Posts by BenWilson
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Legal Beagle: Council Elections: STV Q&A, in reply to Ben McNicoll,
The problem with an MMP approach at local govt level, as I see it, is that if the party lines are explicitly the same as national (small n) political parties (and they would almost certainly have to be to be elected), you’d end up with a situation where each local government is either (A) implicitly subservient to, or (B) completely in opposition to the central government depending on who’s in power at the time.
True, but there is no need for them to be those parties. And MMP does seem to apportion actual power in a way that is more proportional than STV. But the low number of candidates in local body compared to national level elections means that the proportionality is unlikely to translate into anything anyway (a party getting 5% is going to get no representation, most likely), so STV seems to me a better option for local government.
Representative democracy generally seems to work better at that level, there really is a care factor about the level of local interest the candidates have. People are more likely to vote on an issue or a cluster of issues, than on a general ideological alignment, because the issues will be what actually happens, and the general ideology of the elected groups will get no air whatsoever. However, I doubt that actual vote turnouts will rise much under any system.
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An unexpectedly difficult tree
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Limpid pools at sunset
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The worst once over I ever got was in Auckland, upon returning from Amsterdam. Several hours of being searched and questioned. I formed an opinion that they based almost all of it on profiling and my body language, which they read very well. I was actually very nervous for 2 reasons- firstly there was an irregularity in the way I'd boarded the aircraft, which was actually to both my and the airline's advantage, but must have looked fully dodgy. Secondly my jacket would probably have pinged any swab or sniffer dog just because of what had been in there whilst in the Dam. I didn't have anything on me, but the last thing I wanted was a cavity search, the idea is horrid.
Humourously they opened and swabbed practically everything else I had, but the jacket, which I hung on a chair as soon as I was taken aside, was never even looked at. Hidden in plain sight, as they say. I was shitting myself until they came back with the swab results. The searching officer looked me sternly in the eyes and said that they "contained strong traces of heroin and explosives" followed by "how do I explain that?". I think the wave of relief that came over me must have been palpable. It was so ridiculous that I knew it must be a bullshit trick they play to get you to 'fess. Some kind of wild fishing expedition. I fought down the urge to say "you did say heroin OR explosives, right? Because I'm hardly going to blow my own drugs up!". But instead I figured the best thing to do was to act scared and confused. A few minutes later they let me go.
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Worth noting in the shitty airport stakes that when I passed through Charles de Gaulle airport I noticed a piece of the concrete architrave, about the size of a Jeep Grand Cherokee, next to where the aircraft I was boarded in, was missing, as though a giant had bitten a chunk out. Even more alarming, they apparently spat the chunk out onto the tarmac next to the wing. I thought it was the French being damned untidy.
Half an hour later I was waiting to be given the shits by an officious fellow at Heathrow and I saw on TV that Charles de Gaulle airport's upper floors had collapsed, killing 4 people, only 30 minutes before.
I've often wondered about that incident. The architrave must have collapsed while I was still in the building, and could hardly have failed to have been noticed by staff (it was about 20 meters to the ground). But they boarded us and flew us to England without any indication. I prefer that to the idea that such a structural failure could have simply been worked around, as they calmly parked aircraft loaded with fuel and conveyed tens of thousands of unwitting people into them right next to a potential disaster which did eventually happen.
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LAX does suck. I made a point since I heard that the US fingerprints everyone that I will not travel through that continent at all until the come to their senses. Consequently, I discovered a worse airport. Hanoi has no transit area at all. Arriving there without a visa is instantly construed as attempting to sneak in Vietnam. However, the punishment was to be taken to a hotel for the transit, in which I slept like a baby on the reasoning it could be the last human comfort I would ever get before ending my days in a tiger pit or playing Russian Roulette. Then we were flown without our passports to Saigon for the connecting flight and seated in a corridor near an open exit to the city under no guard at all, as numerous steadily higher ranking officials passed the buck. Finally, a guy in a military uniform with a hat about 10 inches high came in, took one look and then contemptuously flung the passprts and paperwork at the latest flunky, yelled something at him, and we were allowed through without delay. I presume that they figured if we hadn't simply walked away then we weren't evil capitalist infiltrators after all.
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Capture: Upside Down, Inside Out, in reply to Hebe,
What a very amazing thought Chris. Imagine what that light has seen before it has seen us.
Was just watching a video that suggests most of that light spent millions of years inside the core of the Sun trying to get out. It would have been going "freeee at last" for 490 seconds before doing the double ping-pong and ending it's life absorbed into the CMOS in Chris's camera. Rather more mindboggling is that there will probably be some photons coming in from deep space in that shot from the other side of the universe, that escaped some star only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, and have been on their way here since before the Milky Way even formed.
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Camp coffee. The simplest model kicked the shit out of the much more complicated one. You can probably see why in the second pic.
This took about 2 minutes to make with a pocket knife and a used coke can. The far more complex one is in the background, took about 10 minutes using scissors and a hole punch. The coffee took about 10 mins on the electric element, about 5 mins on the "improved" coke can stove, and about 150 seconds on the simple can. Chimney effect FTW.
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Southerly: Now I Am Permitted, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
Do we have closure? :)
Only if I'm a stakeholder!
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What’s that creepy thing in the tree???
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