire, so maybe they thought it wasn't that much of a vote winner. Now the topic is on the table we'll see how they fare in the next election. I hope that they will be able to stimulate discussion on this as it is an important issue for many people. I freely admit that I'm in the camp of "I don't bloody know". Part of me says that justice requires that gay couples must have all the same rights as other couples, while there's another part that says that the word "marraige" should be reserved for the heteros because that is justice to the tradition of marraige. It's messy and there are no easy answers, but if we don't discuss the topic we won't find any answers. I don't want to go into this further here, but if you wish to start a thread we can discuss it there. Seeing Aussie politics discussed would make a change from the Republican/Democrat mud flinging that generally goes on. Thirdly. "Socially Progressive"? What sort of a meaningless term is that? And since when has "Progressive" = "Good"? The Soviet Communists, the Nazis and just about every other mass murdering and populace purging bunch of psychotics were all "Socially Progressive" in their day. The Greens would be better off if they could articulate some rational idea as to where they are "progressing" to. It's like "Reconciliation". There are a multitude of plans that move us "closer to reconciliation", but nobody has the faintest idea of how to tell when we've arrived there. Look beyond the "feel good" rhetoric and you'll see the complete lack of destination or goal. Fourthly. Let's see if you can answer a question that no "Socially Progressive" has managed to. I'm white. I was born here. My parents were born here. My grandparents were born here. On my mothers side the only white people who beat her ancestors here were Captain Cooks crew and whoever beat Lt. King off the "Supply" back in 1788. I know the "Dreaming Places" and the land sings in my sleep. So when exactly will I stop being considered an "Invader" and become "Indigenous"? Cheers.

Rigney, we don't need to import your crazies, we have some very good ones of our own. Dan, I don't hate the Greens, I just think that they're a bunch of people who are so far out of touch that they couldn't find reality with a Ouija board and a Star Chart. A 40% reduction of CO2 on 1990 levels by 2020 is a great sounding policy. Now look at the others. Nuclear is off the table, they oppose any new dams for hydro, they oppose any new clean coal and they have grave reservations about wave and tidal. You simply aren't going to replace some 50% of our power generation with Solar and wind. Taken one at a time, their policies are reasonable, taken together they are unworkable and nonsensical. The Oz Greens live in a fantasyland, they are Ideologues that are impervious to logical thought or reason. This makes them very dangerous when in the "Balance of Power" situation. The upside is that their policies and behaviour will now become highlighted and they will probably go the way of the Democrats. I don't think it will take long for the Australian voters to work out that in a fight between the "environment and sustainability" and 50,000 jobs, the workers will lose every time. Note Browns comment on election night that a CO2 tax isn't a tax on the people, it would be charged on the elecricity generating companies so "the people" won't be paying it. Where does this fool think the generating companies get their money from? Fantasyland, pure dreamland. The Democrats were in a similar position some years ago, it was their end. All fluff and bluster with no workable policies is not the way to re-election. It's true the Greens did well this time, but from the figures I've seen, a lot of it was from ALP preferences, not Primary vote. As for Bob Brown? The man is a twit. He stands "for" nothing, only against things. His position shifts based on what gives him sound bites on TV. He castigated the Howard gov for joining the invasion of Iraq, both publicly and from the Floor. What many have forgotten is that he castigated the Hawke/Keating gov (and the UN and everybody else) back in 1991 for not invading Iraq and toppling Saddam. He's from the old guard, like the ALP people that still go around calling each other "comrade", whether he's a closet Malthusian as well, I'm not sure, but he acts like it. The really interesting part of this Parliment are the swinging Independents. The lone Green is a watermelon and will side with Labor every time but the other three spice things up. For the first time in Australian electoral history, the "Opposition" have as much chance of introducing Bills and getting them passed as the "Government" does. Previously only the "Gov" had the numbers on the Floor of the Lower House to introduce laws and get them passed, the Opposition could only try for amendments, with all the back room dealing that this implies. Now, the two major sides have to convince the three swinging votes as to who has the better legislation. For example, both sides have policies for the introduction of paid "Carers Leave". Previously it was the govs version or none, now it might be the Govs version, the Oppositions version, or a mix. An experiment in Democratic Government that may work out very well provided that all concerned hold to high ethical standards. Since we're talking about politicians, there isn't much hope of that, so a complete cock up is highly probable. Meh, a barely functioning gov for 3 years is still better than a bad one for 3 years.

