jeza

I'm in Australia and I don't think I've ever heard of it (except maybe glossing over American recipes online). I've always measured butter in grams. The packaging often has markers so you can roughly estimate to the nearest 50g but that is it as far as I know. If anything I might have assumed it was something approximating these 50g slices.

Hew Raymond Griffiths, had never been to the US. He was extradited from Australia to the US for something that isn't considered a crime in Australia.

The irony is this part: "Griffiths finally returned to Australia on 2 March 2008, after 5 weeks as an illegal alien in the US immigration detention system following his release from prison on 26 January 2008 (Australia Day). A condition of his repatriation to Australia was that he never again re-enter the United States of America, a country he had never visited before being extradited to it."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hew_Raymond_Griffiths

Where I live, pubs were hellbent against smoking bans. Not a single pub was brave enough to go smoke free alone. They all scrambled to install outdoor beer gardens, but not all could do so for lack of outdoor space. Then when the smoking bans were introduced their patronage went up, as did their profits. Sure all their customers before the ban were smokers, but that was putting off non-smokers from becoming new customers.

The article said their visas were expiring.

At least when the snow melts it returns to the rivers and streams where it came from.

I agree that student loans don't do the student much justice and there must be a smarter way of funding education. In Australia our HECs loan system essentially funds research which may benefit society as a whole but hardly benefits students when course content is in some cases years out of date. As it's a loan system that graduates don't repay until their income reaches a certain threshold (essentially an extra tax), with government approval this has allowed course fees to creep upwards.

I don't agree with the general comment on inflation. For instance, I'm not aware of Australia's medicare system leading to higher medical treatment costs. If anything it provides a base level of care and limits the amount that any private medical provider could provide.

In any case I'm certain that private insurance companies facilitate the same kind of inflation as they don't seem too concerned about the cost of services rendered when they can simply pass that onto their customers as a higher premium (which they in turn benefit from). At least where government spending is concerned, inflation can be managed.

> So Polaris would be pretty close to being a polar star for Mars as well.

Poris is only useful if you're in the northern hemisphere. In the southern hemisphere on earth we use the southern cross. It's a bit trickier if you're using a quadrant because you have to align it with a blank area of sky. Though the 17th century explorers managed it.

In Australia 10pc is the largest serving of chicken nuggets you can get at McDonalds, with the other sizes being 3 or 6 (I don't know the prices because they're not listed on their website and I don't often go to McDonalds; https://mcdonalds.com.au/menu/chicken-mcnuggets). Could this be the key though, if 10 is the largest here, then that suggests it is more than what most people can really eat. Having 20 at the same price might just be a decoy to make McDonalds look generous as they'll give you 20 for the same price if you really want (but you don't really want). Might be good value to get 20 if you're sharing but then you'd probably be tempted to get drinks for each person with a most certainly high margin.

Two companies. It's more duopoly rather than monopoly but they track each others prices to ensure they aren't offering anything cheaper than the other.

Rent is already quite high in capital cities, generally based on what high income earners can afford. I think a basic income is more likely to match an average wage so shouldn't result in higher rent. If anything it should take some pressure off housing in the capital cities if one doesn't have to live there so they can gain some mediocre form of work. Though this might result in higher rent in regional areas, as people discover that the basic income would allow them to live comfortably there. The government in turn would have to ensure there is affordable quality housing available close to employment.

I think the norm in Europe has been to rent for some time and as such tenants have more rights. Until recently, if you were renting in Australia you were in the minority and the rights of landlords seems to be skewed above tenants. Leases are usually a year and rarely any longer which can lead to instability for some tenants. Not to mention that tenants often aren't even allowed to hang pictures on their walls.

This opinion piece goes into some detail of the differences: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-11/bagwell-australian-a-n...

I gather you could still have something like Medicare (Australia) with a basic income. It's administrated entirely separately from welfare.

I find it hard to believe that someone could live off $12k. Then again I live in Australia where cost of living on the whole is fairly expensive. But given rent is a big component of cost of living I'd hazard a guess that this will vary quite significantly in different parts of the USA. Furthermore I'm sure there are many different ways to define the poverty line. Even if the basic cost of living is met, there are additional costs that one may have to bear before gaining employment, including education, appropriate clothing, transport and the additional costs of accommodation close to employment.

The argument for a basic income is that one should be able to live comfortably and not just cover bare essentials. This means that people shouldn't be living at the poverty line but well over it. This shouldn't be a disincentive to work because most people need to live their lives around some kind of structured activity. Though it does mean that if there is a shortage of jobs then the unemployed won't be left to rot and the option exists to do some meaningful volunteer work.

That would hardly keep people without jobs out of poverty, which I read in another article is just over $20k.

