Cate Blanchett and the Carbon Tax Ad

Of course Cate Blanchett has the right to express her opinion on the carbon tax. The real question is whether anyone should listen to it.

The government is suggesting using a tax to couple two very complex, highly non-linear systems: the climate and the economy. I doubt pretending to be queen of the elves qualifies one to pass judgment on this.

Instead of open, extensive debate on taxes, compensation for consumers and existing industries, subsidies for new technologies and the role of government as a venture capitalist for the green energy sector, we have the shallow spin of an ad campaign, saying little more than: “C’mon Australia, let’s get behind it. It’s the right thing to do”.

Is it? I don’t know and neither does Cate, or Michael Caton for that matter. Interesting that he has received a lot less criticism than her for doing the same ad.

I suppose if you’re a multi-millionaire, left leaning arts luvvie, supporting an economic policy you clearly don’t understand, which has a negligible effect on your own hip pocket even if the tax is ten times what is being proposed, despite your carbon footprint being many times the size of the average person’s, then you’re bound to cop a bit of flak.

The economics of climate change is a broad and very complex issue. Given the interdisciplinary nature of the problem, I doubt there is currently anyone who can demonstrate the optimality of any particular policy.

This is why we need open, rigorous, evidence based debate to arrive at a meaningful synthesis of arguments.

Instead, we have scaremongering from the opposition and a government completely out of its depth, making up instead of deriving the answer and trying to con the public into support with hollow propaganda ads.

Here are some questions I believe need to be publicly discussed and answered in the process of constructing a coherent economic policy to deal with climate change:

• Why are we not also taxing oxides of nitrogen and sulphur?
• How, exactly, are emissions to be measured and what sort of error margins exist?
• Will we tax imports from countries who have a lower carbon tax rate?
• How will we verify other countries are not rorting the system to favour their exporters, particularly those with unaccountable governments, like China?
• How will the carbon generated by transportation be taken into account without a massive administrative overhead?
• If we introduce a tax, which consumers and existing industries should be subsidized? By how much and for how long?
• Should some revenue from the tax be allocated to a venture capital fund for green technologies?
• Should we switch to DC for bulk electrical transmission?

Good policy derives from openly debating questions like this, not ads with actors following the script of their chosen side.

They Didn't Choose Their Parents' Political Crusade

                        They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

                        They may not mean to, but they do.

                        They fill you with the faults they had

                        And add some extra, just for you.

                                                            This Be The Verse - Philip Larkin

The parents in Larkin’s poem, written in England in 1971, are typical of that time and place, conservative and emotionally stilted.

                        But they were fucked up in their turn

                        By fools in old-style hats and coats

A more prevalent version of fucked up parenting in modern society is the combination of conservative and neurotic, as in Pink Floyd’s song Mother:

Mama's gonna make all of your nightmares come true

Mama's gonna put all of her fears into you

Mama's gonna keep you right here under her wing

She won't let you fly but she might let you sing

Mother - Roger Waters

Mother was written only 8 years after This Be The Verse and although both authors are English and well educated, Philip Larkin (b. 1922) and Roger Waters (b. 1943) are a generation apart, which could explain the change from emotionally stilted to neurotic in their observations of parenting.

By this time, parents of hippiedom and the counter culture had already spawned a host of children. Some of these “alternative” parents naturally found alternative ways to fuck up their offspring, largely by inculcating them with values and a world view so at odds with mainstream society that they found great difficulty negotiating it.

Follow this evolutionary path a couple of generations and we arrive at a modern, lefty / “progressive” instance of Larkin’s poem: a Canadian couple, David Stocker and Kathy Witterick, dubbed “the world’s most PC parents” for trying to raise their child without gender specific cues.

I think skepticism toward fiat authority should be part of every child’s education, so I’m not in any way suggesting that children should be raised to conform to mainstream society. However, it is absurd to reject the notion that they may as adults choose to spend most, or even all of their time in it.

Consequently, parents are harming their children when they raise them as more extreme hippies did and as this Canadian couple are, not only with a perspective and reading of the world which is radically different from most people they will meet, but also insufficient grasp of those other people’s world views.

The harm is twofold: the denial of choice through deliberate ignorance and potential ostracism through the inability to connect with a significant proportion of the population.

The same harm is done by conservative, often religious parents who won’t let their children mix with people from a variety of backgrounds and be exposed to ideas which challenge their orthodoxy, or by immigrant parents who want to raise their children, especially their daughters in the ways of the “old country”.

The children grow up to be seen by many in the wider community as dorks, religious nuts, wogs, ... They have a community on which to fall back, but become insular as many areas of employment and more general social interaction are closed to them. Often, they subsequently attempt to rationalize their comparative isolation via the position that it is them who have rejected wider society, because it is immoral … and hence the problem is passed onto a new generation.

Humans are a very social animal and feeling ostracized can be very damaging to the psyche. It’s already happened to the Canadian family: one of the sons was “recently shunned at a playground by two girls who said that they did not want to play with the girl-boy".

I wonder how the parents explained the rejection. “There’s nothing wrong with you, it’s all the rest of the world’s fault”, perhaps?

Unfortunately, there is something wrong with you, son: you’re struggling to interact with most other kids … and it’s your parents’ fault.

I’m not sure which aspect of the Stocker / Witterick child rearing philosophy I find stupider: the non-gender specific upbringing or “unschooling”, where the child decides what he or she wants to learn. Of course, both imply at least home schooling.

The non-gender specific upbringing is a caricature of leftist political philosophy, in which behaviour is overwhelmingly determined by environment, which can even be shaped to materially modify behaviour with a strong biological basis.

