"truly voluntary prostitution perhaps should be legitimate"
That's how it's been here for years. 20yrs ago I used to drive taxi's and got to meet quite a few pro's (and one transvestite) on their rounds, they are far from being drug fucked and desperate most of them are eminently sane people.
"If we look at places where it has been tried, and things have in fact gotten better for it, then I'm that much more open to the idea."
I've been to Amsterdam and the problem they have is the same as Sydney's Kings Cross, sex is being used as a tourist attraction. Here in Melbourne it's out in the open (billboard adverts) but there is no "red light" district.
Well said, but I think you screwed up the last bit. I can never prove I am not evil, therefore I kinda like Rumpole's "assumption of innocence" idea - that way it's the inquisitor's evidence that must stand up.
"So society has decided there are a few things you just can't sell"
"Society" has done no such thing. It's called the "oldest proffesion" for a reason.
"But if you are going to legalize prostitution, how are you going to keep 'survival sex' illegal?"
Survival sex dramatically declines when prostiution is legalised, at least it did down here in Melbourne Australia where the average pro makes a hell of a lot more than the average Joe. Sure you still have unregistered drug addicts selling sex on the streets because they can't pass the health tests but that's a drug problem not a prostitution problem.
"I sleep fine at night, I think I'll survive knowing some 'too busy dirty asshole' didn't get to buy sex."
Do you think you will survive knowing someone DID get to buy sex?
Chrichton wrote great anti-science fiction and was entitled to his opinion. What I find unbelivable is that certain US senators cannot tell the difference between science and fiction, so much so that Chrichton was introduced to a senate commitee as a climate expert.
An ATM is completely different to a voting machine. With an ATM one vested interest (the bank) controls the entire money counting system, do you want one vested interest in an election to control the entire vote counting system?
I am not from the US but it is clear to most people outside the US that what you currently have is reverse socialisim (ie: corporate welfare for the top 5% has sucked the life out of the economy and the other 95%). Obama is not a socialist, the Democrats are what the rest of the world would call center-left, ie: fiscally conservative, socially liberal. Simply stated, what they are proposing is to give the middle class back the taxes the top 5% were given under Bush (IMHO this more than anything else is the reason to vote D). The fact that Obama is a moderate is a GoodThing(TM), his ability to "inspire" the general population is something we don't see that often in West nowadays, history clearly shows that a pied-piper with the ability to inspire the masses will often march them straight to hell.
I am not a socialist myself, nor do I belive the "trickle down" bullshit the right has pushed for...well forever really. Personally I think the vast majority of people will work hard if given the opportunity. That opportunity evaporates when the wealthy start writing their own laws to a point where they no longer trust each other (re: credit crunch), and to be fair to the rich, opportunity also dissapears under the weight of regulations that unioinists/socialist push in a futile attempt to make life "fair" (re: Cuba). In fact it's seems to me that opportunity dies whenever one (relatively small) group is more powerfull than the rest regardless of what that one group belives (IMHO this more than anything is a reason to vote R).
Personally I'm interested in ideas more than the ideologies they come from, I've been in the workforce for 35yrs, I started married life in what you would call a "trailer park" but for the last 15-20yrs I have been in Australia's top 5% and now live in a very nice house just a stones throw from the beach. I use my brain now instead of the muscles I had 30yrs ago labouring, there's nothing particularly special about my brain just that it has been trained for well paid "work" (obviously not spelling). As for taxes I firmly belive that when one is enriched by the society they live in one has a duty to pay some of it back. Working hard and getting ahead should not lead someone to forget where they came from, all too often it does.
Ok you have surprised me by getting (A) more or less correct, however I'm not sure why you don't accept the explaination. As to some of your other questions...
"Why retreating ice on *GREEN*land should be any concern?"
Nobody expects Greenland's 3 mile deep ice cap to dissapear this century. However at it's current rate it will melt in a couple of centuries and raise the sea level a few meters. I agree that this is not something that will happen in our lifetimes and so does the IPCC, but over the next few decades the rate of melting will affect places like Bangladesh where most of the country is less than a meter above sea level (in some places the ocean has already moved up to 5km further inland causing people to constantly relocate villages). The vast number of refugees this will create will move out of the lowland and head for India causing political instability.
"Why 0.0001% change in atmospheric gases should affect climate more than 0.1% change in solar output?"
First of all the effect of CO2 is not linear, the absorption rate of IR radiation by CO2 has been known for over a century. I also think your figures are wrong - a hell of a lot of research went into creating this graph that shows all the major forcings on the Earth's atmosphere. Note the large error bars and also the fact that areosols (soot, ect) have a large cooling effect that masks about half of the effect of CO2.
"First, nothing significant will happend w.r.t. CO2 emmissions anyway, besides taxes. Be realistic, I do not see world abandoning fossil fuels, that simply will not happen."