Frank White, it sounds like you are describing Trantor, or one of the "Caves of Steel".

Not quite what I meant. While I agree with the principle from the anti smoking campaign I've always thought the passive smoking bit was overblown. A busdriver gets lung cancer. Was it really the passengers smoking or simply 25 years of driving stinking deisel buses through polluted cities? Is it really passive smoking causing the non smokers to get lung disease, or mostly from simply living in stinking, polluted cities? Like it or not, the passive smoking campaign gave authorities an "out". Blaming smokers was a lot easier and cheaper and had far less risk than actually taking action and cleaning up the polluters in their own back yards. In this case North Carolina gets the "out". By pushing the case in the terms iNow describes, NC gets to blame a lot of problems on the pollution from the TVA. NC is therefore absolved of responsibility for action within its own territory. None of the above is meant to argue against passive smoking btw, it certainly has an effect. However, if a Local, State or Federal Authority is given the choice that a rise in health complaints is due to poor and poorly enforced pollution standards (ie. It's the fault of the relevent authority) or due to "smokers".........Yeah, it's really hard to pick which way they will jump, isn't it?

Update. Australia now has a government! For the last few weeks we've had a hung Parliment. Now with the help of those now known as "The Gang of Three" Julia Gillard is the Prime Minister and the Labor Party are still in government. The Gang of Three are simply 3 independent politicians who had to decide which side to back as a minority gov, nothing bad is meant by the name, but there are three of them, so what else could we call them? This may turn out well as there are a number of Parlimentary procedures that p*ss off the public and Independents alike that will soon be changed. The Greens have shown their predominantly red color by siding immediately with Labor, not even making a pretence of considering their decision. Given the policies of the Oz Greens concerning the bush and primary producers things could get ugly. Sorry Canada et al. The big mining tax is dead in the water and we'll be keeping those billions of investment dollars and thousands of jobs. One of the three is from a mining area and he ain't voting for it. (Another thing to p*ss off the Greens, btw) Also gone is any idea of Cap and Trade or a CO2 tax of any kind. Big Al Gore can fly his jet around as much as he likes, but it's no go down here. As a point, a number of candidates were his apostles and used it in campaigning that they have been to the US and personally trained to be part of his little army. They were smashed in the polls. We have a great dislike of American politicians trying to put their ideological patsies into our Parliment. Here's the drum America, keep your f*cking fifth column at home, we don't want it. On the lighter side. Since the election was called the government has been in "caretaker" mode. This means that no new policies or major law reforms could be debated or passed. So what has been the result after a couple of months of neither political party being able to "improve" Australia? Interest rates: Stable Unemployment: Down slightly. Inflation: Down Petrol Price: Down from $1.32/lire to $1.15/litre Industrial Disputes: Down Crime: Stable to Down These figures demonstrate quite clearly the need for Australia to have a fully functioning gov as quickly as possible to........um...............*scratchs head*, stuff things up again? And from the "I bet you didn't expect that" side of politics. Considering how conservatives are generally painted as the more racist, ageist, whateverist side of politics there are two more "first" in this new Parliment. The youngest ever Member of Parliment is Wyatt Roy, aged 20 and a Conservative and the first ever Aboriginal Member of the Lower House is Ken Wyatt, also a Conservative. They join that other "first" Senator Neville Bonner who was the first Aboriginal Senator in Australia over 30 years ago. (and a Conservative) (Also a really nice person, I met him a few times during the Fraser gov.)

