Slashdot Mirror

"Dealers often advertise this drug as being like ecstasy but its properties are much more similar to cocaine and amphetamines," said Professor Iain McGregor, director of Sydney University's Psychopharmacology Laboratory. "Users get feelings of euphoria, it's dancey, it's happy, a bit trippy.

"Unfortunately for people like myself and Paul (Dillon), who are here to tell people drugs are bad, there doesn't appear to be a whole lot that is bad about it."

You heard it here first, folks. It's 'unfortunate' for the regulators when there "doesn't appear to be a whole lot that is bad about" a mood altering substance.

Somebody Please Think of The Children: http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,20797,26264238-3102,00.html?from=public_rss

In 2006 it was still funny
http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,19869727-15391,00.html
Now its falling into place.
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/09/08/Girl-Scouts-preparedness-patch-unveiled/UPI-76591252438255/
They have the boy scouts, girl scouts trained to spy, down your street, online and not just in the USA.
Next time you buy some high-fructose corn syrup fundraising treats make sure anything that can be seen from your front door is 'boring'.
Dont have your Ron Paul, Bob Barr or Chuck Baldwin campaign material on display.
Army intelligence will get your licence plate number and photo at the next rally anyway.

Also there is a trend of finding slimmer women more attractive. In the past this ment that those would be having more children.

According to this article that's still the case.

So, don't fret too much guys. According to that study, women are getting better looking.

No its not banned, it just cannot be sold in any state. However the territories do sell unclassified materials. Thats why everyone goes to Canberra for porn.

RC is banned for sale. Australia does have an X classification for movies and this is what you can buy in the territories.
This leads to the situation that sex shops in Australian states sell material that is X and potentially that would be RC (as they are already doing something illegal) and is not available in the territories. When the OFLC does spot checks of these shops they are usually only looking for child porn or bestiality.
One of the lobby groups for the sex industry has been complaining about this for a long time. Here is a story about it. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,28124,26194980-36418,00.html

I wasn't actually speaking about "around here" (at least near where I live). I was speaking about third world areas where most "feed the poor" programs focus. Nations with adequate public education programs don't have significant starving populations.

I actually think we should try to prevent starvation. But we need to eliminate corruption and educate, not just shove food down people's throats. It just seems to me that it is like playing "whack a mole". Every time you think you've fixed a problem in one area, a new problem pops up. Who would have thought a decade ago that Zimbabwe would be facing starvation and relying on food aid?

It is a complex problem. Starvation has rarely been about too little food in the world.

AHA! But they weren't Strip-Scanned(TM)!!

Ah, good question; I forgot TFS quoted three articles. I was looking at the first link, http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,26209114-15306,00.html.

n spite of having their funding savaged

Er, according to this article:

With government funding boosted for the fifth year in a row to $668.1 million,

What "savaging" are you talking about?

It was also the first time the research organization had seen a surplus in its financial reporting http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26209952-12377,00.html

Well, how about some data from the Australian Government? They're not renowned for inflating the numbers of people affected by a disease.

- 1 in 199.something (ok, call it 200) people who have been confirmed to have the swine flu have died from it.

- 1 in 7.64 people confirmed to have swine flu has been sick enough to require hospital treatment.

I dug this up while I was responding to a post on a forum, where a guy posted a link to an anti-vaccine video, which was referring to the 1976 swine flu vaccine in the US. In that case, 25 people died as complications from the vaccine, and about 500 more got Guillain-Barré syndrome.

But considering they vaccinated slightly north of 48 million people for swine flu in 1976 (48,161,019 according to Wikipedia), that's a death rate of 1 in 1,926,440, and a serious-side-effect rate of 1 in 90,528.

I'll take those odds over swine flu's 1-in-200 lethality rate any day! (Or even 1 in 500 if you assume for every confirmed case there are two or three who get a mild version and don't get tested)

To make it perfectly clear: For every person who died from the 1976 swine flu vaccine, it's possible that nearly ten thousand would have died from the swine flu itself, if not for the vaccine.

