What’s Next?

I’ve been having a look at different election systems and they all seem to try to find though simple or complex means a way of turning thousands of votes into the single vote an electee wields. Is there a way to for the millions of votes expressed at the national level to be channelled into a smaller representative assembly without too much dumbing down or extra steps? Working from the principle of popular sovereignty upwards, I’ve tried to find a simple way to express this and I’ve come up with EVC (Every Vote Counted) for lack of a more imaginative name. I’ve looked for similar systems on the web and can’t find any, which either makes it a completely new idea (unlikely) or just too stupid to be worth discussing. Let’s find out.

The two main features of EVC are:

• A representatives voting power in Parliament is directly tied to the number of votes they receive at elections.
• Multi-member constituencies.

The basic idea is that instead of an MP’s vote having a value of 1, it’s value is equal to Read the rest of this entry »

I watched the Panorama: ‘Wi-fi: A Warning Signal‘ the other night and was just shocked. It’s an excellent example of some really shoddy journalism and science and it’s taken me a few days to fully get my head round the issues.

The program hinges on three main arguments:

1. Mobile phone masts are dangerous
2. Wifi signals are more powerful than phone masts and therefore are as, if not more, dangerous.
3. A subset of the population are extremely effected by electromagnetic fields, therefore it’s not inconceivable that they have an effect on the rest of us.

However, all of these arguments are based on shody or non-existant science and scaremongering dominates. Keyton uses emotive words like ‘radiation’ around 30 times which, whilst a scientifically accurate description (in the same way that radiation could be used to describe light), is for most people associated with the dangerous radioactivity. A Swedish scientist Kenyon makes much use of was voted most misleading scientist of the year in 2004 by 1,600 of his peers for his views on electromagnetism (which is the area he is quized on in this program). He dismisses a WHO official because of his former work in the mobile phone industry yet didn’t raise an eyebrow about the ever helpful Alasdair Philips who makes money off of telling people EM fields are harmful and selling them protective gear right now.
Let’s take it one at a time.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tony Blair wrote an article for The Times the other day, and said this in defence of his foreign policy:

I was stopped by someone the other week who said it was not surprising there was so much terrorism in the world when we invaded their countries (meaning Afghanistan and Iraq). No wonder Muslims felt angry.

When he had finished, I said to him: tell me exactly what they feel angry about. We remove two utterly brutal and dictatorial regimes; we replace them with a United Nations-supervised democratic process and the Muslims in both countries get the chance to vote, which incidentally they take in very large numbers. And the only reason it is difficult still is because other Muslims are using terrorism to try to destroy the fledgling democracy and, in doing so, are killing fellow Muslims.

What’s more, British troops are risking their lives trying to prevent the killing. Why should anyone feel angry about us? Why aren’t they angry about the people doing the killing? The odd thing about the conversation is that I could tell it was the first time he had even heard the alternative argument.

Blair’s seems completely baffled at the inability of people to act completely reasonably all the time. Yes, if you look at it logically we’re not the enemy, the terrorists are (and I suspect there are more Iraqis who would agree with that than it would seem), but we are hardly the whiter than white liberators we’d need to be to really feel incredulous as to why people are angry. We entered under a ’shock and awe’ bombing campaign (whose bright idea to win hearts and minds was that?) with civilian casualties to start off with. We can look at it as necessary sacrifices to remove a brutal dictator, but we weren’t the ones making the sacrifices.

I remember seeing on the news a little bit after the war officially ‘ended’ a crowd of people gathered after a car bombing and someone was telling the reporter how someone else (naturally) had seen an American bomber drop a bomb that caused the explosion. Ridiculous to our ears, what interest would that serve? What reasons would they have? It doesn’t matter, it seemed that people were ready to believe that that would happen. It is actively in terrorists’ interest for the Iraqi people to focus their hatred on the British and American forces and with the raw materials available I doubt it was a difficult task. Each new crackdown to hinder the terrorists (like that amazingly stupid wall) is an active intrusion on the lives of everyday citizens, necessary perhaps, but I really don’t find it as hard as Blair to see where the resentment comes from.

Why do people hate us? Perhaps as Blair wants to believe, because they’re not in full possession of the facts, I suspect a lot of the blame can be laid at the feet of the Anti-American spin doctors throughout the region, but the important fact is that their lies are just believable, who needs to construct elaborate lies when you can just show the pictures from Abu Grav over and over? Blair is right in the sense that the terrorists are the real enemy, but if he really doesn’t understand why people are angry then that is a real concern.