Interesting situation. I have to agree with the reversal though. If the TVA is compying with all relevent statutory requirements, then they really have no case to answer. Any other conclusion will make society unmanageable. There are emission standards for cars too. What is to stop somebody from suing Ford over city pollution even though their cars meet the standards? The same principle applies. For that matter, what would be the point of having any form of pollution standards at all if they can be overridden by the whim of a judge? Frankly it stinks of political point scoring. If North Carolina was even remotely serious they would not be accepting electricity from those power stations and would have shut down all vehicular and air traffic in the State as both are terribly polluting. Somebody is trying to score points with their constituents somewhere by showing that they are "doing something". Or it could be a new take on the old "passive smoking" campaign.

Alfred Beach had one running under New York back in 1870.

Okay, sticking my neck out and not fully understanding what the argument is about. It strikes me that elas is saying that there is a predictable relationship in the distribution of planets in a system, both in size and separation. He thinks he has found it. One of the reasons for disagreement is that the formula changes from system to system, another is inaccuracy. Now I'm just speculating here, not trying to push a point. It occurs to me that there must be "Laws" governing the separation and sizes of planets in a system. For example you couldn't have 2 super-Jovians close to their sun because there simply isn't enough matter in the accretion disc to form 2. Likewise there must be a relationship between size and spacing for a system to be stable, the bigger they are the further apart they must be for stability. Another point is that all the planets will not form from the accretion disc at the same time. However once the first one forms, limits will come into play as to the possible masses and spacings of further planetary formations. From this it should be possible to predict where planetary orbits should be when only a couple are known. I would think 3 would be the minimum. In the various comments about things getting inverted or whatever there has been no real exploration of "Why". To this, I simply point out that this discussion has ignored the largest mass in any planetary system. Is it not possible that there is indeed a basic relationship that will allow accurate prediction provided the mass of the Sun is taken into account? I'm thinking here that up to a certain limit, perhaps expresses in Solar masses then equation A works, for higher masses equation A' and for very high masses equation A". So presumably the equation that works for a Sol system will not be exactly the same as the one for a Sirius type system. If anything at the moment we don't have enough data on enough planetary systems to correctly formulate the variations. Just my 2 cents.

I find it interesting that nobody has brought up the point from Page 5 yet. That is a frightening figure.

There is an incorrect assumption at the core of your inability to understand. To be in a position to destroy the English language, Americans would first have to actually use it. Their continued inability to master the intricacies of even basic spelling, (colour and neighbour come to mind) would demonstrate a similar lack of ability in other areas of higher language function. So rather than destroying the English language, Americans are demonstrating the strength of the language by creating a sub dialect that is more suited for those of lower linguistic aptitude. Even those without the mental acuity to master "English" can learn "American" and be reasonably understood by those of us in the advanced, "English Speaking" world. In a similar fashion, when it was found that things like long division were too hard for some sections of the populace, schools began teaching "Social Maths". Note that we had to shorten the name as those poor, benighted students were simply incapable of spelling "Mathematics" and it was thought to be too degrading to be trying to learn a subject that they couldn't even pronounce or spell. It's probably best to simply think of "American English" as the same as "Social Maths". A small subset especially useful for those of limited understanding, abilities and aspirations. While not a perfect outcome, it should be remembered that the Americans are doing the best that they can do and as such should be complimented and encouraged in their efforts to overcome their natural handicaps.

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2010/august/sun-082310.html How utterly fascinating. I think that finding the 33 day recurring pattern was possibly the oddest part of the whole thing. But how would Neutrinos change the rate anyway?

One could argue that the taxes are a drain and don't contribute to the economy. Either way, taxes would have been paid from the dividends of the company and the company also pays taxes. The best way to get my meaning is to turn the question around. Of what use to the economy are those who speculate on share etc values? Note that these people do not invest in companies with the intent of the company providing a return, they simply hope to find somebody to buy the shares later at a higher price. When a "bubble" bursts it is always due to speculators driving up the prices to unrealistic levels first. We saw it in the dot com bubble and we see it all the time in real estate. Speculators who invest contribute greatly to the economy, speculators who trade are parasites that serve no useful purpose.