That's just deaths. Ignoring non-fatal complications, like having to have both of your feet amputated (and that was an otherwise healthy young person - you know, like you're claiming to be).

Now, I understand that modern influenza vaccines don't have anywhere near the rate of serious side effects as that 1976 swine flu vaccine. You'd think we'd hear about it if they did, considering there are literally hundreds of millions of doses given each and every year. But even if they did, they would still be saving tens of thousands of lives.

Another consideration - most of the people who have died from swine flu in Australia have died despite the best care modern medicine can provide. Some of the people who survived only did so thanks to lung machines, because their lungs are so filled with fluid that they can't breathe, at all.

That's with less than 1 in 600 of the general population getting the disease. What happens if as little as 10% of the population of Australia comes down with swine flu?

Well, then, we could expect to see something like 2.2 million cases, which means 290,000 people would get sick enough to require hospital treatment. In a country that only has a total of 80,000 hospital beds.

I'll let you do the math, but I suspect that 1-in-200 death rate might climb a little, and instead of 10,000 dead, we might see several times that. If it was really virulent and infected a quarter, or half, or even the whole population? Then it's 1918 all over again. There just aint that many anti-virals around, and there definitely aren't enough hospital beds.

And that's why our governments are so damn keen on getting us vaccinated.

Troll??? More like truth. For the right-wing Bush-lover who modded him troll, try to look up the connection between the Bush family and the Hitler regime during WWII. In other news, apparently the Soviets didn't really find Hitler's body at his bunker.

No, it's not actually. This is the New South Wales government, whereas the "child abuse" case (I don't believe he was actually accused of distributing child porn) was the Queensland government.

Wrong case, he is referring to this one from NSW.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24771973-16947,00.html

The case you are probably thinking of was dropped. http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/technology/technology-news/babyswinging-video-charges-dropped-20090909-fh33.html

From a helpful Queenslander. :)

I, too, am curious that this story appeared the day after a story entitled, "Antarctic Ice Is Growing, Not Melting Away." http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25348657-401,00.html

You obviously haven't been tasered before, doesn't hurt at all. Just debilitating. Like losing control of your body or something. It's a very odd feeling. But the sound and speed of the weapon makes it scary. You are afraid of something you don't understand, Mr. AC.

I'm sure we can all agree with you that it doesn't hurt at all.

So Melbourne has been in drough for a good 8 years. QLD was in drought for a good decade before the rains came. The problem that Victorians have is that their quasi-religious problem with building dams has lead to their current dams to run dry while whole river systems that are not dammed are flooding. Did you know that if the Mitchell river was damed that Melbournites would be happily able to run with zero water restrictions? Did you know that the Mitchell has flooded three times in the last decade? Did you know that by damming the Mitchell less than a thousand individuals would be displaced - for the sake of nearly triple the Thompson catchment capacity?

But instead we have a government down there who wants to spend six times the amount to build a dirty and energy intensive water source that has a tiny fraction of the capacity of the Mitchell dam.

It is just another case of the blatant and utter disregard for logic which the green religion commonly displays, along with their condemnation of the only reliable baseload emissions free electricity source and their ridiculous condemnation of ecologically important acts like culling kangaroos and camels (which are not a native species by the way).

"He doubts whether any safeguards could be put in place to deter young people, who after all (are) the most computer literate and savvy in our society, from being able to access material."

news.com.au

Until he is replaced or retires, there will not be any change to the classification system.

I agree with you. Funnily though, the Australian Attorney-General may not.

The separation of Telstra's wholesale and retail divisions has been discussed heatedly for many years, long before the change of government. The previous administration was happy to let it stand, which made Telstra investors happy but pissed off Telstra customers as well as competitors, not to mention holding back innovation. You only have to look at the number of times Telstra has lost in fights with the ACCC, the courts and even the government to see why this was a mistake.

