Hiro Protagonist

There is some truth to what Guard Dog is saying. Energy efficient cars from alternative fuels still have to get the power from somewhere. New flat-screen TVs will use more power than your old tube TV. Also, Plasma TVs use more power than LCD TVs. As the technology gets better with some things (like TVs), the power consumptions also increases. One problem is that in plasma TVs, each pixel is a discrete light source (think of it as a tiny light bulb), so when resolution increases, say from 720p to 1080p, power use goes up as well. Few people have just a TV anymore, and all sorts of ancillary devices contribute to your yearly energy costs as well. Think of all that's plugged into your set, from a DVD or Blu-ray player, an AV receiver, and a gaming console to a satellite receiver, DVR, or Slingbox that never really turns off. They all need power. It may not sound like much, but a DirecTV DVR can use about 33 watts, while a Slingbox draws about 9 watts--constantly. All told, these boxes can use more power than the TV itself, especially when it comes to gaming.

I can't wait to see the end of the world in a hundred years time.

Actually I've gained muscle mass and losing fat. I have bigger biceps (from lifting) and calves and my stomach is more tighter than before and quite a bit has been lost around the waist. I feel more fit and less tired. However my girlfriend is doing what you're suggesting by eating around 6 meals a day, exercising and can't lose weight. Probably because she's replacing all those lost calories with meals throughout the day so her body keep her equilibrium. My belief is that it's better to cut down on the meals and do more exercise. You burn off more calories than you put on and lose weight. If you have meals throughout the day, then you're replacing the calories being lost during the day and not losing any weight at all. And I won't inevitably stop exercising because after I lose all the weight, I will still be walking every morning to keep myself in shape. Exercise isn't something you should stop all of a sudden.

Decided to start exercising last week to lose some weight and will continue for the next three weeks. Power walking 1 hour every morning and night as well as 30 minutes at lunch time. Very strict diet. Small glass of Orange Juice for Breakfast, no lunch. A few cups of tea a day with sugar and milk. Small dinner. End of week 1. Lost 10 Kgs. will update at the end of this second week to see how much I've lost.

I saw the trailers and read every review on Rotten tomatoes and the movie was quite different to what I expected it to be. Quite the contrary. There was no trite or preachy scenes in the movie. Anyway, practically every movie has cliche's in it. I haven't seen a movie that hasn't had cliche's in it.

I had corneal laser surgery on my left eye a few years ago and I'm right eye dominant. My left eye isn't 100%, so even though I can see now and everything seems okay, it's when I do things like wear 3D glasses that reminds me that you need two eyes that 'are the same'. Otherwise it won't work when one eye is more dominant than the other as in my case. I tried the new 3D glasses a couple of years ago to see if it would work and the screen looks blurred with the 3D glasses on (even worse when you don't wear them).

I just got back from seeing it with my girlfriend and her neice. We had a 6pm session and the cinema screened both 2D and 3D versions in the same complex. I saw the 2D version (as the 3D movie glasses doesn't work with me ) and the girlfriend and neice went and saw the 3D version. They were amazed by it. I thought it was a good movie and could see how it would look great in 3D.

Sounds like a Bioware game.

Trailers for Avatar have been showing in theatres for the last 5 months. Unless you've been living under a rock and haven't watched a new movie in a theatre for the last six months or 'Downloading movies illegally', then I don't understand how anyone didn't know about this movie.

A carbon Tax that does nothing to save the environment. How does this tax reduce their own carbon emissions? Are people in the UK going to use less petrol and drive less? are they going to use less electricity? Are Transport companies going to use their trucks less? Are importers and exporters going to reduce their imports/exports and use shipping/airfreight companies less and to reduce their reliance on martime and airfreight shipping?

The Japanese were the bad guys in WWII. Same with the Nazi's. According to all the movies I've seen.

