Today we’ve learned a couple of lessons about Hollywood plot devices – cool guys not looking at explosions and the Willhelm Scream… continuing in that vein we have the current horror movie plot device of choice – mobile phones that don’t work (contains some rude words).
You just don’t see that happening in the classics…
It’s sad how many of the guys in this montage of clips from a dating agency have moustaches. I would suggest that the first step to not being single is to lose the mo.
The latest Electoral Reform Green Paper, Strengthening Australia’s Democracy (available from http://www.pmc.gov.au/consultation/elect_reform/strengthening_democracy/index.cfm ), was recently released. While it covers an issue that has been jumped all over recently by mainstream media, that of lowering the voting age, which while somewhat interesting, it also covers issues which I think are far more discussion worthy.*
I love talking about electoral reform. It is one of my favourite topics. I could talk about this paper a lot.
For today, sections 5.42 to 5.62 discuss the voting system used in the house of representatives. Currently, the house of representatives uses a preferential voting system. In effect, this means you can choose to give each candidate a number, and if for some unknown reason you give your first preference to a Family First candidate, throwing your vote away, you get an automatic reprieve and your vote is reallocated to your second preference. This process of preference skipping is repeated until a preference for a sensible party (or occasionally the greens) is reached.
In all seriousness though, the preferential system is a mostly sound system. The main problem from most perspectives is preferential systems always favour majority groups. A candidate needs to be the first to reach 50% of votes, via an initial majority or through preferences. For example, in Queensland, in each electorate, the candidate who gets to 50% first will win. Thus, as one of the main parties will generally get to 50% on preferences first in each electorate, minority parties will generally fail. Thus, even if 10% of Queenslanders support the anti-environment party and everyone else puts them as last preference, if those who support are roughly distributed evenly across all electorates, they won’t win a thing. Thus, sizeable minorities that otherwise do not form the majority views in any electorate will have no representation in the lower house.
Alternatively, the Senate has a proportional system. A fantastic article on how our proportional voting system for the Senate works can be found here : http://www.abc.net.au/elections/federal/2004/guide/senatevotingsystem.htm . Or if you are dull like me, go read (the incredibly wordy and complex) section 273 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918. The way our proportional quota vote counting system works is very interesting, and I don’t think too many people in Australia have much idea how the Senate is actually elected.
So, back to the new green paper. One of the opportunities it outlines is for the House of Representatives to shift to a form of proportional representation, with divisions at the state or sub-state level. The green paper even discusses many of the arguments for and against the idea (it is quite the paper). This change has the potential to change the political landscape. It also raises some interesting issues for how the ballots will be developed (i.e. will the option remain of voting “above the line” for a single political party, thus accepting the party’s preference order for candidates).
I am still making my way through this paper (at 260 pages it is quite a study). And there have already been a few parts of it I have been disappointed with (the discussion of current proportional vote counting in the paper is poor). But this thing provides topic fodder for months.
*Utilising Nathan’s asterix technique, and noting my prior post, lowering the voting age is pulp news. Further, a 16 year old who wants to sail around the world is not news, and everytime the State Premier/Deputy Premier etc has a press interview, they should not be asked their opinion on said teenager sailing around the world, and their comment is not news.
I thought I’d mentioned the Willhelm Scream before. It’s a sound engineer’s joke in movies. A reoccuring scream sound effect from 1951. It has a life of its own. Here’s a little video documentary about it… apparently the scream was quite possibly produced by the guy who sang the Purple People Eater song.
The coolest thing you can do on a skateboard is fall off and hurt yourself.
The second coolest thing you can do on a skateboard is strap neon shapes to your head and create a scene from Tetris.
You get less points for getting the geometry of Tetris wrong – but style points for trying…
So it’s Wednesday today – but Tuesday was a bit of a write off thanks to a stomach bug and an endless stream of comments to moderate…
But I’ll make up for it. Promise. With this song that points out a particularly interesting cinematic phenomena – I’d never noticed it before. But I’ll leave it to the band to explain…
There are two types of people in this world – those who think Dropbox is awesome and those who don’t know what it is.
You can now get Dropbox on your iPhone. Awesome…
For the uninitiated – Dropbox is a file syncing program with 2GB of online storage space.
Simone and Ben are continuing their love affair with vampires.
I’ve got bad news for them… Vampires are mathematically impossible.
Problem solved.
Seriously, these researchers have conclusively demonstrated (PDF) that vampires would wipe out the human population in just two and a half years… It’s pretty similar to the zombie study I posted a while back.
Let us assume that a vampire need feed only once a month. This is certainly a highly conservative assumption given any Hollywood vampire film. Now two things happen when a vampire feeds. The human population decreases by one and the vampire population increases by one.
Sounds like a reasonable assumption right… Here’s the conclusion…
“We conclude that if the first vampire appeared on January 1st of 1600 AD, humanity would have been wiped out by June of 1602, two and half years later.”
It seems this study was deemed quite controversial by other mathematicians and an economist who argued that other factors should have been considered. You can read about that where I found it – here.
Back when I was casting all sorts of aspersions on Rugby Union I was told I needed empirical data to support my opinion that Rugby League is the superior sport… how bout this… from the SMH… regarding Fui Fui Moi Moi and just how much force he generates in a tackle.
