One of the most interesting, not to mention distracting (or should that be "time-wasting"), aspects of the internet is the way you can just keep wandering down random paths. Just clicking on the links in a Wikipedia article can take you to the most unusual places. As the old Yellow Pages ad said "Let your fingers do the walking". And so it was with only a couple of clicks the other day, there I was looking at a list of "The Greatest Belgians". Now, that's not a list you'll see every day!
As for the list itself, apart from discovering that quite a few French people were in fact Belgians, and that the Dutch-speaking Belgians voted for a largely different top 10, it lost all credibility for me when I saw that there was no Plastic Bertrand or Hercule Poirot in the list. I mean, sacre bleu!
Thursday, November 21, 2013
Monday, November 4, 2013
Who's Counting?
So the Australian Electoral Commission has overturned its previous result for the West Australian representatives in the Senate. The first time round, the winning margin was 14 votes for the last two spots. The second time round it was only 12 but with the Australian Sports Party and the Greens replacing the Palmer United Party and Labor for those last two spots.
There are two big problems with this result. Firstly, I think if the recount has resulted in a change in outcome, and by a smaller margin than before, they should actually do another count. I would like to see the count, or at least its outcome, replicated once. For all we know, it's been counted wrongly again. The second problem however, is more serious. In the course of recounting the votes, it's been discovered that 1375 votes have been lost since the first count. How can we possibly recognise a recount outcome with a margin of 12 votes when we've lost over a thousand of the original votes. We've effectively disenfranchised 1375 people in the recount.
More worrying is the fact that this is the 3rd such discrepancy in this election and the 2nd time votes have been lost or misplaced. These events only come to light when the first result is close, which makes you wonder how many other votes have been lost elsewhere, or if they are ever lost before being counted.
There are two big problems with this result. Firstly, I think if the recount has resulted in a change in outcome, and by a smaller margin than before, they should actually do another count. I would like to see the count, or at least its outcome, replicated once. For all we know, it's been counted wrongly again. The second problem however, is more serious. In the course of recounting the votes, it's been discovered that 1375 votes have been lost since the first count. How can we possibly recognise a recount outcome with a margin of 12 votes when we've lost over a thousand of the original votes. We've effectively disenfranchised 1375 people in the recount.
More worrying is the fact that this is the 3rd such discrepancy in this election and the 2nd time votes have been lost or misplaced. These events only come to light when the first result is close, which makes you wonder how many other votes have been lost elsewhere, or if they are ever lost before being counted.
Friday, November 1, 2013
Spies Like Oz
What do you know? It's not just the United States that spies on other governments. Apparently we've been doing it too. The Indonesians are not happy and they've summoned our ambassador to explain. Now, for me, this is where it gets interesting. You see, his name is Moriarty. That's right, Sherlock's nemesis is apparently our ambassador to Indonesia!
Mark my words! No good will come of this...
Mark my words! No good will come of this...
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