Hmm. I smell methane, the sort you get from a broken gaslight. It's a misrepresentation to say that I was "trying to reinvent etc", and I think a traversal back through the reply thread will show that. People were discussing Venus as providing insight into the greenhouse effect, and I wanted to throw the Moon into the discussion. That's hardly the same as fumbling towards recapitulating Arrhenius' work, 122 years late.
I did take your rude remark personally, but that makes it no less rude. Your argument here is akin to those whose apologies end with '...if anyone was offended'.
I would rather be discussing (and learning more) about the physics of the greenhouse effect, but that doesn't work if I have to keep dodging cheap shots.
]]>There are VPN comparison articles out there, some other VPNs look pretty good too, like ExpressVPN. Choice of home country matters, as it dictates what laws might be used to compel the VPN company to hand over account details etc.
]]>If people do decide to look at Helen Dale's blog, I'd also suggest looking at her wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Dale
Dale aka Darville aka Demidenko is notorious in Australia for a number of things. Read the wiki.
]]>"However, if she tries to use any of those levers, it automatically triggers a constitutional crisis, and the outcome of any monarch/parliament showdown since 1649 is that parliament wins and the monarch loses (in extremis, loses their life)."
I offer as a counterexample the constitutional crisis in Australia, 1975, where the monarch's proxy, the Governor-General John Kerr, unilaterally dismissed the Whitlam government, and more egregiously, when the parliament reconvened (after lunch) under the new Fraser government and repeatedly voted down Fraser's bills and casting a vote of no confidence in the new government, Kerr took no heed of this and dissolved parliament.
The actual involvement of the Queen of Australia is unknown, as the correspondence between her and Kerr has been embargoed (as being personal correspondence and not state documents), but at the very least her proxy exercised powers and defeated a parliament. He received his comeuppance in later years, being mocked and ridiculed, but nevertheless a monarch-proxy won and the parliament lost.
]]>Some tourists buy junkers to tour around Australia, it's cheaper than renting a car. When they're done, they just abandon the car, and sometimes that's at an airport.
Stolen cars get left in car parks. Maybe it draws less attention?
]]>Come back, seagull!
]]>Indeed, Brisbane gets severe flooding every few decades, but people continue to build and live in the flood zones. I'm astonished at how much new development has gone up on the flood plain of the Brisbane River. Those buildings will get flooded, the basements will fill, the cars and generators and internet nodes will be destroyed, and flood levels will cover the ground and first floors, and possibly the second too. See the flood level markers on the Regatta Hotel. 2011, the water covered the ground storey and half way up the first. The Regatta's base is already about 8m above the river's mean level. And there have been worse floods, 1893, and there are anecdotes recorded from aboriginals in the 1800s about floods that went even higher.
Sea level rise is going to make the problem worse, of course.
People just forget what could happen. Lots of houses backing onto highly flammable forests too. Nice to have trees around, except when they're burning.
I've heard people express similar opinions, like, they bought in a flood zone to have a river view, they should wear the flood risk too. Now consider the cigarette smokers. No-one can now say they don't know the risks - so do we turn them away from hospitals when their smoking makes them sick? You can't, but they get triaged to lesser priority because their conditions are viewed as self-inflicted and avoidable.
Society has to look after its dumb people too. Maybe it's better to try to help them make better choices before the flood, rather than help them after.
]]>Today, this: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-25/mem-fox-detained-at-los-angeles-airport-by-us-officials/8303366
Mem Fox is a children's author. Seems like goons at the border took issue with her visa, and humiliated and harassed her for two hours. (Other, browner people copped worse apparently.)
So it looks like Charlie was right to have some concerns. I think I will stay away from the US for a while.
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