Interesting topic. The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia has been looking into the usage of aquifers for water storage in urban areas for some time now (the most recent project was Managed aquifer recharge and storm water http://www.csiro.au/en/Research/LWF/Areas/Resilient-cities/U... from 2010 to 2014, though I remember reading reports about some research around 15 years ago).

I think it is particularly interesting that their research is focused on urban areas, where all the concrete and bitumen results in huge runoff. This creates risk of flash flooding, wastes a useful resource and even causes problems for marine life. So if it can be stored underground in natural aquifers and utilised locally that'd be quite an improvement. Apparently the cost of treating storm water for drinking is similar to treatment of water from reservoirs. No doubt there'd be a pretty big saving infrastructure needed for distributing water over long distances as well.

I think I'd rather be neither.

Though in some countries, hitting a pedestrian gets the driver an automatic jail term. Collisions with pedestrians don't happen all that often in such countries.

The 10-20 year monopoly idea would prove to be problematic if the cable provider is also your ISP. I can only imagine this leading to deterioration in quality of service and over pricing. Regulation might help to an extent. Having a large number of companies using a myriad of technologies could well negate market forces. Where as having a standardised set of technology nation wide could save a lot of money (think maintenance contractors who only have to learn a small set of technologies).

I don't see why a government authority can't coordinate an infrastructure rollout like fibre, provided they have the right expertise. They seem to manage the same task fine with roads, etc. That's not to say it's the only model that can work.

Installing infrastructure is never cheap nor easy. As such I'd categorise fibre as a natural monopoly. You only really need to install it once to every house hold and once it's there, terminal equipment can be upgraded to keep abreast with technological changes. It's better if the fibre is owned by a neutral entity, while internet services provided over the fibre can be provided by competing companies.

The Australian government had this part right with the National Broadband Network. The fibre and backhaul infrastructure would be owned by the government, while retail companies would be allowed to sell internet connections, telephony and pay TV services over this network . A change of government has slowed things down a bit, but the same model appears to be in tact, where the current proposal is that the government will take ownership and upgrade coax cable (HFC) networks as an intermediate step.

In Australia textbooks typically cost $100-150 a title so I'm guessing that is on par with America. I've also been able to source these international editions at a fraction of the price by purchasing online. However, tech books from the likes of O'Reilly can easily cost 2-3 times as much here, putting them in the same league as textbooks.

I found it amusing when we had a representative from a publisher speak at the first lecture for a subject. He had a slide saying "buy locally" and was encouraging students to buy his ebook which was twice the price of the international edition I had already purchased but marginally cheaper than his print edition.

The end result is that students are not buying textbooks anymore and those that do are importing them from overseas. The independent co-operative bookshop at my university went out of business last year as a result. The university opened their own bookshop with ridiculously high prices as well, but minimal staffing from what I could tell. I don't think they can sustain the high prices in the long term without the whole thing falling in a heap.

"They paved paradise and put up a parking lot"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Yellow_Taxi

Isn't it more opt-in because you need to put a link somewhere on the public www before Google can find it?

Pimsleur isn't the most efficient way to learn a language. I find Assimil to be a much more interesting method. The audio component is required purely in the target language with no instructional content and very little repetition. So it is up to the end user to decide how much or little repetition they need. This ultimately means that the recordings contain far more vocabulary and phrases than what you'd get in the same time as Pimsleur. Though it certainly doesn't feel like your hand is being held as with Pimsleur.

The audio is used alongside a printed book that has one side of the page in your target language and the other in your native language for a direct comparison.

You still learn good pronunciation, grammar, words and phrases, but in a far less boring way than Pimsleur. Also there's the added benefit that you get some language immersion since the audio is purely in your target language.

Even still I would say that Assimil isn't enough on its own. To make the process of learning a language interesting you need to utilise a variety of tools and methods.

Do you own a trademark in Europe? Your lawyers won't necessarily be much help if not.

I gather this is the result of the increasing price of crude oil, making small oil fields that weren't previously considered viable now viable. The output of these wells is enough to essentially stop oil prices from going through the roof for the time being.

This just about sums it up: "Don't use kill -9. Don't bring out the combine harvester just to tidy up the flower pot." (from this answer http://unix.stackexchange.com/a/8927)

Add a thermometer to the stovetop kettle and it'd be perfect! :-) I would much rather boil water with gas. It's cheaper and there's no risk that it will overload the circuit breaker.

Unless it's an ad from a recruitment agency. While I'm certain that recruitment agency ads do often advertise real jobs, there are instances where I'm pretty sure there are other recruitment agencies that advertise fake positions. They are then used to collect CVs of the applicants so they have a database of candidates which they can use if an employer asks for someone for another position.

In Melbourne, Australia rent and/or mortgage repayments are more than that in a week. Moving out to the country will save a little bit but also limits access to jobs. I don't think you could get a mortgage for a 3br house for $300 a month anywhere these days.

What happens if a basic income were adjusted for those price increases? One would think it would be linked to CPI and living costs.