Bruce

Yep Yenn, I reckon we need 50 cents deposit on a can and 10 cents on a straw.

I reckon we all know what its like to be dead, because that's what we were for a few billion years before we were born. Here's what is interesting though... Do you do somebody a favour by getting them born? Or is that a mean thing to do, on account of how they were asleep and could have continued to be so. When I think of lives in their entirety, for those who I knew really well, I doubt that I would recommend an unborn to live that life instead of sleeping it out. Sure they had some good bits, but they also had bad bits especially near the end.

The very name is confusing. Bitcoins are a sort of currency and what is being sold here is a stock-trading computer system which has social media as an input. I don't see any connection. On the bitcoins, there is probably money in it for those who can mint them. Alas that's not me... maybe our administrator can do it? Even if he can't mint bitcoins, I'm sure Ian could start his own though, we could call them flycoins. ( there are 1300 other coins trying for business out there ) On the stock trading system, I reckon it lends itself to computer attacks, where thousands of slave computers flood social media with messages. I bet that the russians and the nigerians are right now working at ideas to rip money off the mugs who trust in this scheme.

Space, in your shoes I would just go ahead and do the sensible thing and not worry about compliance. Just be sure that what you do can NEVER be said to be related to any mishap. I don't think CASA have either the resources or desire to chase up details about things that kitbuilders do. My Jabiru has been flying for 18 years now and I have never seen an inspector unless you count the RAAus types I sometimes ask myself, on the theory that a second pair if eyes is a great idea.

Well said Octave. I wonder can we agree on the concept of " harm minimization"? I can imagine a person who says that he doesn't care about harm minimization because the principle ( of prohibition ) is so important that it is worth some extra suffering. Another way to put it is to say that moral purity comes at a price ( harm ) we should be happy to accept.

This was floated in the 1930's to divert water from the eastern side of the great divide to the west and eventually into the Darling. It would have ( and still would ) cost a fraction of our military spending. Would it not have been great to have this year, with the floods in the east and drought in the west?

I reckon space honestly sees prohibition as being better protection than legalization , and while I reckon this is wrong, it is an intuitive thing to think and certainly it is the way most voters and most politicians think too. So thanks space for making the argument. It is sad that other countries don't seem to be interested in learning from Portugal. Not much demand for scientific thinking about harm minimization huh. On the prohibition side of the argument, there are countries like the islamic ones where penalties are much worse and include beheading. I wonder how they rate in the harm minimization stakes. I think they would be horrific countries to live in for other reasons, but as far as illegal drugs go, they may actually be better, in that the kids would be very unlikely to ever be tempted to try, on account of the pushers being dead. I can't see how that would help people like space though, who was hurt by legal drugs not illegal ones.

What about the snowy hydro for Vic, nomad?

Sorry to tell you guys, but the hemp for smoking is a different cultivar from the rope-making stuff. Smoking rope does nothing for you.

Paranoia against the Russians was still there when they build Fort Largs near Adelaide in the 1860's. They must have envisaged a sailing ship carrying some soldiers, sailing from Russia, into the range of the 2 big guns based there. Well it gave a lifetime easy job for the lucky garrison huh.

Well said nomad. Just why my grandfather went to the first world war is a mystery to me. I know the early ones thought they were off on an overseas adventure holiday, but the later ones knew better. How stupid they were, think I with the benefit of hindsight.

1775 is the year of the American revolution, after which the british could no longer use America. So settlement of Australia was a side-effect of that revolution.

The voters in Abbott's seat will have a wonderful chance to chance to reject a powerful climate change denier. if Abbott loses his seat, it will be noticed and have an effect all around the world. In recent years, deniers have been increasing their power and here is a chance to even the score and move away from lunacy.

