rxcoup

Points to the moral dilema that as punishment for pushing his sister, he turns to violence and slaps him. Setting the worst possible example. A video review by stef perhaps as this has caught australian's attention. After visiting Sweden a few times now it's amazing how you suddenly see the high levels of aggresiveness displayed by Australians (on roads especially). Progressive spanking etiquete in Sweden seems to have positive visible dehavioural effects, at least to me. There could be other factors I am not aware of causing the calm I noticed about people in Sweden. In Australia like America it is sort of considered ok to spank children. In Sweden I noticed this even when at late night/early morning bars full of intoxicated people. Late night at a club I would be fearful for my life most of the time in Australia and see at least a few fights every night. On the street it becomes like a scene from fight club, constant fights and feeling of great tension in the air. In Sweden I couldn't understand why there was no puking and punching going on...was like being in some other world. All this while the gvoernment here add more and more laws to govern pub and club lock-out times which have adverse effects in empirical studies. The Slap 2 (please correct thread title spelling)

I didn't vote for a while so they fined me. When i didn't pay they cancelled my drivers license. I was not aware as i had moved and don't drive anyway as I am saving funds to start a business. So they chased me for ages and i had to pay eventually. The following year i voted. Stefan mentioned on a call with another Australian that if forced you could just scribble on the form to invalidate your vote. This party seems like a better option to wasting the vote as It's as close to my views as possible within mainstream politics. I might go along to one of their local meetings and see what they are about and post further info.

I just came accross this political party in Australia. It seems to be promoting libertarian values. As I am forced to vote in Australia or pay a fine a libertarian party may be the best bet. But is there any hope for libertarianism through the voting process or does the revoluion have to be bigger than that - outside of politics. Their website - http://www.ldp.org.au/index.php/philosophy

I have been using linux for over 10 years. I've tried all the distros from complex to Ubuntu. In the end convenience rules for me so now run Xubuntu 14.10. Have been using it for a couple of years as due to the simplicity of setup and its use of XFCE. I would reccomend it to all. I use it on a computer hooked up to my tv for viewing films etc. And also use it on a work computer and laptop to trade currencies for profit. Commend you friendlyhacker for your steamOS. Too many computer savvy people run windows computers as they are forced onto it for their gaming. Anything that can rectify that is a good thing.

Merry almost christmas to all members! I've written up a little article about some climate-change idiocy here in Australia. Would appreciate other members opinions, contradictions or thoughts on my article? Sceptical approach to climate change causes controversy!Tony Abbott seems to have outraged Australia’s mainstream media this week with his appointment of Bob Baldwin to Minister Of Environment as he is outrageously some sort of climate sceptic. This article “Tony Abbott appoints climate skeptic to “help” on environment” being a prime example of misinformed response I’ve seen so far. And I postulate here that it’s an excellent move to install such a person in a field of politics so highly reliant on science. Both “sides” (they are all the same) of Australian politics have long been dominated by climate cultists who’ve been brainwashed from an early age to be unquestioning and unscientific in their understanding of environmental issues, the most emotive being climate change. Rational discussion has for some time been thrown out the window on the issue of climate change as the general public take on “faith” most of the misinformation they are fed and defend it with a near religious level of fervour (and closed-mindedness). Most of the population have little to zero understanding of what issues most scientists agree on (co2 emissions cause some warming) and which are still in contention (the rest, which is still in its infancy i.e. how much man made warming has occurred and will occur based on positive climate feedback theory, whether or not changes to temperature so far are part of normal climatic variation. For an idea just how complex and as yet unknown the science is: From the Guardian: Feedback loops such as these are complex in themselves and even more complex when considered as part of an integrated global climate system. Some are already at work, while others have yet to kick in. Others still – both positive and negative – may yet be discovered. These uncertainties, coupled with historical evidence for the climate changing rapidly in the past, led one prominent climate scientist to compare releasing greenhouse gases into the air with “poking a beast with a sharp stick”. “The computer models were built by scientists who have only a fragmented, immature understanding of complex climate systems”. It’s akin to asking a weather man whether it will be sunny in 5 months time in Nebraska at 5:48pm and then investing in $50,000 worth of sunblock based on his wildly inadequate estimates (carbon tax). So most climate related policies are highly premature and far worse, take the focus and funding away from real life environment issues that could be addressed and resolved in the near term. So why is he a better choice in my opinion? The job of the scientist is think outside the current dogma, formulate theories and gather empirical evidence from the cold hard real world of facts. This man’s job will be to inspect the evidence of scientists. Appointing a “sceptical” minister who admits he does not know, as the evidence is still not in, seems to have caused great outrage in the media and with many so-called environmentalists. This is simply ludicrous. If this guy is sceptical in his parsing of the scientific research submitted to him that’s a good thing. If the evidence put forward is as unquestionable, undeniable and incontrovertible as most seem to think, his scepticism will be outweighed by evidence. All the statements I’ve seen from him seem to be fairly sound and rational. To quote Mr Baldwin himself: “I am neither a skeptic nor a denier. I have read widely and talked to scientists, but I am not a scientist. Maybe climate change is cyclic? I do not know, because there are too many subjective opinions in this argument, each proffering a different expert perspective.” Sounds fairly sane to me, at least he admits that he does not know. Most politicians spit out some lines of end of the world doom speak, meant to induce climate shame and guilt and stoke the fires of fear that allow them to manipulate the public. Carbon Tax Scam Trend setter as he is, Tony Abbot became the first world leader to repeal the carbon tax. But today cunningly deflected attack from the pro-tax crowd by holding up the resultant tax reductions as a boon to his female constituents (who anecdotally control household finances, though I could not find a study proving this). His comments, set off the anti-Abbott feminist brigade and shifted the focus of the media away from the tax repeal and once again to his supposedly misogynistic evil-doing nature. A cleverly crafted deflection technique on behalf of his media team in my opinion. – [Backlash against Abbott’s women and household budget comment grows]. But It’s a shame that such a stunningly brave and momentous piece of policy work need be defended in this way. It’s a great testament to the courage the current government seems to be showing in the face of the climate conspiracy propagandists, the IMF and the IPCC by ditching the carbon tax. Carbon taxation based on climate propaganda and fear mongering is just one of the psychological weapons used to extort ever larger servings of (tax) milk from the Australian public (the cash-cows of modern crony capitalism). So the result is a great victory for reason and sanity, though who’s to say there we’re any virtuous intentions. But hopefully other countries take note of what is possible. What if the Green bench got their way? What if instead they hired a green friendly version of this guy? Let’s play devils advocate. Would any decision they made actually be made in the interest of the current population, let alone the children who will inherit the earth. Deep, deep down you know they would not. Political decisions are made and policies implemented purely to create “spin”-able headlines today and to get votes next week. What would this green friendly politician do? Re-instate the carbon tax and solve all the world’s problems? Assuming the catastrophic man-made climate change theorists are right (which they are not of course) and assuming you take the highest range estimates of the IPCC and somehow got the rest of the world to join in; The carbon tax is a still bad policy with a negative cost benefit of 1000:1. Is Balance restored? Not yet. Even with today’s appointment, the majority of the politicians (and the uninformed public) are staunch science and reason deniers. With such a majority they should be able to quash this evils man’s shockingly sceptical and pragmatic approach to what is a scientific area of policy.