The planet will have a global cap and trade system by 2012, the only nation that is seriously standing in the way is the US and both presidential hopefulls say they will implement a cap and trade system. Nobody expects FF to go away, what they are aiming at is reducing emmisions over a 40-50yr period (roughly the life span of a coal plant). Simalar global treaties have been successfull implemented for CFC's, lead in petrol, atmospheric nuclear testing, and a few other exotic air borne chemicals. Even the "pea-soup" fogs in the UK during the 50's were succesfully cleaned up (only to reappear in China half a century later)
"Second, I think that in 20 years horizont we will see what is true and what is not."
I don't think you need to wait that long, the Artic ice cap is half the size it was in the 80's and much, much thinner. Here in Australia it is also recognised as "the straw that broke the camels back" of the Murry Darling river system. The water has been mismanaged (as it has in California) but the worst drought in Australia's history is still continuing to cut our harvest by 50% over what it used to be before the mid-nineties and many scientists are saying our local climate has changed permenently to a dry conditions. Our storm patterns have shifted ever so subtly and a 10% drop in rainfall translates to 30% less water in our dams and rivers (this is because the dry ground soaks up the rain and reduces run-off). Australia was the 4th largest exporter of grain, famine is the real danger with CO2, not wet feet. This hasn't happened overnight, it has been happening for nearly 50yrs. Over the entire contienent the average rainfall has not changed but the north has more rain and the south has less, pity that most of the ground suitable for crops is in the south and SE where the now dry rivers have been depositing silt for millenia.
"In fact, my only concern w.r.t. to AGW is that people will not do something utterly stupid to "stop warming"..."
Yeah, there are some stupid mega-engineering proposals, thankfully I don't see anyone lining up to pay for them. As for a warmer (tropical) world being an overall benifit, this may be true but the problem is not so much the change to 'tropical' as the rate o
You really have no idea that on the subject of AGW you are the gullible fool. For example how does this sound; "How convienient that nobody paid much attention to Maxwell's equations for over 80yrs", moronic right? Also why is it that EVERY national science body on the planet gets this "grant money" for saying the same thing? Who is paying for all this? - Who is steering this vast army of rubber-stamp scientists and why do they only rubber stamp AGW? Surely there's more money in rubber stamping research that proves (say) tabacoo is harmless? Do greenies suddenly have more money than FF corporations - where are the Greenies hiding this vast treasure and why aren't they taxed on it?
And please don't insult the intelligence of your audience by claiming you're a skeptic, you have no idea what the word means. However if I am wrong about the "skeptic" thing then you will have had time for introspection on your own assertions and will be able to tell us...
(A) The counter argument to the 1998 thing.
(B) The flaw in that counter argument.
So do you have an answer - seriously I want to know? I will settle for an answer to (A) only, (B) would earn you quite a bit of kudos (and grant money) in the math world.
In case you are still not sure what I'm driving at I will spell it out. Have you ever questioned your assumptions? - I mean an assumption is something that when changed can change a very strongly held belief and unlock a door into a whole new world. eg: Eienstien questioned the assumption that time was constant.
This is not to say all assumptions are wrong but if you want to learn anything then the ones you own need constant testing. For instance I have assumed in my post you are suffering from cognitive-dissonance or you are just incurious in a Palin kinda way. Let me know if it's something else - eg: perhaps you are deliberately anti-science on philosophical/political grounds.
Yeah, NASA keeps all that contrary data locked up in a vault, it's the same one they use to house the alien bodies from the area 51 crash and ET's phone from the 80's.
Can someone explain how the GP's ignorance could possibly be considered insightful? Or at least tell me how such mind-boggling ignorance is different to that displayed by creationists and flat-earthers.
"Gaia-worship"
"Gaia" is sometimes seen as a god by the fanatics on both sides of the pro/anti environment 'wedge'. However the word/concept is a synonym for "biosphere" and was coined by "the father of Earth Science" James Lovelock. It posits that the biosphere can be considered as a single organisim (ie: a unique organic system fed by energy from the Sun), it has absolutely nothing to do with projecting human/spiritual qualities onto said organic system.
Canada sounds similar to Australia, both run their elections via a central statatory body and the people staffing it actually do understand the process and the importance of simplicity and transparancy. If I'm not mistaken there are at least 50 different bodies in the US running the national elections?
"People should ask for a personal refunds from the morons who devised this scheme"
IaaA and yes this is a complete waste since there is already an ISP sponsered option for filters and everyone knows this mandatory crap will get nowhere. KRuddy is pandering to this guy who (under certain circumstances) holds the balance of power in the senate, this dick sells his vote to whoever will "do something about the internet" - so KRuddy is doing "something" in order to gain Fielding's support to get certain more serious legislation passed through the senate. KRudy and Conroy are doing their best to weaken Fielding via "Conroy's" plan. The ISP's are already foaming at the mouth so I would say it seems to be working and come next election the senator may get booted out and the FF party may just find themselves in a political desert, it's just like the simarly rediculous "One Nation" party - it's highly likely many of their supporters are the same nuts under a different flag.