There was a lot of rubbish spruiked about the "green revolution" in India and indeed food production per head increased for years as farmers used more chemicals and fertilizers. The long term effects on population and resources are now being felt. One of the world's biggest aquifers is largely spent. And India is the worst-placed country in the world for global warming ( Australia, the US and China are badly placed too, but India is the worst )

litespeed, it would be a wonderful project to make a car or plane from only natural materials. I don't see how it could be done, but I didn't know about some of the things you mentioned either.

There is a bush called "poison emu bush" which the aborigines used to use. I bet they would have used something more powerful if they had it. Yep, space, I remember those excessive interest rates. Ours was capped at 13.5 percent but some new ones were up to 17 percent. The mortgage was only 40,000 dollars though. No way could kids these days pay big interest on their colossal mortgages.

Pill testing is obviously a first step towards legalization, so we should support it but it doesn't seem right, especially given that no tax is collected anywhere in the illegal drug business. ( except property seizures I guess ) I wonder what would happen if it was announced at some event that several of the drug pushers were selling poisoned drugs and buyers were advised to make the seller take his own stuff and then watch him closely for 3 hours before using it on yourself.

Just read up on the miserable lives led by the poor in India. Their lives are being made much worse by the increasing heat. They are many sick and dying from several factors of which the increasing heat is a prime driver. And yes, space, coal has done good in historical times. It may even have staved off an ice age. But ask an Indian worker who can't work from heat-stroke and now can't buy food, what he thinks of global warming. If CO2 is a good thing, then you can have too much of a good thing, I reckon.

Aborigines used to poison desert waterholes. An effective way to feed your kids, but just imagine the hue and cry if whitefellers did it.

The power of capitalism has never been used against the drug trade. Turning the force of greed against the drug trade would be deadly effective. Gosh, if there was a $2000 reward for fingering your supplier, I for one would be out there posing as a buyer. So I don't agree that "heavy handed prohibition " has ever been tried in a smart way. Yes it has and is being done in a stupid way, indeed so stupid that I think it was designed by idiots or else smart men who wanted it to fail. That said, I would still opt for the legalization way. Alas that won't happen soon and we will get more half-baked prohibition. But smarter countries are finding that moves towards legalization are working well, and one day we will take notice.

I reckon we have the worst of both worlds... we have prohibition with all the negative things that come with it, but the prohibition is half-baked. IF you are going to have prohibition, how about do it properly? Pay big rewards for betraying your supplier, poison some pills and put them back into the system ( with lots of publicity ), hold parents financially liable for their kids offending, remove welfare from offenders. Personally, I do not support the prohibition way. A hundred years ago, drugs were not yet prohibited and none of my ancestors were addicts as far as I know.

I wonder what it would take to convince Sco Mo about climate change. Maybe Abbot losing his seat would do it. On coal, I have no objection if they can make it clean. You would think scrubbing the CO2 out of the exhaust of a power station would be easy enough, it must be quite concentrated there. It seems the cost of energy is what makes things expensive.

space, the world population grew during ww2. The war reduced the share of total population held by some countries, but overall the population grew. But just think about how much better the world would be today if the population were held at 2 billion, which was passed in 1927.

On that super-hot day in Adelaide, I saw hundreds of wind-generators from the air and none of them were moving. Apparently the spot price of electricity went to 14,500 dollars per MWh, or $14.50 per kWh. Gosh, my car could have spun a generator at 100 kW and earned me $1450 per hour. I wonder why the 14,500 dollars per MWh is not available to be paid to ordinary people. It would be quite cheap to set up an emergency power station with car-driven generators. Why do governments never do anything smart? One commentator is saying how renewables have failed their first real test. Without storage, the only effect renewables have had is to put up prices. South Australia got through the day using standby diesel generators, which would have cost millions.

Do you think Jordan Peterson would take my bet? I doubt it, he's not about to put his money ( or his sponsors ) where his mouth is. Details of the bet are negotiable, but basically I pay out when colder than normal happens and he pays out if hotter than normal. So far, the response to my bet proposal has been completely negative , from people who deny that global warming is happening. Why is this?