Certainly saner than the Green party, and along similar levels of insanity to the two major parties. However, the Democrats are dead in the water. Howard saw to that one with the GST.
First, a decade is little more than a spot in time - even in one human lifetime.
Even so, I wouldn't keep you from your nicely implemented private electric (never been to Australia before and don't know anyone from there so you get the benefit of the doubt), but you're in a country the size of the US with a population around the size of Florida's. Hardly comparable I'd say.
Actually this demonstrates my point. If a country which is nearly the same size as the US and only one tenth of the population has a functional market which is improving market efficiency, then surely when you add in MORE competition and MORE consumers you will get a more efficient market. You just need better competition watchdogs to ensure that the market truly is free.
Secondly, a decade is long enough to measure efficiency increases. Liberalised energy markets don't just exist in Australia but in Europe and the US as well and have increased efficiency there too.
You can call it whatever you like. I have seen the statistics, read the OECD reports on electricity privatisation and work in the industry. Your power bill increased by 30%? Do you happen to realise that the wholesale price of electricity went through the roof in 2006-2007 across the entire market due to the governmental decision to shut down 2/3 of Tarong power station due to the drought?
Do you realise that without the Basslink interconnector, which connects Victoria and Tasmania that the Tasmanian hydro scheme would likely be out of water right now, causing blackouts in the state?
No you do not realise that, because you do not know about the industry. Sometimes the benefits that you receive are not exactly obvious. Also, before you throw partisan accusations at me, bear in mind that it was the darling of the Left Paul Keating who began the process of creating the electricity market.
As for your annocdotal evidence that public health care is fine, I am glad for you. All I know is that the public health system in QLD and NSW is a mess. It was highlighted by the poor woman who miscarried in a toilet while awaiting help in a public NSW hospital (oh no I countered your annocdote with my annocdote!).
When you were a telephone tech in the 70s, was there ADSL, Mobile phones, cable internet and all of the other telecommunications infrastructure that is in place today? Was there a skills shortage which has left all industries short of staff? Telecommunications has grown increasingly complex over the years and so you are comparing apples to oranges.
Free market and economic liberalisation is something which has time and time again proven to be successful at building a countries wealth. Central planning was the downfall of the Soviet Union, while the free markets of the West prevailed.
Explain again these so called improvemnets of service, or take your head out of your behind and have a look around!
My final point is this - your idea of "service" is very limited. Service means more than just customer response time or how big the smile is of the person performing the actions. Service entails everything, from billing to complaints handling to the utility uptime. In a privatised market customers get to decide that which they value more - cost, customer service, uptime through their ability to go to a competitor which offers them a better deal in the area of their interest. Just like one moderator chose to mark my previous post "Insightful" while another marked it "Overrated", market liberalisation lets the public choose the winners, not the government.
Whoever had the bright idea of privatizing a utility should be shot. Fundemental public services should not be privatized they should be public and operating in a fully transparent manner. Roads, Schools, Libraries, Utilities, and Health Care.
Just because you have experienced a poor implementation of a privatised society (the US typically does not have enough regulation on private enterprise) does not mean that privatisation is a bad thing.
In Australia we have had a privatised electricity market for nearly a decade and it has contributed to much greater asset utilisation overall, reducing the taxpayer costs over the long run. Higher utilisation means less need for new power plants. Better yet, a privatised market means that new infrastructure risk is taken by private investors, meaning that the public purse is not used to back new investments. If those investments are a failure, then the people who pay for the failure are not the general public but the people who made the poor investment.
Another example is healthcare. Private healthcare in this country is a much better option than public healthcare, though public healthcare is provided. Until the recent idiotic changes by the federal government, everyone on a decent wage either had to join private healthcare or pay a premium on their taxes. This meant that a significant number of people joined the private system, freeing up government cash to focus on the public system (not that our wasteful state governments were any good at managing it).
In nearly all cases a privatised system is going to provide a much higher level of service than a public one, but there needs to be regulators in place to ensure sufficient competition. This is a particular problem in the US.
Yours was a left-wing, partisan rant which fails to see that private enterprise can exist in a "fully transparent manner". It's just that the US business environment is one that promotes monopolies not competition and so you probably have never experienced the benefits of a competitive market environment.
This is a typical elitist jerk type attitude. Most people pay good money to play and want to see a majority of the content.
Removal of attunements was a godsend for the billion and one alts out there these days. Why should someone have to go through the whole process of attunement AGAIN, which is really just an arbitrary time sink (when my prot pally did BM for the kara key I so overgeared the instance that it was a joke - I took no damage and ended up tanking the instance half naked). Sure it means worse players can see more content, but to me that just means that paying customers get to have more fun, which is what I want out of a game.
