occidentalis

I don't think they are Galerinas, but really it's not that important - all you need to know is that they are not edible or otherwise useful. Tell your friends to avoid them.

Yeah, the vaccination isn't too bad - except it's three injections (the version that I had). However in some cases the post-exposure treatment is 10 injections straight into the abdomen. Not much fun from all accounts.

You're hilarious EG. At least you didn't have to have 10 rabies injections in your stomach as some people do.

Yep you guys are way over-technicalising things with all the microprop talk. You can do it - that's how it's done with orchids. But you will get useable results with 10% of the effort.

I am an anarchist in the sense that I think humans are inherently capable of working for the common good and making rational decisions. I see it as the most optimistic political philosophy. However that capability is not always used. And perhaps is only really a potential, that can be only be realised through education and self development. For that reason I see an anarchic system as something that will arise spontaneously when society is ready for it. perhaps at the moment we still need the steady hand of government telling us what to do on one level or another. There are also practical considerations. Without centralised government, how can responses to major national or global issues be coordinated? No doubt there are many networking technologies that will improve our bootstrapped ability for bottom up decision making in the pipeline, but still, what happens in a situation where public opinion is deadlocked? Someone has to make a decision. Our current system of government can hardly deal with this situation, I can't see it being better in a world without any central decision makers.

Awesome. I hunted in vain throughout the central and northern Peruvian Andes, but I was there at the wrong time of year and all I got were flowers and funny looks from local villagers as I prodded and poked their cacti. Have to make sure I am there in the wet season next time .

The incentive is competition. If the carbon price is set right, if one company in a set of competitors finds a way to deliver their product or service with less carbon production, they will be able to do it cheaper - and hence have a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Some companies may do that, but they will lose out to competitors that can do it cheaper. AND, that's just with the carbon tax. When it becomes an ETS in a few years, that will eventually become impossible - because the government will over time reduce the supply of pollution permits, and they will become more expensive and potentially unobtainable financially for companies that are not operating efficiently from a carbon pollution perspective.

I'll definitely be stopping by on my next northern trip. Can't believe I haven't been there yet. Don't forget to bring your passport ;).

Interesting - I was just reading about the Hutt River Province this afternoon. The wikipedia article is quite good. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Hutt_River

There is really no need for them. Just just normal jars, crumble and case.

I did a project a bit like this at uni, although the aim was slightly different and I wasn't trying to grow any particular type of fungi - just to see if any grew. I don't think you really need to worry too much about contams if you are using a whole mushroom, because the number of mushroom spores will greatly outnumber any contaminant spores. You might get a few colonies of contaminants forming, but you're not going to grow the plant in vitro until maturity, so you'll need to expose it to contamination at some point.

I love the diagram, but there's an easier way. 1. Crush up mushroom in water and create a spore/mushroom slurry. Filter out the big bits. 2. Sterilise soil and pots. 3. Plant seed into sterilised soil. 4. Water with spore slurry. Bingo I think the problem with planting a seed into the mushroom is that the mushroom will start to rot, and that may end up rotting the seed/seedling.

For what it's worth, I agree with your cynicism, but in this case I don't think it matters. It's just not that important how the money from the tax is spent - as long as it's not given back to compensate the polluters. The purpose of the tax is to make certain things more expensive. What happens to the money after that doesn't matter. Ideally it should be given to the poorest members of society to compensate for increased cost of living - but that's a detail of the policy settings that come with the tax, rather than a factor influencing the effect of the tax per se. Yeah, I thought you might say that. Because you are following the issue more closely than I am I wondered if you might have read or heard of the references that the Greens are basing their figures on. I guess I'll have to go look it up myself now... ;)

Although I think I explained pretty clearly the concept that a carbon tax is more about long term structural change rather than merely reducing emissions, it can actually be reduced to arithmetic as you have asked for. In fact, that's what the current political debate regarding the price of carbon is about. How much is it actually worth? Business groups have finally conceded that it would be acceptable, but they say it should be worth very little ($10 per ton) while green economists say that to achieve a genuine reduction in emissions, it needs to be something like $45/ton. No doubt it will end up somewhere in the middle but hopefully closer to the higher end, as $10 per tonne could possibly do more harm than good. I guess WoodDragon has the figures or could come up with them to specify how many tons of carbon emissions those prices will actually prevent; and what contribution those amounts would make to overall climate change (no doubt within a large margin of error, as all of these predictions are probabilistic). The other way to do it (which is proposed to come into effect down the track in Aus) is the emissions trading scheme. In an ETS, the total amount of GHG that can be emitted is limited, and industries are given or auctioned credits to pollute. They can then trade the credits at a price set by the market. Every year, the government can remove some permits from the market; so they become more valuable, and only businesses that are obtaining the maximum economic value from their emissions can afford to continue emitting.

