"Getting the money out of politics" means reducing the influence of business and lobby groups. It may be true that increased advertising needs equates to more overall money being used, but certainly getting the 80% of uninterested voters involved will radically dilute the sway of the aforementioned groups.

I would also question the notion of that 80% being uninterested. The poor tend to be sceptical about changing their situation and don't see the point of voting. The young are less organised. For sure many non-voters are uninterested, but that doesn't mean that, were they forced to vote, they would not make somewhat informed choices that were in their own interests.

Probably exactly as many of the Egyptian perpetrators who were Swedish citizens.

He had just installed an 'anti-virus' toolbar as directed by a helpful caller from Microsoft?

I assume you're talking about Micallef, but I think there's a difference. Mad As Hell shows no obvious political leaning, it's more deconstructionist/Python humour than political satire, it just happens to use political news as its basis.

A closer show would be the now defunct The Roast.

"Trusted newsman" is going a bit far. The problem I have with political comedy is that, to be funny, it has to take an idea to the extreme, which means everything turns into a strawman argument, reinforcing the tribal polarisation of political discourse.

You must be joking (I half suspect you are), that's 1000 lines of code per day. The mythical man month figure is 10 lines. Of course it depends on the language and the domain area, and whether you're hacking or following a depressive production line like Agile, but the larger a project becomes the more time you spend on the inter-relationships to keep it well-architected, and the less lines you can add.

Nice tip. I find in most situations it's easier to deglaze immediately with tap water. You get the added benefit that you can use all that flavour (straight into the stew, or a sauce if you're cooking a steak).

In truth both conservatives and liberals want a balance of equal outcomes and equal opportunities, they just disagree on where that balance is.

For example, wheelchair-bound people have the same opportunity to ascend a set of stairs as their able-bodied counterparts, but most voters agree we should focus more on equal outcome in this case.

This gives me an idea, create my own operating system, ChessOS, then write a 1-bit implementation, breaking the record. It will have a raytraced GUI too.

A couple of points to be fair. First, it's polemical to call the LNP ultra conservatives. Second, the National Broadband Network would have been Australia's largest ever infrastructure project, all undertaken without a cost-benefit analysis (primary use = entertainment) and committed to during a financial crisis at the end of a boom. The conservatives would never have pushed this even if it were there own idea. We seem to have a cycle of Labor overspending and the LNP overcutting.

Uptake on the part of the NBN they did manage to build has been terrible because they started work in high-unemployment areas to create jobs, then found that those areas couldn't afford to pay extra for high-speed internet, go figure :) We'll need new broadband infrastructure eventually, I just hope it is done with more planning to keep the leeches out.

This entire discussion is a great example of the tragedy of the commons. Consider why you only view the large corporation sites - they offer something superior (for you, and many people), which is why they are larger, but also their revenue size is required to provide that superior service (professional journalists, double-checking by editors etc.).

So your own browsing habits reveal that you actually do care about their revenue, indirectly. The world wouldn't end if we were all forced to get our news from random blog sites or state media, but the question is, how can larger organisations maintain a sufficient revenue stream given the inherent selfishness of the individual consumer? Subscription doesn't seem to work (and frankly I am surprised that advertising does).

Jesus asked if he wanted it healed, but the guy ignored him.

Actually Luke records that Jesus does heal the ear (the other three gospels don't).

That's not quite right. Jesus often gave 'tricky' or 'smartarse' answers to questions that were designed to trap him, and this is one of them. Christian theologians often refer to fulfilment as something that has been completed and is no longer needed (for example with Jesus' death as the ultimate sacrifice, doing away with the need for further animal sacrifices). You may disagree with this interpretation but it's been Christian belief since the start (the book of Galations is mostly about how new believers don't need to adhere to practices like circumcision).

Actually Jesus was pretty apolitical. His message was more about the attitude of the heart than pushing a set of rules for a Christian society. That leaves the actual implementation open to a lot of interpretation, which is probably why Christians pick and choose which OT laws apply as society's attitudes change.

The question is why is freedom so important, what's the goal? It seems to me that the U.S. was founded by oppressed people, so the solution to their oppression was to increase freedom in particular areas. Now, freedom has been deified and has become the goal in itself, whereas the purpose of most rules governing a society is more pragmatic - to improve that society in some way.

Score 2 Flamebait, congratulations :)

I interpret "Where are you from?" as "What is your cultural and ethnic background, because I believe all ways of living are valid and I'm interested in your story."

To be ageist, reading her answers made me think that, however precocious you may be, there are some things that can only be learnt with life experience. Most of the answers, while highly articulate, read like they're straight out of a book called How To Be Perfectly Politically Correct. There's very little nuance or original insight.