'Out Of Gas'
Discussion of episodes currently airing in Un-American locations (anything that's aired in Australia is fair game), as well as anything else the Un-Americans feel like talking about or we feel like asking them. Please use the show discussion threads for any current-season discussion.
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Or should we just have a huge forest of arrows pointing to LA saying "Kat, Lori, ita, Allyson, Aimée, MM, Joss etc."?
How about just one arrow per city and a list of names.
And now that I think of it, some Buffistas will have two cities, like Alibelle.
when you hover your mouse over it, a list pops up of who lives there
We had something like that, certainly. It doesn't work in all browsers, but it can be possible.
My original idea has pop-up windows and little descriptions of the places we live in.
It's here but only Australia works.
Ooooh! John, it's lovely!
Thank you!
I guess if we do "Buffistas outside the USA" as one project and worry about those inside the USA as another, that could work.
Where do you live, FayJay? Somewhere in the Home Counties, right?
Here are the issues as I see them:
Also, Spain, Guinea, Malta?! People, send your name, city/town, state, and country to minmar_00 at hotmail.com if you'd like to be on the map, I am still updating the lists (sorry about the ads, I have a blocker so I didn't realise. I'll move them to my ISP page when I get a minute) while we figure out the logistics.
John H., Billytea and Rob - It seems that Australia is about to get the worlds tallest humanmade object.
It's here but only Australia works.
Hee. "Adelaide is known for its churches, its fine wines and its serial killers."
(And as it happens, only the Northern Territory has a higher murder rate in Australia.)
John H., Billytea and Rob - It seems that Australia is about to get the worlds tallest humanmade object.
Yep. It was reported in The Economist a couple of months ago. The firm claims that the plant will be competitive with Australian coal (the world's cheapest), though this relies on, effectively, a subsidy to reduce greenhouse gas emmissions. Not, in and of itself, a bad thing IMO; but it'd be politically and economically more secure if it can become more efficient in the future. (New technologies often do, of course.)
Meanwhile, I believe I speak for all Melburnians at least when I say "at least it's not the Grollos".
After seeing John's map, I totally believe in the project. I guess I thought of all the Australians as living on the upper right, and I didn't know Min was from there at all. That was really cool.
do "Buffistas outside the USA" as one project and worry about those inside the USA as another, that could work.
That works for me, because I feel like I'm talking to all these exotic people when I see where John H lives, but when I find out Allyson lives in California, I'm like, "Oh. My grandmother lives there."
I think the zoomed-out map should have one arrow per spot and the number of Buffistas who live at that spot. Clicking the number pops up the names. It would fit better and would give you a good idea of the distribution. If you were looking around the map for a specific person, you could use the list. If you were thinking, "I wonder how many people live in Washington, D.C., or if anyone lives in Russia," you could use the map.
Doesn't Australian coal rely on subsidies for it's cheapness? A few months ago I tried to find out the actual cost of Australian coal, and ended up with a letter from one of your ministers explaining (extremely politely, and with absolute sympathy for my innocence as a non-aussie) that this was a trade secret.
Doesn't Australian coal rely on subsidies for it's cheapness?
Reliance? I'd be surprised; Australia has substantial, reasonably reachable coal supplies, a large market (one article I found gave it about 50% of the world export market in metallurgical coal) and high technological levels. More importantly, perhaps, Australia seems to spend some effort in challenging subsidies in the EU and US (at the Uruguay talks, it got the EU to hold static its subsidised coal production until Dec 2002 - I don't know what's happened with discussions to extend the agreement), and got the US to apply stricter conditions to its synthetic fuel subsidies on the basis of competition with Australian coal, without apparently attracting much retaliatory accusations.
(Finally, of course, a Google search on 'australia coal subsidy' was rather sparse on hits concerning an actual Australian coal subsidy.)
Which is not to say that the coal industry does not benefit at all from subsidies (since I don't know, the above reasoning is essentially circumstantial and there may possibly be indirect subsidies whose effect would be hard to entangle); but it seems unlikely any such is significant compared to those offered by other developed nations - I doubt Australia's cpompetitive position relies on subsidies, and indeed if international subsidies were removed from all countries its position would improve.
I did find one reference from Greenpeace back in 1997 that claimed Australia provided direct coal subsidies (albeit at a level substantially below that of the US or EU); it would be interesting to find out more on that, both some detail on said subsidies and whether there's been any change in the last five years. Nor, of course, does this say anything about past consitions, nor future ones (when Chinese coal is likely to create greater comepetitive pressure).
Of greater concern, IMO, was the Howard government's behaviour at Kyoto, in which rather than agreeing to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, instead won an increase to 108% of the then existing levels. (While it's true that energy plays a rather greater role in the Australian economy than in most developed nations, I can think of better ways to account for that than simply refusing to contribute to solving the problem.) I would see the problem less as propping up the Australian coal industry (which seems to be competitive in its own right) as failing to support the development of alternatives. (On which note, this story is something worth watching. Australia does, after all, have fairly vast quantities of sunlight as well as coal.)
Er, all of which is basically saying that failing to account for externalities is more of a problem regarding coal production generally (including Australia) than the producer-borne costs.