Guilds quickly work out who the good players are to bring to raids anyway, so there is still competative pressure to get a raid slot. It just means that less people get turned off by the dauntingly steep time cost to start raiding.
Most of them result from people falling from rooftops, but some are from dangerous chemical exposure in manufacturing and still more are caused in the mineral extraction process itself.
Still, solar is vastly more safe than coal generation.
Nuclear power, even when considering the one nuclear meltdown that we have had and all the deaths caused by it, has resulted in less deaths than any other form of power generation per MWh generated. Including wind and solar.
Secondly, Nuclear power in the only baseload power source which does not release significant amounts of CO2. If you believe that we need to reduce CO2 emissions significantly in the next few years to avoid catastrophic anothropogenic global warming, then Nuclear Power is your best currently available option.
Thirdly, Uranium is one of the most abundant materials in the earths crust - though it does cost quite a bit to extract. We have known reserves that will last us quite some time (though the same is true for coal).
Lastly, we are currently in the third generation of nuclear power plants, which now in the event of an emergency automatically shut down. i.e. it requires individuals to be pushing buttons to keep the reactor running and in a "dangerous" mode. If human intervention stops, the reactor ceases being dangerous (well excluding the radioactivity danger present in the fuel itself).
The problem with nuclear power is threefold - public perceptions (generally from irrational fear), high water usage and high long run marginal costs. Canada and France have shown us that nuclear power can provide a significant amount of baseload power relatively safely.
In fact the Lego Company has gone right back to its roots in the last couple of years with such wonderful sets that are truly a joy to build and look at. The new castle line really has the "Hey this is like castle of the 80s" feel to it, while at the same time having a more modern look to all the sets. The sets are getting more and more pieces, and there is now a HUGE amount of lego that's targeted towards the adult market (it all started with the Imperial Star Destroyer in 2002 which contained a good few thousand pieces).
As a Lego fan I've never been more spoiled, and my wallet has never been as empty as it has been in the last year or so.
Too many people believe that their work ends at being skeptical. Such "skeptics" are among the most closed minded people in society.
And here on Slashdot, their as common as dirt. It's "they're" damn it.
"They're" is a contraction for "they are", "their" means that someone owns something and "there" is refering to a location. 500 years after Shakespeare I'm still skeptical that people will ever master the most basic of all grammar.
"We shall decide who comes into this country and the circumstances in which they arrive" - John Howard. Ideologically he was fairly closely aligned with President Bush. He was also awarded several awards earlier this year by conservative think-tanks in the US. He most certainly was aligned to the right.
I personally believe that the major difference between the US political system and the Australian political system - at least in terms of results - is that culturally Australians are rather distrusting of the government and have compulsory voting. This has the effect of drawing the country to the political center. Grand changes by previous governments tend to be respected by successive governments far more than they are in the US.
A very good example is medicare - a national healthcare scheme. It was introduced under a left wing government after a good 20-odd years of right wing rule, and to this day has not been abolished (though it has been amended heavily by consecutive governments). A more modern example was the GST imposed by the recent conservative government. Bitterly opposed by those on the left, it has remained in place under the current left government.
It is my observation that in the US grand schemes such as these tend not to survive once the opposing party gains control. I think the US really needs to make voting compulsary to make its politics more central.
If it doesn't protect an individual right of the people, why have it in the Bill of Rights at all? That is a good question, and is especially relevant when you look at all the trouble a Bill of Rights has caused in any country with one.
In this case I believe that there is sufficient evidence for a constitutional ammendment, especially considering that even a well armed militia these days would have absolutely no power against a well trained military with tanks, warplanes and nukes at their disposal.
As an aside, the politician who banned semiautomatic firearms in Australia was a conservative Prime Minister who was branded as "the most right wing leader in Australia's history" by his political opponents. He payed for his decision with three consecutive election wins after the event, finally being kicked out of office due to a union-funded scare campaign that cost more than either of the two major parties whole election campaigns. Combined with a leader who promised to be almost exactly like Howard (except ratifying Kyoto and pandering to the union scare campaign), he finally lost power November last year after being the second longest serving PM in Australia's history. It was generally regarded as a golden era of conservative politics, punctuated by the point that to win office his opponents had to sell to the electorate that they were practically the same party with the same leader.
It sounds great because there's some implied racism associated with Muslims and Islam but it really rubs me the wrong way. You know what rubs me the wrong way? It is the watering down of language which deprives it of the nuance and subtlety that we need to accurately describe a situation. Your vile, incorrect use of the term "racism" is just that - something which rapes the English language by using a historically meaningful term to describe something completely incorrectly. The only mainstream religion which may possibly have the "racism" term used to describe discrimination against them are the Jewish people as their religion is tied into their ancestory.