The mandatory thing will come to naught (as it has done every other time for the last 10-15yrs), the money is being wasted and will continue to be wasted by both major parties in an effort to appease and curry favour from a pro-censorship minority that, no matter how irksome, do have a right to be heard (now that's irony!).
If he has a good health plan he should be able to boil it down into a simple to digest benifit, the GP couldn't be bothered with the PDF and neither will 99.9% of voters. Obama boils his tax plan down to "95% will get a cut" / "You won't pay a cent more unless you earn above $X", why can't he do the same with his health plan? - perhaps it's not as well formulated?
As a 50-ish Aussie observer, Obama looks like a clear winner and I agree with Matt Damon's youtube clip on Palin, McCain is a decent man, but is so far out of touch with anything I can relate to that he seems like a cartoon of Uncle Scrooge. FWIW I think that's pretty much a universal opinion in Oz, OTOH the fervor of the Obama followers makes some people nervous.
One thing that strikes me is the stuff happening in the US now is very similar to Australia in the mid-seventies at the tail end of the Vietnam war, we had our first real left-wing govt since before WW2, they campainged on "change", their slogan was "time for change" (had a 'groovy' jingle to the B&W ad), it was the first election where I was old enough to be interested. They cocked-up things when their leader became stupidly stubborn, was forced into an early election, and then fought that election on the legal details of WTF was "wrong" with the early election decision (google double dissolution).
However they got UHC right, and since then Aussie politics has been closer to Europe than the US, ie: fiscally conservative, socially liberal. I also belive Howard was trounced in the last election because of his Bush butt kissing (as happened to Blair), ie: I think Australia went too close to the neo-cons under Howard (google David Hicks, dickhead yes but that still doesn't justify political prisoners).
I think Obama will hand the ticking UHC bomb to Hilary, IIRC it's been her pet project for decades, Without claiming the Aussie system is THE answer, it's certainly cheaper and has better outcomes than the current US systems, I invite slashdotter's to look for themselves (google with site:gov.au for official sites), or just read some of my other comments in the election stories.
Absolutely, a good doctor deserves to be a "highly paid proffesional", it must be such that it's dammed hard to obtain and keep that license and those that have it hanging on the wall must be handsomly rewarded, OTOH in my books (discounting semi-retirement) a doctor who has more golf games than patients is no longer a practicing doctor, he's now a "bussines-man". The bussines-man doctor is catered for in Australia, you can own a hospital and charge what you want, patients can get private cover for all sorts of things they WANT (even crap like acupunture can be privately covered). Now in return for the societal privlage of operating a hospital/clinic you have certain duties to the public, in effect the govt is an enforced partner who will assist you with purchasing equipment but will direct a certain percentage of patients to you to get what they NEED (for example most patients don't NEED a private room, but may need a barium meal and an xray, a xyz scan, a **oscopy, or any number of other semi-specialised treatments).
One area our system does seem to lack in imagination is in attracting doctors to "large" (by Aussie standards) country towns and if I'm not mistaken the US suffers from the problem. However on the whole I belive our system is cheaper to the taxpayer, more effective to the patient, ecourages preventative programs to reduce long term costs, and above all more humane than the US system. I encourage you to check it out and make up your own mind.
Oh, one more thing - quite a chunk of the health related taxes you guys pay is the FDA, the FDA basicalliy do the testing for most of the planet (some nations sort of pretend to have their own tests). If you were smart you would hand resposibility (ie: funding) over to the UN and contract your current experts back to the UN to do the work.
Q6 is the only answer I watched (the site is currently a bit slow, so transcripts would help more than just the deaf). Anyway I agree wholeheartedly with your post, neither of them answered anything except the "What will you do to ensure...that my vote will be counted in this election.." To summarise their answers, McCain - "Get myself elected and keep Obama out of the whitehouse"; Obama - "Build statewide registration databases".
As I said the audio was a bit jumpy but I'm old and patient. I do not recall hearing either candidate utter any of the following words/phrases: electronic, machines, accuracy, electrol collage, paper, verifiable, third party, recount, debate...BUT...the "smoking gun" that proves beyond a shadow of doubt that they have absolutely no respect for our question - neither of them even attempted a Jedi handwave...
"Not even the government can save you from death."
I'm 50, I have lived under a US style system, I heard the same illogical arguments in the 70's-80's here in Australia, it's communisim, they want my money, it will bankrupt the government,blah,blah,blah. During the 80's "the government" saved my asthmatic child's life several times.
