I'm not the previous poster but I did watch the documentary.

It says that forest (i.e. bushland - forest was probably redubed for the American market) is being cleared at a rate close to the Amazon in Queensland. Not rainforest. Most rainforest in Australia is protected.

It should have said was though. Those rates of land clearing have since decreased. Although they still are too high. Australia needs to keep better care of its bushlands. Rainforests though I think you'll find are well cared for.

It says nothing about Aborigines... at all... So I'm not sure why you brought that up in your original post.

Most of the documentary is about the efforts being made to understand and conserve Koalas. Things like researching their behaviour. Treating sick Koalas. Developing vaccines for common Koala diseases. Building under pass and other ways for them to cross roads.

Sorry that first bit should not be in italics.

So you ran your mouth of about Australian treatment of Aborigines, Koalas and rainforest. Of those you contest that rates of rainforest clearing are high and link to a documentary that we can't see about scientists in Australia and America studying Koala mating calls and you're surprised that you got modded down?

Rates of overall land clearing in Australia have been high. They were very high in the 1990's apparently. Possibly as high as those of the Amazon. Rates have decreased since then (that is how Australia met its Kyoto commitment).

Most of that land being cleared is not rainforest though. It's bushland in central Queensland. Most of the remaining rainforest is protected as I said.

Estimates of Koala population vary. In some parts of Australia the populations are stable and increasing. In other parts they are decreasing. In states with decreasing populations they are listed as vulnerable..

OTOH, if it treats its citizens like it treats the koalas (q.v. recent PBS Nature episode) and aborigines and rainforest, maybe it's not that great. Only 15 million people and all that real estate, and still they manage to screw up the best parts.

There's 22 million people in Australia.

As for the rest of your quote I think you might be talking about historical treatment of these things. Yeah Koalas were hunted till about 1920. Now days they are a protected species, with large wildlife sanctuaries and facilities dedicated to nursing injured Koalas and rearing orphaned Koalas to release them back into the wild.

Aboriginal people were treated terribly historically. They were denied the vote and treated as second class citizens until the 1960s (remind you of some other places?) Now days traditional land rights are acknowledged. Aboriginals are given special treatment under the welfare system. And there have been public apologies by several Prime Ministers for the various ways they were mistreated.

I'm not sure of the history of rainforests in Australia but before you go running your mouth you could have at least done some precursory research on conservation efforts in Australia. Firstly the Green party is the 3rd largest political party in Australia and you'll find vast areas of national parks and state parks across Australia. Over 10% of Australia's land mass is national parks. That's an area bigger than Texas.

In fact if you look at tuition, aside from Australia, the US government is less-involved in college education than any other developed country in the world.

Huh? The Australian government is extremely involved in tuition... It caps fees, pays part of domestic student fees and provides the remainder on low interest loans which have their repayment tied to income. In addition, it also provides scholarships and income support to students from poor backgrounds, and through tax-deductions and direct income support it helps people in the workforce improve their education as well.

What it doesn't do is involve itself in the tuition of students not in Commonwealth supported places and not receiving government fee assistance (Aka. HECS). Which in practice pretty much means Universities can do what they want as far as overseas operations and foreign students go.

It's probably not optimal but the Australian system seems to work fairly well. I graduated a few years ago from a four year course at a top university owing about $18,000 to the government. That ends up at about $4500 per year. If I'd payed up front I would have got a 20% (now 10% discount as well). So I could have done it for about $3600 per year.

If you want a developed country that doesn't involve itself in tertiary education look at Japan.

Only the "loss" of Vietnam (a political loss, not a military one, the military could have held the south indefinately, like Korea, if only the public hadn't stopped supporting it, and the dead people helped undermine it, though more die in car crashes than the Vietnam war and nobody cares, so people are insane and fickle).

Of course the public cares about car crashes that's why we have seat belts, air bags, speed limits, crumple zones, crash testing with safety ratings, speed limits, drink driving bans, license requirements to be allowed to drive, vast amounts of police resources enforcing the above rules and so on. I'd say the public cares enough to demand that quite significant resources are spent to help reducing car crash deaths.

Now the public also realized that: Deaths from Vietnam + Deaths from Car Accidents > Deaths from Car Accidents. So a great way to save a whole bunch of lives is to stop fighting a pointless war of aggression on the other side of the world! In addition to that if you find them you can also introduce measures to reduce the road toll and save lives!

I'd say the public far from being fickle and fearful were quite smart.

Of course Japan and Germany trade more with us, they're developed! They were both highly developed nations before they ever got a dollar of aid from us. China was somewhat in the 1930s before Japan went in.

