Litespeed

OME, At least when you look at the fillies, what you see is what you get. About the only thing honest you will ever see in racing. I have said a million times the only way to make it fair is have the horse ride the Jockey.

I think the study makes a really good point. We should follow the effects of colonisation by gun and disease as suffered by Australia, the Americas and sadly too many others. Simple really just kill 90% of the population and let nature do its thing. Or we could stop deniers and get on will doing real action, before the planet kills us off for the parasites we are.

So what you are arguing about the Hummelbird is that the law is arse in this case and should be changed. We are constantly creating new laws and often they are shortsighted. You are defeating your own argument. laws should never be set in stone but reviewed to ensure they actually meet the needs of society as we develop and so must the law. By your logic we should never have allowed cars on the road without the previously mandated man with flag in front. Oh except when the law changes to your dismay with the Hummelbird. You can't have it both ways, you can't be absolutist about the law except when it suits you. If we followed every law and never changed as needed, never ignored any and enforced absolutely all laws, we would all be in Goal. I agree the rules with the Hummel are self defeating and stupid. But your anger over that should not mean you are happy for all society to suffer from the laws and rules just because you have.

A pure pill can easily kill, just like any drug that is given even legal ones. The drugs we are prescribed only have a tiny amount of the active ingredient. I take blood thinners aka rat poison, if I bought a street version it would have a unknown mg of warfarin and most likely kill me as any amount over prescribed can be deadly. The tolerance is quite small between therapeutic and death. The party drugs are much less lethal than this, but a excessively large dose either too many pills or high a purity or nasty shite it is blended with can be fatal. That is why testing is so important and the willingness of friends to seek medical attention ASAP. Many do not from fear of police trouble and hope for the best. Many die when seeking help would have meant a minor hospital stay. If we had a legal regulated supply then deaths would be extremely rare and people would choose safer drugs than things like ICE, which people take as it is cheap and easily available. Also keep in mind a lot of dance party deaths are actually not directly from the drug but from excessive alcohol as they just keep drinking or hyperthermia as the keep dancing and overheat. Others are from excessive drinking of water. Yes too much can kill, and has many times, the blood dilutes and the brain actually drowns. This was the case of a famous drug death years ago, it was her drinking 6 litres of water in approx a hour- her body could not process that much in such a short time. It is the fact such drugs are illegal that leads to the vast harm, injury and deaths.

It should also be noted that the police have a vested interest I. The status quo that many do not realise, they are paid to attend such festivals not by the government but by the festival organisers and often at overtime rates. This is often a demand by the police to allow events go ahead, don't pay our blokes and no event. So effectively extortion from the police to do the job we as society already pay them for. A friend is a cop and such events often add 20k to his yearly income.

There is also the argument that planned maintenance and decisions to declare a fault critical on the highest demand days of the years ensured that spot prices jumped through the roof allowing a surge in profitability from other supplies. Which are also owned by the same power groups. If not planned maintenance would be done in the lowest demand periods ie spring and Autumn. Cynical but possible.

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/environment/sustainability/inexplicable-power-plants-pollution-limits-weak-by-world-standards-20181106-p50ec8.html Check out the allowable pollution and we blame China as a polluter!

Here is the latest article about the pollution from coal fired power, and note they have lower standards that even China now does. The NSW EPA just ticks the box and they get to continue to pollute with no new filtering required. https://www.canberratimes.com.au/environment/sustainability/scandal-nsw-coal-power-plants-will-kill-thousands-before-they-close-20181120-p50h66.html

A lot of it had to do with Napoleon, he wanted to ensure the British had no source if hemp which is essential as ropes, caulking of planks and resins the ships used. Many tons were required for each ship and replaced often. Too lose supply could bring a navy to its knees. The Russians ended up supplying the British via American privateers, this led to Napoleon GPI g to war with Russia. The potential to ensure hemp supplies made Australia of strategic importance. The Hawkesbury river are was were the hemp was grown, but eventual peace with France after Napoleon's final defeat meant it became less important as Europe was now again supplying the hemp.

So you don't believe the massive holes in the ground and air pollution from mining it are a problem? Ever been to a coal mining area? What about the black lung for the miners? What about the highest levels of asthma in developed world? What about the estimated 10,000 deaths a year from pollution by coal power stations- far more than the road toll.

Storchy, We are amused at your inability to accept any evidence that does not fit your world view. You have a right to a view but not to create your own facts. How can the wind and solar be blamed for the old coal burners breaking down? Or do you have special knowledge from a parallel universe? Just in case you did not know- the Earth is Round not flat.

No, you just use existing farms and produce it, it is only one of many crops that can be used as a solution. We should never cut down forests for farms.