Also as a 50yr old I know your attitude to cancer will change with age, if it's incurable yes you will die as quite a few of my friends/relatives have. Life has it's ups and downs and were all walking dead, personally I don't want the random contents of my wallet to determine if I die in comfort or in the gutter.
As for "earning a living", I raised two kids and simultaneously went from "trailer trash" to well paid proffesional. From a purely "economic rationalist view" (ie US style free market) - I have a house close to the beach of which I owe roughly 2/3 of it's value to the bank, it would do me no good to see the houses around me being abandoned, doesn't matter if it's wall street or medical costs. In otherwords when my neighboor gets hit in the head by one of the turds that life throws his way, it does me no good to let him suffer.
Rather than whinge about my own personlly high levey (in $ terms), I am proud that I provide world class health care to ~6 of my fellow countrymen, just as someone else did for me when I found myself in a caravan with a screaming wife and kid all those years ago.
Of course it's your money, I am just offering a perspective from someone who has seen his fair share of horrific cancers and both types of systems. No Aussie would say our system is perfect, far from it, but according to every poll for the last couple of decades 80+% of the population want politicians to either leave UHC alone or extend it to dentistry.
I'm an Aussie and looking at the way the US government have handled other issues lately I can understand your concern. UHC should be sponsered by the govt, not run by government (or private insurance), it should be run by health proffesionals for the benifit of patients. Some comparisons...
To pay for our UHC, Aussie taxpayers have a 1.5% levy on their taxable income, in the US there are a miriad of state and federal schemes that cost the average US taxpayer around 2-2.5% of taxable income. This is a very important point, you pay MORE to the goverenment for the privalage of not having universal cover and that's BEFORE you pay for private cover.
The US has ~40 million people not covered by anything. In Australia everyone is covered, nobody has to face the choice between health care and bankruptcy, that's right NOBODY not even a "minority".
Australia is placed in the top 10 for health outcomes, the US is around 30th (ie: near the bottom of the 'developed' countries list).
As for paperwork, I don't have any - I simply walk into a surgery, show my card and wait to see the doctor. There are rarely more than a couple of people in a doctors surgery and it's unusual to wait more than half an hour or so. I recently went to the UK and took ill, to my surprise I also recieved "free" medical care in the UK because the two governments have an arrangement to look after each other citizens. The only paperwork involved in that episode was my passport.
From an outsiders perspective your health system was trully the envy of the world 40yrs ago but now "the most expensive health system in the world" is also widely seen as dysfunctional. It will not change one bit until your politicians see the problem of health care as a bipartisan issue that needs to be managed by proffesionals rather than used as an ideological club to bash each other over the head.
Elections are held on a Saturday and normally the loser concedes during the Sunday morning breakfast shows, not a bad effort when you consider the logistics involved. It is however possible for recounts in a "knife edge" seat to go on for weeks (as one did recently) but this rarely (if ever?) affects the winners ability to form government. That senario btw is what happened in the US with the hanging chads, personally I think the fact it went to the supreme court was a GoodThing(TM), but the fact they picked a winner rather than order fresh elections was disapointing.
As for "failing to vote" fines, I very much doubt they are the reason we get 90+% participation. As anecdotal evidence I recieved my first fine in error back in the early 80's. I rang the "pay by credit card" number and started explaining the error, the guy on the other end cut me off and said: "Just ignore it mate, everybody else does".
IMHO the explaination for the acceptance of compulsory voting is that most Aussie's see compulsory voting in the same way they see compulsory education/vaccination. In fact I'd go as far as saying the vast majority of Aussies consider people who deliberately don't vote as lazy and/or stupid.
I belive the AEC are counting what are known as donkey votes, from the same site the summary in their report on electronic counting after studying it during the last US elections and elsewhere is quoted below...
"Electronic voting has received significant recent media coverage, and, with the Internet becoming more pervasive, the topic will continue to receive much attention. It must be recognised that a lot of the hype being generated is by the vendors of electronic voting systems.
There are currently a range of issues associated with the introduction of electronic voting and vote counting. Each of these needs to be identified and strategies put in place to resolve them.
The possible starting points within Australia, recommended in this report, have significant business cases for providing alternative technical options to voters in order to strengthen the democratic process.
This paper does not suggest that Australian electoral authorities should at this stage embark on a program to fully replace the easily understood, publicly and politically accepted efficient, transparent paper ballot system that currently exists."
Translation for Aussies: "Tell Diebold they're dreaminn...". Further skimming of the report shows that electronic voting has been used as a successfull option in certain circumstances, such as assisting blind people to vote in secret.
Slashdot Mirror
"truly voluntary prostitution perhaps should be legitimate"
That's how it's been here for years. 20yrs ago I used to drive taxi's and got to meet quite a few pro's (and one transvestite) on their rounds, they are far from being drug fucked and desperate most of them are eminently sane people.
"If we look at places where it has been tried, and things have in fact gotten better for it, then I'm that much more open to the idea."