Post-WWII the U.S. gave huge amounts of aid to Europe including Germany. Later on the US went through an economic boom in part selling stuff to Europe to help it rebuild. Japan was less lucky initially. Post-WWII they were desperately poor, with wide spread food shortages and so on. However come the Korean war the U.S. started to see the importance of a stable Japan and gave them generous military supply contracts which kick started their high growth era in the 1950's.

In another example Japanese war repayments helped kick start Korea's development in the 1960's. Another example is Taiwan which received significant U.S. aid helping them kick start their economic development.

There is no way to develop Pakistan, they'd have to want to do it themselves.

Of course they have got to be willing to do it themselves. However aid can provide a helping hand. The point I was making was that the U.S. is better off in a world of rich nations to trade with (E.g. Pakistan v.s. Japan/Germany). Hence providing aid to help other nations develop can be justified by self interest.

Somalia is not a security problem. Not a significant one anyway. For some private shipping, but the US Navy can blow anything they have with their lowest tech gear out of the water. The threat is nothing compared to the cost of developing it.

Somali piracy costs $7bn despite fall in hijacks. That is in 2011 alone. $7bn of development aid a year buys you quite a lot

Just like that $10B or so a year bought Pakistan's loyalty when our chopper crashed.... and oh, wait, they gave China a look at it.

You mean $10B since 2001. I guess the U.S. didn't spend enough to buy the rights to land a stealth helicopter loaded with navy seals in their territory without notifying them (not that I'm saying that the U.S. wasn't justified in doing so). More to the point do you genuinely believe that aid cannot help improve relations with countries receiving it or help buy their loyalty? If you don't disagree that that can be the case then there isn't really any argument to be had.

Tell me exactly why it is our responsibility to find ways to assist developing regions. There are americans that would love call center work. It beats a lot of other bad jobs.

Well in regards to the Philippines in particular there is the rather ugly history of America buying the islands of Spain and then invading them, crushing the Philippines independence movement and ruling them as a colonial power for about 50 years. So you could say there is some moral responsibility there.

For aid in general there are 3 good self interest arguments.

1. Economics: There are more people in Pakistan than Japan or Germany but wanna guess which ones America trades more with? Germany and Japan of course with trade volumes many times greater than American trade with Pakistan. The wealth of those two countries has created enormous new markets for American products. Yes trade involves job losses but the point is that the opportunities created outstrip the losses.

2. Security: Poor undeveloped countries cause security problems. Look at Somalia. If you can it's better to spend some money helping them develop rather than having to continuously deal with the security problems that you otherwise get.

3. Security 2: Aid is the act of buying allies. If the West isn't going to buy then others (China, Russia, Iran) might just step in.

Aside from self interest developed countries giving aid to developing countries has been a long standing principal. In terms of aid per capita the US gives quite generously but it is by no means the most generous. From memory the U.K is the biggest giver per capita. Aid programs like this are simply keeping the US in line with other developed countries in giving aid.

Yeah, iPods, iTunes, iPhone and iPad are so new... because nobody ever heard of a walkman, online music store, mobile phone or tablet before. Nor is Apple all that succesfull, yes, they sell a LOT of a single model but in total sales, many others surpass them. (Android activations outstrip in a matter of days, total iPhone sales. iTunes sells a lot of online music but only if you don't count traditional retailers)

Nobody is saying they invented portable music players, mobile phones or online music stores. The point is that the online music market and harddisk portable music player markets were almost non-existant before Apple came in there and shook things up. They made harddisk players appealing and tied them to an online music store. I call that making a market and they did it so effectively that they pretty much have the market cornered and have easily seen off attempts by Microsoft and Sony.

The iPhone was obviously not the first mobile but it did revolutionize the market. Its combination of a user friendly interface through the touch screen, onscreen keyboard and well thought out applications ui, with the ability to expand functionality through easily purchasable native applications was novel and innovative. It set the standard that others have rushed to emulate.

The parent poster claims he can't remember seeing rows of tablets before. Well, then he must not have been looking. Archos has been in the market for a long time. Of course, you could further specify that a tablet only counts if it is 8.9 inches and a certain thickness and color but most reasonable people know that tech gadgets evolve. Tablets were once laptops, then thin laptops, then those hybrid laptops whose keyboard could be hidden with a touch screen. In fact, weren't THOSE devices once called tablets?

Actually I made specific mention of old style tablets. I'm sorry you couldn't read to the end of my post. Those devices are nothing like the iPad or other modern tablets. As you yourself say they were laptops with touchscreens stuck on, which is really nothing at all like the iPad. The iPad is in a different class of portability and is designed from the ground up around its touch screen. It also functions much more as a portable entertainment hub. It also does that at a price point that undercuts even most normal laptops. I can't remember anything much like the iPad before it came out. Those touchscreen laptops even if they share the designation of "tablet" certainly aren't the same thing. The iPad made that market. Now everyone, even Amazon, is rushing to get their share of it.