When looking at sea levels, you need to look at the broad scale of sea-level changes. Sea levels go up and down all the time. Eastern England is falling, Scotland's rising. Scandinavia's rising, Holland is sinking. So we're getting the land go up and down, we're getting sea levels go up and down. We've got this wonderful measuring station in Port Adelaide where sea level was measured here, and people have claimed sea level has actually risen. But in fact, the measuring station has fallen. We've had some fiercely hot weather in eastern Australia in the last couple of days. On the other hand, we had some fiercely cold weather in eastern Australia earlier in April this year. Some people might be tempted, "Oh, that's proof of climate change". It isn't - it's a normal variability. The evidence to show that the planet has been cooling is the same body of evidence that comes out to the major meteorological centres in the world. We are currently in a cooling phase, before that we were in a warming phase. From 1940 to 1976 we were cooling. So we go through regular cycles of cooling and warming. The planet is dynamic, just because we're alive today doesn't mean that we are influencing the planet. It changes. The Hadley Centre in the UK has shown that global warming stopped in 1998. That's one of the four centres that put out climate data, and the Hadley Centre use a slightly different database from some of the American centres, they use temperature based on thermometer measurements - some of the others use satellite and balloon. And it's interesting that there is a rough correlation, but in detail there isn't a correlation, that is one of the four centres. The Hadley figures that the years 1998 to 2006 include the hottest, the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth hottest years in recorded history, has been widely criticised across the world. Those figures are not in accord with what we get from the other climate centres, and the second thing is that the British meteorological society has actually withdrawn those comments. Now, we know from 1959 the Royal Society of meteorologists in the UK argued that the variable climate was due to the atom bomb. In the 1970s, they argued that it was due to global cooling. Now they are arguing that we're all going to fry. So science is married to evidence - that evidence constantly accumulates and changes. In the 1930s, it was much hotter. We had from 1920 to 1940 far less arctic sea ice than now, much, much warmer temperatures. If you look at a bracket of 10 years of time, that doesn't tell us what's happening to climate - that's telling us what's happening to the weather. And the second thing is that the Hadley Centre has been widely criticised, especially in the US, for those figures. NASA's claim that 2005 was the hottest in recorded history. NASA also gave similar figures, which they withdrew. NASA now states the four top years of high temperatures are in fact the 1930s. That was in 1930, there was a date in the 1920s, and one in the 1940s. The hottest US temperatures, not the hottest global temperatures. Unfortunately, we have 30 years of satellite and balloon measurements of global temperatures. They are not in accord with the other ways we measure temperature, which is done with thermometers in areas where we've got a huge amount of heat given out by villages as small as 1,000 people. And so one set of data where we use a thermometer gives us a completely different story to when we use radioson balloons and satellites. And if we've got two separate data sets, to start making claims, as we've heard from many meteorological centres, is absolutely erroneous. The first thing is that global temperature is a very difficult thing to measure. Secondly, we have a huge bias in the measuring station, and they are mainly in western countries, European countries - they're not in areas where we might get very high temperatures such as in the deserts. Also, you have scientists in one area of expertise giving their opinions on things that they're not specialised in or haven't researched properly. eg. Barry Brook is a biologist. He's done some very good work on the mass extinctions of macro fauna in Australia. He's not a climate scientist, he's done no climate science. Professor Kurt Lambeck is a geophysicist who's done a lot of work on sea level changes. What he hasn't looked at is the broad scale of sea-level changes. He also has not done work on, say, Tuvalu, where the floor of the Pacific Ocean and there's little wonder that Tuvalu is getting a relatively high sea level and nowhere else in the world is. And again, his work is very narrow geophysical work, mainly in the Mediterranean.

I like this comment from Richard Branson from this news article.