Until people stop equating discrimination based on religion with discrimination based on race, we can never have a sensible discussion on the subject. This stupidity has grown so intense that now in France, you are unable to criticise animal rights violations because of "racism". So instead of criticising the Bush administration for being "racist", take a long hard look at your own massacring of the English language for it is doing more harm to free speech than anything that Bush has ever done. While you're at it, read 1984.
It is as I suspected. This is a left-wing site run by people who mistakenly believe that "liberty" means the freedom from natural consequences rather than the freedom to choose the acts which lead to those consequences.
I would have a lot more respect for these liberal organisations if they actually believed in accepting responsibility for decisions made. Until then, I will continue happily ignoring anything said by such organisations.
Wow, you have some really warped ideas. Where to start? Ok, let's deal with the tangent first.
If the point is to win, to out perform the global competition, why do you care what drugs we use to do it?
To start with, allowing athletes to use performance enhancing drugs basically would have the effect of starting an "arms" race amongst athletes - with long term detrimental effects on the athletes themselves. The point of sport is to see athletes at their peak pitted against one another. The whole purpose of sport is that it is totally performance based. It does not mean that someone who is genetically inferior cannot attempt to compete, and in fact I believe that there have been some successful sub-6 foot basketballers. Have you never read "Think and Grow Rich"? In almost every case in society it is not genetics that ends up winning, but training, willpower and dedication. Using genetics as an excuse for taking steroids undermines the whole reason for having sports in the first place.
Besides, this bill is about preventing companies from using genetic discrimination as a way of selecting employees, it makes no statement about genetically different employees being better or worse than others. Ultimately, there is much subtle genetic discrimination (beautiful people are never out of work) in real life, but this bill is designed to prevent overt genetic discrimination.
I think anyone with a brain right now knows the US government is corrupt.
Again, you make the charge that the US government is corrupt, and the only evidence that you have is to "look at what the US government spends most of it's money funding" which you later admit that you can't actually do completely because "a lot of what is funded is classified". Again I ask, by what standard is the US corrupt? Are they operating within the law (and the constitution)? If they are, then by what standard do you determine that they are corrupt? If they are not, do you have any legal evidence or findings of the alleged corruption?
I think anyone with a brain right now knows the US government is corrupt. Look at the situation in Iraq. Hell, just use wikipedia and look up all the moles that were lurking in the US government since before 911 and tell me, is the War on Terror even winnable? It's a completely unwinnable religious war. We have no way to beat an enemy when that enemy is ubiquitous. There are probably terrorists within the government itself, so how exactly can we win?
You make the false claim that "anyone with a brain can see that the government is corrupt". Then you cite many examples of potential incompetence, but not one of actual corruption. Iraq may have been a poor decision made on evidence which was later discredited, but this in no way makes it corrupt. It may be true that the War on Terror may be unwinnable, but that simply means that the government is chasing after the wind, not that they are corrupt.
The Bill is not all bad. If we lived in a world where the government actually followed the international laws, and the laws of the US constitution, perhaps I would not be so against the concepts that make up this bill. However the words have to be changed because the words leave too many loopholes and only assist corrupt individuals.
This is the claim that actually got me laughing. First you claim that the government has broken international laws (I'm sorry, but laws can only be set by a government, and there is no world governing body), then you claim that the government has broken its own laws. If the government had done this, then that is why there is a separate judiciary, legislature and executive - to prevent this alleged corruption from occurring (unless you are suggesting that the Democrat controlled legislature and judiciary are also corrupt?).
But the most ludicrous comment that you made in this tirade was not the allegations of corruption, but by the supposed "words [which] leave too ma
Yes, and most of this has been due to people in the past working hard to make a better future. We are that better future that they worked towards. And that future was created largely through the concept of property rights.
Can you really trust any of the research being done under this corrupt government? The government of the US is corrupt? By what standard are you judging it? Have these allegations been upheld in a court of law? What does administration do that makes scientific research corrupt?
And can you really trust any kinda race based medicine?
Honestly, the research might be important, but considering that the research is being done by one of the most corrupt governments on the planet, it doesn't sit well with me. Again with the allegations of corruption. What conclusive evidence do you have that this government is corrupt? Misguided - maybe, making decisions based on faulty information - certainly, but corrupt?
We are also one of the most religious governments on the planet. Half of the politicians don't even believe in genetics and still think in terms of race. Citation needed. Race is just one physical manifestation of genetic differences anyway. To believe in race you must believe in genetics. Again, I ask for you to back up your statement with facts.
The census still asks for racial information instead of genetic or DNA information. This may be so, but I fail to see how it relates to this bill. Also, race is an issue Americans are far more comfortable thinking about than genetics (i.e. the average American has a greater understanding of race than they do of genetics, intertwined though they are).
