If the Premiership Was Decided On FPTP

I'm getting a bit tired of all these "If sporting events were decided under AV then..." arguments from the NO campaign.

Because election races aren't really athletics races. If they were, they wouldn't let men and women compete in the same elections. And they aren't really horse races either, because if they were, the Lib Dems have won Orkney and Shetland so many times they would have to be given a big handicap in the next contest. And they aren't really boxing matches, because if they were Cyril Smith would have been in a separate election all by himself.

And election races certainly aren't football matches. But if football competitions were decided on the first round, this is how the Premiership would have been decided this season:

Premier League table snapshot

As it stood on 14 Aug 2010 23:59 UK
Position Team P GD PTS
1 Chelsea 1 6 3
2 Blackpool 1 4 3
3 Aston Villa 1 3 3
4 Wolves 1 1 3
5 Blackburn 1 1 3

Like I said, I'm tired of these sporting comparisons.....

In Saudi Arabia, FPTP = Females Prevented Taking Part

From the Arab News:

RIYADH: Saudi Arabia announced Monday that it was not yet ready for women participating in next month’s municipal elections as voters or candidates. “We are not ready for the participation of women in these municipal elections,” Election Commissioner Abdul Rahman Al-Dahmash said.

On the Saudijeans blog, there's a call for an elections boycott:

The municipal elections deserve to be boycotted because democracy is not a ballot box. Democracy is about conceding power to the people. When the ballot box does not lead to conceding power to people and using this power effectively, then the ballot box does not lead to democracy. The municipal councils had no impact on the lives of people, and the comical manner in which their mandate has been extended for two years shows that they have nothing to do with the power of the people or delegating that power from them. How can an elected councilman gets his power from voters, then keeps to exercise it thanks to a government decision? This is, by the way, why democratic countries hold elections on schedule, because an elected official cannot continue to use his power without the consent of those — the voters — who have given him this power in the first place.

Have you noticed that they are using the same excuses that they have used to exclude women in 2004? The lack of separate polling stations for women, the need to learn from the experience with a promise to take part the next time around, etc. During the past seven years, we have built KAUST and sent 80,000 students to study abroad but somehow we still can’t prepare polling stations for women’s participation. Due to all this comicality and lack of seriousness, the municipal elections deserve to be boycotted.

Farewell, Elizabeth. Goodbye Sarah Jane.

Shocked to hear of her death....

For so many , she was "Our" Doctor Who Girl. This Mitch Benn song has a little extra poignancy now:



And I don't think pain and loss do define us as much as happiness and love:

You Are Either Going To Love This Or Hate It

It's at http://lab.andre-michelle.com/tonematrix

The webapage describes it as:

Simple sinewave synthesizer triggered by an ordinary 16step sequencer. Each triggered step causes a force on the underlaying wave-map, which makes it more cute.

As Kim Ayres explains here

Some of you will already know about this, indeed will probably have it as an iPhone app or something. So far as I can make out, it was created a couple of years ago. But I only found it today. I wanted to put it on my blog so I would be able to find it again any time I wanted to for the rest of my life.

There's some other interesting stuff here too....

Politics Doesn't Have To Be Bad Tempered.

From The Ticket:

Jefferson Smith loves a good political joke.

Early last year, the then-freshman Oregon House member from Portland was getting ready for bed when he and his wife, Katy, began bantering back and forth about what might be the ultimate political prank, something that could lighten the increasingly divisive political mood among his colleagues.

As Smith recalls, the idea came almost instantly. "What if we were to Rick Roll the legislature without anybody noticing?" he wondered.

The lines had to be delivered on the House floor during a lawmaker's regular floor speech--which is, under Oregon law, videotaped for public records purposes. And the lines of the lyrics had to be spread out, so as not to tip off the state House clerk or other observers to what lawmakers were up to.

"It was way harder taking words and spreading them out than simply manipulating them (on video)," Smith says. "There are some easy lines in there to say without getting noticed. 'You're never gonna' is easy. 'I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling' is easy. But an 'ooh?' That's tricky." ..

Hat-Tip : Andrew Sullivan

The Missing Majority

Rochford District Council is very blue. We have 32 Tories, 5 Lib Dems, 1 Green and 1 Rochford Residents Party councillor. So we don't win many votes....

But it was a slightly bizarre evening tonight.

Our Standards Committee consists of 4 Tory District Councillors, 1 Lib Dem District Councillor (myself), plus a number of parish councillors and independent members.

Tonight none of the Tories turned up!

For the first time in ten years our party outnumbered the Conservatives in an official council committee (albeit by one to nil).

Everything went very smoothly and we made some useful decisions...

Actually poor attendance by the Conservatives is becoming a trend here.

"My name is Mervyn King, as i am the Governor Bank of England"

I had an email today from the Governor of the Bank of England, which explains why the government is facing such a big deficit:

Although you may be concerned about my e-mail because we have not met before, My name is Mervyn King, as i am the Governor Bank of England, is the sum of EUR20,600,000.00 in my bank, there were no beneficiaries stated concerning these funds are not an agent would ever come forward to claim it.

So I ask, are we to transfer funds from my bank to work on your bank account or another account of your choice, I would like to see if you can help me and also a good and trustworthy person. Once the funds have to keep your bank account we shall then jointly adopted at a ratio of 60% for me, 40% for you, do me as soon as possible by e-mail for more info here is my e-mail address:
My friendly greetings
Mr. Mervyn King

Does Vince Cable know about this?

Not Exactly Decentralisation......