“Imagine standing looking up at the sky. From a leaning tower someone drops a 20 kilogram bag of cement from a height of 22 metres. Dr Nicholas Armstrong, a physicist, says that when you try to catch the cement it will have the same energy as Moimoi generates when he surges into the defensive line.
Moimoi is able to accelerate from jogging pace to 26 km/h within two seconds. His top speed on a treadmill is 31.2 km/h and he has been measured at 32km/h in game situations.
Of course, it is nothing like Usain Bolt, the world record holder for the 100 metres, who reaches 43.9 km/h, but combined with his mass, Moimoi is a deadly weapon. He is one of the three fastest Parramatta players in a 40-metre sprint.”
The secret, apparently, is that he eats horse.
It turns out that even an awesome venn diagram won’t solve the nerd v geek debate for some people. So here you go. Empirical data. From Library Thing.
I love how in online debates people think volume equals victory.
Somehow the fact that 200 angry commenters at the world’s biggest atheist blog all disagreed with me makes them correct.
And atheists are the first to suggest that majority rule does not make a position automatically correct. When it suits them of course.
This tactic is up there with giving a phenomena a name (eg “Godwin’s Law”) and thus making the use of long held positions and ideas somehow laughable. It’s name it and shame it rather than name it and claim it. It’s odd. Similarly, having some sort of well known theory like Pascal’s Wager “debunked” by people who disagree with it… I’m glad atheists have rebuttals for every position put forward by Christians. It probably helps them to sleep at night. The issue really rests on that which separates theists from atheists… if theists are correct then every rebuttal atheists make on the basis of “logic” or “science” will be shown to be incorrect, and vice versa.
This is the problem I was trying to address in my list also… the question of whether God exists divides down the line of people who think everything came from nothing and the people who think that everything came from God. Either the universe came first, or God did. That’s the complexity I was referring to in my list. While some atheist philosophers think a watch in a field lends itself to chance – other philosophers think a watch in a field lends itself to the idea of a watchmaker.
Just because you’ve made up your mind on that issue doesn’t make the other answer any less rational. It’s probably more rational – because the simplest answer is to assume a creator, not the other way around.
I’m not sure where to go from here. I’m approaching 200 comments from atheists who are pretty angry at my list from the other day. I’ve got to say that if I knew I was going to get this sort of attention I would have at least proof read my list and fixed up a couple of grammatical errors. I probably would have made my position on science a little clearer too…
So let me do that here.
I think science is terrific. I think the scientific method is the best way to understand the way the world works. I think science is fascinating – much more than I did when I was studying physics and chemistry in high school. I am not, as many of my lovely commenters pointed out, a scientist.
I appreciate the benefits of science – like medicine and technology.
I love that we can understand the way the world works, and visit the moon.
I think it’s great that we have a picture of the amazing world that we live in thanks to science.
My point about science was not that it’s a bad thing – nor was it a comment on problems with the scientific method.
I was simply suggesting that the scientific method is open to abuse. By people with agendas. The same accusations atheists throw at “creation scientists” can be turned around and thrown at atheists who try to use science to attack religious belief.
Science is grand. Christians (and other theists) like science because it helps us to understand the world God has made.
Just because we understand things like gravity does not mean that there is no God causing gravity to occur. Some Christians distrust science. That’s not the point I was making – although I think the agenda behind science is worth looking at. Which was my point. When a rabid atheist conducts “science” they’re just as likely to come up with findings that support their position as a scientist working for big tobacco.
It’s interesting how many of the atheists hanging out at possibly the world’s most vindictive atheist blog have some background in church – and deep anger at Christianity – I can’t for a second believe that this anger isn’t motivating their scientific approach.
One commenter, either here or at the post on pharyngula, made the comment that the earth is a 1 in 1000000000 possibility, and made this comment as though that is proof that there is no God. Most theists would see the probability dramatically improving with God in the picture.
The theory that an infinite amount of time and space will eventually and inevitably produce life as we know it is odd, and unconvincing. Surely the same amount of time and space would also eventually create the specific God mentioned in the Bible – an omnipotent, omnipresent creator God.
I don’t want to go down the path of discussing the anthropic principle (the idea that conditions in the universe are just right for life which lends itself to the notion of a creator) – but I do wonder how atheists (and I’m hoping a few of you are still floating around) explain our existence in a way that doesn’t involve a sidestep (ie why are we asking “why” it’s the wrong question).
Also, I have said plenty of other stuff about atheism in the past that you newbies might like to read.
Right, well, I have a new host. Hightek Hosting were great – they just seemed not really to know how to handle WordPress.
PZ Myers’ rebuttal of my five tips for atheists got me 4,000 hits (so far) – and about 60 comments – feel free to join the fun. Here, or there.
So, Christians have been pretty guilty of wrongly accusing atheists of doing bad stuff before – but the prominent atheist PZ Meyers wrote a rebuttal to yesterday’s post, linked to it, and I was flooded with angry commenters.
I’m trying to keep up with moderating the comments (most of which seem to assume I’m an American writing for an American audience).
I’m getting there – but the traffic and comments were the straw that broke the camel’s back with regards to my webhosts, so I’m currently moving.
I’ll flick the switch soon. In the meantime – try to hold off on commenting because new comments and stuff won’t come through.
See you soon.