The only group of people who are opposed to Telstra being split are the (unlucky) shareholders. Pretty much everyone else who has had to deal with Telstra are unhappy with their service and pricing, their treatment of retail customers and wholesale customers.

I'm not saying that the government's NBN plan is well-thought-out or anything, but Telstra's joke of a proposal and their juvenile "change the law to suit us or we take our toys and leave" attitude is even worse for the competitive landscape and the general Australian public. A split can't come soon enough.

The separation of Telstra's wholesale and retail divisions has been discussed heatedly for many years, long before the change of government. The previous administration was happy to let it stand, which made Telstra investors happy but pissed off Telstra customers as well as competitors, not to mention holding back innovation. You only have to look at the number of times Telstra has lost in fights with the ACCC, the courts and even the government to see why this was a mistake.

The only group of people who are opposed to Telstra being split are the (unlucky) shareholders. Pretty much everyone else who has had to deal with Telstra are unhappy with their service and pricing, their treatment of retail customers and wholesale customers.

I'm not saying that the government's NBN plan is well-thought-out or anything, but Telstra's joke of a proposal and their juvenile "change the law to suit us or we take our toys and leave" attitude is even worse for the competitive landscape and the general Australian public. A split can't come soon enough.

The separation of Telstra's wholesale and retail divisions has been discussed heatedly for many years, long before the change of government. The previous administration was happy to let it stand, which made Telstra investors happy but pissed off Telstra customers as well as competitors, not to mention holding back innovation. You only have to look at the number of times Telstra has lost in fights with the ACCC, the courts and even the government to see why this was a mistake.

The only group of people who are opposed to Telstra being split are the (unlucky) shareholders. Pretty much everyone else who has had to deal with Telstra are unhappy with their service and pricing, their treatment of retail customers and wholesale customers.

I'm not saying that the government's NBN plan is well-thought-out or anything, but Telstra's joke of a proposal and their juvenile "change the law to suit us or we take our toys and leave" attitude is even worse for the competitive landscape and the general Australian public. A split can't come soon enough.

The separation of Telstra's wholesale and retail divisions has been discussed heatedly for many years, long before the change of government. The previous administration was happy to let it stand, which made Telstra investors happy but pissed off Telstra customers as well as competitors, not to mention holding back innovation. You only have to look at the number of times Telstra has lost in fights with the ACCC, the courts and even the government to see why this was a mistake.

The only group of people who are opposed to Telstra being split are the (unlucky) shareholders. Pretty much everyone else who has had to deal with Telstra are unhappy with their service and pricing, their treatment of retail customers and wholesale customers.

I'm not saying that the government's NBN plan is well-thought-out or anything, but Telstra's joke of a proposal and their juvenile "change the law to suit us or we take our toys and leave" attitude is even worse for the competitive landscape and the general Australian public. A split can't come soon enough.

Here is the Austrialian news article linked to in the original Slashdot post: News article.

CHINA plans to require that all personal computers sold in the country as of July 1 be shipped with software that blocks access to certain websites, a move that could give government censors unprecedented control over how Chinese users access the internet.

While in practice that could mean essentially all Internet cafe users, in theory, it would have applied to everyone.

So you can categorically state that the models that so much of climate science are based on are completely immune to any real effects that this phenomenon has on the atmosphere and climate.

Right everybody that you don't agree with is a troll, how old are you?

Some of us like to talk about science I'm sorry if that wastes your precious time, apparently you just want to hear people agreeing with your shallow minded world view.

Also please let me know oh infinite well of knowledge, as I'm quite torn - is the chief research scientist with the CSIRO's division of atmospheric research before becoming the director of the Institute of Antarctic and Southern Ocean Studies and chief executive of the Antarctic Co-operative Research Centre a troll when he states:

"I made the error at the time of mentioning in a media interview -- reported extensively in The Australian on a slow Easter Sunday -- that there were still lots of doubts about the disaster potential of global warming. Suffice it to say that within a couple of days it was made clear to me from the highest levels of CSIRO that, should I make such public comments again, then it would pull out of the process of forming the new centre." The CSIRO, it turned out, was in the process of trying to extract many millions of dollars for further climate research at the time."