It’s understandable how one could form such a view in the intellectual climate of the mid 19th century, where even Gregor Mendel’s pea experiments and theories of inheritance had not been published and Marx adhered to Lamarck’s theory of the heritability of environmentally acquired traits.

But surely we’ve learnt something from biology in the past 150 years? It’s true that gender is not always straightforward, however mostly it is.

Which is the more sensible approach?

1.      You’re a boy / girl. There are some things that boys and girls do that are different, such as girls can have babies and boys can’t, but most things boys can do, girls can do too (or vice versa).

2.      We won’t mention our child’s sex in case someone else stereotypes them. We’ll let our child develop a unique sense of identity. Oh no! One of the other children asked our child if it’s a boy or a girl and now it’s crying because it doesn’t know and it’s being teased.

“Unschooling” eh? How, exactly, will the child know what it doesn’t know? How will it know what it wants to learn unless you teach it a sufficiently diverse range of facts and ideas from which to make a meaningful choice? Who will decide on those initial facts and ideas? Oh, that’s right, you.

I bet your kids didn’t decide to go and visit Zapatista revolutionaries in the mountains of Mexico all by themselves.

So, just like any other parents, Mr. Stocker and (I presume) Ms. Witterick have projected their world view onto their children, proving Philip Larkin’s point.

The big difference is that being un / home schooled, there is no one else to provide a counterpoint to the bullshit with which this pair of lefty clowns will inevitably fill their children’s heads.

Which brings us to an important point for a philosophy of Liberalism: when should the state or community interfere?

It should be clear to most that by pursuing such separatism, the parents are harming their children for the reasons given above. But are they harming them MORE than religious extremists, racial purists or immigrants who won’t assimilate? I doubt it.

That’s not to say the harm is not material; rather, other upbringings do just as much, if not more harm. If the community is going to take action against Mr. Stocker and Ms. Witterick, why shouldn’t action be taken against a whole range of people for filling their kids' heads with rubbish and not allowing them exposure to anything that might challenge it?

Well, most Western societies do draw a line. There is a clearly defined educational syllabus up until at least the age of 15. Parents are required to send their children to school to learn it. Those who home school are audited to make sure they are teaching at least this syllabus, as in fact are schools audited to ensure the same.

Many people may not concur with some elements of the core syllabus, but I’d suggest literacy, numeracy, science, historical and geographical facts, civics and financial and technological competence are sufficiently generally agreed. We can at least see that our children learn this basic set of skills.

Unfortunately, home schooling has the capacity to endow almost everything taught with the slant of the parents: civics, science, history, even basic finance.

“Yes, but institutional education endows everything taught with the assumed correctness of our political and social system”, Mr. Stocker and Ms. Witterick might say. True, up until later high school.

The difference is, parents who send their children to recognized schools can give their kids an alternative view if they want. With home or “un” schooling, the community has no chance to expose those children to mainstream perspectives if their parents choose to eschew them, thus denying their children the ability to easily negotiate mainstream society should they wish to seek employment in it, for example.

Then should a liberal society ban home schooling for all but those children with developmental problems? Not if we allow religious schools, military schools or hippy community schools. Each has its own problems.

Going to a state school in a poor socio-economic neighbourhood can actually be worse for a child than any of the above, given the general attitude to learning of many dominant peer groups in such environments.

I’d suggest public exposure and discussion of extremist attitudes toward children’s education and upbringing is the best way for an open society to tackle these issues. This means the gathering of evidence on outcomes and robust debate, including satire and feeling secure enough to point the finger at the religious conservatives and the Stocker / Wittericks of the world.

Should It Not Be A Defendant's Right To Ask For A Judge Only Trial?

Ian Temby, QC took over as acting Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) in NSW for two months from March to May 2011 after Nicholas Cowdery retired. Many may remember him as the first commissioner for the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC).

Interviewed by the Sydney Morning Herald, he identified as a serious concern the “increasing frequency of judge alone trials” occurring since new laws were enacted in January 2011.

He gives as his reasons for believing this to be a problem:

·         Statistical evidence of higher acquittal rates in judge only trials.

·         Jury trials “involve community representatives” and removing the jury “does away with a democratic function”.

In NSW criminal trials, the defence can now request a judge only trial, which will be allowed if certain criteria are met, regardless of prosecution objections. Prior to 2011, both sides had to agree. The operative phrase here is “if certain criteria are met”: a judge only trial is not an automatic right of a defendant.

What is Ian Temby saying? That if there is a statistically significant difference in acquittal rates in judge only versus jury trials, the judges are getting it wrong?

He says later in the article that “the collective common sense of jurors can be a valuable aid to decision making”, so it looks as if he really is saying that juries often know better than judges.

Aah … the common man’s common sense … who needs education, reason and scientific method when we can illuminate complex problems with such a powerful beam as the common sense of the average citizen?

I accept the argument that juries may be preferable and even better than judges in the sentencing phase, as issues of punishment and restitution are very much democratic ones. However, a criminal trial is meant to deliver a conviction only if the charge has been proven beyond all reasonable doubt.

There is no symmetry here. Defendants do not have to prove their innocence. They do not even have to give evidence. The prosecution must demonstrate that, based on the evidence, there is no other reasonable conclusion but guilt. In fact, after the prosecution case, the defence can apply for a Prasad direction, whereby the jury can return a finding of not guilty without the requirement of hearing a defence if it is deemed the prosecution arguments are sufficiently weak to not support the charge.