Expanded the market, perhaps. There were tablets on the market long before the iPad was under development. They just kinda sucked, so there wasn't much demand.

The only tablets I remember before the iPad were laptops with touchscreens. There wasn't anything resembling a consumer focused ultra-portable entertainment hub which is what the iPad is.

iPhone? A polished convergence of the touchscreen PDAs and cell phones, without a stylus.

So in other words quite original. So original and ground backing that it basically revolutionized the mobile market and forced other manufacturers plus Google and Microsoft to scramble to copy the concept

iPod? The first model lacked features (and had less space) compared to its competitors.

But it was sleek, slim, nice to use, and integrated with iTunes. Before the iPod harddisk players were a bit of a non-event. iPod massively expanded that market.

What market did Apple create, other than the App Store, again?

Basically all of the above plus iTunes. Also the MacBook seriously shook up the laptop market hitting a combination of nice features (e.g. decent touchpad, well thought out charger), and a good balance between battery life, performance, looks and cost that no-one else was achieving at the time.

He still gives Apple a bit of a break: "Apple is the good guy on the block of all of them,” he says. “It is creating so much and is so successful and it is not just following the formulas of other companies – [Apple is] totally establishing new markets that didn’t exist."

I'm not a huge Apple fan but that seems pretty much true to me. They weren't all 100% original (what is?) but iPod, iTunes, iPhone and iPad have pretty much all created new markets or massively expanded existing ones. I mean I can't remember seeing rows of tablets on sale at my local electronics store prior to the iPad but now every company and his dog seems to have a tablet product. In fact the only tablets I remember hearing about before the iPad were laptops with touchscreens and huge price tags slapped on."

Not that I am defending their actions, but I do wonder if there is something cultural going on. Is there something in particular about Japanese culture that encourages that degree of control (or perhaps "order")?

No. Sony's CEO is an American from the content side of the business. Sony was fine as a Japanese electronics company. Things went down the crapper when they decided they wanted to be a Japanese electronics company and an American entertainment company.

Sony developed a hard disk music player before Apple did. They missed that market because the American entertainment guys were afraid of it and killed it. Jobs offered to partner with them on the iTunes music store but they refused that. Guess who was responsible. The CD root-kit scandal. That was 100% the American entertainment side of the business.

Also keep in mind that Australia has a growing racial/emigration problem. In Australia nowadays illegal immigrants get stuck into dodgy camps that even the old SA apartheid regime would have thought twice about doing. Now they won't dare. In Australia it is no problem. Can you honestly tell me that you are even 80% sure that these problems are not going to come to a head in Australia in the next 50 years?

I think you mean immigration not emigration. There are far more people coming to Australia each year than leaving it and Australians don't seem to have any trouble with people leaving the country. As an Australian even if I take overseas citizenship, I can still come back to Australia anytime on a special visa and renew my Australian citizenship if I want. We don't really have a great problem with people coming to Australia either. Immigration to Australia is pretty easy and it's one of the few places on earth where if you take citizenship you really will be accepted as a citizen.

While the placement of "illegal immigrants" (AKA. People who attempt to immigrate by arriving in Australia in a boat) in detention centres while their asylum claims are processed is troublesome, it hardly compares to the apartheid. There's no doubt racism in Australia, sometimes it manifests it self in ugly forms but by world standards it's quite an open and accepting nation and the racism that is there is quite isolated. While I can't be 100% certain that there won't be a civil war in Australia in the next 50 years, I can be 99.99999% certain. I've lived overseas a fair bit and I'd say Australia is about one of the least likely countries on earth to have a civil war. It has a low crime rate. It's very wealthy. It's a comparatively very open society and has very little ethnic tension.

I imagine if these people owned a residence the size of a typical house in the northeast US they wouldn't have a problem with poverty. I haven't watched the video but this seems more like a burning blocks in barrels style solution which would offer some warmth to significantly more than 10 people. Of course it's not going to solve the entire heating problem but it might be 40 tonnes of forest saved.

Not having proper perfect aspect isn't that rare. Japanese has perfective aspect (te-shimau) but its perfect aspect is the same as its progressive aspect (te-iru). Colour expressions differing across culture is also quite normal. The sky wasn't bronze in Ancient Greece they just lacked the distinction. Lot's of English's relative rich colour vocabulary are additions from French or similar. Modern Japanese is very developed in it's expression of colours but most of that is recent and some direct imports (E.g. pink and brown from English, kiiro (yellow) from Chinese). Traditionally Japanese tended to express colours through metaphor (E.g. sky-colour .etc.) and interestingly used namari (bronze) quite extensively as a description...