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I lost my last job due to lack of University funding.
Big middle finger to everyone involved.

http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-n...

It depends on your definition of a crime.

Staging a sit-in prayer meeting in Julie Bishop's office is arguably a crime, yet what they were protesting about is apparently not.

        http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-n...

If "Christians" are capable of sitting on both sites of the immigration debate, why can't Muslems.

Of course, the obvious thing to point our are groups like the LRA, or those operating in the Central African Republic. You will probably be quick to deny that these people are Christians, in just the same way many Australian Muslims are saying the Martin Pl The siege is un-Islamic.

No mistake here, Watts is absolutely a paid shill. He is a serial liar, and lying about that is no surprise.

And your link doesn't back your claim.

Willard Anthony Watts (Anthony Watts) is a blogger, weathercaster and non-scientist, paid AGW denier who runs the website wattsupwiththat.com.

When your link starts with amateur ad hominem attacks like the above, you just know it's going to be a pile of useless drivel. For example, they assert that Watts is "on the payroll" of the Heartland Institute while neglecting to mention that the evidence for that particular assertion is fake (they do so in a particularly cowardly way by citing this story which in turn makes the linkage without mentioning that the actual document which explicitly makes the connection probably was forged by Peter Gleick).

I wasn't addressing that particular claim, because it's far more important to communicate that Watts is a shithead who will engage in any lie he imagines he can get away with.

Well, I think there are more important things than whether or you can "communicate" that Watts is a shithead. You seem to be quite capable of communicating that a certain Slashdot poster going by the name "i kan reed" is a shithead, but having a bit less luck with that Watts thing. Maybe you should switch to stuff that's a bit more productive, like rational argument?

Next time I'm diving, I will try to avoid new followers on Twitter.

In Australia, there are an average of 1 deaths per year from Shark attacks

Thats fine if you live in 1936 in Alice Springs, but WA has had numerous attacks in recent years. You think it is just a random data cluster?

http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/timeline-of-shark-attacks-on-wa-beaches-20081227-75sl.html

Google's 'Star Trek computer' voice search is cool, but Siri is already here. Scanadu's Scout, "the first Medical Tricorder" could be another Trek-inspired innovation that will make the world a better place.

a little slow to the party are we? well before you posted people have linked news outlets advising that they have already done so.

http://www.watoday.com.au/opinion/political-news/uk-police-descend-on-assanges-embassy-refuge-20120816-249pe.html

http://www.watoday.com.au/opinion/political-news/uk-police-descend-on-assanges-embassy-refuge-20120816-249pe.html

Yep, parent isn't shitting you

What about the 16 year old girl who sent a sexual nude pic of herself to her boyfriend who then went and shared the pic with the whole class getting the 16 year old girl arrested for creating and distributing child porn?

She is now a registered sex offender and can't go to school or college. Her life is destroyed because of some blind application of a law that was not intended to target her but because of overzealous DA's who want a notch on their political belt go after such easy crimes because of the emotional appeal to people like you.

http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/sexting-teens-makes-sex-offender-list-20110121-19zwu.html
http://articles.cnn.com/2009-04-07/justice/sexting.busts_1_phillip-alpert-offender-list-offender-registry?_s=PM:CRIME
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20001082-504083.html


Or how about the grandmother who took pictures of her naked grandchildren (under the age of 3) in a bathtub and then took the pics to walmart to get prints? Another overzealous DA went and prosecuted her. She was sentenced to 3 years in prison.

http://reason.com/blog/2009/05/04/grandma-arrested-for-child-por


It is evil that children are getting exploited. The problem is, the ones getting punished by the application of the laws due to the political and emotional fervor such application engenders for those leading the crusade, are not the ones exploiting the children.

Both those who download decade old pictures, or pictures of jailbait teens who voluntarily post their own pics on the net, or of innocent grandmothers who take pictures of their infant children, these are not the people being exploited nor are they the one's exploiting others, yet they are the people being targeted by the current application of the law.


Because a DA with 10 "Child Porn convictions" under his belt has an emotional appeal to mindless cosmic space zombie followers and that emotional appeal will get him elected / re-elected.

Very true. Australia is a first world country with good warning systems etc. so you would expect death tolls to be lower than in developing nations.

Our big advantage is that most children learn to swim. These people followed locals into the water, assuming it would be safe for them. Not so.

Greater men than me have failed to answer that question but I'm arrogant enough to give it a try anyway.

In ancient Rome slaves provided for Roman citizens such that there was a large group of people who didn't have to work at all. Everything they wanted was given to them. They spent their time at theaters, bath houses, and feeding each other. Some turned to philosophy, some to learning, many to simply wasting their lives away in whatever they liked to do.

In today's UK there are many people living on the public welfare system. Their standard of living is significantly lower than that of Rome but their pursuits are about the same. It's not fair to say they aren't as intellectual: you would be comparing the average of today's time wasters with the progress of a thousand years of Roman philosophers.

In America there are many people in the inner cities existing with a very low standard of living (by today's ideas of a proper standard of living), most of that wealth given to them by the government. They have very poor lives and a high crime rate. It has been alleged that government handouts are causing this low standard living but another way to look at is that insufficient knowledge, improper allocation of handouts, and not enough handouts are causing the problems. If enough time and energy could be spent on those neighborhoods (especially in solving the social problems) they WOULD improve.