Is Ian Temby really proposing that professional judges are less accurate than the “democratic function” of “community representatives” in deciding (a) the meaning of a charge and (b) whether it has been proven beyond reasonable doubt?

I suggest the opposite. If there is a statistical difference, I suggest it’s because juries often don’t understand the law.

If you believe high acquittal rates are the result of guilty people getting off, then this is more likely due to the inability of police to gather sufficient evidence to convict beyond a reasonable doubt, as the law requires. Judges are more likely to be able to discern this than juries.

If you believe this is happening, advocate to change the law to allow judges investigative powers and to be involved in the evidence collection and charge laying phases of a case, as they are in the Roman law systems of continental Europe.

There might be some (often angry, ignorant, fearful old pensioners) who would advocate changing the burden of proof. They should be ignored. A reasonable society cannot sentence people to jail on the balance of probability, as the statistical evidence proffered by Ian Temby implies some juries may be doing.

If you’re ever charged with a crime you didn’t commit, or excessive charges (and it happens more than most people would like to believe), you’ll want a judge to decide on matters of evidence and law, not a jury because you were nervous, out of your depth and unused to speaking in public.

Egging Bieber ... Epic! Posting The Video Under Your Real Name ... Retarded!

The plan was brilliant, a caper I would have been proud of as a teenager: climb into the roof of Acer Arena and pelt Justin Bieber with eggs. Awesomely funny.

Unfortunately, the mastermind was not much of a shot: all 6 eggs thrown missed their target. He looked like he had a pretty clear aim from almost directly above. Should have brought a dozen and thrown them one or two at a time, although I suppose adrenalin took over.

The egger managed to make a clean getaway, then with egg-regious stupidity, stumbled with a memorable victory in his sights. In a modern lesson for all internet users, he posted details and footage of his grand exploit on a “social networking site”, presumably Youtube, Facebook or Bebo, under his own name (or an account linked directly to it)!

Aww … dude … r u fkn rtrdd?

Of course, the clip went viral. Eventually some knob saw it, a complaint was made and the police tracked him down and arrested him at his home.

If the details of the news story are true, it looks like the police behaved sensibly and appropriately, sending 10 officers to arrest this dangerous criminal, unnecessarily roughing him up and handcuffing him at 7.30am.

Compare this with an assault in Surry Hills, where a woman was thrown to the ground and her mobile phone smashed in broad daylight by a man who then hung around outside the pub in which she sought refuge while she called the police on a borrowed phone. After 3 phone calls to a station about 500m away, still no response. Eventually, the assailant and witnesses left and she had to go down to the police station herself to report the crime. The end result? Nothing.

Good to see the police prioritising their resources appropriately. No wonder you’re so well respected by the taxpaying public you serve.

Just as disgracefully, what justification is there for the NSW Police posting on Youtube video of the arrest of a 17 year old schoolboy at his home? Perhaps irony is appropriate when dealing with adult criminals, but he is still legally a child.

The all too common, cowardly and thuggish police behaviour is an important issue, however my main point in this post is the stupidity of people putting their personal details all over the internet.

This naivety is particularly prevalent amongst young people; text, photos and videos of all manner of embarrassing stupidity which, trust me, you really don’t want in the public domain … and don’t think the alleged semi-privacy of the friends only section of your Facebook page really is private: it’s easily accessible. Photos and video of you doing stupid shit are just for you and your friends, so keep it off ANY computer except your own.

It’s not just embarrassing photos either: why would anyone put any of their personal details ANYWHERE on the internet? You must be mad.

I don’t agree with everything Julian Assange says, but his assertion that social networking sites are “spy machines” is pretty close to the mark. All it takes is a change to the law and police or any other authority can read your emails at will.

Business information is different. Placing professional profiles on the web is common practice. But why let complete strangers across the globe know your personal details?

That’s a recipe for not just identity theft, but being tracked and evidence collected against you. I don’t just mean criminal evidence, like in the Bodacious Bieber Egging Caper, because that won’t apply to most people.

I mean if someone wants to selectively assemble or even just view things you’ve posted: text, photos, videos and use it against you. They could harass or slander you across the web. They could pass details like your name, school or home address around to their dickhead friends. Or they could simply decide your behaviour is wrong and deny you a job.

Write a letter to a newspaper, make a comment on a blog, be engaged in a business or do some research that some left or right wing extremists don’t like and next thing they are targeting your family home. It’s happened.

Why take the risk? If you’re going to join Facebook or similar and put "personal" information on the web, be smart and use an alias. It isn’t hard.

Facebook says they have a policy that only real names are allowed. But in fact a large percentage of Facebook accounts are under aliases. If everyone showed some common sense and held their accounts under an alias, what do you think Facebook management would do? Ditch the policy or lose the advertising revenue?

And for Christ’s sake, why would you twitter your whereabouts under your own name? Please come and rob my house!

What is the connection between a philosophy of Liberalism and wherever possible, not allowing your personal details onto the internet?

A significant component of personal freedom is individual privacy. In this sense, institutions such as governments, public service agencies, law enforcement and corporations have goals which diametrically oppose your liberty: they actively try to collect your personal information. 

Unnecessarily giving away personal information erodes not just your own liberty, but liberty in general.

Naked Attacker Had Mouse Up His Bum ... WTF?

This is the kind of hilariously fucked up caper that just makes me laugh and laugh. Just the headline is enough:

Naked Attacker Had Mouse Up His Bum In South Carolina

How? Did he stick a piece of cheese up there and then sit outside a mouse hole, chucking a brown eye?

Why is South Carolina in the headline? Is this behaviour more shocking because it occurred there? Would it have been more acceptable in West Virginia or Kentucky? Actually, it probably would be.

