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Wood chests in the day would've been common. Wood chests adorned with a bit of gold probably existed in every ruling household/palace or residence of the upper classes throughout the whole Middle East and surrounding regions. If the Egyptians in Moses' time didn't know anything about it, and of all the historical writings etc the only references to it are found in the Bible, then could it be possible that, like a number of other biblical stories, the biblical story of the Ark of the Covenant isn't completely accurate or never really happened? Silly me....what on earth am I saying? I'll go and wash my mouth out straight away!

Well I probably should've said minor variations don't always matter. Sure they do sometimes, depending on what you're building. Still, the Egyptians' ability to do these things was not perfect, though admittedly quite phenomenal, but........so what?

I think there's a bit of difference between the perception of the "perfection" of pyramid construction and the reality. Great Pyramid of Giza Is Slightly Lopsided No-one disputes the Egyptians had impressive technical skills for the day. But could they manage it with more precision than in the modern day? Probably not. Do minor variations in civil construction precision matter in the modern day? Not really.

It would be fair to say whoever dropped it in your letterbox is probably overdue for a mental health assessment......

Actually many of them could. Pretty much. No I don't think so. Just that many are inspired by tough talk.....even if it's bs.

I don't think there's much debate that certain events transcribed in the bible are based, whether accurately or slightly loosely, on historical facts, especially where they concern the geopolitical situation back in those days. However many other parts are certainly not. The big problem we have is when so many folk confuse what's based on historical recollections, what's metaphorical in nature, and what's fairly obviously just totally made up from ancient superstition etc.

This is a long-ish video but I personally find John Oliver pretty funny. He covers Hillary Clinton's scandals (and doesn't actually go easy on her, contrary to what some people will pre-conceive) including the "Swiss File Transfer" scandal......which he just made up to show that if you fabricate a scandal about Hillary Clinton, people will believe it. You can fast forward to 9:00 to hear him speak about the Clinton Foundation. He doesn't go easy on Clinton, but he gives some humorous perspective, including listing all the other Government officials who have bypassed Government email servers including Republicans Jeb Bush, Colin Powell, Chris Christie, Rick Perry, Bobby Jindal, Sarah Palin, Carl Rove etc (but they're Republicans, so we won't talk about their similar email transgressions). At about 11:30 he starts the comparison to Donald Trump, including the Trump Foundation and lets rip. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgETrS5qVpA

Just for your peace of mind, Marty. Harrison Ford being interviewed for Channel 10 by Angela Bishop last year when he was promoting Star Wars - The Force Awakens

Harrison Ford did NOT endorse Trump Photo of Harrison Ford holding a Trump sign - FAKE Photoshop is such a wonderful thing....... C'mon Phil. It took me literally 60 seconds to check this. Harrison Ford actually let fly on Donald Trump when he was visiting Australia a little while back. Ford is a lifelong Democrat and opposes almost everything Trump says he stands for. Clint Eastwood does endorse Trump but Clint Eastwood has always been a die-hard Republican supporter. He idolised George W Bush, Reagan, etc. What that says about Clint Eastwood's judgement - that's up to you to decide. The Clinton Foundation has been getting mud thrown at it by Republicans for almost as long, yet strangely has never been charged with any wrongdoing or fraud. Republicans have control of both houses of Congress, they have Governors in various states, Republican supporting law enforcement, but still no charges. I don't know whether the Clinton Foundation has committed fraud or not, but they've never been charged with anything. Maybe they just haven't actually done anything?

I remember the conversation (with a young earth creationist) well. It started like this: "You just need to look at the night sky and you're peering back millions of years in time." "Huh? How do you figure that?" "Because those stars are millions of light years distant and that light from them which you're seeing now has taken that long to arrive here." "Well obviously the speed of light is wrong." "It has been measured to within 1 m/s by a number of experiments and they all get the same results." "Well they must've done the experiment wrong, or they don't know the right distance." "That's actually experimentally estimated to a reasonable degree of accuracy too......enough to tell they're millions of years away." "Well those experiments must be wrong too." Yeah ok....not really much point in pursuing this any further, is there?

I don't understand biblical fundamentalists. It's like "if so much as one word of this isn't true my entire world will collapse around me, therefore it is all 100% accurate". Pretty sad way to live your life in my opinion.

Well this is the thing......for very many years the Church has promoted itself as this bastion of goodness where evil cannot flourish and will always be prevented from entering, or at least very quickly driven out. Except that it has been shown that this isn't necessarily true. Yes of course there are a majority of very good and well intended folk within it. But if you close your eyes and stick your fingers in your ears in the pretence that nothing bad can happen because you're all so faithful and looked after by the good Lord, well look what actually can happen!

