Bruce Tuncks

I have studied the matter Nev and believe that the more sources an info thing has, the more likely it is to be true. Just because ( say) a Murdoch site is unreliable with right-wing stuff, it does not mean that it should be always disbelieved. I know a guy who thinks that the whole media is full of lies, and he seriously thinks Russia is the only country telling the truth. Personally, I reckon he has descended into nonsense on account of not applying the same standards to Russian propaganda as he has to western propaganda.

I reckon lots of "studies" on how bad alcohol was were funded by the wowsers. But I have to agree how the alcohol industry is now big enough to fund its own "research".

Getting back to crops, the figure of importance is the root-zone salinity. This of course varies with the irrigation water salinity and the leaching fraction.

Nev, it is very difficult to ascribe an effect where the sample is small and the numbers are small too. " Lower IQ" would be hard to measure and I would need lots more details to take it seriously... But thanks for trying.

Please correct me if this is wrong... Seawater is 30,000ppm , the mixture of salts is largely NaCl but there are all sorts of other stuff. Sheep can drink 3000ppm salt water, and they are tough animals in this regard. Human blood is about 9000ppm which was likely the ocean figure when out ancestors left . Crops.... a sensitive crop is french beans which don't like irrigation water more than 900ppm.

Don't feel bad, I just looked it up.

It's about half n half nomad. The fluoride which becomes part of the teeth n bones is not excreted. How could it make these things stronger otherwise?

My understanding was that fluoride was discovered by the fact that some kids in Australia just had good teeth... I am open to argument about this nowadays.

Our kids grew up with no fluoride, so we added it in the form of pills. The kids are both 50 now and have ZERO teeth problems. I personally never studied the issue and always thought that being anti-fluoride was like being a flat earther, But these days I just live on rainwater and reckon its fairly safe, depending on what wild animals have pooped on your roof.

Spacy, why don't you get a rainwater tank?

What religion were the Irish?

thanks spacy, I never knew.

Good onyer Nev. I hereby bet a bottle of red that he ( trump) will not win. Mind you, I also didn't think he would have beaten Hillary Clinton but he did. I think he had Putin's assistance. Anyway, I have been reassured by a book I just read where he gives lots of examples where : 1. you needed to be a trumpist to get republican endorsement most of the time. 2: being a trumpist caused you to lose 5% of the real vote at an election. Personally, I can imagine a "respectable" republican lady secretly voting Democrat after wondering what would happen if her 12 y/o daughter got pregnant from a rapist. Of course she would never admit to this. I have also been impressed by the drop in women applying for the armed services. They can easily be got pregnant and they are unable to choose their place of abode.

I like the definitions you come up with OME. I associate "sectarian violence " with the Irish protestant vs catholic stuff, and this is proof to me that we, as a species, seem to need an enemy all the time. Personally, while I did notice some anti-catholic stuff among the older generation, it died out before I got any. I wonder how those old bigots would have coped with the 800,000 moslems we have imported...

Kg has it right.... I can't help wondering why the religious never seem to blame their ridiculous deity on misfortunes like earthquakes. My best guess is that they don't really believe their own stuff.

I found it hard to believe that Australia is now listed as a dangerous place for Jews. Sure, we have taken in 800,000 moslems when we only have 100,000 Jews, but surely we didn't import anti-semitic types? Personally, I have never met a true anti-semite and I don't expect to... how awful can they be?

I reckon "flawed democracy" is a good description of the US. They too would be given a good kick up the bum if they had to apply to join a " democratic" group of nations and were only given partial membership till they improved. I wonder if the pure dictatorships would still bother with things like sham elections?

I once read how plantation workers in Brazil could not afford orange juice for their kids.

Yep Nev, even a real democracy has to continually fight people like Trump.

It is impressive that " pure" dictatorships dress themselves up as democratic from time to time. Russia has elections for gods sake. I still reckon that outing this nonsense is a worthwhile thing to do.

Farming sure is dangerous, and this danger makes it impossible to afford an employee. The cost of providing the employee with legally sufficient training and safety equipment would be prohibitive, especially given the fact that the job changes all the time.

At the Alice Springs show, many years ago , I took a pic of the wife standing next to a sign .." Bitches on heat not allowed on the grounds", the sign said.

Thanks OME. I never tried to use a rewards card but now I know the check the fine print really well. I'm surprised that the expiry business is legal.

Wonderful idea spacy, but I reckon the answer is "no".

I looked up democracies and the US is listed as a "flawed" democracy. There are about 25 percent of countries which are properly democratic, plus a lot of flawed ones and several of the dictatorships list "elections" etc as they wish to pretend. Wouldn't it be great if the real democracies formed a "UN" and penalised those flawed democracies , thus encouraging them to try harder. I reckon this would make it harder for dictatorships, excluded very publicly, to pretend. I would allow the US to remain aloof and say how they were not among the proper democracies anyway.