The bill might not be all that bad but it's way before it's time. So you are now crediting this "corrupt" government (which is now made up of a democrat majority in congress I might add) with foresight?
We have a government that genetically discriminates against drug addicts, just look at the drug laws, yet this non-discrimination law would prevent employers and health insurance companies from discriminating against those same drug addicts? I don't see a point. No, there is nothing genetic about drug addictions, anyone telling you otherwise is lying to you for their own reasons. Drug problems tend to be more related to social class than genetics anyway.
And then we have the government trying to crack down on steroids and other human enhancement products, helping to enforce the very genetic discrimination that this bill is attempting to stop. How is cracking down on performance enhancing drugs and banning genetic discrimination even linked? Sport is about testing an athlete's genetics, discipline, skill and training against other athletes. Genetics is more of a building block for athletic ability, rather than the totality of that ability, while performance enhancing drugs are an artificial "cheat" that is used to push the body beyond its natural limits artificially, often with negative repercussions long term.
I don't can't see this bill being anything good when it's managed by the current group of people. Again, more government bashing. Take off the tinfoil hat, step outside and take a few deep breaths. In reality, the worst that you can accuse this government of based on the available evidence is no more than making poor decisions (in your eyes) and maybe (just maybe) breaching certain interpretations of the constitution. You cannot however claim that they have done so out of malice towards American people or out of a direct desire to undermine the constitution.
If you really believe that the US government is corrupt, head to England and live in the nanny state, or head to somewhere that is REALLY corrupt like Zimbabwe, Lebanon or any number of third world nations.
If your point is that Christianity was spread everywhere by force then you are obviously wrong. If your point is that sometimes Christians were persecuted to the point of death for their faith throughout history then that is also true. If your point was that in some cases people used the excuse of "spreading Christianity" to spread their political influence and power then that is also true. However, if you are saying the Christianity itself is inherently evil or violent because of any of these points then your logic needs some work.
Christianity knew nothing but persecution for at least around the first hundred years of its existence. That does not validate or invalidate its beliefs in any way.
Fact of the matter is, though -- Ireland is the only country where Christianity came without bloodshed... but in the long run, that backfired as well. Australia?
Canada?
New Zealand?
Greece?
Italy?
There are many examples where Christianity has spread without bloodshed.
How does this work, redistributing "wealth" from those that don't have it Corrupt right wingers give no bid contracts to their friends, tax cuts to the rich, allow monopolies to flourish, encourage Enron-style deregulation, etc. So your criticism here is of corrupt people? I find corruption offensive no matter the political views of those engaging in corruption. Deregulation is a good thing when coupled with sufficient transparency. Enron was not sufficiently transparent and engaged in corrupt practices.
Right-winger incursions were minor and asymmetric compared to the left, but then again, the left was responsible for over 100 million deaths during WW-II and immediately following. Right, I think that was Nazism, fascism and Stalinism that kind of took the blame for most of those deaths. Just a little different from what Obama and Hillary stand for. Keep listening to Rush though... To be truthful, the most extreme form of right wing government is a fascist one (which has the economic benefits of democracy combined with a rabid nationalism). The criticism of Fascism was never to do with the productivity of a country engaged in it, but the evil that Fascist governments caused to the world. Similarly, Communism is the most extreme form of left wing government, which couples poor economics with a suppression of freedom of speech. Dictatorships rarely align even closely to a wing of politics and simply do whatever is necessary to maintain power.
Both governmental types are extremely dangerous for different reasons, but let it be known that if one of the "wings" starts taking over completely the people of the world are the ultimate sufferers.
I personally lean to the right, but that is a product of the current political environment (in my county in particular). Given a different time (such as in the time of the US civil rights movement) I would have leaned to the left.
As it is, I have a very strong hatred for the incursion into our education systems that the left has had in recent times. Why should MacQuarie University in Sydney mandate liberal arts subjects for all students, even those who are doing totally unrelated (engineering, science etc...) degrees? Why should a US lecturer be able to sue her class for "creating a hostile working environment" for her because they unanimously hated her stupid ideas on "ecofeminism" and other such nonsense (I hope that case fails by the way). This morning I read in the paper that they wish to change the description of aboriginal society pre-white settlement (or invasion as it is called by the left) from "primative" to "complex and nuanced".
It is this political correctness that should be fought against and defeated so that we can maintain a society that is free to express its true opinions.