I've been to Amsterdam and the problem they have is the same as Sydney's Kings Cross, sex is being used as a tourist attraction. Here in Melbourne it's out in the open (billboard adverts) but there is no "red light" district.
...or underage. Legal is much better for society but society is still far from perfect.
Well said, but I think you screwed up the last bit. I can never prove I am not evil, therefore I kinda like Rumpole's "assumption of innocence" idea - that way it's the inquisitor's evidence that must stand up.
No I don't belive it was anything other than a ploy, perhaps I could have stated it more clearly than "What I find unbelivable...".
"So society has decided there are a few things you just can't sell"
"Society" has done no such thing. It's called the "oldest proffesion" for a reason.
"But if you are going to legalize prostitution, how are you going to keep 'survival sex' illegal?"
Survival sex dramatically declines when prostiution is legalised, at least it did down here in Melbourne Australia where the average pro makes a hell of a lot more than the average Joe. Sure you still have unregistered drug addicts selling sex on the streets because they can't pass the health tests but that's a drug problem not a prostitution problem.
"I sleep fine at night, I think I'll survive knowing some 'too busy dirty asshole' didn't get to buy sex."
Do you think you will survive knowing someone DID get to buy sex?
Chrichton wrote great anti-science fiction and was entitled to his opinion. What I find unbelivable is that certain US senators cannot tell the difference between science and fiction, so much so that Chrichton was introduced to a senate commitee as a climate expert.
An ATM is completely different to a voting machine. With an ATM one vested interest (the bank) controls the entire money counting system, do you want one vested interest in an election to control the entire vote counting system?
"I don't support the philosophy of socialism"
I am not from the US but it is clear to most people outside the US that what you currently have is reverse socialisim (ie: corporate welfare for the top 5% has sucked the life out of the economy and the other 95%). Obama is not a socialist, the Democrats are what the rest of the world would call center-left, ie: fiscally conservative, socially liberal. Simply stated, what they are proposing is to give the middle class back the taxes the top 5% were given under Bush (IMHO this more than anything else is the reason to vote D). The fact that Obama is a moderate is a GoodThing(TM), his ability to "inspire" the general population is something we don't see that often in West nowadays, history clearly shows that a pied-piper with the ability to inspire the masses will often march them straight to hell.
I am not a socialist myself, nor do I belive the "trickle down" bullshit the right has pushed for...well forever really. Personally I think the vast majority of people will work hard if given the opportunity. That opportunity evaporates when the wealthy start writing their own laws to a point where they no longer trust each other (re: credit crunch), and to be fair to the rich, opportunity also dissapears under the weight of regulations that unioinists/socialist push in a futile attempt to make life "fair" (re: Cuba). In fact it's seems to me that opportunity dies whenever one (relatively small) group is more powerfull than the rest regardless of what that one group belives (IMHO this more than anything is a reason to vote R).
Personally I'm interested in ideas more than the ideologies they come from, I've been in the workforce for 35yrs, I started married life in what you would call a "trailer park" but for the last 15-20yrs I have been in Australia's top 5% and now live in a very nice house just a stones throw from the beach. I use my brain now instead of the muscles I had 30yrs ago labouring, there's nothing particularly special about my brain just that it has been trained for well paid "work" (obviously not spelling). As for taxes I firmly belive that when one is enriched by the society they live in one has a duty to pay some of it back. Working hard and getting ahead should not lead someone to forget where they came from, all too often it does.
Ok you have surprised me by getting (A) more or less correct, however I'm not sure why you don't accept the explaination. As to some of your other questions...
"Why retreating ice on *GREEN*land should be any concern?"
Nobody expects Greenland's 3 mile deep ice cap to dissapear this century. However at it's current rate it will melt in a couple of centuries and raise the sea level a few meters. I agree that this is not something that will happen in our lifetimes and so does the IPCC, but over the next few decades the rate of melting will affect places like Bangladesh where most of the country is less than a meter above sea level (in some places the ocean has already moved up to 5km further inland causing people to constantly relocate villages). The vast number of refugees this will create will move out of the lowland and head for India causing political instability.
"Why 0.0001% change in atmospheric gases should affect climate more than 0.1% change in solar output?"
First of all the effect of CO2 is not linear, the absorption rate of IR radiation by CO2 has been known for over a century. I also think your figures are wrong - a hell of a lot of research went into creating this graph that shows all the major forcings on the Earth's atmosphere. Note the large error bars and also the fact that areosols (soot, ect) have a large cooling effect that masks about half of the effect of CO2.
"First, nothing significant will happend w.r.t. CO2 emmissions anyway, besides taxes. Be realistic, I do not see world abandoning fossil fuels, that simply will not happen."