Back onto religion.........I have no words for this: Colorado church didn’t report pastor’s child sex abuse because ‘biblical counseling’ would suffice It's not even the fact that he was pastor who sexually abused. That could happen in non-religious circles too. It's the Church's "solution" to it! Honestly....,what goes through these people's heads? Pray, read some bible stories, and she'll be apples?

I think SAs electricity is so expensive more due to privatisation and consequent monopoly ownership of the grid, and years of neglected infrastructure. If you seriously believe your electricity bills would drop by getting rid of solar and wind input, I reckon you'd be in for a rude shock.

If they just repealed the law John Howard introduced in the first place (and which he did without a referendum, plebiscite, survey, or even asking his neighbour Dorothy) the entire issue would go away so we could turn our attention to other issues, and presumably the 75% who don't give a toss would still not give a toss. Sounds like a win-win to me!

Funnily enough the moon's surface temperature can get up to 100 deg C in direct sunlight during the day because there is no atmosphere. Our atmosphere both reflects and absorbs some of the sun's energy directly, but on the moon 100% of it reaches the surface. Conversely it can get to -180 deg C at night, again due to the lack of atmosphere. The heat just radiates straight back out into space and there is no atmospheric "blanket" to trap it near the surface. So the "average" temperature is pretty chilly. Of course none of this supports his contention that a planetary atmosphere causes surface cooling! This is the same for all planetary bodies and moons. I don't even know how he can stand up and say this stuff. It's not embarrassing to not know the science because, yeah of course it can get pretty complicated. However it's embarrassing to tell everyone you know it when you obviously actually don't.

Not if, like some personal traits, sexuality is determined by more than one gene. Or a combination of factors. If it takes a combination of these genes to be "switched on" to cause homosexuality, then reproducing relatives will happily keep passing those genes onwards. Not to mention that homosexual people are usually capable of reproducing and sometimes (eg, the closet gay dad) they actually do this before realising they've just talked themselves into acting straight for years when they're really not.

She didn't see that many drug addicts, but many years ago when she worked in a pretty poor area she saw a few, and this was one of the bad examples of a kid who really needed to be brought up by different parents. I dunno mate. It's a pretty hard task, but I agree with both of you that not enough is done. It's not an easy solution though and we need to try something other than pure "enforcement", which hasn't worked anywhere in the world, ever in history.

Yes absolutely TP, I agree. Yet we now have 17 year old girl who has become a heroin addict because her step-dad injected her with heroin and it is not enough of a reason to have allowed her to have been adopted and brought up in a loving family which happens to be two guys, which would've prevented that happening? This religious mentality is like how the Jehovah's Witnesses treat a child who has been severely injured and lost a lot of blood, and needs an urgent blood transfusion. Doctors: "without a blood transfusion, your child will die". "Unfortunately our faith will not allow that". Child dies. Conundrum solved. Girl gets heroin addicted. Cory Bernadi would say "Thank God they didn't place her with a gay couple though - think of the damage that could've done!" It wasn't my intent to be patronising. I'm trying to show, using two real-life examples, the dilemma created by taking an idealistic stand on this issue. Idealistic treatment here is not going to help anyone. If you're a parent you're a parent, whether it's biological or not. My 45 year old sister was adopted as a baby and has never met her biological mother, nor has any desire to. My mother is her mother. Not her "mother" (inverted commas). TP we live in an age where so many kids get abused, mistreated, or poorly cared for in heterosexual families that for the children's sake, it makes no sense to disallow respectable, caring, fully employed gay folk to adopt them. All it does is take away yet another chance that these kids might live a decent life. There is no evidence that children brought up in these situations have any more problems adjusting to life than in your average heterosexual family. None at all. Mate, scabies is "inflicted". Heroin addiction is "inflicted". Being in the care of two kind and loving parents is not "inflicted", nor akin to psychological abuse.

Option A: Heterosexual parents with mum and dad are available to raise child. Both are heroin addicts and unemployed. Dad with history of domestic abuse. Both with long criminal history of drug abuse. Father has previously introduced a 17 year old girl to her first ever heroin shot. Option B: Homosexual parents with two guys are available to raise child. Both with impeccable character references, well liked in community. One employed in well paid professional job and the other also fully employed. Both willing to adjust work to share full time parenting. Desperately want kids. Solution? Put the child only with the mum and dad in option A? Put the child into string of foster homes? Anything but option B? Fact for the curious.........Mrs Dutch knows both of these situations. One (the drug users and the 17 year old daughter) she dealt with as a GP. The other (gay blokes with kid) are friends of hers. At some point, you just need to be thankful that there are two respectable people out there who are willing to do everything for this kid, which will ensure the child grows up in the best environment possible and ends up a happy, responsible adult.