Can't say I agree with the idea of creating markets of utilities. It hasn't worked with Telstra, it won't work with power. At least with the distribution side. The generation and retail sides may bring benefits though, providing there are no monopoly players installed or allowed to form through mergers. Actually the National Electricity Market (NEM) was established in 1998. It is currently viewed by the OECD as worlds best practice for electricity markets. The current media blow up is over privatising state generators (i.e. putting them in shareholder hands instead of state hands - a good thing for efficiency) in NSW, which already participate in the NEM. The electricity market has tangibly reduced power costs all across the eastern seaboard (WA is not a part of the market).
Liberalisation in the NEM extends to power supply and not to transmission, as transmission is something which exists as a natural monopoly. It is controlled by both state owned (QLD and NSW) and privately owned (SA and VIC) companies. NEMMCO run the operations in the market and the AER regulate it. None of those nasty, beaurocracy-filled vertically integrated monopolies in our market! We have liquid futures and ancillary services markets too.
The real reason why the Telstra sale hasn't worked as effectively as it should or could have is that there are some natural monopolies (such as infrastructure) which should probably have been spun off into a separate entities. Nevertheless, it was good to get the country out of debt and in the financial position to be one of the strongest economies in the world.
The coalition has always been to the right of centre. Labor has always been to the left of centre.
What is very interesting is that to wrest power from Keating, Howard presented a small target but never pandered to the left in any way. In fact he based his election strategy on distancing himself from Keating in every way possible. Labor, in all areas has had to move to the right to take power from the conservatives. Rudd had to become basically a carbon-copy of Howard for the electorate to allow the left back into power, despite the myriad of Howard-haters. I note that the two latest announcements by federal Labor is that they have managed to get the states agree with Howard government policies (the $10b water plan and incentive pay for teachers) that they had ridiculed for being right-wing a year ago.
Never forget that it was Kevin07 who first got the public talking about (and approving of) the porn filter. Howard copied him on that issue. Unfortunately we'll now have to contact our ISPs to remove the by-default internet filter when it gets into place because of Rudd's take on the issue.
Still, when your left-leaning party is all for creating markets and promoting traditional family values you know you're in a good country. Now if they could drop all of the politically correct crap so our parliament was a fight between a left-leaning right-wing party and a right-leaning right-wing party I'd be happier still.
Don't worry, he will do a wonderful job of fixing the problems left by the Howard government. Problems such as increased real wages, increased average wealth, more equal wealth distribution and massively reduced unemployment.
He is also trying to fix the Gillard-knife-in-the-back problem by giving her so much work that she is crushed by the workload. For the sake of Australia let's hope that it works
Slashdot Mirror
Klaatu barada ni*cough*o
Yeah I said em. Maybe I didn't pronounce every single syllable absolutely perfectly but I said em.
Common Kiff, teenagers all smoke and they seem pretty on the ball.
Certainly saner than the Green party, and along similar levels of insanity to the two major parties. However, the Democrats are dead in the water. Howard saw to that one with the GST.
First, a decade is little more than a spot in time - even in one human lifetime.
Even so, I wouldn't keep you from your nicely implemented private electric (never been to Australia before and don't know anyone from there so you get the benefit of the doubt), but you're in a country the size of the US with a population around the size of Florida's. Hardly comparable I'd say.
Actually this demonstrates my point. If a country which is nearly the same size as the US and only one tenth of the population has a functional market which is improving market efficiency, then surely when you add in MORE competition and MORE consumers you will get a more efficient market. You just need better competition watchdogs to ensure that the market truly is free.
Secondly, a decade is long enough to measure efficiency increases. Liberalised energy markets don't just exist in Australia but in Europe and the US as well and have increased efficiency there too.
Do you realise that without the Basslink interconnector, which connects Victoria and Tasmania that the Tasmanian hydro scheme would likely be out of water right now, causing blackouts in the state?
No you do not realise that, because you do not know about the industry. Sometimes the benefits that you receive are not exactly obvious. Also, before you throw partisan accusations at me, bear in mind that it was the darling of the Left Paul Keating who began the process of creating the electricity market.
As for your annocdotal evidence that public health care is fine, I am glad for you. All I know is that the public health system in QLD and NSW is a mess. It was highlighted by the poor woman who miscarried in a toilet while awaiting help in a public NSW hospital (oh no I countered your annocdote with my annocdote!).
When you were a telephone tech in the 70s, was there ADSL, Mobile phones, cable internet and all of the other telecommunications infrastructure that is in place today? Was there a skills shortage which has left all industries short of staff? Telecommunications has grown increasingly complex over the years and so you are comparing apples to oranges.
Free market and economic liberalisation is something which has time and time again proven to be successful at building a countries wealth. Central planning was the downfall of the Soviet Union, while the free markets of the West prevailed.
Explain again these so called improvemnets of service, or take your head out of your behind and have a look around!