Cap'n, you might want to consider that statement in the light of its implications. If you believe it to be true, then you must agree that no conclusions can be drawn about the various proportions of forcings during the 1950-1980 period. The attribution of warming to predominanty CO2 is in a large part based on the attribution proportions of the 1950-1980 period and can be considered a projection based on that period.......

Well, it looks like we are heading for the first hung Parliment since WW 2. We probably won't have a result for a week or so. Projecting forward with circa 71% of the votes counted it looks like this. Labor: 70 seats, down from 83. (Our "Left" wing party) Coallition: 72 seats up from 60 (Liberal and National Parties, our "Right" wing) Green: 1 (Their first seat in the Lower House.) Independent: 4 (And quite smart cookies, these 4) Since the single Green will side with Labor it all comes down to the Independents in the Lower House. Things could change as these are projections and the postal vote is yet to come in. The Australian Electoral Commission has 27 seats currently listed as "Undecided". No matter who wins in the Lower House the "balance of power" goes to the Greens in the Senate. This will make government interesting because whoever forms gov in the Lower House is not going to want to institute a major tax on CO2 because that will blow out costs and electricity bills around the country. When all it takes is a couple of Independents to change their minds, rampant inflation is not a good look for a gov. The Greens however, want a large tax on CO2 and will try to use their influence to get it instituted. "Give us the carbon tax we want, or we won't support your other policies" All in all, it looks like it's going to be interesting. My prediction is that whoever forms the gov will do their best but will eventually describe working with the Greens as "impossible" and we will have another election in 12-18 months. I say that because our "Greens" are ecofreaks with little to no logical capacity. They want a 40% reduction of CO2 compared to 1990 levels by 2020, which some might call a laudable goal, but they are opposed to "clean" coal (if it ever happens), nuclear and hydro power. They are also concerned about the "visual pollution" of windfarms and the possible degradation of sea grass areas that might be used for tidal or wave power. And there is the very long running campaign against sand mining, so exactly how we are supposed to generate electricity I have no idea and they aren't saying. On a lighter note. The Communist Alliance are feeling pleased with their highest vote count in decades, 486 votes nationally. The Socialist Alliance did much better with 7,732 votes, which shows that people really do prefer Socialism over Communism. Although both were eclipsed by the Socialist Equality Partys 8,900 votes. The Australian Sex Party polled 8,707 votes. I'm not sure what that means, but I hope that it isn't "More Australians prefer Socialist Equality to Sex" or we're in big trouble. Demonstrating the major influence that religion plays in Australian politics, the CDP Christian Party trounced the Secular Party by a resounding 69,465 votes to 10,209. Or if you prefer percentages, by.67% of the vote to .10%. A resounding victory for our religious right. Well done. God is truly smiling on you. Now go away and let him smile on you somewhere else. Finally, and showing what well organised sceptics can do, the "Climate Sceptics Party" managed 3,447 votes illustrating that with the obvious backing of the huge "Big Oil funding and propaganda machine" they have managed to have more impact than the "Non-Custodial Parents Party" (2,439), the "Carers Alliance" (1,176), the "Building Australia Party" (1,252) and the "Australia First Party (NSW) Incorporated" (3,092). Given the expected increase in funding from right wing think tanks, the Sceptics believe that they will able to mount a credible challenge to the Socialist Alliance numbers by 2050. In a note of irony. The "What Women Want Party" didn't tell anybody what their policies were. They apparently didn't stand any candidates either, so the population of Australia is still in the dark as to what the women wanted anyway. I love Australian politics. Do other countries have this much fun?

I must learn to read better. For some reason I was thinking "from 1960" which made an endpoint change. I'll shut up now.