It turns out my site is blocked in China. Obviously deeply subversive.

Give sites a go at:

http://greatfirewallofchina.org/test/

Yuh-Huh

When a ship carrying hundreds of people was recently turned away from Benin, Africa, officials suspected that the children on board were human slaves. The incident once again brought attention to the problem of slavery. At this moment, millions of men, women, and children—roughly twice the population of Rhode Island—are being held against their will as modern-day slaves.

Sometimes referred to as bonded laborers (because of the debts owed their masters), public perception of modern slavery is often confused with reports of workers in low-wage jobs or inhumane working conditions. However, modern-day slaves differ from these workers because they are actually held in physical bondage (they are shackled, held at gunpoint, etc.).

Modern-day slaves can be found laboring as servants or concubines in Sudan, as child “carpet slaves” in India, or as cane-cutters in Haiti and southern Pakistan, to name but a few instances. According to Anti-Slavery International, the world’s oldest human rights organization, there are currently over 20 million people in bondage.

This should be the main focus of the event. We should be talking about making it so that in 200 years they can celebrate the bicentennial of abolition of ALL slavery everywhere. We can feel collectively gulity about our slave-owning ancestors, collectively proud of our abolitionist ancestors, but we should be the last generation that can feel guilty about living in a world where it still exists.

I’m not exactly sure what this advert is for…Is anyone really going to suddenly think ‘gee wizz, now I know all that I’m going to support America regardless of any disagreements I have with specific policy’?

This is exactly the same absurd with-us-or-against-us crap that causes so much of the problem in the first place. It isn’t a choice between an America which has a set list of pros and cons and no America, it’s a choice between any number of different versions of America, some of which help create a climate of anti-americanism and some that don’t. This ad just shows a complete mis-understanding of the issues and creates a message that really means nothing to anyone.

While the news that someone dropped their ipod in the toliet and triggered a security alert is amusing, my favour bit of the story is how cool he is, despite causing security alert, in answering this question:

I waited in total silence for about 10 minutes as he
kept searching and searching, until I finally asked him, “What are you
looking for?”

“Contraband,” he said without looking up at me.

“Such as?”

“Child pornography, hate propaganda.”

“Child porn I can understand, that’s illegal. But hate propaganda is protected speech.”

Now he looked up. “What country do you think you’re in?”

“Oh, it’s illegal in Canada?”

“I honestly don’t know. But that doesn’t matter. I get to decide what goes in this country. Do you have a problem with that?”

I paused for a long time while I thought about what I should say to this. “Yes.”

“Yes, you do have a problem?”

“Yes, I do. If it’s illegal in Canada I’ll understand, but saying
‘I don’t want it in my country’ isn’t good enough when you’re a
government official.”

Principles are important!

BBC NEWS | Technology | Web censorship: Correspondent reports

Google, for example, has modified its Chinese language search engine so that it does not show results for sites the Chinese government deems “harmful”.

Not quite true, google.cn, the google based within China does indeed self-censor (but is unique among censoring search engines in that if some results are not being shown, a small disclaimer of this fact is given), while the chinese language version of google.com is completely uncensored (but often subject to large delays from within China, hence the establishment of google.cn).

Some may have noticed the new Amnesty sign on the sidebar, it’s part of their new Campaign against Internet Censorship. I totally agree with this and believe it’s an initiative well worth supporting. But there IS a problem with this sign thing -  the idea given that this helps get around censorship by loading censored content onto lots of websites. Of course, in reality the quotes come from the central database which is blocked by the censors, rendering the quotes useless to those inside the firewall. Added to that, the quotes are too short to possibly be of any use to anyone. It is however a call for support from the uncensored internet and I have it for that reason. I just wish it wouldn’t be advertised as being helpful to people behind the firewalls when in actual fact it’s not for anything more than drumming up support.

“The Government is all too aware that the UK can have an energy mix which keeps the lights on and secures supply that does not include nuclear power.”

Technically true, but that would need a HUUUUGE reliance on coal and oil. Which the conventional wisdom seems to say is bad.

Interesting Nuclear fact: Coal power stations release far more radioactive material into the air than nuclear stations, which releases almpst none.

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