My final point is this - your idea of "service" is very limited. Service means more than just customer response time or how big the smile is of the person performing the actions. Service entails everything, from billing to complaints handling to the utility uptime. In a privatised market customers get to decide that which they value more - cost, customer service, uptime through their ability to go to a competitor which offers them a better deal in the area of their interest. Just like one moderator chose to mark my previous post "Insightful" while another marked it "Overrated", market liberalisation lets the public choose the winners, not the government.
Whoever had the bright idea of privatizing a utility should be shot. Fundemental public services should not be privatized they should be public and operating in a fully transparent manner. Roads, Schools, Libraries, Utilities, and Health Care.
Just because you have experienced a poor implementation of a privatised society (the US typically does not have enough regulation on private enterprise) does not mean that privatisation is a bad thing.
In Australia we have had a privatised electricity market for nearly a decade and it has contributed to much greater asset utilisation overall, reducing the taxpayer costs over the long run. Higher utilisation means less need for new power plants. Better yet, a privatised market means that new infrastructure risk is taken by private investors, meaning that the public purse is not used to back new investments. If those investments are a failure, then the people who pay for the failure are not the general public but the people who made the poor investment.
Another example is healthcare. Private healthcare in this country is a much better option than public healthcare, though public healthcare is provided. Until the recent idiotic changes by the federal government, everyone on a decent wage either had to join private healthcare or pay a premium on their taxes. This meant that a significant number of people joined the private system, freeing up government cash to focus on the public system (not that our wasteful state governments were any good at managing it).
In nearly all cases a privatised system is going to provide a much higher level of service than a public one, but there needs to be regulators in place to ensure sufficient competition. This is a particular problem in the US.
Yours was a left-wing, partisan rant which fails to see that private enterprise can exist in a "fully transparent manner". It's just that the US business environment is one that promotes monopolies not competition and so you probably have never experienced the benefits of a competitive market environment.
This is a typical elitist jerk type attitude. Most people pay good money to play and want to see a majority of the content.
Removal of attunements was a godsend for the billion and one alts out there these days. Why should someone have to go through the whole process of attunement AGAIN, which is really just an arbitrary time sink (when my prot pally did BM for the kara key I so overgeared the instance that it was a joke - I took no damage and ended up tanking the instance half naked). Sure it means worse players can see more content, but to me that just means that paying customers get to have more fun, which is what I want out of a game.
Guilds quickly work out who the good players are to bring to raids anyway, so there is still competative pressure to get a raid slot. It just means that less people get turned off by the dauntingly steep time cost to start raiding.
Most of them result from people falling from rooftops, but some are from dangerous chemical exposure in manufacturing and still more are caused in the mineral extraction process itself.
Still, solar is vastly more safe than coal generation.
Funny :/
I was refering to these type of sets:
http://shop.lego.com/ByTheme/Product.aspx?p=10179&cn=245&d=100
http://shop.lego.com/ByTheme/Product.aspx?p=10177&cn=245&d=100
http://shop.lego.com/ByTheme/Product.aspx?p=10182&cn=245&d=100
Sets that have over 1000 parts and have ecsquisite detail.
Ok I'll bite.
Nuclear power, even when considering the one nuclear meltdown that we have had and all the deaths caused by it, has resulted in less deaths than any other form of power generation per MWh generated. Including wind and solar.
Secondly, Nuclear power in the only baseload power source which does not release significant amounts of CO2. If you believe that we need to reduce CO2 emissions significantly in the next few years to avoid catastrophic anothropogenic global warming, then Nuclear Power is your best currently available option.
Thirdly, Uranium is one of the most abundant materials in the earths crust - though it does cost quite a bit to extract. We have known reserves that will last us quite some time (though the same is true for coal).
Lastly, we are currently in the third generation of nuclear power plants, which now in the event of an emergency automatically shut down. i.e. it requires individuals to be pushing buttons to keep the reactor running and in a "dangerous" mode. If human intervention stops, the reactor ceases being dangerous (well excluding the radioactivity danger present in the fuel itself).
The problem with nuclear power is threefold - public perceptions (generally from irrational fear), high water usage and high long run marginal costs. Canada and France have shown us that nuclear power can provide a significant amount of baseload power relatively safely.
It used to be a lot worse than it is now.
In fact the Lego Company has gone right back to its roots in the last couple of years with such wonderful sets that are truly a joy to build and look at. The new castle line really has the "Hey this is like castle of the 80s" feel to it, while at the same time having a more modern look to all the sets. The sets are getting more and more pieces, and there is now a HUGE amount of lego that's targeted towards the adult market (it all started with the Imperial Star Destroyer in 2002 which contained a good few thousand pieces).
As a Lego fan I've never been more spoiled, and my wallet has never been as empty as it has been in the last year or so.