Here is a Hemp skateboard- the deck is hemp and 100% bio resin.

And a whole side panel of a small car from Hemp Plastic, here Henry Rollins gets out some anger! As I have said the ability is out there we just need the will to do it.

And here is a Lotus Elise /Eco concept from 2008, panels are lighter than originals and strong.

This is from 2012 a Landline ABC program, Note the stupidity of government. Finally Hemp is allowed for Foods from 2018. Why do I know so much? I had a research licence for growing it at UWS Hawkesbury in 1997-1998. We could have had a industry by now but pig headed pollies and vested interests kept stopping it.

Here are some vids on Hempcrete which is a low cost waste product from fibre making added with lime and water. The videos tend to say it is new but that is all bullshite, just a company flogging their stuff. It has been around in various forms thousands of years and ages to go rock hard and will last thousands of years as it naturally petrifies. Also the homes they are building are only a half way tech as they still use a lot more timber than is necessary, but that is because the are still in the modern building mindset. Also note the clever home block building machine in Thailand, could pump out thousands a day for low cost, let the dry and bingo, load supporting low weight blocks. Hempcrete can be fully load supporting when done to its best. It is also fireproof, vermin proof and pretty much idiot proof.It is also very light weight so loads in the structure are far lower and much easier on the worker building it. The use of Hempcrete can even be seen back in roman times and many of these structures still stand today. And yes Hemp is now been grown in Australia so the materials are available and will become cheaper as more farmers get into it. Remember this is actually a waste material from making fibre. So potentially can be extremely cheap- think bagasse from sugar cane cheap.

Here is a vid of a guy making a hemp based aircraft , don't know his current progress. Vid also has other stuff as well, very gimicky vid but its American

Most will not know that Henry Ford never wanted his cars to be petrol powered but preferred bio fuels which were common up to the 1940's. He had a estate at mount Michigan were he grew Hemp and made products including car parts from it for prototypes and fuel. He was forced literally at the barrel of a gun to stop by the government as it had made growing hemp illegal in the 1930's after a campaign by Randolf Hearst and the Dupont family. These guys controlled the chemical oil plastics industry and newspapers, with Hearst having been given free access to Nth Americas forests to make paper from- a extremely polluting process that used products from Dupont. Here is a video about Fords Hemp car, there are better videos out there I will search.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srgE6Tzi3Lg We must keep in mind this was a cellulose based plastic. Also note a lot of information on the web and elsewhere is written and created by those with a bias against hemp and other bio products as it is against there current business model just as it was 80 years ago.

No the scientists made no mistakes for thalidamide is was the greedy company that knew it was not suitable for the pregnant women, but decided to market it anyway. The testing proved this but they were ignored , the 50's data showed the company knew. Just like big tobacco and James Hardie they just swept it under the carpet in pursuit of profits. As a drug it still has uses today but not as a nausea aid for pregnant women.

How do we make steel with coking coal? It is called carbon, ......those green things in the forest make it. Just use pyrolysis you get gases to burn for power or use a reactor for long chain molecules and make plastics and also gives you carbon. Not real hard and have been doing it for centuries.

An awefully large amount of that steel we keep making is used for wasteful purposes- just look at all the ghost cities in China. That represents a massive amount of coal, steel and concrete that may never be fully utilised, if at all. When we don't account for the true costs of these materials it is all too easy to waste the natural, financial and human capital of the planet.

Where do I start,...... Fiberglass etc can be made from organic sources or just replaced with natural fibres like hemp. Resins can also be from a organic base and they don't burn easy either. Concrete has lots of replacement options which means it can be greatly reduced in use. Ever seen a rammed earth wall? Ever heard of Laminated wood beams? We are now building skyscrapers out of the stuff, all fully reusable or recyclable at end of buildings life. We even have hemp panels which are similar in spec to honeycomb panels made of carbon and aramid. These have been available for over 20 years and have been used in aircraft. Why don't we see more of this? Industry is stuck in old school tech and deeply embedded with big oil and mining products. There is almost no product on the planet that can't be done using organic bases instead of oil- which started as plant matter in the beginning. But what about say a fire door? Yes been made in Asia and Europe from hemp and resin for 30 years and much higher fire rated than the old school ones and weigh a lot less. Most mining is completely redundant. When we need a refined mining product either recycle it or use renewable power to create it.

Mining only produces most of our stuff because our economics is geared that way. Yes some is essential but only a small amount, the rest can be made other ways. And those alternatives make more jobs and pollute far less.

Mining creates only approx 5% of our GDP and 1% of jobs. So we could easily afford not to do it, especially since it uses foreign capital, equipment and rarely pays any tax.