The planet will have a global cap and trade system by 2012, the only nation that is seriously standing in the way is the US and both presidential hopefulls say they will implement a cap and trade system. Nobody expects FF to go away, what they are aiming at is reducing emmisions over a 40-50yr period (roughly the life span of a coal plant). Simalar global treaties have been successfull implemented for CFC's, lead in petrol, atmospheric nuclear testing, and a few other exotic air borne chemicals. Even the "pea-soup" fogs in the UK during the 50's were succesfully cleaned up (only to reappear in China half a century later)
"Second, I think that in 20 years horizont we will see what is true and what is not."
I don't think you need to wait that long, the Artic ice cap is half the size it was in the 80's and much, much thinner. Here in Australia it is also recognised as "the straw that broke the camels back" of the Murry Darling river system. The water has been mismanaged (as it has in California) but the worst drought in Australia's history is still continuing to cut our harvest by 50% over what it used to be before the mid-nineties and many scientists are saying our local climate has changed permenently to a dry conditions. Our storm patterns have shifted ever so subtly and a 10% drop in rainfall translates to 30% less water in our dams and rivers (this is because the dry ground soaks up the rain and reduces run-off). Australia was the 4th largest exporter of grain, famine is the real danger with CO2, not wet feet. This hasn't happened overnight, it has been happening for nearly 50yrs. Over the entire contienent the average rainfall has not changed but the north has more rain and the south has less, pity that most of the ground suitable for crops is in the south and SE where the now dry rivers have been depositing silt for millenia.
"In fact, my only concern w.r.t. to AGW is that people will not do something utterly stupid to "stop warming"..."
Yeah, there are some stupid mega-engineering proposals, thankfully I don't see anyone lining up to pay for them. As for a warmer (tropical) world being an overall benifit, this may be true but the problem is not so much the change to 'tropical' as the rate o
Can you post the sax solo that comes after the colored girls, I love that bit.
You really have no idea that on the subject of AGW you are the gullible fool. For example how does this sound; "How convienient that nobody paid much attention to Maxwell's equations for over 80yrs", moronic right? Also why is it that EVERY national science body on the planet gets this "grant money" for saying the same thing? Who is paying for all this? - Who is steering this vast army of rubber-stamp scientists and why do they only rubber stamp AGW? Surely there's more money in rubber stamping research that proves (say) tabacoo is harmless? Do greenies suddenly have more money than FF corporations - where are the Greenies hiding this vast treasure and why aren't they taxed on it?
And please don't insult the intelligence of your audience by claiming you're a skeptic, you have no idea what the word means. However if I am wrong about the "skeptic" thing then you will have had time for introspection on your own assertions and will be able to tell us...
(A) The counter argument to the 1998 thing.
(B) The flaw in that counter argument.
So do you have an answer - seriously I want to know? I will settle for an answer to (A) only, (B) would earn you quite a bit of kudos (and grant money) in the math world.
In case you are still not sure what I'm driving at I will spell it out. Have you ever questioned your assumptions? - I mean an assumption is something that when changed can change a very strongly held belief and unlock a door into a whole new world. eg: Eienstien questioned the assumption that time was constant.
This is not to say all assumptions are wrong but if you want to learn anything then the ones you own need constant testing. For instance I have assumed in my post you are suffering from cognitive-dissonance or you are just incurious in a Palin kinda way. Let me know if it's something else - eg: perhaps you are deliberately anti-science on philosophical/political grounds.
Yeah, NASA keeps all that contrary data locked up in a vault, it's the same one they use to house the alien bodies from the area 51 crash and ET's phone from the 80's.
"Duh, it's SOLAR OUTPUT that determines temps."
Can someone explain how the GP's ignorance could possibly be considered insightful? Or at least tell me how such mind-boggling ignorance is different to that displayed by creationists and flat-earthers.
"Gaia-worship"
"Gaia" is sometimes seen as a god by the fanatics on both sides of the pro/anti environment 'wedge'. However the word/concept is a synonym for "biosphere" and was coined by "the father of Earth Science" James Lovelock. It posits that the biosphere can be considered as a single organisim (ie: a unique organic system fed by energy from the Sun), it has absolutely nothing to do with projecting human/spiritual qualities onto said organic system.
Baseball? - Like the "3 strikes and you're out" thing is the foundation of the judicial system. /ducks.
Canada sounds similar to Australia, both run their elections via a central statatory body and the people staffing it actually do understand the process and the importance of simplicity and transparancy. If I'm not mistaken there are at least 50 different bodies in the US running the national elections?
IANAMB but the "walking molecule" can been seen in this awe inspiring animation.