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,26056202-5013596,00.html

This is an impassioned plea on news.com.au for Google to give Murdoch money. It's one Murdoch paper reporting on something in another Murdoch paper. Note the Google ads.

Illustration: Rupert Murdoch saying "My preciousssssss".

If I was stuck in a storm drain, I probably wouldn't call 000 either.
Unless you can give them a street address, they will just laugh at you and hang up.

Politicians haven't decided the matter. Climate scientists, the people best qualified to do so, have decided the matter and provided reports to the politicians, who then decide that to do about it.

The only way for non-experts to make a meaningful judgement is to become experts.

Sorry, I've known too many experts to accept that. Perhaps the ones I haven't met personally could convince me. Wasn't it experts who were running the banks and financial system? How's that working out? I know that in my country, experts run the education system. How's that working out? I know, I know, science is different, blah, blah. Scientists come from the same educational institutions that have nearly half of their output functionally illiterate. Is it the degree that's supposed to inspire confidence? What about the MBA's, economists and teachers?

Then you have experts that disagree:
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2008/02/first-woman-to-earn-phd-in-meteorology-speaks-out/
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/another_ipcc_dissenter_speaks_out

So now I, as a non-expert, am in the position of being confronted with divided experts. I suppose I'll have to rely on my own judgement after all. If you, as a scientist, can make the logical blunder in the first line I quoted, there's no way I'm giving in to a dictatorship made of the likes of you.

http://www.newscorp.com/news/bunews_39.html
http://www.newscorp.com/news/bunews_40.html

http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/news/402737/The-News-of-the-World-was-the-subject-of-some-ferocious-attacks.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124713962333917725.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124710587096916143.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124725579809924597.html
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2528020/Met-Police-No-investigation-into-hacking.html
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2530062/No-truth-in-News-of-the-World-phone-tap-claim.html
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Article/200907215334404
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Article/200907215335802
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25762968-401,00.html
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25763994-23109,00.html
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,28124,25759684-7582,00.html
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25757545-2703,00.html
http://www.skynews.com.au/showbiz/article.aspx?id=351326
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6670747.ece

just a few links about it from News Corp. owned sources.

/deafening right?
//oh and in the end, it seems like the guardian (a rival newspaper to News Corp. in the uk) got a bit carried away with reporting this because they didnt seem to have any of the evidence of the claims that they were making.

http://www.newscorp.com/news/bunews_39.html
http://www.newscorp.com/news/bunews_40.html

http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/news/402737/The-News-of-the-World-was-the-subject-of-some-ferocious-attacks.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124713962333917725.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124710587096916143.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124725579809924597.html
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2528020/Met-Police-No-investigation-into-hacking.html
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2530062/No-truth-in-News-of-the-World-phone-tap-claim.html
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Article/200907215334404
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Article/200907215335802
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25762968-401,00.html
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25763994-23109,00.html
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,28124,25759684-7582,00.html
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25757545-2703,00.html
http://www.skynews.com.au/showbiz/article.aspx?id=351326
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6670747.ece

just a few links about it from News Corp. owned sources.

/deafening right?
//oh and in the end, it seems like the guardian (a rival newspaper to News Corp. in the uk) got a bit carried away with reporting this because they didnt seem to have any of the evidence of the claims that they were making.

http://www.newscorp.com/news/bunews_39.html
http://www.newscorp.com/news/bunews_40.html

http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/news/402737/The-News-of-the-World-was-the-subject-of-some-ferocious-attacks.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124713962333917725.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124710587096916143.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124725579809924597.html
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2528020/Met-Police-No-investigation-into-hacking.html
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2530062/No-truth-in-News-of-the-World-phone-tap-claim.html
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Article/200907215334404
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Article/200907215335802
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25762968-401,00.html
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25763994-23109,00.html
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,28124,25759684-7582,00.html
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25757545-2703,00.html
http://www.skynews.com.au/showbiz/article.aspx?id=351326
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6670747.ece

just a few links about it from News Corp. owned sources.

