Perhaps explains the confusion of Australia with Austria.

This ia sad reflection of the lack of understanding of the new government on environmental issues. For them, rewarding their mates and campaign donors in big business is more important than anything else.

"If the climate scientists have a model that accurately predicted the past 16 years then we can talk about the future." Rubbish. The global atmospheric environment is a complex set of regional systems, all dissipating energy through the various weather patterns around the world. The greenhouse effect has caused that huge set of systems system to heat up, and so they have to dissipate more and more energy. This is increasing entropy and there has to be a dramatic result when you do that to any system or machine. Metaphorically, this is like a steam engine when the boiler is fired up too high and the pressure relief valve has to operate or it will explode. The result is more violent regional weather systems which result in heat being transferred in greater quantities than previously in living memory. Sometimes this results in some places freezing and other places having heat waves and drought. The entire system has not been modeled thoroughly. Some of the smaller weather systems have been modeled quite well but when subjected to exogenous heat inputs from the global system, the model fails to predict what might happen because this effect cannot be taken into account in the model. What most Americans think about this is irrelevant because most Americans are too poorly educated to appreciate how scientists do research, and they are notoriously willing to entertain stupid conspiracy theories. Grow up America!

Cinema owners have no right to stop texting. The carrier purchased a license to use the spectrum at great cost and the cinema cannot take away the right given by the Federal government through that license. Using it is bad manners but nothing more. Crazy old gun nut. The curse of the Second Amendment.

In reality he was showing off by penetrating the security of Metlink. I think that we nerds too readily attribute him the noble motivation of helping them to improve their security, which clearly should have been better. Why did they need to keep all that information? So, the company deserves a kick, but so does the kid-hacker, who knowingly broke a state law that should be taken very seriously. He should have been arrested, but I doubt that he actually was. From Christmas Eve to Australia Day, 26 Jan, during the heat of summer, most Australians are on holiday, and it is very difficult to get any sense from many businesses or government agencies. It is also a slack news time where little stories get big coverage. Metlink is the much-hated, greedy marketing arm of the Melbourne public transport system that the populist media love to kick. So this kid chose his time to report the "problem" very well. If you ever try to catch a tram in Melbourne, you will hate Metlink too. You are required to buy a ticket from a machine on the tram under pain of heavy fines, but to do that you are required to have an intimate prior knowledge of the system so that you can choose the right number of "sections" for the fare. "Hurry up Yank!

It's OK! Relax! This is only about marketing, and we know that everyone loves receiving commercials that are aimed at them. Sales people have a right to have all personal information. This will improve their aim. Isn't that wonderful. Of course, we should not let the cops or federal agencies have access to the data because that would allow them to catch criminals, and no one wants that.

NSA probably can't help it. It is taking huge stacks of meta data on large blocks of phone numbers, and some congressmen are bound to be included. So perhaps it honestly does not know. If it denies the accusation it is bound to be caught out.

Win 8 works quite well on a phone, being more ordered, intuitive, and less messy than Android. The main problem is still the MS walled garden. I don't want Explorer or Bing, and I still can't get many of the apps I want and enjoyed on Android.

The Christian Brothers, who run this "not for profit" are desperate for the income it brings them. Their church no longer permits them to work at their profession of teaching because they were so enthusiastically involved in the pedophilia scandals, and cannot be trusted near children. They lost most of their wealth in law suits because of the abysmal performance of their leadership in addressing the claims of the abused. Now most of them are growing old and fat in an idle retirement, and the few who can still earn money are working very hard trying to support them. I could almost feel sorry for them, but no, because they were the very worst of the abusers: even running a child slave labor camp at Bundoon in Western Australia that kept orphan kids in a hard labor camp prison where many of the boys were also sexual slaves. http://www.smh.com.au/national/i-can-still-hear-the-kids-screams-20110611-1fyap.html So now they want to impose their abhorrent sexual ethics on those who they have to employ to do the work that they should be doing. If ever there was a case for retrospective abortion, it would be for these guys.

The USA is less evolved culturally than most other countries, so it is to be expected that so many of its people would be less evolved intellectually. Still, these are amazing statistics, and are a credit to conservative Christianity for holding back the evolution of its believers for so long.

Global warming is about more heat being stored in the atmosphere. That means there is more energy in the complex global system that causes our weather. This extra energy causes the system to behave in a different way than we are used to. This leads to more unstable weather extremes of all kinds in the short term and to stable climate changes in the long term.

And, the fluorescent type not put out as much light as incandescent, regardless of what it says on the label. They create more HF radio interference, and they have a shorter life; Oh! and they cost much more. I bet the Asian $2 shops will find a way to keep the incandescent coming.

The UN should auction 15 year full property right leases, and give the money to developing countries.

Huh? You want to be able to attack an intruding enemy, bomb his troops, ships, and tanks wherever he is in your country. In Brazil, that could be at a distant border a long way from you fighter base, or way out to sea.

Thanks this story did not satisfy my belief criteria. It had to be fake. Even the DHS is not that stupid. I assumed that this was a beat up with more facts about the case being left out to increase indignation and newsworthiness. It is \. we should be angry with for publishing this crap. Not the Toronto Star.