"People should ask for a personal refunds from the morons who devised this scheme"
IaaA and yes this is a complete waste since there is already an ISP sponsered option for filters and everyone knows this mandatory crap will get nowhere. KRuddy is pandering to this guy who (under certain circumstances) holds the balance of power in the senate, this dick sells his vote to whoever will "do something about the internet" - so KRuddy is doing "something" in order to gain Fielding's support to get certain more serious legislation passed through the senate. KRudy and Conroy are doing their best to weaken Fielding via "Conroy's" plan. The ISP's are already foaming at the mouth so I would say it seems to be working and come next election the senator may get booted out and the FF party may just find themselves in a political desert, it's just like the simarly rediculous "One Nation" party - it's highly likely many of their supporters are the same nuts under a different flag.
The mandatory thing will come to naught (as it has done every other time for the last 10-15yrs), the money is being wasted and will continue to be wasted by both major parties in an effort to appease and curry favour from a pro-censorship minority that, no matter how irksome, do have a right to be heard (now that's irony!).
If he has a good health plan he should be able to boil it down into a simple to digest benifit, the GP couldn't be bothered with the PDF and neither will 99.9% of voters. Obama boils his tax plan down to "95% will get a cut" / "You won't pay a cent more unless you earn above $X", why can't he do the same with his health plan? - perhaps it's not as well formulated?
As a 50-ish Aussie observer, Obama looks like a clear winner and I agree with Matt Damon's youtube clip on Palin, McCain is a decent man, but is so far out of touch with anything I can relate to that he seems like a cartoon of Uncle Scrooge. FWIW I think that's pretty much a universal opinion in Oz, OTOH the fervor of the Obama followers makes some people nervous.
One thing that strikes me is the stuff happening in the US now is very similar to Australia in the mid-seventies at the tail end of the Vietnam war, we had our first real left-wing govt since before WW2, they campainged on "change", their slogan was "time for change" (had a 'groovy' jingle to the B&W ad), it was the first election where I was old enough to be interested. They cocked-up things when their leader became stupidly stubborn, was forced into an early election, and then fought that election on the legal details of WTF was "wrong" with the early election decision (google double dissolution).
However they got UHC right, and since then Aussie politics has been closer to Europe than the US, ie: fiscally conservative, socially liberal. I also belive Howard was trounced in the last election because of his Bush butt kissing (as happened to Blair), ie: I think Australia went too close to the neo-cons under Howard (google David Hicks, dickhead yes but that still doesn't justify political prisoners).
I think Obama will hand the ticking UHC bomb to Hilary, IIRC it's been her pet project for decades, Without claiming the Aussie system is THE answer, it's certainly cheaper and has better outcomes than the current US systems, I invite slashdotter's to look for themselves (google with site:gov.au for official sites), or just read some of my other comments in the election stories.
"salaries of doctors"
Absolutely, a good doctor deserves to be a "highly paid proffesional", it must be such that it's dammed hard to obtain and keep that license and those that have it hanging on the wall must be handsomly rewarded, OTOH in my books (discounting semi-retirement) a doctor who has more golf games than patients is no longer a practicing doctor, he's now a "bussines-man". The bussines-man doctor is catered for in Australia, you can own a hospital and charge what you want, patients can get private cover for all sorts of things they WANT (even crap like acupunture can be privately covered). Now in return for the societal privlage of operating a hospital/clinic you have certain duties to the public, in effect the govt is an enforced partner who will assist you with purchasing equipment but will direct a certain percentage of patients to you to get what they NEED (for example most patients don't NEED a private room, but may need a barium meal and an xray, a xyz scan, a **oscopy, or any number of other semi-specialised treatments).
One area our system does seem to lack in imagination is in attracting doctors to "large" (by Aussie standards) country towns and if I'm not mistaken the US suffers from the problem. However on the whole I belive our system is cheaper to the taxpayer, more effective to the patient, ecourages preventative programs to reduce long term costs, and above all more humane than the US system. I encourage you to check it out and make up your own mind.
Oh, one more thing - quite a chunk of the health related taxes you guys pay is the FDA, the FDA basicalliy do the testing for most of the planet (some nations sort of pretend to have their own tests). If you were smart you would hand resposibility (ie: funding) over to the UN and contract your current experts back to the UN to do the work.
Q6 is the only answer I watched (the site is currently a bit slow, so transcripts would help more than just the deaf). Anyway I agree wholeheartedly with your post, neither of them answered anything except the "What will you do to ensure...that my vote will be counted in this election.." To summarise their answers, McCain - "Get myself elected and keep Obama out of the whitehouse"; Obama - "Build statewide registration databases".
As I said the audio was a bit jumpy but I'm old and patient. I do not recall hearing either candidate utter any of the following words/phrases: electronic, machines, accuracy, electrol collage, paper, verifiable, third party, recount, debate...BUT...the "smoking gun" that proves beyond a shadow of doubt that they have absolutely no respect for our question - neither of them even attempted a Jedi handwave...
"Not even the government can save you from death."
I'm 50, I have lived under a US style system, I heard the same illogical arguments in the 70's-80's here in Australia, it's communisim, they want my money, it will bankrupt the government,blah,blah,blah. During the 80's "the government" saved my asthmatic child's life several times.