Heck why don't they just say "parent 1" and "parent 2"? What does it matter what sex they are and who really cares?

I want to ask him on a public forum, with TV cameras rolling, how he explains the surface temperatures of the moon ......which has no atmosphere. Like, just for fun.

No, stuff him. If someone wants to crap on about important policy matters and has the ear of "the people", they should do their research properly, especially if they're actually a politician! The only problem with "Heaven and Earth" is that it was riddled with factual and scientific errors. This was the start of Plimer's downfall from having a reasonable scientific reputation. Plimer extended himself outside of his own area of expertise - which is mining geology. For one of many examples, and a particular whopper which gets dragged out by sceptics repeatedly, Plimer maintained that a single volcanic eruption (Pinatubo being his example) produces more CO2 than humans do annually. What do the actual earth scientists who study volcanic eruptions say? Terry Gerlach is the guy who led the study of the eruption of Pinatubo. He is a volcanic gas geochemist (bit different from a mining geologist) with the highly reputable US Geological Survey: My article “Volcanic Versus Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide” appeared in the June 14 issue of the American Geophysical Union’s publication Eos and addresses the widespread mis-perception in the media, the blogosphere, and much of the climate skeptic literature that volcanic CO2 emissions greatly exceed anthropogenic CO2 emissions. I wrote the article to provide a comprehensive overview of the topic using only published peer-reviewed data with a minimum of technical jargon for a broad spectrum of Earth science researchers and educators, students, policy makers, the media, and the general public. AGU has made the article public; anyone can [/url]download a copy . There is also an Eos online supplement , although I have a better formatted pdf version that is available upon request. The bottom line? Annual anthropogenic CO2 emissions exceed annual volcanic CO2 by two orders of magnitude, and probably exceed the CO2 output of one or more super-eruptions***. Thus there is no scientific basis for using volcanic CO2 emissions as an excuse for failing to manage humanity’s carbon footprint. **For the uninitiated, "two orders of magnitude" is a factor of x 100. Like trying to tell people the population of Australia is 2.3 billion when it's actually only 23 million. ***There have been 2 super-eruptions in the last 2 million years.

One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts in his first speech to parliament yesterday: "It is basic. The sun warms the earth's surface. The surface, by contact, warms the moving, circulating atmosphere. That means the atmosphere cools the surface. How then can the atmosphere warm it? It cannot." I have yet another bruise on my head, courtesy of my desk. My sincere thanks to the 77 people (yes, count them, he got 77 first-preference votes and ended up in Parliament) who helped elect him. "It is basic. The sun warms the earth's surface." Yes it does, so far so good. Only about 50% of incoming solar radiation does this, but yeah let's continue. "The surface, by contact, warms the moving, circulating atmosphere." Well yeah it's called conduction which is a form of radiation transfer. But why do I feel this argument is about to spear off the rails? "That means the atmosphere cools the surface." Yippee! There we go! Hang on everyone, we're in for a wild ride! No it doesn't mean that, my young Socrates (yes in his speech he compared himself to ancient Greek philosopher Socrates, who I suspect is struggling to get out of his grave at this very moment and thump him). The surface is cooled because it loses its heat through radiation at night. If we had no atmosphere the earth's surface would still cool. Let me repeat that for you Malcolm - without an atmosphere, the surface would still cool. How therefore, Malcolm my young heroic philosophical genius, do you contend that it is the atmosphere which causes the cooling, if the fact is that the Earth's surface will cool whether an atmosphere is present or not? Look, I know it was the crux of your argument and you're probably now having trouble figuring out how to answer that, so let's move on. How then can the atmosphere warm it? It cannot. Malcolm, my incisively brilliant friend, an atmosphere is composed of gases, right? What do gases do when they are hit by infrared radiation? Well that depends. Some of them are not bothered in the slightest and totally ignore it - a bit like your leader Pauline regarding checking her facts on how many refugee kids attend certain schools. But some of them due to their molecular structure absorb then re-radiate that energy in all different directions, some of which heads back down the surface from which it came. And what happens, Malcolm, when radiation hits the Earth's surface? I think we already covered that didn't we? It would warm it, wouldn't it, like you admitted it does right back at the beginning? And thank goodness it does warm it Malcolm, because otherwise we would freeze as literally all of the energy re-radiated from the Earth's surface would simply rush off into space and leave us a wee bit chilly. But on the flipside, we would want just enough of these warming gases in the atmosphere and not too much, wouldn't we? Because that could get toasty in the longer term, right?

I have had bruises on my forehead from a desk impact when reading those types of things on a number of occasions. It hurts quite a bit.