The funniest bit was where “medical professionals” saw “a mouse tail hanging out of his anus” and then found the rest of the mouse inside.

Now, I’ve been known to get well toasted and go for the occasional streak with friends. Even a spot of nude driving or chucking brown eyes at people from a passing car. All good Aussie fun.

However, I can honestly say I’ve never been so fucked up that I’ve stuck a mouse up my bum and broken into someone’s house (at the same time).

I guess the moral of the story is: If you’re a hillbilly with an IQ of 50, don’t go smoking ice.

Another Lefty Wanker Proselytising Their Guilt

The main reason I loathe the modern left is that it is so heavily represented by people who think like Theo Hobson.

On 29 August 2010, this nauseating little turd wrote an article for the Guardian (surprise) entitled “Liberal guilt? Good for you”, with the subheading

It's right to be anxious. To be completely fatly smugly relaxed about our problematic world is the definition of the Tory soul.

It was probably read with smug approval by the middle class, university educated Guardian readers over breakfast as they prepared to drive self absorbed brats Katie and Oliver to their respective private schools.

This distillation of Western, middle class, lefty onanism was then reprinted in Australia in the SMH and the Age, under the title “Liberal guilt is nothing for a decent society to be ashamed of”.

Theo Hobson, your "little parade of privileged anxiety" does fill me with derision: not because I am a Tory, but because you are a sanctimonious tosser.

Your representation of politics as a dichotomy between smug, amoral gluttons and moral, “guilty liberals” is childishly absurd. Your characterization of liberal guilt as “conscience”, with the implication that anyone who disagrees with you has none is typical of the political piety of the modern left: anyone who differs from your position is not only logically wrong, but morally wrong, therefore a bad person, unworthy of participation in our great rule making enterprise.

Wantonly, recklessly or even negligently polluting the environment is seen as morally wrong and in many cases criminal by the vast majority of sensible people across the political spectrum. The only people who appear to disagree are at opposite extremes of this spectrum: self serving, corporate buccaneers and self serving, totalitarian governments, each the enemy of genuine liberalism.

Such general censure is entirely different from believing wealthy people should be able to pass their assets to their children, rather than have a large percentage confiscated by the state, that culture is a major contributor to the poverty of societies, that state funded IVF treatment should only be available to married couples, or that people have the civil right to say: “we don’t want any more Muslims here because their values are too different from ours”.

These are political positions which should be actively debated. To present anyone supporting them as lacking conscience is a device typical of both the modern left and religious right, intended to avoid arguments based on evidence and logic, which I suggest they are fearful they would lose.

“Self-accusing anxiety” does not necessarily accompany liberalism. It does however accompany the perverse bastardization in which “equality” (as defined by “ethical” people such as Theo Hobson) has been given such precedence over liberty that it must be imposed by countless committees regulating every aspect of not just economic, but social behaviour.

If you feel guilty about inheriting wealth and power from your society, then give away as much of it as will assuage your conscience. But don’t sit there in your political piety and tell other people they are morally wrong if they do not share your definition of justice.

The word “liberal” has become pejorative in places like the United States. That religious conservatives hold so much influence there is significantly due to the hijack of liberalism by Theo Hobson and his identity politics, social engineering, “guilt industry” ilk.

Keep Moving When You Step Off The Escalator ... How Difficult Can It Possibly Be?

People who stop and look around in confusion as soon as they step off the escalator ... are they the stupidest fucking morons in existence?

“Der … der … umm … what do I do now?” Well, just about anything other than what you’re doing, you frigging cretin!

Some pair of morons did this to me the other day. Even worse, this was coming off the escalator ONTO the train platform. What’s to decide? Just walk onto the platform, then when a train comes, walk onto it. Presumably they believed their pension cards entitled them to inconvenience all around them with their abject stupidity as well as discount fares.

Of course, I banged into them. Not with any deliberately extra force, but what else could I do, particularly as they were standing side by side, doubling their cretinousness / cretaincy?

When I asked them where they thought the people behind them would go if they stopped there, I received the response: “Ohh … ohh … ohh”, all said in a bewildered, slightly high pitched voice. Perhaps their tiny brains were trying to think of something that would make me feel rude, but were simply not up to the challenge.

It’s not just the elderly who do it. The inability to absorb basic facts about one’s immediate environment and deduce appropriate actions seems to be fairly uniform across ages, genders and races.

If the offender(s) is not frail and looks like they can take a bit of a bump, I usually put a bit extra into the collision, accompanied by a look of “Would you like a punch in the face as well? Say something stupid or irritating and you’ll get your wish.”

One behaviour I have noticed to be correlated with stopping immediately after getting off the escalator is standing next to people, rather than in front or behind, thus blocking the aisle where people walk up or down. 

A plausible explanation offers itself: These people have extremely low IQ and spend almost all their time in a (very small) bubble of their horrifyingly barren internal narrative. The concept that other people might be unreasonably inconvenienced or irritated by their stupidity and therefore get angry is anathema to them, as is clearly the concept that courtesy begets courtesy and rudeness begets rudeness.

In Australia, we drive on the left and somewhat surprisingly, people stand on the left on the escalator and walk on the right, except of course those who have failed to grasp this idea. 

The other day, the train was on the platform, due to depart. A line of people were standing on the left of the escalator as it descended to the platform. Despite having made the effort to go to a train station, none of them seemed to be in any hurry to actually catch a train, but they were all politely getting the fuck out of my way.  

Lo and behold, two girls in their early twenties, standing abreast near the bottom of the escalator. They were fat and badly dressed as well. 