Also as a 50yr old I know your attitude to cancer will change with age, if it's incurable yes you will die as quite a few of my friends/relatives have. Life has it's ups and downs and were all walking dead, personally I don't want the random contents of my wallet to determine if I die in comfort or in the gutter.
As for "earning a living", I raised two kids and simultaneously went from "trailer trash" to well paid proffesional. From a purely "economic rationalist view" (ie US style free market) - I have a house close to the beach of which I owe roughly 2/3 of it's value to the bank, it would do me no good to see the houses around me being abandoned, doesn't matter if it's wall street or medical costs. In otherwords when my neighboor gets hit in the head by one of the turds that life throws his way, it does me no good to let him suffer.
Rather than whinge about my own personlly high levey (in $ terms), I am proud that I provide world class health care to ~6 of my fellow countrymen, just as someone else did for me when I found myself in a caravan with a screaming wife and kid all those years ago.
Of course it's your money, I am just offering a perspective from someone who has seen his fair share of horrific cancers and both types of systems. No Aussie would say our system is perfect, far from it, but according to every poll for the last couple of decades 80+% of the population want politicians to either leave UHC alone or extend it to dentistry.
Of course it does and AFAIK you can give to charity until your income tax hits zero or less. I wonder why libertarians don't already do this?
I'm an Aussie and looking at the way the US government have handled other issues lately I can understand your concern. UHC should be sponsered by the govt, not run by government (or private insurance), it should be run by health proffesionals for the benifit of patients. Some comparisons...
To pay for our UHC, Aussie taxpayers have a 1.5% levy on their taxable income, in the US there are a miriad of state and federal schemes that cost the average US taxpayer around 2-2.5% of taxable income. This is a very important point, you pay MORE to the goverenment for the privalage of not having universal cover and that's BEFORE you pay for private cover.
The US has ~40 million people not covered by anything. In Australia everyone is covered, nobody has to face the choice between health care and bankruptcy, that's right NOBODY not even a "minority".
Australia is placed in the top 10 for health outcomes, the US is around 30th (ie: near the bottom of the 'developed' countries list).
As for paperwork, I don't have any - I simply walk into a surgery, show my card and wait to see the doctor. There are rarely more than a couple of people in a doctors surgery and it's unusual to wait more than half an hour or so. I recently went to the UK and took ill, to my surprise I also recieved "free" medical care in the UK because the two governments have an arrangement to look after each other citizens. The only paperwork involved in that episode was my passport.
From an outsiders perspective your health system was trully the envy of the world 40yrs ago but now "the most expensive health system in the world" is also widely seen as dysfunctional. It will not change one bit until your politicians see the problem of health care as a bipartisan issue that needs to be managed by proffesionals rather than used as an ideological club to bash each other over the head.
"would greatly accellerate the counting process"
Elections are held on a Saturday and normally the loser concedes during the Sunday morning breakfast shows, not a bad effort when you consider the logistics involved. It is however possible for recounts in a "knife edge" seat to go on for weeks (as one did recently) but this rarely (if ever?) affects the winners ability to form government. That senario btw is what happened in the US with the hanging chads, personally I think the fact it went to the supreme court was a GoodThing(TM), but the fact they picked a winner rather than order fresh elections was disapointing.
As for "failing to vote" fines, I very much doubt they are the reason we get 90+% participation. As anecdotal evidence I recieved my first fine in error back in the early 80's. I rang the "pay by credit card" number and started explaining the error, the guy on the other end cut me off and said: "Just ignore it mate, everybody else does".
IMHO the explaination for the acceptance of compulsory voting is that most Aussie's see compulsory voting in the same way they see compulsory education/vaccination. In fact I'd go as far as saying the vast majority of Aussies consider people who deliberately don't vote as lazy and/or stupid.
I belive the AEC are counting what are known as donkey votes, from the same site the summary in their report on electronic counting after studying it during the last US elections and elsewhere is quoted below...
"Electronic voting has received significant recent media coverage, and, with the Internet becoming more pervasive, the topic will continue to receive much attention. It must be recognised that a lot of the hype being generated is by the vendors of electronic voting systems.
There are currently a range of issues associated with the introduction of electronic voting and vote counting. Each of these needs to be identified and strategies put in place to resolve them.
The possible starting points within Australia, recommended in this report, have significant business cases for providing alternative technical options to voters in order to strengthen the democratic process.
This paper does not suggest that Australian electoral authorities should at this stage embark on a program to fully replace the easily understood, publicly and politically accepted efficient, transparent paper ballot system that currently exists."
Translation for Aussies: "Tell Diebold they're dreaminn...". Further skimming of the report shows that electronic voting has been used as a successfull option in certain circumstances, such as assisting blind people to vote in secret.