This isn't a thread about a carbon tax - it's a thread about new climate change research. But just to address this question quickly, although I have done so elsewhere already: If you are thinking about it in terms of every $1 = x amount of climate change reduction, then you are thinking about it wrong. Simply putting a tax on GHG emissions won't really do much in the short term. The point is that over the long term, it will result in a gradual restructuring of our economy away from one that depends on environmental destruction for growth to one where economic growth is 'decoupled' (sorry to use a jargony term, but I think you can guess what it means) from environmental impact. Currently, every time you buy a tank of petrol, every time a forest is logged, every time a shipment of coal is loaded, every time a useless consumer item is produced and sold, etc - the economy grows. Economic growth is almost intrinsically linked to environmental damage. While all of these actions have a damaging effect on the environment, the economy has no way of reacting to that. Those effects are 'external' to the economy, until their downstream impacts, such as the impacts of climate change like more extreme weather actually result in some sort of damage - and by that point it's too late. The cost is borne by people other than those who generated the problem (who may be children of current generations, or if the problem strikes sooner, they are likely to be people in less developed countries around the world, who are disproportionately at risk and are less capable of adequate response or adaptation). Taxes and trading schemes are market-based responses to environmental problems. The government could also choose a 'command and control' method, where they apply strict legal requirements for companies to reduce their emissions. The problem is, the government doesn't know as much about the fine details of each business as those businesses do themselves - so would be likely to get it wrong. It's more efficient, more philosophically in line with a free society, and more effective to use a market tool to do the job. You create an economic situation that encourages businesses to produce fewer emissions, and leave it up to them to decide how to do it. This has the effect of internalising those environmental 'externalities' (another bit of jargon that I trust you are intelligent enough to figure out) and ensuring that the market can act appropriately. The market only responds to costs; if something becomes more expensive, it becomes less attractive to the market. Under a properly-managed carbon tax, products and services that produce a lot of greenhouse gas emissions will become more expensive. The market will respond to that by investing less in those industries. Another way to say that is that if those costs exceed the benefits those industries provide in terms of useful products or employment, society will move away from them. Those industries will do everything they can afford to do to reduce the amount they pollute. Some of them will adapt and find new ways of producing their products at an affordable level. Others will not; they will either go offshore to less regulated economies or they will go broke. That's unfortunate, but the reality is that it won't be possible to transition to a genuinely sustainable economy without completely changing or perhaps stopping some of the activities that we currently do. The role of the government is to use policy settings that get the most gain for the least pain - and that's what the current debate on the 'price' of carbon is about. Their second role is to minimise the social fall-out from these changes by providing adequate compensation and assistance to the people who will be most disproportionately affected - particularly the poor, and those that directly lose employment as a result. However, they need to do this in a way that doesn't compromise on the original goal of the scheme, which is structural economic change. And that doesn't come easy.

I read some of it and enjoyed it. A little long winded but generally well written. Took me back to south america .

MP3 VBR V0. Or FLAC, but I would only bother with FLAC if you are making them available for download. If it's just for streaming, MP3 will be quite sufficient.

Teotz, I would like to see you post a list called "List of Teotlcoatl's Lists".

oh yeah, I'm not interested in the jars they can be sold or donated to _e_'s community project, up to San Rainbow.

I'll take the lot, only problem is I need it sent to WA. If you can find a freight company that will get it here (Fremantle), I will pay $1500 in total for the shipping + stuff, and if there is any change from that you can keep it. send me an email at indole (at) gmail (dot) com.

AFAIK you can host your site anywhere; you just redirect the nameservers. regarding your original question, the thing is that the organisation that administers the provision of .com.au TLDs requires that they are only sold to people or businesses that are actually called something very similar (can be an abbreviation or an acronym) as the domain. That means you can get your own name (if you have an ABN, because you have to be a business) or you can get the name of your business or something very similar. The idea of this is to prevent domain name squatting and increase the reliability of the .au TLD (you can guess the name of a business by knowing their URL). For an Australian business, .com.au is much more trustworthy than .com. Apparently some .com.au resellers do sell domains to people without checking whether they actually have the business name; however most won't.

yep

Definitely not, Hilux surfs are toys in comparison to a well-fitted out cruiser. You need to ask yourself what you're planning to do with your vehicle. Is it for sport/recreation 4WDing, or for getting to slightly off the track locations or beach driving? then look at hilux surfs or the smaller jeeps (which are actually amazing 4wds and can climb things that cruisers simply can't) Or do you want a base to live out of for long trips? In that case you need a cruiser. A pajero may suffice from what I've heard but I've never driven one. Hiluxes are OK, but they do not have the same guts as a cruiser. Prados are good vehicles, based on Hilux but more comfortable. Not as roomy for long trips though. for 15000 you should be able to get a reasonable LC - i've seen them for less than 10k but they didn't look fantastic. Check out gumtree or ebay, you can get some bargains. Agree on getting an inspection if possible.

Because you can't have people getting high!

No it doesn't, all it does is paint all of us as loonies in the eyes of the authorities (ie, the people making the decisions), making it much easier to brush off those of us with legitimate rational concerns. The Acacias were not being removed for any reason to do with the proposed legislation. The people doing it probably have never even heard of the proposed legislation. Acacia longifolia is a weedy species and in many areas is an environmental weed. I've removed plenty of it from bushlands myself back when I was doing bush regen work.