/deafening right?
//oh and in the end, it seems like the guardian (a rival newspaper to News Corp. in the uk) got a bit carried away with reporting this because they didnt seem to have any of the evidence of the claims that they were making.

http://www.newscorp.com/news/bunews_39.html
http://www.newscorp.com/news/bunews_40.html

http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/news/402737/The-News-of-the-World-was-the-subject-of-some-ferocious-attacks.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124713962333917725.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124710587096916143.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124725579809924597.html
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2528020/Met-Police-No-investigation-into-hacking.html
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2530062/No-truth-in-News-of-the-World-phone-tap-claim.html
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Article/200907215334404
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Article/200907215335802
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25762968-401,00.html
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25763994-23109,00.html
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,28124,25759684-7582,00.html
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25757545-2703,00.html
http://www.skynews.com.au/showbiz/article.aspx?id=351326
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6670747.ece

just a few links about it from News Corp. owned sources.

/deafening right?
//oh and in the end, it seems like the guardian (a rival newspaper to News Corp. in the uk) got a bit carried away with reporting this because they didnt seem to have any of the evidence of the claims that they were making.

Firstly, Conroy is a Senator at the *Federal* level. This law was a *State* laws, meaning Conroy would not directly be able to introduce legislation to change these laws.

Secondly, crossing the state border to get around state laws is not hypocritical unless he actually supported those same laws. Nor is it Illegal.

But most importantly, despite being a Federal Senator, Conroy prompted a review of surrogacy laws which led to those laws being changed for the better.

So while Conroy may be a fool (Internet filtering, Copyright Cops etc.), he is not a hypocrite.

http://www.almanac.com/weathercenter/howwepredict.php

More on Global Cooling:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10783

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25348657-401,00.html

I love this quote by Jay Lehr of The Heartland Institute: "And, if we were to try to reduce greenhouse gases with China and India controlling way more than we do and they have boldly said they are not going to cripple their economy by following suit, our impact would have no change in temperature at all."

Point blank, people: You can't trust your local, highly trained meteorologist to predict tomorrow's weather, so how can you trust a bunch of politicians and climate scientists looking for funding to predict the weather 50 to 100 years out? Most of you will be dead before you realize it was a scam all along.

Remember the hole in the ozone scare? Turns out it's a natural phenomena after all... Now, we're stuck with R134a instead of the far more efficient R12, not to mention all these other products that supposedly did such irreparable harm...

http://www.gwb.com.au/gwb/news/beck/230899.htm

Patrick Moore (founder of Greenpeace) said, "much of the environmental movement has been hijacked by extremist activists who use the language of the environment for a movement that has more to do with class struggle and anti-corporatism."

Don't believe the hype!

I'm sure of it. Americans consistently are the most productive overall, and they rank #2 in value-added-per-hour worked to Norway. Our productivity growth per new worker is the highest in the world. All of this according to the UN. Granted it was in late 2007 and the recession may have taken a bite out of the numbers, but it's the most recent data I could find. This is the first link I found about it, though it's a much more shallow analysis than I remember reading some time ago. You may want to search some more.

You can debate the relative merits of each approach for yourself, I'm merely supplying the data. Personally I tend to lean toward the European approach, and while I consider myself as patriotic as the next guy I'm not sure what all the dick-waiving over things like GDP is supposed to be about. To quote Robert Kennedy:

Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.

One of my very favourite Murdoch comments was after an interview with the Australian public broadcaster, the ABC, who questioned him very well, asking questions he really did not want to answer.

    After the end of the interview his mic was left on and he was clearly heard to say "Fucking ABC bastards", much to the listeners amusement.

Yeah? Well something seems to have changed.