"They're" is a contraction for "they are", "their" means that someone owns something and "there" is refering to a location. 500 years after Shakespeare I'm still skeptical that people will ever master the most basic of all grammar.
"We shall decide who comes into this country and the circumstances in which they arrive" - John Howard. Ideologically he was fairly closely aligned with President Bush. He was also awarded several awards earlier this year by conservative think-tanks in the US. He most certainly was aligned to the right.
I personally believe that the major difference between the US political system and the Australian political system - at least in terms of results - is that culturally Australians are rather distrusting of the government and have compulsory voting. This has the effect of drawing the country to the political center. Grand changes by previous governments tend to be respected by successive governments far more than they are in the US.
A very good example is medicare - a national healthcare scheme. It was introduced under a left wing government after a good 20-odd years of right wing rule, and to this day has not been abolished (though it has been amended heavily by consecutive governments). A more modern example was the GST imposed by the recent conservative government. Bitterly opposed by those on the left, it has remained in place under the current left government.
It is my observation that in the US grand schemes such as these tend not to survive once the opposing party gains control. I think the US really needs to make voting compulsary to make its politics more central.
In this case I believe that there is sufficient evidence for a constitutional ammendment, especially considering that even a well armed militia these days would have absolutely no power against a well trained military with tanks, warplanes and nukes at their disposal.
As an aside, the politician who banned semiautomatic firearms in Australia was a conservative Prime Minister who was branded as "the most right wing leader in Australia's history" by his political opponents. He payed for his decision with three consecutive election wins after the event, finally being kicked out of office due to a union-funded scare campaign that cost more than either of the two major parties whole election campaigns. Combined with a leader who promised to be almost exactly like Howard (except ratifying Kyoto and pandering to the union scare campaign), he finally lost power November last year after being the second longest serving PM in Australia's history. It was generally regarded as a golden era of conservative politics, punctuated by the point that to win office his opponents had to sell to the electorate that they were practically the same party with the same leader.
Until people stop equating discrimination based on religion with discrimination based on race, we can never have a sensible discussion on the subject. This stupidity has grown so intense that now in France, you are unable to criticise animal rights violations because of "racism". So instead of criticising the Bush administration for being "racist", take a long hard look at your own massacring of the English language for it is doing more harm to free speech than anything that Bush has ever done. While you're at it, read 1984.
It is as I suspected. This is a left-wing site run by people who mistakenly believe that "liberty" means the freedom from natural consequences rather than the freedom to choose the acts which lead to those consequences.
I would have a lot more respect for these liberal organisations if they actually believed in accepting responsibility for decisions made. Until then, I will continue happily ignoring anything said by such organisations.
If the point is to win, to out perform the global competition, why do you care what drugs we use to do it?
To start with, allowing athletes to use performance enhancing drugs basically would have the effect of starting an "arms" race amongst athletes - with long term detrimental effects on the athletes themselves. The point of sport is to see athletes at their peak pitted against one another. The whole purpose of sport is that it is totally performance based. It does not mean that someone who is genetically inferior cannot attempt to compete, and in fact I believe that there have been some successful sub-6 foot basketballers. Have you never read "Think and Grow Rich"? In almost every case in society it is not genetics that ends up winning, but training, willpower and dedication. Using genetics as an excuse for taking steroids undermines the whole reason for having sports in the first place.
Besides, this bill is about preventing companies from using genetic discrimination as a way of selecting employees, it makes no statement about genetically different employees being better or worse than others. Ultimately, there is much subtle genetic discrimination (beautiful people are never out of work) in real life, but this bill is designed to prevent overt genetic discrimination.
I think anyone with a brain right now knows the US government is corrupt.
Again, you make the charge that the US government is corrupt, and the only evidence that you have is to "look at what the US government spends most of it's money funding" which you later admit that you can't actually do completely because "a lot of what is funded is classified". Again I ask, by what standard is the US corrupt? Are they operating within the law (and the constitution)? If they are, then by what standard do you determine that they are corrupt? If they are not, do you have any legal evidence or findings of the alleged corruption?
I think anyone with a brain right now knows the US government is corrupt. Look at the situation in Iraq. Hell, just use wikipedia and look up all the moles that were lurking in the US government since before 911 and tell me, is the War on Terror even winnable? It's a completely unwinnable religious war. We have no way to beat an enemy when that enemy is ubiquitous. There are probably terrorists within the government itself, so how exactly can we win?
You make the false claim that "anyone with a brain can see that the government is corrupt". Then you cite many examples of potential incompetence, but not one of actual corruption. Iraq may have been a poor decision made on evidence which was later discredited, but this in no way makes it corrupt. It may be true that the War on Terror may be unwinnable, but that simply means that the government is chasing after the wind, not that they are corrupt.