I said: “Get out of the way, you fat lumps!” as I shoved past them and onto the train, just before its doors closed.

Some readers may think this excessively rude, but I believe it is just about the right amount of rudeness. Why should I miss a train and be late because two fat blubbers are too ignorant to observe a simple social custom? They deserve a short, sharp bit of rudeness in return.

Once, I encountered an even bigger cretin. This bloke was walking TOWARD the escalator, then decided to stop and look around with a confused look on his face, about one pace from the entrance, completely blocking it. Naturally, I banged straight into him. 

I asked him: “Why stop there, you clown?” 

His response was a strange one, since he wasn’t a foreigner: “Ohh … can’t people stop and look around in this city?” 

Perhaps he was from Adelaide. He certainly looked like someone who might vote for the Australian Democrats. 

My response: “Anywhere but where you stopped. You’ve got the entire concourse to stop and look around, you dickhead. Why choose to stop right in front of the escalator?”

He then said: “Does everyone have to be in such a hurry?” 

I said: “Well, I am, so get the fuck out of my way.” I finished off with: “I bet you vote Green, you fuckwit!”

Christ, what a turd! “Madonna! Que stronzo!” as the Italians say. 

Yes, you’re right, fool … it’s all the fault of our intolerant society … everyone in such a hurry. You should be able to block any entrance or exit you like. People should just wait until your tiny brain conjures up another thought and you decide to move, because you’re so sensitive and probably care so much about Aborigines and refugees.

The final set of train / escalator morons I’ll describe are people who can’t walk through an open ticket barrier.

In some busy, city railway stations, the staff occasionally have sufficient common sense to open the ticket barriers for the morning peak hour rush, correctly surmising that even if a few fare evaders do slip through, the increase in public convenience is worth it.

Despite the evidence of the open barriers and hundreds of people walking through before and all around them, some fools still cannot work out that it is safe for them to do the same. 

That’s right … they actually stop and hold everybody up by trying to put their ticket in the machine. Just like when a car unexpectedly stops or slows down, the effect ripples back down the queue.

You’d think this degree of dumbfuckness reasonably rare and you’d be wrong: it happens pretty much every morning. 

I once asked one of these people for an explanation: “Just purely out of academic interest, why did you think you needed to put YOUR ticket in the machine when everyone else is walking through? Did you think the machine was going to single you out for an electric shock or something?”

I was met with a dumbfounded look on an otherwise vacant face. Eventually the lump stammered out: “I … er … well, I didn’t know.”

Didn’t know what? Whether the machine would suddenly decide to close on you despite hundreds walking through successfully before you? Even if it did, what would be the consequence? Death?

This is a singular type of stupidity: one incapable of interpreting simple, blatantly obvious, repeated instances of identical evidence. The most disturbing thing is, these people are on their way to work, so someone must have seen fit to employ them. Imagine the people who they beat for the job. Jesus wept.

Although, when you get off a train and watch 400 people all try to queue up for the escalator, with only about a dozen choosing to sit down and continue to read their newspaper or book or do the crossword, it is perhaps surprising that more of them don’t stop at the top and try to work out what to do next.

So how does this anger at idiots fit in with a philosophy of liberalism? Aren't liberals supposed to be tolerant?

Tolerant of what? Deliberate ignorance? No.

The liberty part of liberalism means people can do what they like if their actions don't unreasonably impinge on others' attempts to do the same. It doesn’t mean you can behave however you want and everyone else should tolerate it. An attempt to strike a reasonable balance between individual liberty and equality of opportunity in a large society implies individual responsibility as well as individual rights.

Someone is probably thinking: "Calm down. How much inconvenience are you really being caused?"

A small amount, many times, which is why the perpetrators get a brief amount of rudeness in return. It's not like a bump and a few harsh words equate to a head butt or a tasering.

Mr. "Can’t people stop and look around in this city?” got a bit extra because he tried to pretend he hadn't done anything wrong and it was all the fault of an uncaring society.

People have a responsibility not to be self absorbed morons, cretinously ambling about like mobile speed bumps. It is quite reasonable for those affected by said morons to point this out. No one is suggesting the right to summarily shoot them. Although …

It’s because in most cases these people genuinely believe they are not idiots that it is an important social service to disabuse them of their delusion. 

Like the scene I witnessed where a fuckwit had chosen to park in the residents’ area, rather than in one of the several, free visitor parking spaces in a block of flats. Not only had this prick parked in someone else’s spot, he didn’t even bother to look at the yellow lines and had in fact parked straddling TWO people’s spaces.

Someone (presumably one of the owners) had placed an (I assume) angry note on his windshield. His response was to say to his wife: “Some people are so intolerant”, the implication being the note writer was intolerant in general, not just of his behaviour.

No, dickhead, people who won’t suffer selfish, self absorbed, ignorant cretins in “polite” silence are not intolerant in general; after thousands of small, almost daily doses of moronism, they have simply had a gutful of people like you.

Green Hypocrisy and Pauline Hanson's Election Challenge

The Greens have once again shown their opposition to genuine democracy and free speech by opposing Pauline Hanson’s right to challenge the NSW Legislative Council vote count in the Court of Disputed Returns.

I don’t want her challenge to be successful either because she would displace the 21^st place getter: the Nationals’ Sarah Johnston, who is at least part of a reasonably coherent party. However, if either of her claims below is even partially true, it is a very serious matter and should be heard in court. As would any candidate, she certainly has the right to ask for a review of the result, given how close it was.