In which european countries have more than half the population received higher education? (This claims for the EU overall, even among just young people, the figure is a third).

Then everyone expects to get an "advanced" job and despises menial labour or "low-level" technical jobs (like say, a car technician).

I'm not sure we can make that conclusion. In (non-socialist) UK, we used to have fees paid for and grants, but only some people went to University. In the last 10 or so years, there's a push to get more people apply - but at the same time (in order to pay for it), grants have been abolished and tuition fees introduce.

I'd also argue that the sense of entitlement is greater when education is not free: when it's free, I'm going to University for an education, and any job I get out of that is a bonus. It hasn't cost me, so I don't think I'm entitled to anything.

But when suddenly University costs thousands of pounds, I can understand people feeling more entitled to get something out of it. This is especially true when the argument that the UK Government has put forward is that "graduates earn more money, so it's okay to charge them loads of money up front for going to University" - if it turns out that they can't get such a job after all, but they're still left with thousands of pounds of debt, I could understand them feeling cheated (although the problem is with the Government, not the University).

And I have to ask - can you cite a case where in "socialist" Europe, people have been suing their Universities for not getting a good job?

It all results in high unemployment ("advanced" jobs are rare by definition) for European "aborigines", while uneducated (but willing to work everywhere) migrants fill the labour market gap.

Well hang on, surely that's a fix to the problem? If there are lesser educated people who are willing to do the jobs (migrants or otherwise), then that means it's no longer a problem that there aren't people willing to do the jobs. So you have migrants doing the less skilled work, and other people doing the work that requires degree level education.

I don't see education causes unemployment anyhow?

Incidentally, US unemployment seems comparable to EU unemployment ( http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25873672-664,00.html , http://www.geo.tv/8-1-2009/46892.htm claim 9.5% for both). Your post wasn't an anti-socialism rant in disguise, was it?

So what happens if it takes liking to the feces still in your colon?

Form an army of mutant Mongolian death-worms and take over the world?

The worm- about 1.5m long- apparently jumps out of the sand and kills people by spitting concentrated acid or shooting lightning from its rectum over long distances.

I think you're both confusing all the geographically challenged Americans quite terribly

In The Age's article, they referred to him as a 'super hacker'. I guess that sounds better than "A guy who logged into computers he wasn't allowed to using default passwords".

Here's why they'll NEVER open-source skype: http://gigaom.com/2009/07/30/will-skypes-founders-put-the-kibosh-on-ebays-ipo-plans/ http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE56U03D20090731 http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,,25862165-5013040,00.html

The Censordyne ad had a great line about "get results indicating everything went great"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goEEbsEDEM4
more about the ad
http://www.censordyne.com.au/
http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,25781616-15306,00.html
and how it was barred from airing on QANTAS flights to Canberra.

What I don't get is... what IS it with Catholic Churches, Ireland, and Child Sex Abuse??

Breaking Story: New 'shock' report into church sex abuse

URL: http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,25818510-5005962,00.html

New 'shock' report into church sex abuse
Article from: Agence France-Presse

July 21, 2009 11:19pm

A SHOCKING new report has identified hundreds of victims of child sex abuse by Irish Catholic priests, officials and clerics say, two months after a landmark study found "endemic" mistreatment.
A Government-appointed commission of investigation headed by a judge has been probing allegations of abuse by priests in the archdiocese of Dublin - the country's biggest - since March 2006.

Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has warned that the report - being presented to Justice Minister Dermot Ahern on Tuesday - would "shock us all".

It is the first time the state has investigated how the once-powerful Church in mainly Catholic Ireland has run its affairs.

It probed whether the Church reported abuse allegations or attempted to "obstruct, prevent or interfere with the proper investigation" of complaints.

A spokeswoman for the archdiocese said the Church authorities had identified between 400 and 450 people that allege they were abused by one of 152 Dublin priests since 1940.

"I would like to stress that that is a very conservative estimate and is likely to rise," she said.

