Actually there are a few tiny natural islands in the region where the shoreline is buried under a couple of meters of junk, mostly driftwood and large bits of plastic.

Water. AKA - "The universal solvent". I personally think wind farms are economically viable in many places, but not so much offshore for precisely the reasons you mention.

South Australia is 30% renewable despite a current federal government that is openly hostile to clean energy. The reasoning behind that ideological hostility is not difficult to spot - coal is our #1 export. India has recently declared that large scale PV solar is cheaper than Australian imported brown coal and is switching 400M people to solar over the next decade or so. Prices for coal are way down and mines are currently being mothballed, even those mining the high quality coking coal used to make chinese steel have seen recent mine closures.

The anti-science luddites in charge of this country can see the writing on the wall for the global coal industry, the words "stranded assets" are scaring them shitless. They lack the wisdom and intellectual independence required to plan a smooth transition so they do what politicians do best, fight it tooth an nail with tabloid propaganda and rigged domestic markets.

The slave trade would not have existed without property law. A market that is free of regulation is an oxymoron, what the "free" in free market actually means is that anybody can participate in the market, nothing to do with the type or number of rules that make the market possible.

That's wouldn't be "looking for people with liberal arts degrees", that's "looking for people with demonstrable technical experience" and finding that they just happen to have a liberal arts degree.

Yep.

As an analogy I'd point to pedigree and breed in a dog show. Your FORMAL education also has a breed (your major/minor) and a pedigree (which schools you attended).

But when it comes to hiring, I'd be looking for the "big dogs". And while breed and pedigree can be a factor (Chihuahua compared to Sheep Dog) I won't exclude the mutts.

If you have the drive and dedication to complete a formal major in one field while spending your free time becoming competitive in a different field then you are someone I should be interviewing.

While I'd tend toward Computer Science (since that is what my degree is in) I'd FIRST want to see what they've done already.

Is there anything the Lit major can show that demonstrates his programming skills? Like patches submitted to a FLOSS project? Or a mobile app? Or even a personal website?

It's not that you cannot get a programming job with a Lit degree. It is that the other candidates will probably have more DEMONSTRATED skills in the programming field.

Show me that you CAN program (sufficient to the basic requirements of the project) AND that your Lit degree gives you a different perspective AND how you implement that perspective.

Every one of the links you have posted comes from a mainstream Aussie media outlet, when those stories stop appearing you have a real corruption problem. The NSW ICAC judicial inquiry has forced the resignation of at least a dozen MP's who took illegal donations from property developers and is still going strong. Now think about real oppression (say) Mugabe or Saddam, they tow the line or risk summary execution.

Internet snooping by cops is a double edged sword, sure it can be used as a tool of oppression (if the political climate is ripe) but it has also been used to solve some high profile murder/rape cases. In the Jill Megan (sic?) case the cops didn't spy on anyone, they simply explained the situation to the banks (on the weekend) and the banks voluntarily gave them what they needed to track the bastard down.

Disclaimer: I have a female cousin who has served in the Victorian police for over 3 decades. I'm not claiming all Aussie cops are saints, but certainly the vast majority have their heart in the right place and are doing a tough job as best they can.

PS: Bad form to reply to own post but I'd also like to say I agree with your post, those consideration are a matter of due-diligence in my mind.

Of course you will also want to apply the same standards to the claims made by those upholding the status quo. After all, the FF industry is one of the most powerful economic entities on the planet, it has a lot more power and wealth than Gore, they are at least an order of magnitude higher in assets than the clean energy industry as a whole.

We have already seen the US senate abused in a failed attempt to discredit a single scientific paper. What I would like to see now is a repeat of the "tobacco trials" for the coal industry and their pet politicians (yes senator Inhofe, I'm looking at you)..

Another way of looking at it is that Gore puts his money where his mouth is, and considering the profits are fed back into his educational charity it's hard to see how it has given him more power and wealth than (say) a post-political career as a corporate lobbyist. For the most part I find American's in particular are generally for/against his charitable work based not on the contents of his documentaries, but on the perceived colour of his politics. The rest of the world don't really know him as as a politician, and are therefore less inclined to instinctively "shoot the messenger".

Sigh, the scientific community almost unanimously came out of the lab to praise the documentary because they felt it was a "bloody accurate" representation of their work.