The implication that she should not be allowed to challenge the result is absurd hypocrisy, typical of the politically pious left. If roles were reversed, the Greens would be kicking up a huge stink, but Pauline Hanson shouldn’t be allowed to challenge the result because we don’t agree with her politics. Thus, she is morally as well as logically wrong (if the latter concept exists amongst the Greens) and therefore should be stopped by any means.

Sarah Johnston and the Greens’ Jeremy Buckingham moved ahead of Pauline Hanson on preferences at the last stage of the count. He was the 3^rd Greens MLC elected, in 20^th place.

Buckingham’s position is that Pauline Hanson “should accept” the result. He was quoted: "Not only am I threatened, I think the whole of New South Wales is threatened by the challenge … I think it would be a bad outcome if she was to be successful."

Pauline Hanson only missed out on election by 1306 votes. A good analysis by Ben Raue shows the step by step progress of the preference distribution and candidate elimination. Notice that none of the final four elected candidates reached the quota of 185,274 = 1 + the number of formal votes (4,076,006) divided by 1 + the number of candidates (21). Even if extra votes were found, she would leapfrog Sarah Johnston because it is Gordon Moyes’ preference distribution which eliminates the 22^nd candidate.

Her claims in support of a recount are twofold:

1.      That at least 1200 votes for her were found in the blank ballots pile.

2.      That the randomized preference distribution system is unfair.

So why, exactly, would it be a bad outcome if her dispute were successful?

Since it is being heard in the Supreme Court, we might assume that a successful challenge would only result from at least one of her claims being upheld and at least an extra 1307 votes found.

This would be a good outcome in the sense of justice, because it would either:

1.      Prove that a substantial number of votes for her had been “misplaced” … and I really do mean the inverted commas.

2.      Prove that the randomized preference distribution system is unfair. I show this in a previous post anyway.

Of course, it would also be bad because it implies either:

1.      A flawed preference allocation system which must be fixed not just in NSW, but in every jurisdiction which employs randomized preference allocation with quotas.

2.      At the very least, gross incompetence in misplacing more than 1307 votes or, I suggest, criminal behaviour in “misplacing” them, even if the initial misplacing was accidental, then not rectified when discovered.

Hanson’s lawyer claimed that he has evidence of knowledge within the Electoral Commission of the misplaced votes via internal emails, as well as evidence of a subsequent attempt at covering it up. If they do in fact have such emails, the behaviour they imply is an extremely serious breach of the Electoral Act, possibly resulting in jail terms if anyone is found to have deliberately mishandled ballot papers and/or destroyed evidence.

If more than 1200 votes for Pauline Hanson are shown to have ended up in the blank ballots pile, what is the chance they got there (and stayed there) by simple incompetence, human error? 4/5 of 3/10 of fuck all, I say.

An alternative explanation is that some lefty(ies) at the NSWEC put them there to ensure she didn’t get elected. Cue howls of outrage … no supporter of left / progressive causes would ever do such a thing. We’re all such honest proponents of democracy. Like fucking hell you are.

If you’re morally right, well, what’s a little “bending of the rules”? The religious right would do the same thing. The further people's views from the centre, the more they tend to see themselves as morally superior and sadly, the less they feel they need to justify dishonest tactics.

I don’t want to see Pauline Hanson elected. Her time at One Nation and the absurd policies they produced show she is manifestly unqualified to govern (of course, it in no way follows her opponents are any more qualified).

She’s able to voice in simplistic terms some issues about which many people in Australia are unhappy:

·         That immigrants from significantly different cultures to the dominant, British derived, Australian culture (yes, it really is) are not required to assimilate.

·         That the politics of accusation and lack of personal responsibility seem to have dominated the Aboriginal agenda.

·         That large corporations are ripping most of us off.

Unfortunately, apart from deporting immigrants who commit crimes, she has very few credible solutions.

Being able to poorly articulate the grievances of a section of the community, regardless of how large is not in my view a sufficient qualification to enter parliament.

In spite of her lack of qualifications for the job, it does not follow that any Green candidates would be any better. It is certainly not a justification for electoral fraud.

If deliberate vote hiding is proven, even the non-rectification and cover up of an initially innocent mistake, the slippery little shit(s) who did it need to be punished: bankruptcy and jail.

Proportional Representation and Quotas

This note is a brief explanation of the quota system in a proportional representation election. It is intended as an adjunct to articles discussing issues arising from the implementation of proportional representation in parliaments.

If a parliament has N members, a “quota” is 1 + V/(N+1), where V is the total number of formal votes. In the counting process, as soon as a particular party or group (including groups of one) has enough votes for a quota, the person first on their candidate list is elected. Subsequent votes go toward their second candidate and so on until all votes have been counted and no more parties or groups have a quota.

In general, less than the requisite N members will have been elected at this stage, so proportional representation necessarily means preferential voting, unless it is agreed that after all full quotas have been allocated, the seats remaining are allocated according to the number of primary votes for the remaining candidates. However, this would seem contrary to purpose, since it would then be possible for someone to be elected with a small percentage of a quota if there were lots of minor parties and independents.

Of the groups without a quota, the one with the least votes is eliminated and their votes are allocated toward the remaining groups according to their second preferences, unless no second preference is allocated, in which case the vote is exhausted and is effectively informal. The elimination and preference distribution continues until N candidates are elected.

The big problem here is that say party A has 2.5 quotas, for example. We allocate 80% of their votes to the quota piles for candidates A1 & A2 on their list, then 20% of the votes to candidate A3, who now has 0.5 of a quota and must hope for a sufficient preference flow to be elected.