It is not yet clear when the report will be published. "The minister will refer the report to the Attorney General Paul Gallagher to see how best to proceed," the justice spokesman said.

In May Ireland was rocked by a landmark report that concluded sexual, physical and emotional abuse was "endemic" in Church-run industrial and reformatory schools, orphanages and other childcare institutions dating back to the 1930s.

Prime Minister Brian Cowen said it contained a "shattering litany of abuse of children in care in this country over many decades".

He told Parliament the report was the gravest in the history of the country and contained "such horrific stories that it is difficult to know where to begin in talking about it".

This scary question remains: Would I be breaking Irelands new anti-blasphemy law by bringing this up?

No. They will just sponsor Al Gore to speak about global warming at a local meeting. Thanks to the Gore Effect, the temperature usually drops dramatically as soon as Gore arrives.

Australian Antarctic Division glaciology program head Ian Allison said sea ice losses in west Antarctica over the past 30 years had been more than offset by increases in the Ross Sea region, just one sector of east Antarctica. (emphasis mine)

"Sea ice conditions have remained stable in Antarctica generally," Dr Allison said.

I'm more inclined to believe this is closer to Dr. Allison's view as it encompasses long range thinking and there's a direct quote attached.

Dr Allison said there was not any evidence of significant change in the mass of ice shelves in east Antarctica nor any indication that its ice cap was melting. "The only significant calvings in Antarctica have been in the west," he said. And he cautioned that calvings of the magnitude seen recently in west Antarctica might not be unusual. (emphasis mine)

"Ice shelves in general have episodic carvings and there can be large icebergs breaking off - I'm talking 100km or 200km long - every 10 or 20 or 50 years."

So this is where the ABC article is getting it's information. Dr. Allison is saying that these are episodic carvings but that over a long period it's stable. The ABC author is just looking at the carving going on this year and created a sentence (that is not a direct quote from Dr Allison) saying that Antarctic is losing ice. This is a myopic and misinforming view in my opinion, as it's short term and does not represent the overall situation in Antarctica.

Making silly luxuries for the rich is the poor man's chance to get some of that wealth back at an advantageous rate:-)

Slightly OT but Tom Cruise and family are in my home town this week. Apparently Mrs Cruise blew 5*10^4 .au dollars on an alligator skin handbag. My guess is that shops in the right location keep stock especially for the occasional shopper with Way Too Much Money to spend.

s/Anime guy/gaijin/

Japanese are some of the worst xenophobes on the planet. And when they aren't busy doing that, they're busy using Google Earth to search for old social classes to discriminate against.

Posting as AC because I don't even have an account here. Yes I am aware of the irony of calling an entire racial group xenophobic.

• A sizable majority of scientists believe in global warming.
• There was no consensus in the 1970s about global cooling. (I didn't know this)
• The plan to cover the poles in soot was exaggerated. (I didn't know this)
• Organizations that provide statistics on economics or climate change usually have a bias.

You admitted that a consensus can be wrong, but added

it's hubris for laypeople to dismiss it all as a vast academic conspiracy to get grant money.

I don't mean to dismiss it outright, and certainly not as a conspiracy. I think it comes back to money, as most things do. If grant money is more and more going to scientists that support global warming, it's in their self-interest to do so, no conspiracy needed. Being "green" is extremely popular right now. Many businesses also are making money from making "green" products, and car ads and household product ads are all mentioning how "green" they are. I don't think this is a big conspiracy. I'm also not saying it's a bad thing, being environmentally conscious is great. And I don't mean to suggest that the work these scientists are doing is bunk because there's a possibility they're just doing it for grant money. But the temperature record shows cooling or flat temperatures since 1998, historical cyclical swings in climate unrelated to humans, some studies showing antarctic ice growing, and so it seems to me like hubris or conceit to assume humans are causing disastrous global warming. In your link to Wikipedia it mentions some scientists that think it could even be a good thing if it happens.