Agree, now if you do some fact checking you will find the vast majority of climate scientists have already come out of their labs to loudly defend Gore's work, I'm not sure what your reading/viewing habits are, but you obviously missed the last 10yrs of debate, so the question is now - what will you tell your kids? - Can you set a good example by demonstrating a true skeptic changes his mind when confronted with inconvenient facts, or will misplaced pride take you down the creationist road?

Increasing seasonal sea ice in Antarctica is not "contra-evidence", it's a prediction that most models have been making for over 20yrs now, the mechanism that causes the counter intuitive result is well understood. So called "skeptics" are flogging a dead horse in their attempts to cite it as some sort of "smoking gun" that climate scientists are attempting to hide. The often intentionally misleading claim is ranked at #10 on skeptical sciences list of most popular climate myths.

As for Al Gore, any internet idiot can play "gottcha science" by taking words out of context and deliberately misinterpreting them. However the scientists who were lead authors of the IPCC reports that Gore's documentary was based on gave it a good review for it's representation of the report. Of course there were minor errors, and yes, the scientists pointed them out. The reason Gore shared the Nobel prize with the IPCC is that he put the IPCC's monumental lit-review effort squarely at the center of public policy debate.

Useful idiots? - As someone who has followed climate science with interest since the late 70's, Gore's documentary was an excellent (but imperfect) explanation of the science and it's real world consequences. It's a shame so many slashdotters mindlessly join in when the Gore bashing starts, he's the only well educated geek that has come close to sitting in the whitehouse for a very long time. History will admire his charitable public education efforts, even if most american's currently do not.

Disclaimer: I've been well known on slashdot for commenting on climate related stories for around 15yrs now, I'm not and have never been an "AGW advocate", I'm a science advocate.

Physics - awesome!
Chemistry - awesome
Biology - awesome

But I think he's wrong on some many issues. From the summary:

... he imagined laser-scanning every object in the Smithsonian for students to explore ...

Why? That's like looking at a single car from one country and claiming an "education". Think REALITY. The students could see HOW the objects were created. What tools were used. Who crafted the item. What the society was like that required it.

... and collaborating in shared virtual spaces rather than campuses.

They're called "chat rooms". Wanna "cyber"? Porn is NOT the same as education.

Looking at other students would be a distraction.

The next step past that is when you have shared space, and not only do you believe that this object is right there in front of me, but I look around and I see other people just like we see each other now, and I really, truly believe that youâ(TM)re right in front of me.

Why does it matter that you see avatars looking at the same point that you are looking at?

And he keeps going on about that. For him it is all about "seeing" other "people" (really just avatars) so it can be the same "experience" as real life.

That's stupid. They are not people. They are avatars. And knowing how people are, their avatars would be designed to be as distracting as possible.

If it saves the life of an imbecile who can't trouble to buckle up it MAY be worthwhile, but for anyone of normal intelligence it is a liability.

To understand why this "imbecile" has air bags, first put your seat belt on, now see if you can tap your head gently against the door pillar, now imagine tapping it at 50mph. As for the steering wheel bag it's not there to stop you from leaving your seat and being slammed into the steering column, that's the seat belt's job. The wheel bag is there because "collapsible" steering columns still have a nasty tendency to intrude into the cabin, significantly reducing the the wheel to face gap.

Disclaimer: I think keep my "liability". Sure it may one day cost me "an arm and a leg" but that's a perfectly rational insurance arrangement given the alternatives.

RE: my other reply, I've heard that in the US some of the bags are set to ridiculously low speeds, something like 10-15mph, if that's what happened to you then I think you have a valid point, set at 25-30mph they are definitely an "intelligent" option ad serve a different role to seat belts. In fact a properly designed air bag assumes the person is strapped into their seat.

No offence but I found the part about your glasses leaving your face for a split second fascinating, did it happen in that weird "slow motion" phase of the car crash or did you not even see it because it was so fast?

Wow sounds like you have actually read 1984. Big brother is an unseen but omnipresent demigod who will strap a live rat to your face if he sees you doing something he doesn't like. 'Animal Farm' is a more accurate criticism of the modern democratic state that arises from the revolutionary ashes of such demigods..