ancienthart

Hmmm. Phone spam.

But they might lose the conservative vote then ... o_0

Build, no. Maybe offer to sell a seperate solar charger, maybe.

Hard to see it getting off the ground.

You're a captive market once you get on a plane. Of course they'll make you pay.

To put this into context, during Uni, I shared a flat with a young Chinese couple that had immigrated to Australia.

They hadn't even _heard_ of the Tiananmen Square Massacre until they left China.
Add that to Google's filtering within China, and the situation doesn't look good.

I would like to point out that the problem isn't with the amount of food available in the world, but the cost of transport. Even if overproducing countries were to give food away for free, by the time the food got to the areas where it is needed, the cost of transport would put it out of the reach of the typical consumer in that region. This will only get worse with rising oil prices.

It may sound harsh, but the only real solutions to the problems are:

Reversal of local environmental problems.
Investment in agricultural research, education and improvement in semi-marginal areas.
Encouraging migration to more environmentally sustainable regions.
Reduction of population sizes in very marginal areas. (I.e. gradual phasing out of non-emergency food aid, encouraging contraception, and of course migration.)

These measures will be difficult, cause a lot of disruption and emotional anguish, but they are really the only things that will permanently solve the problem.

However, people on all sides of the fence are unlikely to agree to these measures, as either being uneconomic, culturally damaging or even "inhumane". Thought what exactly is humane about giving people food to live in an unsustainable region rather than an immigration pass or a chance at developing a sustainable agriculture I really can't see.

Yep, the rednecks will be there to try to keep out Obama, the liberals, black and hispanics will be there to try to get him in. Never mind the actual political issues being discussed.

(By the by, my definition of redneck DOESN'T include skin colour or geographical location. I've met some very liberal people in farming communities, and some out and out bigots in big cities.)

I know this is a bit tasteless, but we're already having enough trouble keeping stationary buildings up. (9/11)
To paraphrase the NASA pilot, do we really want to live on top of 1000 moving parts weighing several hundred tonnes, all provided by the lowest tender?

As a teacher, i would say that practice is good, but at the present in Australia, our students are:

Doing typically 50-100 assessment tasks per year.
Working part time (Which I consider a valuable experience. I never worked for money during school term, but I did a lot of farm work and fruit picking during the holidays.)
Taking on extra-curricular activities. (We have a lot of students training at national level in sports, participating in bands and fashion parades.)

Saying that homework won't be set during kindergarten, long weekends or holidays doesn't sound that unreasonable to me.

Hear hear.

As a teacher, I think this idea is wonderful. I am aware of the research on homework, I'm also aware that in my school alone, the students have eight subjects and usually one-two assessment items per term (1/4 of a school year in Australia) per subject.

However, I have also had a parent bawling me out in a parent-teacher interview, then go behind my back to the principle about how I wasn't teaching their child, primarily because I wasn't setting enough homework. Never mind that I did my damnedest to ensure the type of work that traditionally is set for homework was done during part of the lesson so the student could actually get direct feedback. *sighs*

I'm in Australia, and I was raised on a mixed dairy/beef farm. Whatdyathink?
I also find the current Mad Cow situation a prime example of Mad Human Syndrome. What sort of corporate whacko thinks it's a good idea to feed a herbivore meat?
As to the people out there who decry that meat causes global warming, I'd like to point out that it's grain-fed meat that is the problem. If people could taste grass-fed veal and fresh milk, they'd be in an uproar over what food companies do to it before it gets to the shops.

She's still trying to get her career back on track after the last pregnancy. I'd hope that she knows how to use contraception. :)

"Resolved" is a tricky word in this case. I see diplomacy staying on top of the situation until October 2008, and little chance of an all out war by then, but the fact that other countries will want to resolve the situation by diplomacy gives Mr Ahmadinejad too handy a lever for him to give it up.

Hard to call. As a science-trained individual, I see the situation as an equilibrium between cost and effectiveness. Add more troops, and you'll have to pay for them. Take troops away, and the remaining troops will have to face a higher amount of active "enthusiastic" resistance.

By 2010 I see the following things happening:
Obama withdraws a token amount of troops at the start, say 5-10%. Pressure to withdraw more. If they're intelligent, the resistance stays quiet. Obama withdraws more troops, say 30-40% of the original. Resistance goes active and troop deaths in Iraq climb. Media and opposition parties get into an uproar about "unsupported troops in Iraq". Troop numbers are either brought back up close to original number (with mild condemnation of Obama), higher (with widespread condemnation) or a complete withdraw (50/50 what this does to Obama's popularity.).

I see the Iraq situation as being too similar to Vietnam. During the entire Vietnam situation, politicians were entirely unable to bring active troop numbers down permanently from the (high) equilibrium position, until they brought the number of active troops down to zero.

I not only predict a large voting block of non-Caucasians for Obama (and against McCain), I also predict a larger voter turn-out in that segment of the population.

Too much time and social change between the first movie and now. I find that when I look back at most films over 15 years ago, I tend to cringe - the original Star Wars comes to mind. "Do you think she'd ever like me?" *cringe*
If they stick to the original social tone of the first movie, bomb.
If they change the social tone of the second movie, why bother calling it Top Gun II?

The only uncertain factor here is meeting the deadline.

I just want to know, who the hell would vote yes. :)