I'm grateful to Prue Bray, who has pointed out a rather worrying statement on March 23rd by Conservative MP Greg Clark, the Coalition minister for Decentralisation. You can find it here.

It's about 'planning for growth', which sounds good in terms of improving the economy, but there are some alarming bits for people concerned about over-development:

.....there is a pressing need to ensure that the planning system does everything it can to help secure a swift return to economic growth. This statement therefore sets out the steps the Government expects local planning authorities to take with immediate effect.

So new policies come into effect immediately.

Authorities should work together to ensure that needs and opportunities that extend beyond (or cannot be met within) their own boundaries are identified and accommodated in a sustainable way, such as housing market requirements that cover a number of areas, and the strategic infrastructure necessary to support growth.

So a council like Rochford may have to accept extra development to cover the needs of other areas such as, say, Southend? (this has happened before, but perhaps not as directly as now proposed.)

local planning authorities... should... consider the range of likely economic, environmental and social benefits of proposals; including long term or indirect benefits such as increased consumer choice, more viable communities and more robust local economies (which may, where relevant, include matters such as job creation and business productivity)

Does that phrase about increased consumer choice give more leverage for new supermarkets to be built? (some residents may welcome this, many others will be concerned about the viability of town centres)

.......To further ensure that development can go ahead, all local authorities should reconsider, at developers' request, existing section 106 agreements that currently render schemes unviable, and where possible modify those obligations to allow development to proceed; provided this continues to ensure that the development remains acceptable in planning terms.

So even where developers have agreed to fund new open space, education or health provision or highways improvements, developers can pressurise councils to CANCEL these funding agreements?

Mr Clark is the Minister for Decentralisation. That should be about giving councils more power and freedom, not less.

It's Political History, But Not As We Know It

Something went very very wrong in the Disney Hall of Presidents....

Regressing

Let's hope we don't run out of raw materials.

I've been reading a little of the 1965 book by Graeme Clark and Stuart Piggott, "Prehistoric Societies".

In this book they mention the Ubaid culture of early Iraq - we are talking about 6000 years ago:

"The newcomers in the delta of the Two Rivers had to contend with many difficulties, not least with a shortage or non-existence of the material resorces to which they had been accustomed in their original homeland. They were especially handicapped by the lack of metal and stone...."

At which point the slightly curious may wonder, what do you make things out of when you don't even have stone? I mean, even stone age people had stone, that's why we call it the stone age.

Well, these people didn't have copper any more, and at some stage had to make axes out of stone instead of copper. Any then:

"Instead of sickles with a curved cutting edge made of serrated flint blades, in what was now an ancient tradition, we find sickels made entirely of hard-fired clay. However neither the shaft-hole axes nor the battle-axes can be regarded as functional , but rather as the reproduction of unobtainable and expensive weapons of prestige in the only locally available material - mud"

So there you have it. Items of prestige made out of mud.

Now , I know this is being disparaging towards pottery, which is an important technology. But I've got this vision of someone giving their husband a clay battleaxe, and him replying (and looking like a Sumerian Baldrick) "Oh darling, you are spoiling me, this is the finest mud."

It makes me smile. But there is something slightly chilling about a people's technology regressing in this way.

I just hope our society doesn't run out of raw materials.

The Shortest You Tube Clip Ever?

So it's about time I got back to blogging again.

So why not begin with possibly the shortest YouTube clip ever.

One filled with astonishment - and hope.....

Merry Christmas!

If you've just enjoyed watching the (excellent) Dr Who episode entitled A Christmas Carol here's the 1910 film version of A Christmas Carol

Future States

I was rather excited when I found the website for Future States - which explains itself as follows:

What will become of America in five, 25, or even 50 years from today? This series of 11 short films explores possible future scenarios through the prism of today’s global realities. Immerse yourself in the visions of these independent prognosticators as they inhabit a future of their own imagining.

The films aren't the best SF that I've seen - but certainly not the worst either. But have a look for yourself.

I've only watched two films so far - "Pia", about the interaction between a widow and an android, , and "Rise", about a change in the housing market.

Another one,  "Silver Sling", about surrogate mothers looks a bit too depressing for me at the moment.

You can watch "Rise" by clicking below:

The Stuxnet Shock

Are we seeing the first real use of malware as a weapon in the physical world? And is it being used against Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant?


From the Christian Science Monitor:

So far, Stuxnet has infected at least 45,000 industrial control systems around the world, without blowing them up – although some victims in North America have experienced some serious computer problems, Eric Byres, a Canadian expert, told the Monitor. Most of the victim computers, however, are in Iran, Pakistan, India, and Indonesia. Some systems have been hit in Germany, Canada, and the US, too. Once a system is infected, Stuxnet simply sits and waits – checking every five seconds to see if its exact parameters are met on the system. When they are, Stuxnet is programmed to activate a sequence that will cause the industrial process to self-destruct, Langner says.

Langner's analysis also shows, step by step, what happens after Stuxnet finds its target. Once Stuxnet identifies the critical function running on a programmable logic controller, or PLC, made by Siemens, the giant industrial controls company, the malware takes control. One of the last codes Stuxnet sends is an enigmatic “DEADF007.” Then the fireworks begin, although the precise function being overridden is not known, Langner says. It may be that the maximum safety setting for RPMs on a turbine is overridden, or that lubrication is shut off, or some other vital function shut down. Whatever it is, Stuxnet overrides it, Langner’s analysis shows.

"After the original code [on the PLC] is no longer executed, we can expect that something will blow up soon," Langner writes in his analysis. "Something big."

Hat-Tip: Andrew Sullivan

Possibly The Coolest Cat Video EVER