Suppose however that candidate A3 is eliminated in the preference count, so the preferences from their 0.5 of a quota will be allocated to other candidates. How do we know the preferences in the 20% of party A votes allocated to candidate A3 for their 0.5 quotas will have the same distribution as the preferences in the 80% of party A votes allocated to candidates A1 & A2 for their 2 quotas?

The strict answer is that we don’t. In NSW (and other jurisdictions), random sampling is used. This means that all of party A’s votes are collected and 20% of these randomly assigned to candidate A3. But, just like rolling a die, if we do it a lot and count the number of 6’s, the proportion will be close to 1/6 of the total rolls, but probably not exact. In fact, if we perform 60,000 rolls, we are expecting 10,000 6’s, but there is a 10% chance the actual outcome will be less than 9,883 and a 1% chance the actual outcome will be less than 9,787.

Those are significant differences from the expected or average outcome. If the rolls were votes instead, there’s a 10% chance we’ll miss out on more than 117 votes to which we’re entitled and a 1% chance we’ll miss out on more than 213 votes.

This is in essence one of Pauline Hanson’s two claims in support of a recount in the 2011 NSW Legislative Council election. It’s a fair point, although I’m pretty sure someone else must have noticed it on her behalf.

Prior to computers, a random sample was the only practical way to allocate a proportion of votes to preferences. However in modern elections, all votes, including preferences are scanned into a database. It is not difficult to work out all possible relevant preference combinations and allocate preferences to candidates exactly in proportion to those in the total voting pool. Any halfway decent undergraduate maths student could do it.

Democracy develops once there is the technology to support it. We now have the technology to do away with the sampling errors in the random allocation of preference votes. Let’s use it.

Let’s look at an example:

Suppose a parliament has 9 members and there are 10,000 voters, so a quota is 1 + 10000/(9+1) = 1001 votes ie. 10% plus 1 vote.

Suppose there are 4 parties who receive votes A: 4665, B: 3300, C: 1400, D: 635.

For ease of explanation, we’ll assume compulsory preferential voting, so all ballot papers have 1, 2, 3, 4 listed in some order against A, B, C, D. Optional preferential voting (you can write 1 or 1, 2 or 1, 2, 3 or 1, 2, 3, 4) follows the same principles of quotas, elimination and preference distribution, but the maths is slightly more complicated.

From the first round of counting, A has 4 whole quotas, B has 3 and C has 1, so we get 8 of our 9 members elected. Once these votes are allocated to the candidates on A, B & C’s lists, the remaining votes are A: 661, B: 297, C: 399, D: 635.

It’s B with the lowest total of those remaining, so all their candidates from 4^th down are eliminated and we must distribute preferences from 297 of B’s 3300 votes amongst A, C and D. As discussed above, since the order of preferences can differ between ballot papers, how do we work out a fair way to choose which 297 of all B’s votes have their preferences allocated?

As I said above, in NSW, the 297 are selected at random. Prior to computers, this was really the only practical way to do it.

But suppose we have all B’s 3300 votes in a database. We count the second preferences and find 33 = 1% for A, 2970 = 90% for C and 297 = 9% for D.

Then of B’s 297 vote overhang, we should allocate 1% = 3 votes to A, 90% = 267 to C and 9% = 27 to D.

After allocation, we have A: 664, C: 666, D: 662.

D, who was ahead of B’s 4^th candidate and C’s 2^nd candidate, is now eliminated and their 662 votes distributed to A or C depending on who is preferred.

So, if most of these 662 voters prefer A to C, A’s 5^th candidate will take the 9^th seat in parliament and party A will have an outright majority. Otherwise, C’s 2^nd candidate will be elected and party C will have the balance of power.

In this case, sampling 297 votes from 3300 at random could easily have given a couple of extra votes to D by pure chance and maybe only 1 or 2 votes to A instead of 3, thus altering the outcome of the election, since A would then have been eliminated and perhaps more of A’s preferences would have gone to D, giving D the final seat.

Hopefully you can see the point that although the preference distribution system is not perfect, being elected (or not) by the vagaries of the statistics of random sampling is a flaw we can now fix and therefore should.

Let’s modify the example slightly:

Suppose instead the primary votes were A: 4700, B: 2800, C: 1650, D: 850.

A has 4 whole quotas, B has 2 and C has 1, so we get 7 of our 9 members elected. Once these votes are allocated to the candidates on A, B & C’s lists, the remaining votes are A5: 696, B3: 798, C2: 649, D: 850, so now it is C’s candidates who are eliminated and the preferences of the 649 votes for C distributed.

By A5, I mean the 5^th candidate on A’s list, since the first 4 have already been allocated a quota and elected. B3 is the 3^rd candidate on B’s list and so on.

Suppose C’s preferences go to A: 254, B: 152, D: 243, giving totals of A5: 950, B3: 950, D: 1093.

Now D has a quota of 1001. Their first candidate is elected in 8^th spot overall and the remaining 92 votes go to D’s 2^nd candidate, who doesn’t have more than A5 or B3 and so is eliminated.

The 92 votes are distributed to A5 or B3 according to preferences. Both A and B need 51 of the 92 votes for a quota, so it is possible neither will achieve this. The outcome could be A: 48, B: 44 for example. This would see A5 elected since they have more votes than B3. A 46:46 split is also possible, which would necessitate a run off for the 9^th seat.

The reason we make a quota 1001 instead of 1000 is that for anyone receiving 1001 votes, it is impossible for 9 other candidates to equal or pass them, so they must be in the top 9. If they only received 1000 votes, it is possible for 9 other candidates to draw with them, so they are not certainly in the top 9 until they receive the 1001^st vote.