Eight scenes - some new and some extended worth about 3 extra minutes

Don't come to Australia. We have more censorship here than nearly any country in the world. Internet is already censored with .com.au sites having to be approved. If you have an 'offensive' .com.au site they can take it away. A lot of Books, Movies and Games are banned. And if the Game isn't banned, then it's modified to the point where it doesn't resemble anything like what the original game is. I think we're the only Western OECD country without a R rating for games. And now the Government wants to introduce an internet filter that is similar to China's internet filter, so you won't be able to veiw most of those sites you mentioned. Even links at wikileaks and Youtube will be banned in the internet filter.

Really depends on your personal situation. I think it's better with things like Travelling. It's cheaper now in releative to your income to travel to another country than it was 40 years ago. The technology is fantastic. Games are like worlds instead of a couple of pixels on the screen. I still have my Atari 2600 and C64 though. Information is at your fingertips instead of going to a library. How I wished I had the internet when I was at school instead of looking in an outdated school encyclopaedia to do my assignments. On the other hand, no one I know play board games which I miss. And I wouldn't mind going to a circus. I mean a real circus with Lions and Tigers and Elephants, etc.

Despite this, humans breed faster than the virus can kill. Perhaps it could be a final solution for Africa, when the virus kills everyone, the West can go in and fix the place up and run it properly.

2012. Special Effects was amazing. It looked like they put every disaster movie that's been made in the last 20 years and put it all into one movie. (Dante's Peak, the Tsunami tidal waves from Deep Impact/Armageddon only BIGGER, Day After Tomorrow, etc). It wasn't like previous disaster movies where you sit through 90 minutes of dialogue to see 5 minutes of special effects at the end... This was special effects all the way through! With my chinese girlfriend and her neice, they loved the chinese angle to the movie as well.

Talking about religious discrimination, how about Muslims having seperate toilets from non-muslims at an Australian University? I know the website itself is bias but the article itself is a bit of a worry. Reminds me of the Black and White toilets that happened in America. I've been trying to find another source to this to substantiate this story but all the mainstream media seem to not be reporting this.

True. Which is why i would regard sharia law as incompatible with liberal democracy. BUt being a muslim does not necessarily mean you expect shria law to be applied any more than being a christian means you expect all that guff in Deuteronomy about stoning people to be carried out. Muslims living in western countries practise their cultures according to the cultural traditions of their individual countries and in some cases according to different ethnic traditions within these national cultural traditions. Assimilation is seen as a racist model that expressed the supremacy of the host society in cultural rather than racial terms. The replacement of assimilation is multiculturalism as the dominant theme in immigration and settlement policy. Muslim integration or lack thereof, has a lot to do with the levels of racism and discrimination that still exist in that society [i.e. the blame goes to the host country's residents racism and not the muslims lack of integration]*. This is taken from the Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship website. * My interpretation in brackets of this statement.

Oh and the hybrid cars I find laughable when it comes to cost. A brand new Toyota Prius here in Australia costs $44,000.00 but I can buy a Brand new $20,000.00 car and spend around 3 years supply (~ $24,000.00) in petrol and still will probably be cheaper to run before I even drive the Prius out the door.

I agree with Wals. Especially with point 2. Reducing pollution is incredibly expensive. Here in Australia, if you want to put solar panels on your roof, you're looking at around AU$10,000 plus extra costs to put these on your roof and you'll get about $3500.00 in a one off rebate from the Government on installation. You'll still be out of pocket around $6500.00 and it's been suggested here that it will take about 7 years for the money saved by getting energy from the sun plus yearly rebates to equal the amount of money you would have spent from the electricity grid. So after 7 years, you'll be saving money. The average home owner probably won't do that. To suggest that businesses and consumers will have a choice to reduce thier carbon output is laughable. In many cases both business and consumers don

Other groups were persecuted by the nazi's. My mum was a Jehovah's Witness, my Uncle was a homosexual, my grandfather was a political dissident, my aunt had a Physical and Mental Disability, my father's next door neighbour was jewish and they lived in a gypsy community. Tough time was had by all. So MY opinion means more than anyone else on this board because I have more experience than anyone else.