Epic disaster is a 5 mile wide asteroid hitting the Earth. Epic disaster is the Yellowstone supervolcano covering the entire planet in ash. Epic disaster is a gamma ray burst from outer space eradicating all life. Large disasters are earthquakes, hurricanes, and tsunamis. Any disaster means widespread destruction and many people dying. Having to change your address is not a disaster. Many people have been nomadic since ancient times. If there are more jobs in California than Missouri, people will move there. Mass migrations happen for many different reasons all the time. Some are bad like a hurricane dissuades people from living Louisiana, or an evil dictator commits genocide and refugees flock to neighboring countries. Some are good like the gold rushes in California and Alaska, or people moving to Florida because they prefer to retire there. And you seem to refuse to acknowledge that this would happen over the course of centuries. No mass deaths. Things would change slowly. That's where I'm coming from. Maybe we have a slightly different view of how big a calamity it would be. I will say I agree with you that it would be best if New York and LA stayed above sea level. But the point is, we don't know if it's us causing this, or if capping carbon will stop it. If this is part of a natural warming cycle, there would probably be nothing we could do about it, and the hardships this bill would put on us would be for nothing.

How big the hardshi

Actually "we" (meaning the human race) has already lived in MUCH warmer global average temperatures than even the prediction fairy brought to al gore when his tooth fell out from laughing about how gullible Americans are.

So "we" would be perfectly capable of living in a "greenhouse warmed" future. In fact, given the historical evidence of human population between the medieval warm period and the medievel "little ice age", it is a VERY safe assumption "we" do MUCH better in warmer climates than in colder. All animals (including polar bears, btw) do better in warmer climates. For any animal heavier than 100 grams or so, you can use the simple rule of thumb that below 52 or-so degrees, any temperature rise is a very positive thing indeed.

Of course, that prediction assumes AGW is correct in the first place. GW, meaning direct causal correlation between co2 levels and temperature, causal in that direction and not the other, GW is disputed, at best and AGW basically has zero supporting evidence, so it's about as well supported as the tooth fairy.

So what is the use of the new taxes again ?

Let's enumerate a few possibilities :

1) AGW is correct (highly unlikely) + Taxes delay output rises by (!) 10 years in America (highly unlikely again)
result : about a 2 year delay for whatever disasters temperature rises cause. Massive cost for the economy. De-industrialization of the US. Enormous job losses.

2) AGW is false (extremely likely), GW is correct (unlikely). This would basically mean something else is pushing athmospheric co2 content, and earth climate is an inherently unstable system (that's the definition of unstable systems : a system that amplifies random variations) + new taxes delay American co2 output increases by (!) 10 years
result ZERO delay for whatever disasters temperature rises cause. Massive cost for the economy. De-industrialization of the US. Enormous job losses.

3) AGW is false (extremely likely). GW is false (likely). Taxes delay American output increases by (!) 10 years
result No (intended) effect on environment. Massive cost for the economy. De-industrialization of the US. Enormous job losses.

So tell me again, why are we doing this ? Because, to be quite honest, I find the "republican" explanation a very good one : Democrats hate the American economy and are so much more concerned about looking good that they knowingly walk into the abyss.

Biofuels for example, are by now responsible for at least 2 million dead by starvation. They also have had zero effect on emissions, and therefore zero effect on the predictions of either AGW or GW. But one effect they did have : 2 million dead.

Democrats : can you please explain why you're starving millions just to feel better about your car fuel ? I wonder if you'll take responsability for the consequences of your politics. Heh. Right.

Democrat - with a "d", like Dumb and Decisions.

ruled that in order for something to be "child pornography", it had to be depictions of (1) real children, and (2) real pornography.

That being somewhat less weird than australian law...

("The alleged child pornography comprised cartoon character "Lisa Simpson" having sex")

Nope. The Australians are afraid of breasts (Ref: Conservatives MPs... want topless... bathing banned on NSW beaches). The world is has gone mad.