However, this second example shows that in a very tight race, it is possible for the final spots to be won by candidates who have not achieved a full quota (it could happen in the first example too, if D’s preferences split evenly between A and C).

Optional preferential voting:

This works in the same way as the examples above, except there is no requirement to allocate preferences to all candidates in order. In our examples, someone might vote AC or just A, instead of ACBD or ACDB.

In this system, it is often not possible to allocate the preferences of all votes for an eliminated candidate. If all the candidates chosen by a particular vote have already been eliminated, that vote “exhausts” and has the same practical effect as an informal one.

With optional preferential voting, there are usually sufficiently many exhausting votes that the last few candidates are elected without reaching a quota. This is not a serious problem per se, since it can happen with full preferential voting, as we saw above.

Let’s revisit our first example, but with optional preferential voting.

Suppose that in the first allocation of preferences ie. the 297 votes from B’s 4^th candidate, we have 1% = 3 votes to A, 80% = 238 to C, 6% = 18 to D and 38 votes exhausting because they only chose B and didn’t preference any other candidate.

After allocation, we have A: 664, C: 637, D: 653.

Now it is C’s 2^nd candidate who is eliminated. Their preferences are allocated to A or D or neither and exhaust. It is quite possible for A and D to receive only 100 preferences each if neither are popular amongst B & C voters, in which case A’s 5^th candidate would be elected in 9^th place, without even coming close to a quota.

This was the case with the final 4 candidates elected to the NSW Legislative Council in the recent poll.

Eat Da Poo Poo!

Here is the (in)famous Eat Da Poo Poo! video from Pastor Dr. Martin Ssempa, chairman of the National Taskforce Against Homosexuality in Uganda. It has of course gone viral because of the plethora of hilarious catchphrases.

The good “Doctor” has an MA in counseling from Philadelphia Biblical University, clearly one of the world’s top educational institutions. PBU offers bachelor degrees in bible studies, optionally coupled with courses such as business, education or science (lots of essays on intelligent design, I’m guessing).

A little searching uncovers the claim, apparently quoted directly from PBU’s website (although I couldn’t find it there):

Ssempa also received an honorary degree from PBU in 2006 for his ministry of compassion to HIV/AIDS victims in his native land.

I do not see mentioned any doctoral program anywhere in its graduate programs page, so one might well ask how PBU is able to award an honorary doctorate when it is apparently not possible to obtain one from the university by actual academic work. One might also ask what any university, even a "university" such as PBU would hope to achieve by giving an honorary doctorate to such an obvious goose.

But let’s get to the main point of the article: this clown’s video.

In it, Martin Ssempa attempts to show the audience graphic examples of gay male fetish sex (shit eating and fisting) as an argument in favour of outlawing homosexuality. At the risk of spoilers, I’ll describe my favourite quotes:

“I’ve taken time to do a little research to know what homosexuals do”.

Well buddy, it would take more than a little research to find the stuff you got hold of. You’ve apparently put quite a bit of effort into this “research”. A labour of love, clearly.

The best parts of the video are his descriptions to the audience of what is going on in the videos:

“… and the other person is poopooing … and this one is eating tha poopoo … like ice cream”. One bloke up the front is vigorously taking notes.

The good Pastor takes great delight in showing the laptop screen around the audience, including women: “Look at this guy sincerely, Bishop …”

Later on:

“They start off by touching each other’s genitals and smelling each other … then this one smears tha poopoo all over the other person’s face …”

When it gets to the fisting scene:

“… as if that is not enough, he puts the haand deeppaaahhh!!!”

Apparently, it’s all Barack Obama’s fault:

“We ask Barack Obama to explain to us: Is this what he wants to bring to Africa as a human right … to eat da poo poo?”

The crowd erupts out of their seats, shaking their fists as if to cry: “No, by God! We must fight to the death so Barack Obama does not make us eat da poo poo!”

… and they say they want to be treated with a level of respect afforded to equals?

Old Man Marries Dog For Luck - Then Dies

Allegedly it is a custom of the Tharu tribe of Nepal that an old man who regrows his teeth must marry a dog, for luck apparently.

In 2004, an elderly gentleman was fortunate / unfortunate enough to invoke this custom when he regrew some teeth. It turned out to be the latter as Phulram Chaudhary, 75, died three days later, suggesting the Tharu’s theory does not stand up empirically. The article does not say whether the new husband died “on the job” like Billy Snedden.

The bride looked lovely in the traditional Nepali red wedding sari with its gold threading and I can imagine a nice slab of Pal covered in marzipan with little statues of the bride and groom on top. The groom was said to be quite pleased with his dowry of two half chewed tennis balls.

Not to be deterred by, or perhaps unaware of the untimely death of the not so fortunate Mr. Chaudhary, in 2005 British woman Sharon Tendler married the bottlenosed dolphin Cindy at the Israeli seaside city of Eilat, in what was reported to be “a modest ceremony”. She was quoted: "It’s not a perverted thing … I do love this dolphin."

"Cindy" is in fact a male. If he wasn’t confused by being given a girl’s name, he is certainly confused now after being told he is married to Sharon.

Like most people, I laughed heartily when I first read about the Tharu’s custom of old men being forced to marry dogs, the sort of bizarre practice only foreigners could dream up. However after more thought, I believe this is the kind of thing we should institute here in Australia. Someone with big ears could be forced to marry a wombat, for example.

If you’re going to have crazy social rules, don’t be like the Greens and institute wowserish, politically pious laws that make 90% of people mildly unhappy. Have rules that single out the randomly unfortunate and subject them to a lifetime of ridicule and torment instead.