The Bill is not all bad. If we lived in a world where the government actually followed the international laws, and the laws of the US constitution, perhaps I would not be so against the concepts that make up this bill. However the words have to be changed because the words leave too many loopholes and only assist corrupt individuals.
This is the claim that actually got me laughing. First you claim that the government has broken international laws (I'm sorry, but laws can only be set by a government, and there is no world governing body), then you claim that the government has broken its own laws. If the government had done this, then that is why there is a separate judiciary, legislature and executive - to prevent this alleged corruption from occurring (unless you are suggesting that the Democrat controlled legislature and judiciary are also corrupt?).
But the most ludicrous comment that you made in this tirade was not the allegations of corruption, but by the supposed "words [which] leave too ma
Yes, and most of this has been due to people in the past working hard to make a better future. We are that better future that they worked towards. And that future was created largely through the concept of property rights.
If you really believe that the US government is corrupt, head to England and live in the nanny state, or head to somewhere that is REALLY corrupt like Zimbabwe, Lebanon or any number of third world nations.
I don't follow the point you are trying to make.
If your point is that Christianity was spread everywhere by force then you are obviously wrong. If your point is that sometimes Christians were persecuted to the point of death for their faith throughout history then that is also true. If your point was that in some cases people used the excuse of "spreading Christianity" to spread their political influence and power then that is also true. However, if you are saying the Christianity itself is inherently evil or violent because of any of these points then your logic needs some work.
Christianity knew nothing but persecution for at least around the first hundred years of its existence. That does not validate or invalidate its beliefs in any way.
Canada?
New Zealand?
Greece?
Italy?
There are many examples where Christianity has spread without bloodshed.
Both governmental types are extremely dangerous for different reasons, but let it be known that if one of the "wings" starts taking over completely the people of the world are the ultimate sufferers.
I personally lean to the right, but that is a product of the current political environment (in my county in particular). Given a different time (such as in the time of the US civil rights movement) I would have leaned to the left.
As it is, I have a very strong hatred for the incursion into our education systems that the left has had in recent times. Why should MacQuarie University in Sydney mandate liberal arts subjects for all students, even those who are doing totally unrelated (engineering, science etc...) degrees? Why should a US lecturer be able to sue her class for "creating a hostile working environment" for her because they unanimously hated her stupid ideas on "ecofeminism" and other such nonsense (I hope that case fails by the way). This morning I read in the paper that they wish to change the description of aboriginal society pre-white settlement (or invasion as it is called by the left) from "primative" to "complex and nuanced".
It is this political correctness that should be fought against and defeated so that we can maintain a society that is free to express its true opinions.
Liberalisation in the NEM extends to power supply and not to transmission, as transmission is something which exists as a natural monopoly. It is controlled by both state owned (QLD and NSW) and privately owned (SA and VIC) companies. NEMMCO run the operations in the market and the AER regulate it. None of those nasty, beaurocracy-filled vertically integrated monopolies in our market! We have liquid futures and ancillary services markets too.
The real reason why the Telstra sale hasn't worked as effectively as it should or could have is that there are some natural monopolies (such as infrastructure) which should probably have been spun off into a separate entities. Nevertheless, it was good to get the country out of debt and in the financial position to be one of the strongest economies in the world.
The coalition has always been to the right of centre. Labor has always been to the left of centre.
What is very interesting is that to wrest power from Keating, Howard presented a small target but never pandered to the left in any way. In fact he based his election strategy on distancing himself from Keating in every way possible. Labor, in all areas has had to move to the right to take power from the conservatives. Rudd had to become basically a carbon-copy of Howard for the electorate to allow the left back into power, despite the myriad of Howard-haters. I note that the two latest announcements by federal Labor is that they have managed to get the states agree with Howard government policies (the $10b water plan and incentive pay for teachers) that they had ridiculed for being right-wing a year ago.
Never forget that it was Kevin07 who first got the public talking about (and approving of) the porn filter. Howard copied him on that issue. Unfortunately we'll now have to contact our ISPs to remove the by-default internet filter when it gets into place because of Rudd's take on the issue.
Still, when your left-leaning party is all for creating markets and promoting traditional family values you know you're in a good country. Now if they could drop all of the politically correct crap so our parliament was a fight between a left-leaning right-wing party and a right-leaning right-wing party I'd be happier still.
Don't worry, he will do a wonderful job of fixing the problems left by the Howard government. Problems such as increased real wages, increased average wealth, more equal wealth distribution and massively reduced unemployment.
He is also trying to fix the Gillard-knife-in-the-back problem by giving her so much work that she is crushed by the workload. For the sake of Australia let's hope that it works