Mollydukes,

You - you put it very well.

Isn't it fascinating that SPQR had difficulties with your style.

Who wants to be neuro-typical anyway? - it's the folks who think outside the square that tend to make the difference to humanity.

Btw, My 11 year-old HFA son found this the other day - and found it hilarious.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybDKfGEw4aU

It's a Saturday Night Live satire of Westerners moaning about the new iphone upgrade.

Hi Mollydukes,

I was watching a documentary the other week and one of the psychologists made a comment that none of us are “normal”.
We all have degrees of "abnormality" –it’s only a question of magnitude.

I am not offering any “truths”. I also have no firm answers.
But I second your confidence in science--and this branch of science/research in particular:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism

As for my “cheap shots”, they are not really intended to be taken seriously.

I encourage you to stick with OLO there are a lot of intelligent and talented people on this forum.
And you write very well –nothing like a four year old!

Cheers

True. "Who wants to be neuro-typical anyway? - it's the folks who think outside the square that tend to make the difference to humanity."

Doesn't need to be a global crisis, either... this one minute from The Onion Newsroom - Study: Alzheimer's Patients Say They Do Not Have Alzheimer's, helped me whilst caring for my father (he said at the time he saw the joke!):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieK1PTXmopE

Around the world there are millions of blind people. None of them have drivers licences, so we know they can't be trusted?
I don't know why Bob Carr doesn't have a drivers licence? Perhaps he has progressive myopia? And can't see much further than a fully extended hand?
With the best will in the world, we will still need to be using fossil fuels for at least the next fifty years?
There's some rather large glasshouses in northern SA, that exploit salt water as evaporate?
Enough to keep all the plants extremely healthy.
Large open air ponds finish the job and salt is also harvested and sold?
The power source and additional heating comes from NG?
The exhaust is fed directly into the hothouse, after flowering, where the plants thrive free of pests, which are asphyxiated overnight, by costless Co2 saturation?
Tarong power station is trialling Algae as a mop crop that is capable of cleaning up emission.
Similarly, Green Technologies, Boston, Massachusetts, is on the record, as perfecting a closed cycle system that scrubs smoke stack emission.
Queensland abandoned carbon capture and storage, as simply being far too expensive!
But only after they had wasted 100 million on the trial?
The advantage of using Algae as a mop crop is, there is a profit that can eventually be realized from endlessly sustainable bio-fuel!
Algae only use 1-2% of the water of traditional irrigated crops!
They absorb 2.5 times their own body weight in carbon emission, and under optimised conditions double that bodyweight and absorption capacity, every 24 hours!
100 tons today becomes 200 tons tomorrow, 400 the day after! billions of tons are possible, the only limit being available fertilizer/effluent!
A foreign firm are already doing it in our Northwest, utilising sea water; and are looking at supplying in excess of a million litres of bio-diesel annually, to local mines!
The aforementioned are ways we might do things both differently, throw a hundred million of govt money at; and, produce a decent profit from doing so!?
Rhrosty.

Privatisation has been a dismal failure that has undeniably concentrated far too much of our finite wealth in far too few hands! 1% owning 40% of Americas total and finite wealth!
Privatisation has allowed many govts to simply outsource core responsibilities, and in so doing, reduce tax!
After that, many were able to bring in balanced budgets or even surpluses, utilising derivatives, which effectively kicked the debt can down the road for around thirty years!
Meaning, others are left with the debt burden.
Capitalism is supposed to include risk and competition, not vast monopolies and captive markets!
To whit, we need to reclaim both energy and capital and all essential cash cow services, as publicly owned and operated property. Competing duopolies, would remove the only viable critique, ever levelled at publicly owned corporations?
We need to completely ban short selling, corp raids, asset stripping.
We also need to vastly reform our tax system, to remove an ever increasing load from fewer and fewer shoulders.
And instead, create a single broad based, entirely unavoidable system, that returns around an averaged 37% to the averaged Australian bottom line and around 25% to averaged household incomes!
A 4.8-5% single stand alone expenditure tax would do just that!
And increase inland revenue by around 100 billion per, which by the way, becomes immediately available; daily, to consolidated revenue!
Meaning a govt no longer needing to borrow, to finance its core responsibilities!
Doing what you've always done while expecting a different outcome, is madness and arguably the single reason, the whole world is in so much trouble today.
We have no other choice but to embrace change; rather than operate as self serving road blocks, in the path of absolutely essential reform!
We can all be far better off, rather than a pitiful and shrinking few of us!
Money really does have to circulate through many millions of hands, for modern western style economies to actually work; and or prosper the most industrious and innovative amongst us!
Rhrosty.

Excellent, Rhrosty... therefore it will not happen. Governments need the country to be in constant crisis in order to instil fear and get re-elected. A contented populace will lose interest in politics and politicians, as Belgium proved by running along perfectly with no government for more than a year. We only need a few wise people to guide us who actually know what they're talking about and have no axes to grind - not politicians!