So what I'm saying is that given high enough productivity per person you would have the same social structures that have been seen where wealth is concentrated: look at Dubai's hotels and massive public works projects, the activities of today's ultra rich (often composed of wealth wasting contests like seeing who can get the most and best horses and proving who had enough time to spend learning just the right set of mannerisms) and the activities of the Roman wasters.

It may also by beneficial to compare lifestyles across times when wealth was plentiful and not so plentiful.It is not whether someone is working or not that determines their standard of living but only how much wealth they have. Below a certain point you have ghettos and severe social malignancy; above that level you have the desire to be warm, comfortable, well fed, and able to move about; and above that there is an increasing amount of conspicuous consumption where anything goes as long as it obviously cost enough.

Yes, the seperate schemes are a hangover from affirmative action of the 70's and 80's. As I posted in my reply to walshv007 the extreme benefits that no white man could hope for amount to an extra $6.50 per week. ANY student coming from a defined remote area can also apply for rental assistance, people living in remote areas tend to be aboriginals.

Ideologically I'm also not in favour of legislation based on race but pragmatically the aboriginals have not benifited from the so called "lucky country". Until very recently most lived in what can only be described as thrird world conditions, lost between stone age traditions and the 20th century laws.

We also have race based legislation banning the sale of alcohol in many of the aboriginal settlements, their traditional social structures are 40kyrs old and have never had to deal with alcoholisim until the last hundred years or so. Aborigines are also permitted to hunt otherwise protected species on their reserves. IMHO these laws are a GoodThing(TM).

http://www.fourwinds10.com/siterun_data/business/currency/news.php?q=1246389934 [fourwinds10.com]
and
http://business.watoday.com.au/business/markets/china-calls-for-end-to-us-dollar-domination-20090627-d077.html [watoday.com.au]

It looks to me like they are using treasuries as a form of hard currency to buy up commodities. This seems reasonable to me, since their own currency does not float and is essentially worthless on the world market.

It's no secret China is very quickly losing faith in the value of US bonds.

Losing faith? No - they continue to buy them. What they are is worried that their economic model is unsustainable. They are in the unenviable position of having a huge trading partner and wanting very little (comparatively) of that trading partner's goods. They refuse to let their own currency float because it would make their manufactured goods too expensive, so they are restricted to trading with foreign currency... and most people still want dollars.

If they think they aren't getting paid anyway, they can cut us off, which they've done some of already,

What do you mean? Buying up bonds and then trading them for stuff is not "cutting us off" by any stretch of the imagination. Sure, it devalues our currency compared to whatever commodity they buy - but that is the inescapable consequence of printing extra money. Remember that their currency is necessarily tied to ours, so any fall in the dollar also effects their own currency.

forcing the USA to scramble for a new loan source...

They are our largest bondholder, but they are hardly the only source of money flowing into US treasuries. Sure, the interest rate that the fed would have to pay would go up - but that's not exactly the end of the world.

and if China dumps us, welcome to the REAL depression.

Dumps us? Where would they send their manufactured goods? While it is true that we would not fare well if China suddenly cut off trade, the impact on their economy would be even greater. They accumulate billions of dollars in US currency. This currency is worthless ultimately except for buying American goods. If they cut off trade, they are stuck with a huge stockpile of worthless paper while we sit on trillions of dollars worth of finished goods. While I'd certainly rather that they cash in those US dollars to receive American goods, I can't really see how the Chinese would have anything to gain by giving up all of that money.

Ultimately, it is the Chinese system that has to change. They can't be a serious player unless they float their currency... but when they do that, their goods will become significantly less competitive. They are in a very unenviable position, and it's no wonder that we see them whining.

Yes. They already called in some of the debt...

You have any source for this? I see stuff like this in the news.

http://www.fourwinds10.com/siterun_data/business/currency/news.php?q=1246389934
and
http://business.watoday.com.au/business/markets/china-calls-for-end-to-us-dollar-domination-20090627-d077.html

While they can't "call it in" in a direct sense, there's more than one way to skin a cat. It's no secret China is very quickly losing faith in the value of US bonds. Them losing faith in value = actual loss of value. If they think they aren't getting paid anyway, they can cut us off, which they've done some of already, and can certainly devalue our economy if they wanted to, forcing the USA to scramble for a new loan source... and if China dumps us, welcome to the REAL depression.

According to the results of the survey aimed to determine the most happiest countries Japan was number 90 (as opposed to the United States at position 114). In fact most of the developed countries did rather poorly due to the fact that consumer oriented economies eventually turn people into unhappy slaves. We constantly need to chase the results of the next quarter and increase productivity. At some point people stop giving shit about the actual meaning of life and proceed to exist. Existence, if you ask me, is not a happy state and some industries have to force individuals to smile. Is this the answer? Fuck no.

If you want me to smile and be happy, give me an extra day off, a bonus or guarantee the fact that I can see a doctor even if I don't have insurance. You can take the 5-bedroom 3-garage houses back to late 90s because life called and it wants me back.

in fact, all suicides who have been stopped or unsuccessful have reached a point later in their life where they were glad they didn't succeed

What a ridiculous over-gerneralisation. If their reasons were sound, then either they get it right the second time, or it's too late an they have to die naturally and horribly. Maybe like this poor lady - too weak to take the Nembutal, and vomiting up excrement.