You have to take into account of the population difference (AUS ~25.6 mil vs USA. ~328.5mil), standard of living, GDP, taxation, etc. etc. to make a fair comparison. Going by a straight currency exchange & population diff. of 1 AUD = ~ .73 USD, a very generalized equivalent would be about asking a 3.7~3.8 trillion war chest budget for the USA.

I have family there, and lived in Sydney, Aus for a while and worked with lots of Kiwis, they were great.

We have an identical problem here in Aus too.

Given the polls put support for gay marriage in Aus between 65 and 85%, the only way the no vote will win is through voter apathy.

Conservatives are motivated and will fill out their postal votes. Staunch equal rights activist will of course vote yes. The middle ground in Australia is mostly apathetic and that's where you might find this whole thing falls on it's tits unfortunately.

Annnnnd the plebiscite is not binding... So if the gov still doesn't want to go ahead with it, they don't actually need to (although I suspect they will cop a short term shellacking in the polls because of it).

Sad thing is, the current PM is on record repeatedly as being in favour of same sex marriage, but he is only in power because of right wing power brokers in his party and if he came out openly in support (ironic, I know...) he would likely be spilled out of office.

Fuck politics.

Blocked here in Aus too.

But I can watch this one: https://youtu.be/yKFxFqOmqcs
Which I'm assuming is the same, because it's the same length.

Looks very much like a Sulphur-crested Cockatoo, which you can occasionally spot flying here in Aus.
Very smart birds

Your point is moot though. At any given period of time, everything man does is a product of the civilisation that surrounds him. Nobody lives in a vacuum.

"What has that got to do with this video."
The water supply grid was one of the important "grids" you forgot. It may be trivial in a water rich region of the world, but, for example, living off of the water grid in the middle of Australia is hard work.

" That doesn't mean that he's living some kind of noble 'off the grid life style'".
I'm pretty sure you're the only one who has mentioned this. I think the point of the video is that he's doing something out of the ordinary that he really enjoys. I wouldn't mind living a step up from what he does (access by road). It would be very satisfying.

Do you have an opinion on living like that? Would you do it?

"I don't live on the water supply grid."
Cool! Is it by choice? Do you use the newer poly tanks? What's the annual rainfall you need to stay water positive each year? Do you use filters or a pump? Have you drilled for underground water (we call it "bore water" here in Aus). What region of the world are you in?

Not that I support one or the other side of this retarded argument...

But in Aus, something like 1 in 3000 Australians of Lebanese descent were accused (not convicted) of being involved in terrorist planning/actions etc. And Australians lost their shit about it.

1 in 20 of Australian Catholic clergy have been convicted of child molestation, which closely matches a US study of 107,000 clergy turning up 1 in 24 odd. No one seemed particularly perturbed...

Pro tip: The west is more concerned about muslims/arabic types because they're brown and strange (to us), even though your child is far more likely to be molested by a pedo than he/she is to be killed in a terror attack. Though I hate using it, seems like a "won't some one think of the children moment".

Hrm, wonder if you can deport catholics back to the Vatican...

The technology to load shift is available, but getting it developed and implemented is one of the components that is missing from the overall power strategy in Aus.

Energy companies, like Ergon (Queensland) are actively trying to limit input, with a hard cap of 5kVa input for residential, and sometimes even as little as 3kVa in some more remote areas.

And while technology like liquid vanadium battery cells (long life, expandable by adding extra tanks of liquid electrolyte) exist, they are still prohibitively expensive.

There are plenty of solutions, but little appetite from the companies and governments, and very little knowledge among the end users. So while we're throwing cheap Chinese panels on rooves with gay abandon, I think it's a little early to brag about what a rampaging success Aus solar is because "lots of panels yo!".

Few points...

We have no options for serious load shifting to utilise all that solar power in the evenings when it would make a difference. And power companies refuse to trust it for baseload power, so they still generate what they estimate they need for base load,and pay for rapid generation to handle spikes. Most electricity generated from home solar in Aus is wasted.

Without battery backups, the best production of the day goes to the energy company for 8 cents, and we buy back power from them (generated by coal of course) at night for 36 cents. Our energy companies aren't going to pay a premium for power they really don't give a crap about.

Most panels in Aus face north/east, to generate the largest amount of energy. When most people aren't home to use it. Instead, panels should face north/west to generate the most power in the afternoon when we come home from work/fire up air conditioners/start cooking etc. And even then, the power than is generated is but a fraction of what is consumed during peak periods due to the setting sun.

Annnnd most people in Australia do not even check their systems to see if they're still doing anything... It's estimated 14% of all home solar systems are currently non-functional due to faulty panels, inverter or both.

Until the point in time comes when energy companies can create a way to load shift solar production to ensure continuity of power, or household power storage units pricing comes down enough to be viable, non industrial solar in Australia is mostly feel good propaganda.

And while a number of coal plants have closed recently, it's not due to lack of demand as solar take up reduces requirement for coal fired power... It's because the plants are not viable any more to run and owners do not want to run at a loss. Each one that closes represents a significant portion of our overall generation being lost, with no core plan for continuity (wind and solar are not being considered as a core strategy currently).

I'm all for saving the planet, but the science/facts on solar outweigh the feel goods. Perhaps instead of patting ourselves on the back, we should be thinking about a better plan.

Rule number one is true only to a certain extent. There comes a point in time when the gun is empty and 100% safe. This has to be the case otherwise you can't clean it and you can't store it empty (as it has to legally be in NZ and Aus).

The way the rule works is, always assume the gun is loaded until everyone in the room is satisfied that it is not. Then it can be safely handled among the people in the room (i.e. inspected, dry fired, cleaned, or stored). Even though everyone knows it is empty you still don't point it at anyone - this is to reinforce the habit of the rule and for ultimate safety (say everyone got it wrong somehow that the gun was empty or not - very unlikely but possible).

Weird, I got excused from jury duty in Aus because my sister worked as a clerk in the prosecutors office. Not that I mind, but it was cited as a possible conflict of interest.

But we're in Australia where there is at least an attempt to make the system seem fair an impartial.

America. Fuck yeah...

It's raining Humvees in Germany:

http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/hohenfels-gelaendewagen-fallen-ungebremst-aus-flugzeug-a-1088464.html

I'm not sure how it works in the US.

In AUS/UK, if you vote for say the Greens party, and they don't have enough votes to get a seat, they'll forward their own votes to another party that is likely to win.
The votes keep getting passed down from party to party in a hierarchy.
So in most cases it's worth voting for minor party here as even if they don't get in, they will pass the votes to the next best larger party anyway, and perhaps pick up a few seats for themselves too.

I guess it's completely different. Pretend I said nothing

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