How did you come to hold the beliefs you have?

[Jovial Monk]

The Forever War is a great book, Froges. Grab it if you see it somewhere.

[boxy]

Other life, and there are communication difficulties (no universal translators, y'see).

Yeah, perhaps discovering alien life will be the one thing that can truly unite humanity? Another interesting one there is the Uplift series (forget who wrote them), where terrestrial life (humans/dolphins/chimps) was united by their mutual kinship when they became bit players in a highly politicised universal society. (Uplift being a reference to humans "uplifting" dolphins/chimps to fellow space faring races.)

[JWFrogen]

Other life, and there are communication difficulties (no universal translators, y'see).

Yeah, perhaps discovering alien life will be the one thing that can truly unite humanity? Another interesting one there is the Uplift series (forget who wrote them), where terrestrial life (humans/dolphins/chimps) was united by their mutual kinship when they became bit players in a highly politicised universal society. (Uplift being a reference to humans "uplifting" dolphins/chimps to fellow space faring races.)

That is interesting, I will check both out when I have time. I wonder if Borders would have these or do you have to go to the used book shops and hope you get lucky?

[Jovial Monk]

Hope you get lucky, froges

[Ravi]

Good to see you didn't get the chop like all those Yarwun site blokes Ravi! Though I did hear that a number were retrenched from the alumina plant and the smelter.

We'll have to have a beer sometime

my other half was one of those retrenched from yarwun, ... though things are looking up with the LG plant ..workwise anyway

[Lefteee]

Sorry to hear that Ravi

Brother-in-law suffered the same fate when the smelter suddenly decided that it could do without all the businesses that were contracting to it. He had some work for a while but that finished up two weeks ago. He is waiting on word of a job out at the Dysart mine.

If those LNG plants come here there will be work in spades. Principally for tradies, construction workers and machine operators but all those workers have to spend their money somewhere, so cause a flow on effect.

I'm thinking that withing another 30-40 years, Gladstone will have become the northern Newcastle.

[Ravi]

actually i think the economic downturn was used by Rio tinto and others to remove themselves of expensive contractor agreements and then set about re-employing the same people (albiet less of them) under new, less lucrative conditions... a friend of mine lost his job out there and was reemployed by the same contractor the next week, but no longer as a shift worker, so he misses out on the big bucks and the days off. Its a conspiracy I tells ya